Drumbeat: March 3, 2012
Posted by Leanan on March 3, 2012 - 11:58am
Global mining boom is leading to landgrab, says report
The global mining, oil and gas industries have expanded so fast in the last decade they are now leading to large-scale "landgrabbing" and threatening farming and water supplies, according to a report by environment and development groups in Europe, Africa and India....The dramatic increase in large-scale mining, clearly seen in places such as the Amazon for gold and oil, India's tribal forest lands for bauxite, South Africa for coal and Ghana for gold, is being fuelled by the rising price of metals and oil. These have acted as an incentive to exploit new areas and less pure deposits, says the report.
"Technologies are becoming more sophisticated to extract materials from areas which were previously inaccessible, uneconomic or designated of 'lower' quality," it says. "That means more removal of soil, sand and rock and the gouging out of much larger areas of land, as seen with the Alberta tar sands in Canada."
Crude Oil Drops Most Since December as Obama Comments Reduce Iran Tension
Oil fell the most this year as President Barack Obama said a pre-emptive strike on Iran might generate “sympathy” for the Persian Gulf country, easing concern that an attack would take place.Prices dropped for the first time in three days after Obama said in an interview with The Atlantic magazine that a strike without warning might allow Iran to portray itself as a victim. Futures also declined as the dollar rose before reports next week that may show U.S. economic growth.
All the signs point to a falling oil price - except supply
If you want a recipe for falling global oil prices, you would think this would do the trick.The 17-country euro zone, which includes three Group of Seven countries, is back in recession. The shale deposits in the United States are gushing oil. Libyan supplies are coming back with a vengeance. Iran has not been bombed and, if the blathering Beltway pundits are right, will not be bombed before the U.S. election. The Strait of Hormuz is wide open. The latest generation of cars makes the fuel economy of your dad’s old banger look like the Exxon Valdez’s. European austerity-related taxes on gasoline and diesel are pushing down demand.
Why, then, are oil prices so high, to the point they threaten the tentative economic recoveries in debt-bombed Europe and elsewhere?
HSBC Says Oil Replaces Greece as Threat to Economic Growth, Asset Values
Soaring oil prices have displaced Greece’s sovereign debt as a threat to global economic growth and financial markets, HSBC Holdings Plc, Europe’s largest bank by market value, said.“With Greece disappearing, at least temporarily, from the headlines, investors have quickly found a new source of anxiety thanks to the recent surge in oil prices,” HSBC Chief Economist Stephen King said in a note today. “If the trend persists, a fragile economic recovery in the developed world could quickly be derailed and inflation could return to emerging markets.”
Slipping up on oil and Greece?
But the question of whether oil packs as much a threat for world markets as the systemic risks posed by the Greek debt collapse is an interesting one. Certainly the sort of random, nervy price movements late Thursday are reminiscent of the edgier days of the now two-year-old euro crisis. Familiar too is the often unfathomable second-guessing of political developments in the euro zone. Yet for many people oil is just the new, well… oil.
Iran Oil Loss Would Worsen Global Fuel Shortage, U.S. Says
Excluding Iran from the global oil market would increase the shortfall between worldwide supply and demand sixfold, based on February production and consumption estimates, the U.S. Energy Department said.
Gas prices gain 1.6 cents, near $3.76 a gallon
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The nationwide average for gasoline prices surged Saturday, approaching the $3.76-a-gallon mark, according to the motorist group AAA.The average price of regular unleaded gasoline climbed 1.6 cents in the latest 24-hour period, marking the 25th straight increase, AAA said. A month ago, the nationwide average was $3.46 a gallon.
What can U.S. do to halt rising gas prices? Not much
Rising gas prices are always a bad thing for an incumbent president, especially one heading into a tough re-election battle.But President Obama admitted in a speech in Miami recently that there's not all that much he can do to blunt the impact of prices, which some analysts think could be heading toward $5 per gallon nationwide this summer.
Obama: Fuel-efficient cars an answer to gas prices
WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama says vehicle fuel economy standards set under his administration and better cars built by a resurgent U.S. auto industry will save money at the gas pump over the long term, a counterpoint to Republican criticism of his energy policy.
Rep. Hastings faults Obama on oil policies
(UPI) -- U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., criticized President Obama Saturday for blocking the Keystone XL pipeline and restricting offshore oil drilling.Hastings, in the weekly GOP media address, also called on the president to loosen regulations on the oil industry.
The moves, he said, would help lower gasoline prices and create jobs.
Do Food Commodity Prices Follow Oil Prices?
People always seem to be interested in the comparison of food commodity prices with oil prices and many have proclaimed that food equals oil.This next graph going back to the 1950's, taken from this OECD publication, demonstrates that food prices have not followed very closely with oil prices.
Iran-Owned Tankers Storing Crude Falls to Two-Year Low, E.A. Gibson Says
The number of Iranian tankers used to store oil at sea slid to a two-year low as more of the ships were deployed to carry crude to Asia before the U.S. and Europe tighten sanctions on exports, said E.A. Gibson Shipbrokers Ltd.
Filipino, Russian sailors seized off Nigeria coast in ‘good health’—MEND
LAGOS—Three sailors abducted when their cargo ship was attacked by pirates off the Nigerian coast this week are “in good health”, an armed militant group said Friday.
Texas Farmer Takes On TransCanada
The debate over the Keystone XL pipeline has moved from the White House to a farm in Texas. Third-generation farmer Julia Trigg Crawford is engaged in a court battle over whether TransCanada, the company that wants to build the massive pipeline from Canada to Texas, has a right to declare eminent domain on a portion of her family's farm.
BP Reaches $7.8 Billion Deal With Gulf Spill Victims
BP Plc (BP/) said it reached a $7.8 billion settlement with businesses and individuals over the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster, removing one of three major litigation fronts facing the company over the biggest offshore spill in U.S. history.
Oil Spill: Why the BP Settlement Is Just the Beginning of the End
Under the terms of the settlement, plaintiffs who haven’t received compensation yet can take money from the settlement or opt out and apply to a BP-run entity. And if neither option appeals, they can still sue—which means we may not have seen the end of litigation over the oil spill.
BP settles while Macondo 'seeps'
As BP pays billions in settlements, scientists are concerned about a persistent oil seep near the Macondo 252 well.
How close did Japan really get to a widespread nuclear disaster?
GM stops Volt production for 5 weeks
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- President Barack Obama said recently he'd buy a Chevrolet Volt after he left office "in five more years."It seems like General Motors could use that business much sooner. The automaker said Friday it is halting the Detroit production line for the Chevrolet Volt for five weeks as it works to sell down its existing inventory of the plug-in car.
Minister Ed Davey says vested interests will hate his 'Green Deal'
The UK's energy minister said his "Green Deal" plan for business would be so radical it would be hated by some.Ed Davey told the Scottish Lib Dem conference in Inverness he would announce details of the project soon.
He said he was "giving notice" to businesses and local authorities to get serious about saving energy and saving people money.
Soaring sustainability: Eagles sign with solar-power giant at Phila. stadium
A year and a half after first announcing plans for solar power at the Eagles' stadium, the franchise announced Thursday that it had teamed up with a new partner - solar giant NRG of Princeton.NRG will design, build, and operate an array of more than 11,000 solar panels and 14 micro wind turbines that, over the course of a year, will provide six times the power used during all Eagles home games at Lincoln Financial Field, the team said.
1958 zoning code authors saw the future, often wrongly
Lewis clearly failed to predict suburban flight, and also didn't anticipate the decline in family size, which means that DC has a far lower population even with more housing units than existed in 1956.
Spherical Oil Silo Home is where we'll live when the oil runs out
It may be an impossible question to even fathom for you and me, but the folks over at Berlin's Pinkcloud.dk design studio are asking what our world will look like when we're not so fixated on oil. The estimated 49,000 oil silos worldwide, the group argues, could be transformed into some pretty futuristic-looking homes.
The Best Part About Global Warming
Scientists are still studying the complex relationship between flu and climate, and other factors, like an absence of new strains or immunity from past vaccinations, may have contributed to this season’s low numbers. But there is reason to believe that the weather is an important factor.
Why climate change is not on India’s radar
One day into my trip I realize it is unrealistic to expect India to meaningfully address climate change. The country is blanketed in polluted air, and flooded in polluted water. Even in the face of severe health impacts the government presents ineffectual action on local pollutants. Expecting India's government to incur costs for reducing greenhouse gases is to fool ourselves. We must wait for a will to tackle local pollutants, before action on climate change will occur.
Venezuela's Opec stand is a win for climate change campaigners
Environmentalists who support developing countries' fight against polluters should also back their struggle for control of oil.
Why the Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong
The first problem is an elementary mistake in economic analysis. The authors cite the “benefit-to-cost ratio” to support their argument. Elementary cost-benefit and business economics teach that this is an incorrect criterion for selecting investments or policies. The appropriate criterion for decisions in this context is net benefits (that is, the difference between, and not the ratio of, benefits and costs).
A Carbon Tax With a Twist to Please GOP -- Maybe
Arthur Laffer sees all taxes as essentially bad but some are worse than others. With that in mind, he would like to swap a tax on carbon for our current tax on income.
Climate Change: Insurers Confirm Growing Risks, Costs
The politics of global warming have typically involved much debate as to the role climate change plays in growing weather-related risk. Yesterday, however, at a Capital Hill a press conference on the cost of climate change, debate was not on the agenda. Pointing to a year of history-making, $1 billion-plus natural disasters, representatives of Tier 1 insurance companies took a definitive stance with members of the U.S. Senate to confirm that costs to taxpayers and businesses from extreme weather will continue to soar because of climate change.
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The spherical oil tank idea is, imo, a silly attempt to extrapolate the status quo except with shiny solar panels and greenery, and slap them on an old oil tank for irony. Sure, they make an attempt to create self-sustaining systems, but it's way too complex. Is an elevator run off of PV cells really a wise investment in a world of declining energy? Why not just build housing on the ground or use stairs? What about the maintenance and sourcing replacement parts for all the mechanical systems? While a well intentioned step in the right direction, its far too complex to be resilient in any meaningful way.
Earthships, imo, are a much more practical and well thought out solution that has actually been tested and proven in the real world, not some design studio's fantasy.
Ah, an earthship -- my dream home! Especially living in Tornado Alley :)
A Green Empire
How Anthony Malkin ’84 engineered the largest “green” retrofit ever
See: http://harvardmagazine.com/2012/03/a-green-empire
I'm currently working on a lighting proposal for a high end auto dealership. The public areas are illuminated by 2x2 nine cell deep parabolics fitted with three PL40 lamps driven by two magnetic ballasts. Each fixture draws roughly 140-watts. The replacement fixture (a Lithonia ES8P) will consume either 30-watts (offices and service reception) or 42-watts (showroom) depending upon the amount of light required. We'll also change out the metal halide recessed lighting in the showroom (90-watts with ballast) for Philips 12-watt PAR30 LEDs. Much better light quality and a 70 to 85 per cent reduction in lighting load.
Cheers,
Paul
Sounds great, your efforts will likely reduce the electricity required for lighting. How much does the reduction in lighting load contribute to an increase in HVAC demand? Are you also going to include upgrading the HVAC to higher efficiency levels, to further minimize the overall effect? Auto showrooms typically include lots of glass on the street side of the showroom. Is the glazing double pane, and if not, why not suggest replacing the glazing with double layer, low-e or just add an extra layer on the inside to cut the heating load? Is there an AC load during summer because of all that glass? If so, suggest an overhang to block the summer sunlight...
E. Swanson
I assume you mean "How much does the reduction in lighting load contribute to a decrease in HVAC demand?
No, he was correct. In cold climates when you reduce the energy consumption of lighting - a great deal of which is converted to waste heat - you will increase the load on the heating system.
Because the lights are producing heat via electric resistance, this is a very expensive heat, so replacing it with efficient heat from a modern heating system will still save energy and money.
Exactly . . . reducing heat provided by light bulbs and replacing it with heat produced by a more efficient and lower cost natural gas system will save both energy and money. If you have an electric heat system, you are at least replacing with heat generated by a system better designed to generate and distribute heat (heat up by your ceiling is not so useful).
The reduction in the client's lighting load is 20.1 kW so there will be a modest increase in heating demand during the winter months but this will be more than offset by the a/c savings. The front of the dealership faces south/south-west and there's a relatively shallow overhang above the glass, so I expect a good amount of unwanted heat is generated year-round.
Without knowing the facts, I'm guessing the showroom is air conditioned eight or nine months of the year (hopefully, the rooftop units are equipped with economizers so that outside air is used for cooling whenever possible, but I wouldn't count on it).
Personally, if it were my call, I would install a multi-zone VRF heat recovery heat pump such as the Sanyo ECOi or Mitsubishi City Multi to remove excess heat from the showroom and offices where cooling loads dominate so that it can be put to good use in the service bays located on the north side of the building where heat is needed nine months of the year. After all, why waste an enormous amount of energy simultaneously heating and cooling two adjoining spaces when all you have to do is throw whatever it is you don't want over a 15 cm cinder block wall, in effect accomplishing both tasks using perhaps one-tenth as much energy.
Be that as it may, HVAC falls outside of the scope of the work we do on behalf of ENSC, so although I can make various recommendations to the client I can't secure funding for these non-related measures.
Cheers,
Paul
"The front of the dealership faces south/south-west and there's a relatively shallow overhang above the glass, so I expect a good amount of unwanted heat is generated year-round. "
Simple awnings? Too low tech I suppose, but seems obvious...
Awnings would definitely help minimize the unwanted solar gain but, again, I'm not the one who writes the cheques. That said, I'm kinda partial to the idea of using the south side of the building as a passive solar collector with this heat being transported into the service bays. These service bays require a fair amount of heat nine months of the year because the concrete slab is in direct contact with the earth (no insulation), the space is heavily vented due to vehicle exhaust and the roll-up doors are constantly opening and closing as cars enter and leave. Why not turn something that's a nuisance into a plus?
Cheers,
Paul
It's a "show" room.
But even the increased load on the heating system is a very GOOD thing . . . there is nothing to 'offset'! You are replacing expensive inefficient light bulb generated heat with heat from a dedicated heating system that works cheaper & more efficiently at generating heat (hopefully natural gas). If light bulbs were better at generating heat than the heating system then we would use light bulbs as heating systems!
I don't disagree, bearing in mind that much of the waste heat is "trapped" inside the plenum (i.e., above the T-bar) or it accumulates the at ceiling whereas, ideally, we want it to be at floor level.
There are radiant heaters in the service bays hung just below the canopy and they're most likely natural gas as I don't recall seeing any propane tanks on the property. The offices and front showroom are severed by rooftop units. They could very well be gas (a combination of gas heat and electric a/c) or heat pumps or they might even be electric resistance as gas only became available in this area maybe a year or so ago.
Cheers,
Paul
While on the topic of Efficiency, some exciting news. Fujitsu has updated the RLS Series ductless AC/Heat pumps. The RLS2 series and is available in many areas now. The 9RLS is rated 27.2 SEER and all 3 units operate down to -5F. Many improvements in the line, Heating output up on all 3 units, Now 16,000BTU up from 14,400 IIRC for the 12RLS. Appears that Fujitsu may be king of the hill for efficiency in ductless units for now. Fun to see an efficiency war going on. http://www.fujitsugeneral.com/wallmountedRLS2_specs.htm. The Fujitsu rep only had one sales flyer for the RLS "TWO".
Any idea why the smaller units are more efficient?
The 1 ton 12RLS appears to be a 1.5 tuned for efficiency. So you can get a 1.5 ton for same $$, but under 18 SEER. The multi-head units seem to peak out around 18 SEER. Depending on cost of Energy, Cost of ownership over the life of the unit is all over the map.
The performance of these units is nothing short of amazing and I wouldn't be surprised if they continue to operate below -5°F as the low-temperature cut-off on our Sanyos is -22°C/-7°F.
One thing I should note... the outdoor compressors may be prone to ice build-up due to the design of their drain pan. A friend of mine in Montana had one of his units fail because the drain hole froze over and layer upon layer of ice built up to the point that it took out the fan (he was working in Saudi Arabia at the time and so the problem went undetected). Another friend in Prince Edward Island had a similar experience with his Fujitsu 15RLS but was able to clear the blockage with hot water before things got out of hand. As a precaution, I might enlarge the size of the opening or, alternatively, apply heat tape to the bottom of the pan to prevent any accumulation (you can plug it in only as required or run it an hour or two each day via an outdoor timer).
Cheers,
Paul
I've had to use a 100W lightbulb in a crawlspace to prevent pipes from freezing in an older home - it really works well. If the furnace goes out in the dead of winter, it's wise to just light up the basement rooms where the pipes are - just one or two incandescents may save the plumbing.
Another good reason to be sure and save a case of bulbs when converting to LEDs/CFLs!
I worked for many years for a Federal Indigenous Affairs agency in Australia - a bit like the US BIA, but actually chartered to support Indigenous Peoples, and it was run by Indigenous people, rather than being set up to oppress them. (Sorry, but the BIA has a pretty dreadful legacy).
Anyway, I regularly visited an Indigenous Community out in the Australian central desert - day-time temperatures can approach 50C (122F) pretty often - it's a hot place. I would go into the home of the community administrator, and he would have every light on, the oven on, and all the elements on his stove top on - all blazing away. The heat was unbearable.
The reason? My federal agency had built a 500KVA oil-burning power station (or some such), and the community only needed 200KVA to meet its daily needs, but they had to run the thing much higher or it would crash through under-usage. So every energy-burning device in the community of 1,000 people was going full bore, so the power station would work.
This was not the only such community with this problem.
Wow! You probably can't make stuff like that up!
They couldn't at least run some inefficient air conditioning units to cool their homes as opposed to running everything else?
That becomes an individual cost for buying the A/C they might not be able to afford. Similar to why poor people can't afford the upfront costs for insulation in NA to lower their heating costs.
Indeed. These are extremely poor people with extremely basic housing stock ... the notion of supplying AC to them (or their buying it) just did not arise.
That seems to be a situation that could work ideally in a church.. Any thoughts from someone with experience on if it would be a net savings to move heat from the sanctuary on Saturday night/Sunday to other parts of the church? Would only be for maybe ten hours a week but seems like a lot of heat to waste!
What are the luminous efficiencies of those lamps?
In recent years, the luminous efficiencies appear to have increased quite a bit for commercially available LEDs and compared to incandescence light bulbs they are quite a bit more efficient. However, compared to the better lightning ways, typically used in commercial settings, like T5 fluorescent tubes, I didn't think LEDs were that much better. LEDs still have advantages compared to fluorescent tubes, like faster response times, but efficiency wise they aren't or aren't much better.
According to wikipedia [1] e.g. LEDs have an efficiency of 50 - 100 lumen / watt, compact fluorescent have 46 - 75 lumen / watt, T5 tubes have 70 - 105 lumen / watt and metal halide 65 - 115 lumen / watt. The most efficient light sources, low pressure sodium lamps, reach 100 - 200 lumen / watt.
Those numbers would indicate that the LEDs are at best on par with the other lighting types. Where does therefore the 70% - 85% reduction in lighting load come from? Is it simply that much darker?
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminous_efficacy#Examples_2
The replacement lamp is a Philips 12-watt long neck PAR30 which has a rated output of 800 lumens or 67 lumens per watt. The ED17 lamp currently used supplies 3,850 mean lumens (i.e., measured at 40 per cent rated life) which puts its overall efficacy in the range of 43 lpw after you factor-in the ballast losses. However, the big hit with the metal halides is that these fixtures have a narrow six inch opening, a tall fluted neck, low irradiance finish, protective glass lens and the lamp is vertically aligned; consequently, much of the light is trapped inside the fixture (in effect, light bounces off the side of the housing only to be re-absorbed by the lamp itself) and so delivered lumens come in quite low. In the case of the LED PAR, virtually all of the light is delivered on target.
Cheers,
Paul
Consider photons emitted over lifetime of the fixture, Best no-filament lights (LED/Induction) shine bright at 100,000 + hours. Lots
of metal halide with years old bulbs shine at a fraction of rated lumen/watt.
Metal halides produce a good amount of light fresh from the box, but by end-of-life their output can fall to less than half their initial values. The problem can be further compounded by weak capacitors which have a lifespan of 50,000 hours or so. As these capacitors age, there can be an additional 50 to 60 per cent loss in light output and colour shift can become rather pronounced (the light that is generated turns noticeably green).
And just so no one thinks I'm making this up, I've lifted the following directly from a Philips service bulletin:
Cheers,
Paul
Ahh, The cap issue explains a lot. More often than not, If the fixture shines at all, NO attention is given, only when the bulb finally blacks out or blows up. Typical 1000W HID light is 60,000 Lumen out of the Box, at the end of it's 12,000 life, it's at half brightness. So what is it's real useful life for such bulbs on a PM program? In November I Installed 6 - 500 watt 32" Induction, http://www.neptunlight.com/products/4/1/induction-lighting.html Wired the independent 250 watt sections on separate branches with astro timers, and to the client amazement at 44 feet up, just lighting one tube is plenty of illumination. So the 24 month ROI is half along with 40 years of no maintenance operation at 12 hours/day. Induction's work great with occupancy sensors, try that with HIDs :-) Perhaps 12-36 months before LED can compete with Induction on illumination quality and cost of ownership, but with the Capital and R&D in LED technology, it is happening
Regarding A Carbon Tax With a Twist to Please GOP..., above, I came to the conclusion a while back that a carbon tax will only be possible once it's designed to move wealth to the top of the financial pyramid, so here we go ...
... a trickle down carbon tax plan. Jeez. Since lower income workers likely spend a higher percentage of their incomes on carbon-taxable expenditures, this smells like a plan to counter perceived progressive income tax wealth re-distribution. Not that I'm against schemes to reduce carbon emissions, I just can't see a way to accomplish it without furthering the process of moving virtually all of the wealth to the already wealthy. Class warfare takes many forms, it seems...
Impose an energy consumption tax, at the retail level, offset by abolishing the highly regressive Payroll (Social Security + Medicare) Tax.
My contention is that those with lower incomes pay a much higher percentage of that income on "energy.., at the retail level", while those with higher income levels benefit more from overall energy use being converted into greater income. And how would you fund Social Security and Medicare out of a carbon tax? No easy answers...
Agreed, Ghung. We can't change the mess we've made without a completely new set of politics, culture, and forms of exchange. We're going to have to think outside the box on this one?
http://prosperouswaydown.com/thinking-like-a-system-about-climate-science/
Of course one could tinker with the offsetting tax decreases to change the class effects (regressive/progressivity). But, the R's are pretty adept at proposing changes that superfically sound good (fairer, less papework etc.), but are really designed to shift the burden from the 1% to the 99%. But fiddling with the distributive effects is politics, and you can expect the big money lobbyists to try to get their pound of flesh.
Me. I'd probably go for it, since getting some sort of carbon tax is a big deal. Also getting the R's to admit you can raise taxes someplace and offset it by reducing them elsewhere would be a kind of breakthrough.
This is a bizarre proposal. Now I agree with it because I think it would help on climate change, it would reduce the trade deficit by reducing our usage of foreign oil, it would improve health by reducing pollution created by fossil fuels, etc. But Arthur Laffer said this:
That just seems really stupid. Fossil fuels are an amazing energy dense substance that we extract from the ground to power our economies. With a tax on carbon, we would be using less of that very cheap energy source or be forced into using more expensive alternatives and thus throttle the economy. Basically, he is saying we should tax the cheap energy slaves we use to power our economy. I think that would be bad economically . . . the only way it makes sense economically is if you take into account the other factors that I listed above (less trade deficit, better health, less climate change effects, etc.) that he claims not to care about.
I think Arthur Laffer may be a closet environmentalist/protectionist but he can't admit it because that is heresy in his conservative circles.
I think hes a true believer that if you cut taxes, people will work harder and the economy will improve. That was the basis for his claim that cutting taxes will raise government revenues. The argument was rather simple: think of a graph of tax rate on the horizontal scale, and government revenue on the verticle. At the left hand edge of the graph the tax rate is zero, so government revenues are zero. On the right edge, taxes are 100%, and noone lifts a finger, so no work no revenue. So somewhere in between those extrems government revenue is maximized. So far so good. But, his accolytes posit that taxes are so detrimental to working that the peak is at a very low tax rate. So he's taken a presumed effect, and elevated to a degree that defies data.
Now the real effect of a shift on economic output? Some production of fossil fuels would be curtailed. More would be spent on efficiency and alternatives. Energy would be more expensive, but take home pay would be higher. Most likely we slow the rate that we use resources, which most people on this list would think would be a good thing. With lower demand for fossil fuels the (pretax) market clearing price of these fuels would drop, so the owners of the FF reserves would be the big losers.
very cheap energy source?!
Just curious, have you ever heard of this thing called 'Peak Oil'? Hint, we are going to be forced into using more expensive alternatives whether we want to or not. Furthermore the economy as we know it, is already well on the way to being throttled!
The world of cheap energy slaves is already in the rear view mirror and the road ahead is uncharted to say the least. IMHO we had best prepare for the unexpected!
But it still is a resource that is 'underpriced'. What really is the 'replacement cost' for a barrel if you are converting photons into fuel in a month? A year? A day?
Priceless, Eric!
If I remember the Census Bureau figures properly, the poor spend about 16% of household income on energy in all forms, the middle-class about 8%, and the wealthy about 4%. It goes almost without saying that it is also more difficult for the poor to make investments in energy efficiency.
Lots of regional variation as well. High-carbon heating oil in New England. Low-carbon hydroelectricity in the Pacific NW. Broadly speaking, the Eastern Interconnect has higher-carbon power than the Western: a significantly bigger share from coal, smaller shares from natural gas and no-carbon sources.
The only serious tax is a genuine tax on wealth (assets) - not income. Tax every dollar of assets for everyone 4% every year - all problems are solved, and it is very progressive relative to assisting the poor. Even the top 1% can't escape it, if the government is serious about implementing it.
That sounds like a variant on those monetary systems where the currency is timed and steadily loses value, to insure that people keep it in circulation.
Or, Jokuhl, since money is information, we could even measure the value of wealth by marking time itself. That is, if we could bottle it and sell it like they did in the movie, In Time. Everything's a commodity in this dog-eat-dog society.
http://prosperouswaydown.com/subsystems/money/
I agree.
I always liked the idea of a Federal Property tax, as I feel the rich should share proportionally in the protection of their assets. Warren Buffet gets more value, tax dollar for tax dollar, out of that fleet of fighter jets than a dishwasher in Fresno, even when you discount their value in threatening other countries.
And for the record, I think there should be an Income tax as well. Tax property alone, and the rich won't own anything. They'd structure it so it all became untaxable income.
Lloyd
If the problem is that the government spends too much money on defense and building and maintaining an empire, then the last thing you want to do is put more money in the pockets of this government. Vote for an antiwar candidate if military spending is your gripe.
Sounds to me like you are just envious of the "rich" and would like to take them down a couple of notches.
A federal property tax would not necessarily put more money into the government (though the US needs at least 50%more tax revenue than it is receiving, that's a separate issue.) I want to take more money out of the pockets of the rich rather than the poor, using the value of their property as a measure. A proportionate share. You can keep the revenues neutral, and balanced against a concurrent income tax.
Is your position that you are against equitable taxation?
It's possible that if the rich were paying for their share of the military out of their own pockets rather than ours, they might be a little more amenable to cutting it back.
A federal property tax is about more than just defense. The poor and middle classes also pay a greater burden in areas like policing, fire protection, and the enforcement of regulations.
I believe we are subsidizing the rich, by making it possible for them to have more because of the docile environment caused by our way of life and legal/political system. Those with more should pay more. They should pay a proportionate share.
It's not about the military- it's about fairness.
This is standard plutocratic claptrap. Attack the man, not his position. He just wants more, it's all envy. This says more about you than about me. Some of us don't have acquisition as a primary value. For the record, I have a house and a car in Toronto; you don't have to hold a tag sale for me. However, I look around me and see a world becoming less fair, and a public and a political class that don't see taxation for what it is: a way to build a nation, and provide the services we depend on. The rich are shirking their civic duty, and they're doing it on the backs of the poor.
For the record, I am not "rich" myself.
Of course, the rich should pay more in taxes. That is why we have income taxes that are based on taxing a percentage of your income. And I am all in favor of eliminating tax loop holes and deductions that benefit mostly high income people (mortgage interest deduction, etc.).
However property taxes are regressive. They hurt the middle and upper middle classes a lot more than rich. They hurt retired and unemployed people. A 4% federal property tax is trivial for CEOs and people like Newt and Romney but will hurt professionals who have worked hard all their life to buy a nice home. It is also highly unfair to people who live in areas where real estate is expensive (like NY or silicon valley). Eliminate property taxes altogether and replace them with a local county level income tax.
No amount of taxation will ever be enough. The government will borrow and spend more and more until the country goes bankrupt. Your 4% tax will eventually turn into 8% and then 12%.....
For Warren Buffett, a Federal Property Tax on his net worth (actually, let's call it a Net Worth Tax, for clarity) of 4% works out to $1,560,000,000.000. One point five Billion Dollars. This is not trivial for anybody.
I suspect a 4% Net Worth tax would be to too high, particularly if you continue income tax.
I said that I was not positing an increase in taxation but rather a redistribution of the tax burden. If more government income came from the rich, the burden on the lower classes would be reduced.
I made a three-line comment; I didn't lay out a plan. Filling out the idea would involve working out the balance between Income and Net Wortht taxes, and details like exemptions. Say the first $100,000.00 is tax free or at a lower rate (that's $200,000 for a couple.) This would reduce the tax burden on the middle class nicely. And if more taxes were coming in from the rich, you could reduce the income tax burden on the lower classes...or try to balance the budget. I know, I know...crazy ideas.
The only reason those properties are valuable is because the jobs and income are there. They should pay up.
I'd like to live closer to downtown; can't afford it. I get by.
You've bought the party line: Taxation is theft! They'll keep going until they got all your money! Gotta keep that low tax rate in case you get a million dollars!
They want you to die in poverty, in a ghost town with no services, with no health insurance, and your kid fighting a war in some foreign country and coming back short a leg or his senses. And they want you to thank them for it.
"They want you to die in poverty, in a ghost town with no services, with no health insurance, and your kid fighting a war in some foreign country and coming back short a leg or his senses. And they want you to thank them for it."
Yep.
Yet... if you give them money, they go on adventures and build monuments to themselves. Spain got all kinds of money made available as loans. They went on a building spree. One town built an airport in an area with five already available. The design features a 60 foot statue of a local politician.
http://www.deconcrete.org/category/post-crisis/
"Mobility efficiency is left aside when every politician from the National Government wants his own hometown to get an airport. It is like a monument to glorify his political ego amongst their fellow countrymen."
Things were much better in America when the tax rate scaled up to 90+%. Investments were made. These were squandered in the Vietnam war adventure and various financial scandals with the remains carted away in globalization.
It is all a mess. At least removing the rewards for hording make more of the pie available to more people.
I think assuming politicians or political opponents are evil won't get you very far. Trust is a necessary element in building a good society, which makes it a very important starting point. Distrust should be used very selectively.
I don't think so, actually. Hoarding means somebody use the money to invest (for instance, the bank lends the money to someone). If the hoarded money is not in circulation for some reason, then the fed can increase the money supply by other means.
That somebody is wealthy or has a high income doesn't take away anything from other people's ability to consume, unless, of course, that somebody actually use his money to consume stuff himself. Money is just symbols.
Um... have you been paying attention to what passes for "political discourse" lately? This is not your father's or grandfather's America any more, where moderate Conservatives still existed, Congressmen still wrote their own bills, banks were still regulated, and occasionally a law would even get passed that actually benefitted regular working class schmucks.
It's arguable that if you *don't* assume most pols (and the financial oligrachs backing them) are self-serving and evil, then you are hopelessly naive.
The wealthy consume a far lower % of their incomes and/or wealth than do poor or working class people for reasons that should be obvious (the rich --even the most profligate ones-- do not eat 100X what the rest of us do, do not burn 100x the amount of gas, use 100x the amount of toilet paper, etc.). When you concentrate the wealth via the tax code to the extent we have in the U.S. (approaching Brazil and Mexico for income inequality), this tends to leave a lot less wealth for everyone else, and (importantly) also starves government programs that primarily benefit poor people: public education, Medicare and state health programs, Social Security, unemployment insurance, welfare programs, etc.
The economy may not be a zero sum game, but a rising tide has only been lifting the yachts for the past 30 years. Everyone else gets Ponzi schemes (NASDAQ & housing bubbles) and lots of debt to attempt to maintain their lifestyles. Perhaps "Money is just symbols" as you say, but those symbols are mighty hard to come by for most people, and are concentrating in fewer and fewer hands. Not a great recipe for democracy or political stability.
As I said, your attitude is not a working basis for a good society.
Fully agreed. So, of a certain GDP, the non-wealthy consumes proportionally much more than income disparities would suggest. This, in turn, means that much of capitalist wealth and income is used as impersonal working capital, and the capitalists are in effect merely care-takers of that money. Society is thus more egalitarian than one would assume from looking superficially at select statistics. The living standard of a person, after all, is all about consumption, not about symbols on bank accounts. Also, nobody would benefit if the impersonal working capital is transferred from capitalists to the government, since the government would be worse at making productive use of that money, lowering overall GDP and leaving less consumption space to the people.
Globally, that's extremely far from truth, and not even in the US it is true. Who would like to go back to the living standards of 1982?
If I lived in China, the answer would be most definitely "no". For the U.S., it's a definite "yes".
Back in 1982, median income:house ratio was about 3:1, even in high cost states like California. One good income could comfortably afford to buy a house (assuming 20% down), where now it takes two and 3% down with FHA financing is the new norm (allowing even sketchy borrowers to keep bidding up prices). Also, most jobs --even private sector-- provided full medical/dental and vacation benefits back then. Outsourcing had not kicked into high gear (yet), manufacturing still employed quite a few workers, and the Great Vampire Squid & friends accounted for a much smaller % of corporate profits and the macro economy back then. Income and wealth inequality were also much lower then.
Of course the music and fashion sucked, but, hey.... no decade is perfect.
Average home size has increased 65% (from 571 sq ft/person in 1980 to 941 in 2007).
The average vehicle miles per licensed driver has increased by 42% (from 10500 in 1980 to 14908 in 2005). Meanwhile, the percentage of women over 16 licensed has increased from roughly 76% to 86%. (Men have been flat at 93-94%.)
So, you're saying jobs have become less physical, less tedious and less dangerous? Total spending on health care has increased from $1000 PPP to almost $8000. In 1981, the first keyhole (laparoscopy) appendectomy was performed, and now, lots of surgeries can be performed with this technique with less total costs, less recovery time and a higher availability of surgery to fragile, elderly people.
I disagree here too, of course. In those respects, the 80-ies was nice. Less neurotic on sexuality and nudity too.
A few more facts: TV screen sizes has increased fourfold or more while weight and price has been heavily reduced. Bluray seems to outperform VHS somewhat in pictury and sound quality. Computer processing speed has increased some 100,000 times and the hard drive cost per GByte has decreased from $1 million to about 10 cents. The cellphone provides communication everywhere and can now replace a CD player, a GPS, maps, encyclopedias, a camera, a video camera, a watch, an alarm clock and a video game console, easily removing the need for up to $10,000 worth of "old" expenses, if the functionality could be bought at all.
US life expectancy seems to have increased from 74 years to 78 years as well.
I don't know where you got 65%, but even taking Census figures back to 1973 and using average (not median) numbers, I only get a 44% increase in average house size from 1973-2010: http://www.census.gov/const/C25Ann/sftotalmedavgsqft.pdf
Regardless, house square footage is not typically the largest component of real estate costs, especially in high cost states --the land underneath the structure is. And what really explains the macro run up in housing prices, either during the bubble years (2000-2007) or before would be an explosion in borrowing credit and a general relaxation in borrowing standards. Whether you attribute this mainly to the Fed's near-ZIRP policies, the relaxation of banking regulation, the meteoric rise of GSEs and MBSs, or too-generous tax benefits for real estate investors (or a combination of all) is up for debate. But the square footage of the structure on the lot can only account for a tiny % of the increase in prices or leverage.
As far as saying "jobs have become less physical, less tedious and less dangerous", I doubt they've become less tedious, some small % have become less physical, and "less dangerous" all depends upon what line of work you were in back in 1980. Jobs for the 99% percent have also become less rewarding in terms of salary, benefits and job security, as families sruggle to even maintain their former standard of living via two incomes and an explosion in mortgage/consumer debt.
RE: technology, yes, it's gotten better, but we're talking about differences in the macro tax/economic climate and wealth distribution, not technology, right? And before you bring up a favorite Fox News talking point, yes, refrigerators and TVs are now cheap enough that even poor people have them now.
RE: US life expectancy, yes, it's gotten better here, but has advanced even faster in "socialist" advanced democracies that spend far less per capita on healthcare than we do: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy
However, thanks to widespread obesity and diabetes, it's quite possible that even those modest gains will be reversed soon.
I used the per capita numbers. The number of persons per house has decreased as well.
Land costs are irrelevant, as that money is just symbols that are doing carousels through people's accounts. What matters is what we actually produce, collectively, and how we distribute that among ourselves to impact our standards of living.
Again, not correct. Salaries and benefits have increased quite a bit in real terms. The increase in vehicle miles travelled and soaring housing space is just two examples of that.
Technology improvements is a major part of what constitutes our increased GDP per capita, so that's what has to be distributed, and it has. The 1% cannot get appreciably better cell phones than the 99%. The wealth distribution is largely irrelevant - consumption distribution is what matters in terms of living standards.
Yes, it has, but still, a good improvement. Also, you do suffer from a legacy of big immigration and of slavery/discrimination. It takes a few generations to catch up.
Property taxes are only overly regressive if they are applied regressively. A sensible non regressive policy would be different brackets of ownership based on market value being taxed at a higher rate.
For example, 0% on the first $1million land/asset holdings, 1% on holdings valued between $1 and $2million and increasing on that basis. The percentage tax rate could be amended as this is just an example, and the brackets could be changed but once decided should automatically increase with inflation. The number of different brackets is also up for decision.
The important part is the initial tax free amount can be set at a rate that doesn't penalise small land holders, or just a single residential address, so the problem mentioned above about someone being priced out of a house that has been in the family for generations disappears. It's hard to get too excited about tax, but this one is a no brainer, but will probably never be implemented for obvious reasons - rich people would pay the most.
So, what is your takeaway from this graph?
Is it really that the rich are being subsidized? As I understand it, the 1% earns just some 20% of total incomes, but pays 38% of all federal income taxes.
You know the answer to that one, but you prefer to pretend not to and to suggest that there is some vast injustice against the 1% LOL.
First, your "just 20%" is low/outdated.
Second, those from the middle on down need to spend nearly all of their income on necessities, so there just isn't much blood left in that turnip to pay the tax man with. While those with more have excess income, far beyond what is needed to pay the basic bills, so they are better able to pay. That is what being rich means.
This is of course blindingly obvious on a moments reflection to any school child. But perhaps you were hoping that no one had a spare moment or a school child on hand? ;-)
First, I googled and think my 20% is in the right ballpark. Second, I think at least half of the lower 50% has plenty money in an international comparison. Third, your objection doesn't cut it, your condescending tone notwithstanding. Fact remains, the top pays more than their fair share, and the federal tax, as everybody knows, is progressive. Swedish taxes, for instance, is much less progressive.
You have convinced me.
I will cry crocodile tears for the poor, benighted and slighted 1% every night into my pillow from now on. '-)
Someone said "we are subsidizing the rich". I simply pointed out the (extreme) inaccuracy of that statement. It seems we agree on the facts.
You apparently ignored the rest of the sentence:
"...by making it possible for them to have more because of the docile environment caused by our way of life and legal/political system..."
Capital flight to Somalia doesn't seem to be much of a problem. I will add that without consumption and labor, capital earns no returns.
As a matter of curiousity, did you miss the announcement of Mitt Romney's average tax rate (notwithstanding that most of his money is in trusts). Also, federal and income are two modifiers of the word taxes. Without those modifiers what does the graph look like? Now add back in deductions and divide by share of income above the poverty level.
Then we can start talking about tax incidence. Who bears the cost of property taxes on a rental unit, the landlord or the tenant? Who bears the cost of the employer share of payroll taxes, the employer or the employee?
Yes, I did. As a Swede, I think I'm fairly knowledgeable of other countries' politics, but there is a limit, I guess. Now I looked it up. It seems he paid his taxes and since it was capital income, the rate was not that high. (Although it's a double taxation - the corporations pay taxes on profits before the capitalist pay taxes on dividends and such.)
Don't know. Could you present something about this, perhaps?
Deductions were accounted for in my graph, as it was about actual tax revenues. Also, the poverty level is irrelevant when answering the question about who is subsidizing who. It is very clear to me that the rich subsidize the poor.
Definitely the tenant and the employee. And the end consumer pays value added taxes and bears the costs of trade tariffs and such.
Some info has been provided by others below. Use of federal individual income taxes to measure progressivity of U.S. taxes is a canard. This is the most progressive significant portion of U.S. taxes and made up only 42% of federal revenues in 2010, federal taxes were only 60% of total taxes at all levels in 2009. Thus individual income taxes made up only about 1/4th of government revenues in the U.S. recently. Your sources present the data you regurgitated with the implication that this measures total tax burden and that most people are leeches on the backs of the wealthy. This is ludicrous to anyone who lives in the U.S. and isn't a propagandist. The remaining 75% of taxes (non-income or non-federal) are regressive in aggregate.
The comment about deductions was intended to point out that income taxes are paid on adjusted income, not actual income. The rich have more deductions, and so pay a lower effective rate than apparent.
The comment about the poverty level was intended to point out that income below the poverty level is not really net income, it's subsistence. Corporations don't pay income taxes on maintenance expenses, and people shouldn't pay income taxes on keeping together body and soul. That isn't a subsidy for the corporate person, or the corporeal one.
We agree that the tenant and the employee bear the costs of taxes which are attributed to their landlord and employer respectively in determining tax burden share (which skews the statistics to APPEAR more progressive than they are). Also, I haven't seen any Republicans tearing their hair out about double taxation of tenants who must pay property taxes out of their after-tax income, although I hear this double taxation thing a lot about capital income transferred between legal persons.
However which way you cut it, taxes redistribute enormous amounts of money from the rich to the poor. You're simply not satisfied with "enormous amounts". You want more.
Regressive in relation to income? Perhaps, but even then a rich person pays much, much more.
Again, the graph I pointed to was not about tax rates, it was about actual money actually paid in taxes.
Depends on what poverty definition you use. If relative poverty measure, then disagree.
I could agree in principle, but that's not how the socialist state works. Much of what it does is taking over the responsibility of keeping your body and soul together. I.e. you pay the state to care for you, since you can't be trusted to make the right decisions yourself. It isn't, sadly, about letting you care for yourself if you can and help you if you really, really need it. Believe me, as a Swede, I know.
Strange. Such an attribution is what socialists would do, to try to trick people that they pay less taxes than they really do.
Here is another graph that puts the tax "burden" on the upper quintile in a somewhat different perspective:
And this one:
And let's not forget this one:
Envious of the rich? Who is it who demands that we be an empire? Whose assets are we protecting? Surely it is not for the poor. However, a flat tax on assets seems somewhat regressive, even though the wealthy have more assets. I don't know how I would pay a tax on my assets in addition to an income tax.
a flat tax on assets seems somewhat regressive
Actually, a flat tax on assets would still be progressive. unlike a flat tax on income, simply because the rich --especially the uber-rich-- own so much more of all asset types than do middle class or poor people. Of course, it could (and should) be made progressive as well (i.e., different rates for different wealth brackets).
I don't think you've thought that through. A flat tax is flat, not progressive, by definition.
The largest effect of that would be to increase capital flight.
When roughly 2/3rds of wealth is concentrated in the top 5%, even a technically "flat" asset tax would be enormously "progressive" in its impact (e.g., tax burden would fall overwhelmingly on asset holders).
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
I keep hearing this meme from right wing media outlets, but no proof to back it up. When corporate (the *effective* rate, not theoretical after all the tax loopholes), capital gains and top marginal rates are all considered, the tax burden has not been lower on rich people or corporations than in over half a century. So where would these rich people theoretically flee to? Socialist Sweden? Communist France? Evil socialized Canada?
I won't beat a dead horse - I think you understand that proportional is not progressive.
I take it as a given that a lot of people will evade expropriatory taxes. The Swedish IRS estimate was that at least 500 billion SEK was withheld abroad when we had a wealth tax.
I'm a Swede. When I was younger I thought the US was capitalist and Sweden was socialist, but now I know better. Sweden and the US is approximately the same, just different. (I.e. equally economically free, but have regulated different areas. And the regulated areas in both countries are notoriously plagued with problems, of course, while the less-regulated areas thrive and deliver prosperity.)
jeppen, do you really believe that Sweden and the US are "approximately the same"? Granted, I haven't travelled extensively in Europe in a long while, but I keep tabs with American ex-pats and other friends living over there, and the social safety net they describe in Western Europe is miles ahead of what we have here:
--cradle-to-grave single payer healthcare,
--free (or nearly free) college education,
--unemployment and social welfare benfits that would make a "99er" here green with envy,
--free or heavily subsized housing + mental healthcare (i.e., no widespread homelessness),
--6-8 weeks of paid vacation & sick pay, etc., etc.
Of course, we get lots of expensive super bitchin' weapons systems and plenty of foreign countries to "deploy" them on, bankster bailouts, ultra-low taxes on billionaires, no estate tax, "regulations" written by lobbyists, and... I forget, how does all that help people like me again? Hmm....
Your points are a bit exaggerated, actually, but anyhow, you'll agree that most of what you mention is about government spending?
Heritage index of economic freedom rates the US as (much) more economically free than Sweden in "labor freedom", "government spending" and "fiscal freedom". In all the other domains, Sweden is more free: "property rights", "freedom from corruption", "business freedom", "monetary freedom", "trade freedom", "investment freedom" and "financial freedom".
So, Sweden is more economically free in 7 out of 10 measures. Granted, "government spending" is a very visible measure, and the near monopolization of health-care, child-care, education and pensions make taxes quite high. But it is undoubtedly a fact that in other sectors, Sweden has chosen a very, very free-market approach, embracing globalization and competition. We would be even freer, arguably, if it were not for the EU membership.
As a contrast, I constantly hear about strange US barriers to entry (taxi medallions and such), pork barrel bills, trade barriers, subsidies, regulation and stuff like that. Your electricity markets seems strangely fragmented and mostly socialist, for instance, while Sweden's is quite free. Your political landscape with its federalism and checks and balances seems to make you unable to streamline regulation and to unify and simplify, and you fall victim to rent-seeking and special interest demands to a higher degree. Sweden seems to be able to create smarter, more coherent policies, although we have some socialist junk that is hard to get rid of, such as rent controlled housing. (But even the socialist junk has been streamlined quite well and hangs together in a well-tuned framework.)
This is another meme that requires challenging (that unfettered activity is "good", and regulated activity is "bad").
In fact, it was the relentless de-regulation of the banking, investment, and lending criteria that led to the global financial crisis. Is there any doubt about that? Regulation is not exciting, but it is constantly necessary, because of the greed of so many of the rich - and the vulnerability of the little guy.
No, that's not a fact, and yes, there's definitely doubt about that. You should read up on the matter. This a good start.
On the contrary, regulation typically serve to protect the interests of the incumbents, enhancing their rent-seeking abilities and limiting the access for new competitors. In the short run, this hurts the little guy. In the long run, it hurts everybody - even incumbents.
Why is it "serious" to expropriate people's belongings? Why should a person that has built and paid for a home, possibly with his own hands, be be forced to sell and move if his income doesn't match the rising asset tax? If you want to help the poor, why don't you do it with your own money instead of with other's money?
A 4% asset tax, enforced "seriously", would swiftly turn the society communist (and I don't say that as an exaggeration or for rethorical purposes; it really will create communism. Nobody but the government will be able to run serious businesses with such a tax in place).
I think youre taking the argumentation a bit too far. However I agree about the tax on wealth (as opposed to earnings) thing. Such a tax forces people to liquid assets with low returns on book value. Such as forest land, allowed to stay in the natural state -better start cutting those trees to pay the taxman! Better sell that farmland to the housing developers (in fact townships have used property taxes to force sales). Much better to place the tax on earning, than on basic assets.
Here's an example I saw. I lived in Bozeman, MT in the early 1990's. Property taxes were rising very fast due to skyrocketing property values. There was an elderly man who was living in the stone house that his grandfather had built by hand when he was young. This man was not rich, just above poor, but the property taxes were now so high that he could no longer afford to pay them with his meager retirement income. He had to sell the house that had been in his family free and clear for 3 generations. He didn't want to sell and move, he wanted to live there.
There's a big difference between regressive property taxes and a wealth tax. Policy details matter and a reasonable wealth tax would have an exemption level (probably at $1M or so indexed to GDP). However, if his property was so valuable that he was actually wealthy, then I see two possible outs: a reverse mortgage, or an owner-will-carry partial sale to his heirs.
I think you make my argument for me. I don't think the principal family home should be subject to wealth/asset tax (even if it's valued at $30 million or more), but all other assets should be taxed - which is a major incentive to make sure that wealth is used productively every year.
And i's got nothing to do with communism .. what a silly comment ... it is about reversing 500 years of pressure from the ruling elite to remove wealth taxes, and impose income taxes of the middle and working class. Time to fight back!
Income tax plus a fair estate tax serves roughly the same purpose and is easier to implement than a wealth tax.
A fair estate tax: has rate bend points for various levels of assets, doesn't allow rebasing of assets at probate, is indexed for the age gap between decedent and heir, allows structured payment over time, etc.
income tax plus a fair estate tax serves
Wait, what you're really talking here is "socialist income confiscation" and a "death tax"! Those are evil instruments of communist redistribution from the industrious John Galt job creators to the lazy, undeserving poor, dontcha know! You should watch more Fox News before making such outrageous left-wing statements. This is Uh-merika, bub!
Strange. I think the result is quite obvious. US net wealth was some $54 trillion (2009), so the suggestion would be to expropriate more than $2 trillion annually, which is more than annual corporate profits. People wouldn't want to hold much assets in such an environment. The required profit margins to make investments would become impossibly high. Building tangible assets such as houses would be heavily discouraged, as would spending. Short-term consumption would rule the day. "Wine, women and song", as the Swedish saying goes.
First, investment is very seldomly dodgy. Second, that the government has crowded out private investment in infrastructure and services by taking and using your parents money is not a very good moral argument for the government to take your money as well. (For subsidies, the argument becomes even more absurd. Two wrongs don't make a right.)
"First, investment is very seldomly dodgy."
I was using dodgy investments as the opposite end of the spectrum from honest labor, not saying that all or even most investments were dodgy. Though I think 'very seldom' is not quite the right expression.
"Second, that the government has crowded out private investment in infrastructure and services by taking and using your parents money is not a very good moral argument for the government to take your money as well."
Do you not think that government has any role in infrastructure and services? Do you think government has no role? Are you an anarchist? And what do my parents have to do with it?
"For subsidies, the argument becomes even more absurd."
I was not saying that subsidies were a good thing. The point of my post, which somehow you must have replied to before I deleted it, was that the notion that corporate profits or most other forms of great wealth were completely independent of government infrastructure, services, and subsidies was absurd.
I think it definitely has a role regarding enforcement of laws and some regulation. It may or may not have a role regarding infrastructure and services. I'm quite pragmatic and I'll be happy to let the minimum size of government be decided by careful experiments. Forget about the parents comment.
Still, to ask for payment for stuff you've probably already paid for, and didn't ask for in the first place, is the m.o. of mafiosos.
You don't get to vote for your friendly neighborhood capo :-)
That's true. That separates us from less developed states - that the social order (in both politics and economics) is decided and renegotiated by continuous and open-access competition rather than by alliances of rent-seeking elites. The notion of the occupy movement that the US is a limited access social order is both wrong and somewhat dangerous, as it may end up creating what it tries to get us out of.
Continuous and open-access competition in the social order is a fine ideal. It is hardly the status quo.
Again, I claim that it is. It's only natural to see some corruption, nepotism or discrimination and view the glass as half empty, but really, it is half full, and we should cherish that. There is a fundamental difference between our open access orders and the limited access order of Russia, for instance.
If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?
The "great and powerful wizard" reveals a heavy hand in his usage of levers, spinnymabobs, etc.. The misinformation is clumsy, heavy-handed.. the fires a bit too.. contrived.
Sure, whoever from OWS would take that little booth may be worse, more despotic, certainly more far out there.. (temp check anyone?)..
Certainly their zeitgeist would have a different flavor.. But they serve as a cautionary tale to those in power to maybe temper their actions. slow them down, reduce their magnitude.. (temp check, anyone?
(and OWS is that temp check))
Will they ever take control? I don't think so. They are not an effective form of government. They are a foreshadowing, a pre-echo of sentiments that could become much more pronounced in much more normal people, who are much more moldable.
They are just a bunch of hippies in a park. Nothing more, nothing less. And the owner of Vanzotti park is now pleased to own a national landmark. For what it's worth, I'm rooting for them.
So when was the last time you and your friends were out and about in your personal pickup trucks with a couple bags of asphalt and shovels, purchased at your own expense, filling pot holes in a public road?
I'm sure you never asked for those roads in the first place either...
BTW you like to constantly use the 'Communism' bogey word but it happens to have the same root word as community and commons, both concepts which are anathema to your world view. As long as you have yours, right?!
Why would we? The government does that for us, doesn't it?
No, I didn't. Especially, I didn't ask for the government to make public roads and didn't have the option of being a part of demand for a privately funded road.
Actually, I don't. I really try to avoid it (the word "socialism" as well) as I've learned that communist and socialist Americans hate being called communist and socialist. It's like the N-word, I guess, and I try to respect that. But here I used communism in a very theoretical, impersonal and correct manner, so I thought it would fly. Apparently not. I'll have to try to go descriptive instead: "A 4% asset tax would end up with all major businesses being owned by the government."
I'm not sure why communities and commons couldn't arise without people being forced at police taserpoint to give up their belongings. My utopia is maximum freedom and your utopia is maximum totalitarianism, at least on the economic axis. Both our visions may be impractical and unattainable. But we're getting too off-topic here, I guess. I'm not really interested in discussing utopias.
Precisely. Everybody who doesn't share your vision is motivated by greed. That's it.
Btw, I stumbled upon this gallery of how capitalism in just ten years managed to utterly destroy the rich and diverse charm of communist East Germany.
Being forced to disgorge the proceeds of theft, usury, extortion, and brigandage is different than being stripped of one's belongings. Emancipation isn't takings.
That's one possible moral motivation for an asset tax. But I would think there could be specific laws for theft, so not everybody has to be treated like a thief.
Taxes are cheaper and more efficient than permanent criminal court proceedings for all malefactors of great wealth.
Wealth tax only capital above a threshold. Set the tax at a variable rate equal to the average interest on the national debt. Call it interest for deferred income taxation.
Clearly at some high rate, and at some low minimum asset level a wealth tax would damage investment and market functions.
But France and Switzerland have existing wealth taxes, and few would consider either "communist", so a wealth tax at appropriate rate and asset level can co-exist with very high functioning capitalism, including in Switzerland, banker to the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_tax
Yes, but none approach 4%. And I'd guess Switzerland has exemptions, particularly for the extremely rich, to limit capital flight and minimize destructiveness. I know Sweden did before abolishing the wealth tax altogether.
You'll never get it passed, unless substantial amounts are exempted, because it wipes out the possibility of any personally-funded retirement for the masses. It's been decades since savings accounts paid 4%. CDs did before the recession, but only if you committed your money for years. The general rule of thumb for withdrawals post-retirement is that 4% is the maximum safe rate -- and you've just confiscated all of that.
I admit to a personal prejudice on this one. After most of a lifetime of saving, I've accumulated enough to retire, at least to the extent that I don't have to be an 8-to-5 wage slave any more. But not if you impose a tax approaching the revenue that I can generate from my savings.
Oil becomes economic obsession But there's little politicians can do to blunt the price rise.
There ought to be a law that when you get something so terribly wrong you must shut down your publication. 173 million barrels in one year comes out to be just under half a million barrels per day. Where on earth did they get such a silly number. According to the EIA's Total Energy site, the U.S. produced an average of 5,670,689 barrels per day last year or a total of 2.07 billion barrels.
And according to that same link the US imported 8,482,633 (net) barrels per day or a total of 3.096 billion barrels. Adding the two we used a total of 5.166 billion barrels. Doing the math we imported almost exactly 60 percent of the oil we used.
Why can't these guys even come close to getting it right? It is right there on the EIA's web site for all the world to look at. Yet they never even come close. Printing an article that we only imported 44.8 percent of the oil we used is bad enough but saying we only produced half a million barrels per day should be a crime.
Ron P.
Hi Ron,
From the
Bloomberg item atop:
"Excluding Iran from the global oil market would increase the shortfall between worldwide supply and demand sixfold, based on February production and consumption estimates, the U.S. Energy Department said.
"Global fuel use averaged 3 million barrels a day more than output when Iran is excluded from the calculations and 500,000 more when Iran is included, the department’s Energy Information Administration said in a report yesterday.
"The examination of oil and fuel supplies and prices with and without Iran was prepared to help guide President Barack Obama’s administration in determining the feasibility of imposing sanctions related to Iranian oil trades through its central bank. Yesterday’s report was the first assessment issued under a Dec. 31 law that requires the EIA to provide an update on oil market conditions every 60 days."
Please note the bolded text. The EIA is admitting there is NOT enough oil to supply the global market even with Iranian exports included. That ought to tell Obama to back off his sanctions aimed at Iran's oil export capability as the law stipulates, which the linked article explains somewhat. This is the first time I've seen an explicit statement by EIA that oil's peaked, that demand is outstripping supply.
I suspect Obama is trying to walk a political tightrope. Trying to be just tough enough on Iran to prevent the Israeli hawks from launching a military strike. He's hoping to muddle through with tough sanctions rather than having an Israeli (or joint) military attack on his watch. Somehow I don't think it too likely that the Iranians will agree to something that the Israelis will accept, so I think he's really just kicking the (military) can down the road as far as possible.
The linked item mentions the EIA report's impact on determining sanctions:
Based upon the shortage EIA reports and the obvious fact that no effective "reserve capacity" excists, I don't see how Obama can okay further sanctions, and the law allows him a face-saving way to retreat. Based on the data provided here--"The Ceridian-UCLA Pulse of Commerce Index® (PCI®) dropped 1.7 percent in January. That places the PCI 2.2 percent below year-ago levels with essentially no growth in the year-and-a-half since the summer of 2010"--I would argue it's very much "in the U.S. national interest to" abandon the santions regime.
It is in the national interst, but is it in his political interest. The opposition will raise holey hell about his weak surrender monkey knees. Probably AIPAC will join in the chorus. I think he has to make it look like hes the tough guy.
This is Obama's big test, IMO. If he caves to the Israel lobby on this one, I may just not be voting at all in November. Or ever again.
The problem with this sort of protest (non)vote, is it cedes the decision making to those with less ethics than you. So we are stuck with choosing the lessor of...
I wouldn't think of it as a protest. More like giving up.
Then there's that apocryphal little old lady in Maine, who said... "I never vote, it just encourages the bastards". :-)
Iran goes non dollar on the 20th of this month. So the next 17 days will tell.
If Obama wants to look like a tough guy maybe we should tie his wrist to Ali Khamenei's & give them both a pocket knife.
Obama is some 20 years younger and 10 cm taller. Khamenei likely isn't the most physically active guy the world has seen either. I don't think such a fight would make Obama look very tough.
The USA spends more money on "defence" (if you're going to tell a lie, make it a big one - Adolf Hitler) than the rest of the world.
So he's threatening to force the overstretched generals of the world's biggest army to figure out how recruit a bunch more black southerners so they can open a new Middle Eastern front, to kill a few thousand unenthused Persian soldiers + their women & children, most of whom have no opinion on this whole issue; paid for by a society already bankrupt; on a fairly backwards oil state, who's religious leaders probably couldn't organize a cake sale; because the US can't survive without Iran's oil.
I don't think such a fight would make Obama look very tough, either. But my idea is a lot faster, cheaper and more efficient. And if it became the standard for settling international disputes you would get a different bunch of republican candidates.
As far as I can see, Obama is sensibly just waiting for Iran to overthrow its leadership. (Its days seems numbered.) However, the political reality is that he must look a bit tough to win the election, so he's saber-rattling a bit. I don't worry about that. However, I do worry about the current crop of republican candidates, who seems to have more or less promised to attack Iran. That would be very not good.
Not necessary. If the only goal is to stop Iran from building a bomb, you don't need to put boots on the ground. One rule: If it can potentially generate a significant amount of electricity, bomb it into rubble. Ditto for transmission facilities. You don't have to reach a buried oil- or gas-fired generating plant of commercial size -- you just have to close the exhaust vents. No country without electricity on some relatively large scale is going to build and maintain nuclear bombs.
So bomb um back to the stone age. And keep bombing um to keep them there, because like now they are really mad as hell, and the only thing on their minds after survival is vengence.
not that it matters any more- but there is a small thing called the Geneva Conventions. Destroying the infrastructure that a civilian population needs to live on is a war crime. But when you have committed so many what is one more?
Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant
Should have added that I wasn't advocating such a strategy, only noting that no one builds a nuclear bomb in a country without substantial electricity, so it is possible to stop such weapon development without occupying the country. There are any number of legal experts who argue that precise bombing of specific dual-use targets is not prohibited by the Geneva Conventions. At least substations, and possibly power plants, were bombing targets in Iraq in 1991 and again in 2003. The 1991 case would probably be more relevant, since there was no intent to occupy the country, only to prevent it from pursuing certain activities.
Personally, I'm mostly a neo-isolationist. At least IMO, one of the secondary reasons for the US to get over its dependence on distant energy resources is so that we can hide behind two oceans and have defense spending that reflects that. As things stand today, we end up providing a public service in the form of security against certain risks for Europe and parts of the Far East. No one other than the US can project the force necessary to -- for example -- reopen the Strait of Hormuz if Iran declared it closed (and enforced that). At least not without even more blatant violations of the Geneva Conventions: Western Europe could start taking out Iranian cities with nuclear weapons until the Iranians relented, but couldn't reopen the Strait with conventional forces in any kind of timely fashion.
China, India, Russia, Pakistan, North Korea, and South Korea have the largest armies in the world. The US is number 7.
You might be arguing that the US has the most effective army in the world, but that depends on the type of war you fight. If an opposing country draws you into an asymmetrical war where your technological superiority doesn't give you an advantage, it can become a nasty situation (a la Vietnam).
I was aiming for "most expensive"!
The point was that the USA spends more on "defense" than anyone else in the world. More than most of rest of the world combined. From the billions that evaporated with no accounting into Iraq I, for one, do not consider that very "effective", unless by "effective" you mean the ability to reduce a country to rubble.
Kinda like AK's vs 20,000 foot drones.
Here's Khamenei last week:
““The Iranian nation has never pursued and will never pursue nuclear weapons. There is no doubt that the decision makers in the countries opposing us know well that Iran is not after nuclear weapons because the Islamic Republic, logically, religiously and theoretically, considers the possession of nuclear weapons a grave sin and believes the proliferation of such weapons is senseless, destructive and dangerous.”
And he just kicked Ahmadinejad's butt in the parlimentary elections.
Khamenei takes control, Forbids Nuclear Bomb
I do like letting the leaders duke it out personally, rather than involve millions of (mostly) innocents. A better matchup would be Netanyahu and Ahmadinejad.
It does seem like there has been a "Waiting for Godot" aspect to a possible attack on Iran from the US or Israel; however, this time it does really look like it is different. Given the statements by Israeli leaders, I don't see how they can unilaterally back down.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/worst-oil-crisis-could-lie...
Worst oil crisis could lie just ahead
On Chris Matthews' Sunday morning show, Bob Woodward said that a senior foreign affairs official in Washington described the current geopolitical environment as the most difficult since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Am I the only one who belive Israel and Iran BOTH lack the capacity to launch an attack on each other? At least for now.
Attacking is easy and each has the capability to do so. What's far more difficult is the ability to Wage War--particularly war requiring a successful invasion--an ability ALL players in this game lack--including the US Empire, which can invade, but cannot win the war and thus the invasion fails. Again, US Imperial policy regarding Iran is Regime Change--every other stated goal is bullshit, a chimera, a Red Herring. That goal cannot be gained through one or several aerial assaults. Nor will using nuclear weapons gain the objective. There was a time when the simple coup would work, but the Iranian nation was very different in 1953; there are very few Royalists now. Indeed, Iranians were subjected to assault via the West through the Shah and then invaded by its proxy, Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and had its nationals subjected to terrorist attacks, not to mention the escalating sanctions regime since 1979. Invade Iran, and the whole nation becomes the enemy, as was the case when Iraq invaded. To conquer Iran would mean a Holocaust of immense proportions, followed by a neverending occupation, that would forever taint what litle respect the USA retains, and render it a nation no better than Nazi Germany deserving a similar fate. And of course, any invasion of Iran will collapse the current industrial order, as Iran will surely retaliate by destroying regional hydrocarbon infrastructure, and that is an outcome the .1% cannot bear as it must have a continuous flow of cash to support its house of cards.
It's absolutely amazing that there are no comments in response to my initial comment about the EIA's confirming that oil markets are undersupplied even with Iranian exports, not even Ron has addressed it, which is even more amazing. You'd think that such a confirmation of Peak Oil's reality would be jumped on and commented about for days. I guess that Peak Oil isn't important anymore, and reports of the Theory's death were correct.
I am not sure. I have been in contact with iranians who look back at the time of the Shah with nostalgy, the good old day. "We had this wonderful king, then we had a revolution, and now everything is bad" is a direct qoute from a girl I had some contact with.
Incidently, I have never met an Iranian who is muslim. They all pretend to be when they live in the Islmic Republic, but when they leave and move to Sweden, they are not more muslim than I am. (Yes, iranian muslims exists, but I have not met one yet).
Ron a useful guide to those visiting TOD would be a quick reference to World oil facts updated monthly or as facts present themselves .There are many that don't take the time to really study the problem as you and others do that compile and post info on drumbeat that unless you read all the post you may never find it.
Would also be this video I found last night on Rupert's website, that concisely explains peak oil. At the end it describes ways people can be better prepared for a changing world.
http://www.collapsenet.com/free-resources/collapsenet-public-access/item...
I think most journalists are innumerate. Even in "The Wall Street Journal" many of the articles show that the author did not understand the significance of certain numbers and sometimes mentioned less important numbers and omitted much more important numbers. Some WSJ reporters are much better than others at reporting and interpreting numbers.
Most publications are much worse than the WSJ with respect to the numeracy of the reporters and editors.
Ron, I think that getting numbers like US oil production wrong is part of a general lack of sense of scale and proportion. I see mistakes like this all the time in the press and among the general population. In my experience, engineers and scientist appear to be better at judging the validity of numbers than journalists.
It may have something to do with the education system, and may have been aggravated by the introduction of digital calculators. Just key in a few numbers and another number comes out, which then becomes gospel, regardless whether the ouput number is reasonable or not. What the education system isn't doing is reinforcing students knowledge about the magnitude of certain critical parameters such as the Earth circumference, distance to the sun, world GDP, world population, cruising speed of an airliner, weight of a tractor trailer rig, surface temperature of Venus, mass of all the extracted gold, surface area of the oceans, number of automobiles in the world, and world production of oil, coal, steel, wheat, etc.
And even when they have numbers, especially very big numbers, how many people really appreciate the distinction between a million, a billion, a trillion, and a quadrillion? By the looks of the general press, I'd say not very many.
It seems worse than just not being able to understand the scale of numbers and what they mean. They also don't even seem to verify basic facts.
For example, one week ago, late on February 24, it was reported that the Saudis had increased oil exports by more than 1 million bpd in response to the Iran crisis. One week later, the Wall Street Journal was still reporting the same story:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020375370457725913140427784...
Curiously there has been no independent confirmation of the Saudi insider who claims exports have increased. In fact, according to oil tanker tracker, Oil Movements, OPEC exports haven't increase at all:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-01/opec-exports-stable-amid-tight-...
Granted, it does appear that there is some evidence that the Saudis increased oil exports to India by about 200,000 to 300,000 bpd last week, at the same time Iran's exports to India dropped by about the same amount. However that still leaves missing about 1 million bpd in expected exports, somewhat like not finding a large elephant in a small room.
So the WSJ and others in the major media continue to put forth incorrect information, and have not retracted an unverifiable report. This situation might be funny if not for the fact that many American citizens will now make incorrect assumptions about the effects (or lack thereof) of a possible war with Iran, due to this shoddy reporting on the real facts about oil.
We must all thank Big Brother for increasing our chocolate ration to 20 grammes a week.
Any memorization at all is now considered a waste of time, utterly beneath the infinitely self-estimable dignity of students or anyone else. After all, everyone has calculators, and phones with at least rudimentary browsers, so no one ever needs to remember a thing. Indeed, the circle has now closed fully: no one even needs to remember or know when they ought to double-check whether something they see or hear even makes sense.
But look at the bright side. With no one needing to know or remember anything at all, the highest "moral" goal has finally been attained: life has at long last become "fair" to the feckless, stupid, and lazy.
"no one even needs to remember or know when they ought to double-check"
Paul,
I teach behavioural kids (Gr. 5-8) and every morning I put a sentence or two on the blackboard for Penmanship (they print it neatly, then do it in cursive writing, which they invariably had never learned how to do).
Anyway, last week I posted this (which I first saw here at TOD):
"Bumper sticker:
Don't believe everything that you think."
That had the kids looking very puzzled for a few minutes, but then sparked a pretty good discussion about jumping to conclusions, having blinders on, our reluctance to consider info that does not fit with prior experience, etc.
We also don't let them use calculators (except occasionally to check an answer which they've already worked on.
In math, we are forever hounding them on the reasonableness of their answer: eg. a missing decimal point will have (in long division) 5 kids splitting $850.75 each receiving $17,015 (or a sales tax calculation where the tax is 13 times the value of what they're buying).
The kids complain that we are too picky....
I heard a CBC discussion about the purpose/value of a university education, and one prof said that its purpose is to teach undergrads how to think and how to learn.
In my opinion, that process needs to start much, much earlier than that!
Paul & Rick:
Amen to that brothers!!
There once was a time when "failure is not an option" meant persistence and determination.
Now it means everyone gets a gold star for showing up.
I have hired (and fired) enough Uni grads and techs to conclude that most institutions are turning out people that are marginally illiterate and innumerate, at best. Forget the dream of critical thinking.
I was fortunate enough to attend a very good high school and find in many cases the education I received was on par with a four year grad of today. Further, I think the emphasis on some sort of college degree is now just a litmus test for employers to verify that the applicant has a modicum of work ethic and can walk and chew gum at the same time.
That said, to be fair, colleges and unis can only work with the applicants they get.
As product development manager, I hired a tech, fresh from school. He regularly objected to my design approach, in spite of the fact that he only saw a very small part of the overall system. It finally resulted in a long, ranting email to one of my partners whom he assumed was my boss, complaining how his views were not being respected and how I was not a "team player". He neglected to check facts, because I owned a significant portion of the company as well as the IP rights for the technology. He was flabbergasted and outraged when I gave him the freedom to seek alternate employment. Apparently, employers are now responsible for everyone's self-esteem, not just salary and benefits.
I suspect his delusions of adequacy were fostered by his so-called educators.
Sometimes, I'm so thankful that I am not successful.
Shortly after, I packed it in due to a medical condition, I finally realized that I was highly allergic to bull$h!t.
Rather than risk anaphylactic shock, I now do contract work with a much reduced income, and am slowly relearnng what success is.
Cheers,
Hey Pragma
I am in the last year of teaching high school. I emphasize attitude and effort above everything else; for the main reason that I have spent most of my life working in industry. Anyway, last week a lazy one refused to leave when I gave him the boot out of my class. He told me that he wasn't getting paid, therefore, did not need to work. Anyway, I kill my own snakes and never call an administrator for help, but in this case I was so pissed off I feared for this kid's safety if i 'lost it'. I was really close and could feel it building. My boss came down to the class with me, I left the room, and he told the student that he was so pissed off he wanted to choke him out....that he couldn't have imagined how I felt? (Now, is this a great boss, or what?)
The point is this, I am well paid teaching in Canada vrs the American system. But for the last few days I have been installing a granite counter top and cabinets for about a third of my salary and have never been happier. I have about a weeks work left but it made me realize that I am going back to contract work next winter. Screw it.
Anyway, back to the tiles.
Paulo
As they say in OZ, good on ya mate!
I too live in Canada, an ex "Wet Coaster" actually. Many here rightly mentioned how much knowledge has been lost, but something that is rarely discussed is poor overall education levels (apart from general assertions that people are idiots).
Canada actually ranks quite high, but obviously that score doesn't impress me. I have traveled and work extensively in the US and I am shocked at the lack of general knowledge, literacy and numeracy. I think that this does not bode well for the Long Emergency. Education is critical so your exit is a loss for the system, but I understand where you are coming from. We have lost the plot.
To all my American friends, I don't say this with any smugness or superiority. Education is just as much a part of infrastructure as are bridges an railroads. The lack of reinvestment is a travesty which will cause problems for decades to come.
As education fades, can witch burning, alchemy and astrology be far behind?
Peace.
I teach behavioural kids (Gr. 5-8)
Have you pondered diet and the "acting out"?
http://www.feingold.org/
"Don't believe everything that you think."
*clap* *clap*
May that start them on a lifelong journey of asking "WHY".
"Have you pondered diet and the "acting out"?"
Hi, Eric,
I haven't examined your Feingold link, but I will at least give it a peek. Certainly I'm aware of some of the info re. red dye #2 from 20 years ago, my own son seemed to really get hyper on chocolate when he was little (age 4-8?), and some of these kids do seem to rev up on sugar.
But I am dismayed by what they bring for lunch & snacks: multiple tubs of pudding, pizza pockets, Lunchables, etc, all of it in plastic containers of varying thicknesses. We've had parents drive over with McDonald's takeout for their already-overweight darlings.
Rarely a fruit in sight.
As I often remind them, there is far more energy in the packaging than there is in the food, and they look thoroughly puzzled: "But Mr. M, I can't eat the package," which of course is true.
But they rarely know what plastic is made of, it's never occurred to them that the energy in oil can be compared/measured relative to the energy in food.
But Ron, the people writing this wisdom have a community college diploma from Podunk Indiana, and it includes a couple of Media Studies units. It qualifies them to be top-notch financial journalists ... so you shouldn't criticise them!
Interesting read ...
Upper Class People More Likely to Cheat: Study
My roommate freshman year was going to be a doctor. His plan was to practice on Park Avenue (NYC) and treat little old ladies and do as much unnecessary surgery as possible to make as much money as possible. I do not know where he ended up but I expect he is doing exactly what he aimed to do.
And in late-breaking news, a major new study to be published by UC Berkeley shortly will show that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow.
Greed will rear its ugly head just as it does every day, but the Sun does not rise. See Heliocentric Theory.
Its important to have real corroboration, rather than just gut feeling and anec-data. Besides most of the populace has swallowed the memes, that the poor will rob you, and the rich are fine upstanding citizens who deserve every break we can give them.
Actually, they are the "Job Creators" and John Galtian supermen, without whom the economy would grind to a halt. And you are correct that the great majority of the U.S. populace believes that (a) the JCs deserve every tax break/subsidy we can give them, and (b) they will soon join their ranks, so a tax on the rich is really a tax on their future selves.
Pictures are truly worth a thousand words.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/weather/gallery/2012/feb/29/deadly-tornadoes-r...
Why climate change is not on India’s radar
Worse still I think that major corporations have decided to relocate emissions intensive industries to India knowing they will never be carbon taxed. Therefore the West should take some blame for those emissions since they are partly on our behalf. A carbon tariff on emissions intensive goods arriving in other countries will share the burden since the buyer pays more and may seek lower carbon alternatives. For example if a tonne of steel creates 1.7t of CO2 then at Australia's carbon tax rate of $23 per tCO2 the carbon tariff would be $39.
Here's a couple more cases
1) dirty steel plant relocated to India
In Perth Western Australia there was a plant for making steel using sub-bituminous coal rather than coking coal. That plant is being dismantled and moved to India http://www.miningaustralia.com.au/news/rio-to-relocate-hismelt-plant-to-...
2) Indian guest workers in Queensland coal mine
Despite 10,000 local job seekers in the area of this proposed mine the developer would prefer to bring in guest workers http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-02-14/indian-group-plans-qlds-biggest-co...
BHP got out of steel in Australia a decade ago, long before there was any talk of a carbon tax - they could see the (future economic) writing on the wall a long time ago.
Why climate change is not on India’s radar
This is why I say that we will never properly address rising carbon emissions. While we wring our hands in the West, India is asking "What's global warming?" Seriously, a survey from a couple of years ago showed that the majority of Indians had no idea what it was. The Asia Pacific region emits more carbon dioxide than any other on earth, and their emissions are rapidly climbing. That -- contrary to James Hansen's claim about the oil sands -- is the biggest carbon bomb on the planet.
It is precisely because of this that GWB was right not having the United States join Kyoto (believe me it is not easy to write those words). Without India and China committed to reductions in GHG any global accord is meaningless. IMO rather than trying to fight for GHG reductions here in the US we should be working on adaptation. With due respects to McKibben and unfortunately the planet he is tilting at windmills.
The truth is really simple- politically neither India and China can agree to emission levels/capita that are lower than that of the United States and there is simply no way with all the goodwill in the world that the United States can get its GHG emission levels down to a level that if the Chinese and Indians got to would provide for stable GHG levels in the atmosphere.
I think we should start by building the wall on the Southern border to protect against the inevitable surge of climate refugees and develop sufficient maritime capacity to intercept ships at sea.
That's exactly what we're planning here in Canada
Bryan
That's what I was thinking. It's time to start stringing barbed wire and putting guard towers on the 49th parallel to keep all those climate refugees from heading north.
Except maybe farmers. When the boreal forests turn into prairie, we may need more farmers to plow it. And oil sands workers, too, because we'll need fuel for all those tractors.
part of the contingency planning is to make sure that we have the capacity to take yours down :-)
cv, GWB promised the American people that he would regulate CO2. He lied about that.
His daddies lie about not raising taxes ("Read my lips" and all that) was quite minor and only hit Americans in the wallet. Bush Jr's lie will hurt every living thing.
He had the opportunity to lead. He failed.
I noticed that he didn't say that the US would suspend democracy until every other country becomes a democracy first. (Of course, he did come pretty close to suspending democracy here, come to think of it.)
Leadership on GW was/is even more important than leadership in the political or an other area.
The walls you dream about won't keep the drought in Mexico. It won't stop the ever more powerful deluges and storms. It won't stop the seas from rising. It won't stop (and could exacerbate) the species loss--the creation story run backward--that is already well underway.
Wake out of your dream.
Ice age CO2 levels: 180 PPM
Inter glacialCO2 levels: 280 PPM
Todays CO2 level: 392.66 PPM (dec 2011, according to NASA)
We already have a CO2 concentration that is bigger than that wich make the difference between an ice-age and an inter-glacial period. So we have already programmed one "glacial step upwards" into the system. What this new climate looks like, no one realy knows. The climate needs a couple of decades to catch up with the CO2 levels, due to the lagging effect of oceans. That is why we do not have that new climate yet. But we will get there, the only way to stopit is to clear the sky of the gas. This is the beginning of my "it is to late" speach.
But off course, we could perform the experiment of pouring out another 100 PPM of CO2 to see what the next climate after this will be like. Who knows,it may be fun? Atleast it will be interesting. The chinese way of interesting.
We already have a CO2 concentration
I can see you have issues with Carbon in the air. Due to modelling that can't be shown by controlled studies to be correct.
What, personally, have you done to take Carbon out of the air?
I did not see that survey of Indians, but last time I checked, the US was the place that has one of the two major political parties in complete denial of global warming. I don't know of any parties in that kind of flat out denial of basic science in India or any other developing country (but maybe suyog or one of our other resident Indians on the forum can correct me.)
We can always blame others for our own foolish disregard of the obvious.
Or we can be the world leader we claim to be and bring others with us by the force of our example.
Rrr, uhh, never mind.
Are you sure about that?
This is pretty remote country - it would be a pretty wide net just to cover 10,000 souls - let alone 10,000 unemployed people who wish to work in a new coal mine. But I take the point that importing foreign workers can be a contentious (ie racist) issue in Australia, even in those many mineral-rich rural areas where there is an on-going labour shortage.
Those are politician Bob Katter's estimates on the Indian owned mine. Recently the BMA mine was looking for 1,000 workers and was thinking of starting a shuttle plane service from the Gold Coast airport.
This link is new http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-17254778 about the UN investigating coal ship damage to the Great Barrier Reef. I don't get it; from July 1st Australians pay carbon tax on coal and gas fired energy yet the government does everything possible to make it easier for foreigners to burn our fossil fuel. Not just coal but I believe a world first in liquefied coal seam gas with three plants under construction. Something is crazy hope it's not me.
I agree - I think it's ludicrous (or at best, token) to impose a carbon tax in isolation internationally - but it's actually crazier to impose one on the one hand, but OTOH be a very major player in the export of "bad" fossil fuels (ie coal), and for the taxing government to provide all manner of significant support to promote and assist those industries.
Just shows you what crazy little creatures they are - these democratic capitalist states. And the carbon tax is part of the price the Labor Party is paying to have Greens support in the Senate.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/mar/03/michael-mann-climate-chang...
The money quote from that 1958 zoning code article:
Looks like elf'n'safety is a lot like peak oil. If you choose, you can use it to rationalize forcing anyone to do anything you want - in that case to buy a large lot or else go without.
That is 36 by 100 feet. With a 32 by 50 foot house (1600 sq ft). With 2 feet on the sides and 15 foot set back in front and 35 foot back yard. Not an overly large back yard (36 by 35, 1100 sq ft).
My neighborhood is 5 acre zoning :) 220,000 sq ft
Most new high-density SF developments are two-story. Voila... 2400 square feet and a bigger yard.
I used to have a 25x95 foot lot, with a 75-year old 1100 sq. ft. two-story Victorian-style house on it. It was one of only 2 two-story houses on the street when I bought it - the rest of the houses were cute little 1-story cottages of the same age.
It was an extremely nice neighborhood with a lovely riverfront park on one side, and a light rail station with fast access to downtown on the other side, which is why I moved there. A lot of other people noticed the same things, and the small lots didn't put them off, either. They obviously had a lot more money than I did, though.
When I left, 25 years later, the street was full of Victorian-style houses that looked like my by-now 100 year-old one, except much bigger. The zoning laws for single-family residences allowed them to cover no more than 50% of the lot with structure, but within the zoning limits, they could build a 3,500 square-foot three-story yuppie mansion with underdrive garage on a 25x95 foot lot, and by the time I left, that's what they were starting to build.
In the more affluent part of the neighborhood, excessively wealthy people were buying side-by-side 25-foot lots, merging the titles, and building 7,000 sq. ft. houses with underground parking.
The bottom line is that small lots are not a constraint to achieving the housing standards you want. If you can't get a big lot, you can go high (and your BMWs can go deep).
Well, yeah, obviously. OTOH we're talking about the District here, where land can be very expensive. And the footprint needn't be large if the house has two stories or is not so large. You should see some of the houses and house lots in Holland's Randstadt. As the APHA would apparently have it, the Dutch should have been - and still be - dying like flies!
That elf'n'safety bit remains the "interesting" angle here - as spurious as ever, the bog-standard shopworn tactic nowadays for scaring people over nothing in order that they shall submit meekly to anything that's propounded. I do wonder how the APHA concluded that 3650 square feet was OK, but not 3600 or even 2900. Maybe they threw three dice and read them off, making 2900 impossible? Or maybe they know of some secret virus with precisely tuned distance-measuring DNA? But in any case why didn't they oppose duplexes and apartments too?
Then again, zoning is usually about artificially pumping up "property values", in order that petty speculators with little actual earning power can pretend to get rich. So maybe APHA had a pipeline straight to, not medical knowledge of any sort, but a real-estate brokers' association? After all the national fetish for worshipping real-estate is nothing new.
363 million barrels vanishes in northern Yuzhnoye Khylchuyu (link)
LUKOIL in profit miss on field miscalculation
As pipelines stall, railways keep oil flowing
The ABC (Australian equivalent of BBC) had a program during the week on fracking in the US. I was surprised to see in Texas just how close some of the rig sites were to residential areas.
http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2012/s3441606.htm
Fantastic Video Energy. It taught me a few things I did not know. For instance 50% of all well casings fail during the life of the well. But think about it, walls one inch thick an miles long, is that surprising? And gas bubbling up through a stream. And we can see it only because a stream was there. It must be coming up all over North Dakota like that. And that is just from the few well casings that have failed so far. What happens when half of them start failing? Shocking!
Ron P.
EFA,
Thanks for that... the final segment about the ND farmer seems quite typical: weird things in the water, humans & livestock getting sick, etc.
Two months ago a very interesting study was published, "Impacts of Gas Drilling on Human and Animal Health."
It points out how livestock are effective (though unfortunate) 'canaries' since they usually remain in a confined environment 24/7.
The authors describe how the toxicity of fracking fluid was inadvertently tested in a reasonably scientific manner:
"Two cases involving beef cattle farms inadvertently provided control and experimental groups.... Of the 60 head that were exposed... 21 died and 16 failed to produce calves the following spring. Of the 36 that were not exposed, no health problems were observed....
At another farm, 140 head were exposed... approximately 70 died and there was a high incidence of stillborn and stunted calves. The remainder of the herd (60 head)... did not have access to the wastewater; they showed no health or growth problems" (p.60).
The Bamberger & Oswald study can be linked here:
http://protectingourwaters.wordpress.com/2012/01/23/animal-and-human-hea...
EFA - " I was surprised to see in Texas just how close some of the rig sites were to residential areas." You shouldn't be. I could point out many dozens of frac'd fields that are not just close to residential areas/towns but are actually directly under those locations. And in some cases been there for more than 50 years.
As been pointed out here many times before it is very rare for the actual frac'ng to cause any damage to nearby water wells or surface structures. The threat to folks is the improper disposal of frac/production fluids. In the bad ole days (1940's and 50's) this was a serious problem in Texas. Since then a combination of tough/enforced regs and a legal system that would crucify offending companies it's not a widespread problem today. Illegal dumping can still happen but there are many eyes watching today. You might be surprised to know that typically it's other oil field workers that help bust offenders. Many of us live in those areas. My 11 yo daughter drinks well water every day. Wanna guess how I would react if I caught someone dumping frac fluid on the ground close to her water supply? Hint: I'm always armed in the field. LOL
There is a disconnect between citizens in Texas who have no vested interest in frac'd wells and the MSM reports coming from the NE US. Remember these folks aren’t making money from the frac’ng. They have a pit bull of a defender in the Texas Rail Road Commission and a legal system fully on their side. Yet you don’t see stories in Texas about fears over frac’ng. I suspect you probably haven’t seen stories down under about the discovery a while back of a significant source of frac fluid contamination in the Macellus shale gas play. It got very little coverage by the MSM even in the US. Turns out local municipal treatment centers were accepting (for a nice fee) frac fluids and then discharging them untreated back into the streams to float downstream to the next community. Oddly enough it was illegal for a private company to do this. Eventually both PA and NY made it illegal for these facilities to do this. You would think such alaw wouldn't be needed.
From the beginning of our discussions on TOD about frac fluid contamination I’ve recommended folks in those areas to stop fixating on the actual frac’ng efforts but pay very close attention to where those frac fluids are disposed. We’ve safely disposed of literally thousands of times as much nasty fluids in Texas as they’ve done so far in the northeast US. But as I pointed out above the process is heavily regulated and enforced. To give an extreme example of the regs in the Gulf Coast: in La. it often rains on one of my drill sites. I may have a low ring levee surrounding the site to prevent flooding. But what of the rainwater that falls inside my levee? Just pump it out on to the surrounding ground, right? Nope: I have to pump it into tanker trucks, haul it to a certified disposal company and pay them to get rid of it. How much? Around $6-8 per barrel. In the last few years I’ve spent over $300,000 disposing of rainwater from my drill sites.
It’s not that difficult: write good regulations, enforce them and crucify offenders. It won’t completely eliminate all the problems but reduces the risks to acceptable levels IMHO.
Rock...not being facetious here...could your company erect tents or rain flies/awnings over the drill pads (if there is a derrick, connect to the four sides), made out of some kind of food-grade/safe (non-leaching) plastic, and let the rain water trail off the sides of the awnings past the levee berms?
Or would that awning actually cost more than $300K/year to buy and maintain, or is it the case that the regulators consider rain touching anything drillers' own to be contaminated?
Rockman, did you watch the video? The gas bubbling up in North Dakota fields was not caused by the improper disposal of fracking fluids. Unlike the old oil fields in Texas, where the pressure was bled off decades ago, the gas fields of North Dakota are still under tremendous pressure. And when a well casing ruptures, the gas escapes up through the outside of the well bore... until it reaches an area where there is no cap rock to hold the pressure in. That is about where the water table begins.
And then the gas just pushes out into the sandy soil until it bubbles up through the surface of the surrounding farmland.
I think Rockman that you are underestimating the severity of the problem. Do half of all well casings fail during the life of the well? Hey, all I am asking is that you watch the video and explain what is causing bubbles in the streams of North Dakota, or what is causing the water to start to stink? Or the cattle to get sick and die?
Ron P.
Ron - As I've said repeatedly contamination can occur when either cement fails or casing ruptures and allows the nasties to reach the surface/water table. And yes that happens and no it is not a common occurence. I've seen gas bubbling up to the surface and water wells heading NG in areas where not only have there been no frac'ng but not oil/NG wells drilled at all. But you've read about those cases before. I can show you areas in the country where the water stinks and cattle get sick and there hasn't been a well frac'd within a hundred miles.
It's real simple: if frac'ng caused any of the problems you described (which is a possibility) then show the the data and prove it. Trust me: I've done such assesments for landowners in the past and it's very easy to prove. Which begs the question: why aren't we seeing reports of PROVEN DOCUMENTED cases and not speculation? I can show you ignited NG flowing out of someone's tap in their home and it has nothing to do with oil patch activity. Show me the reports of proven problems...not speculation. Like I've said it's not difficult to prove...show me the proof, please.
Okay, I take it that you are just not going to watch the video. The water in the stream was pristine and clear before the nearby fracking begun. Now it is dark and stinks, with bubbles coming up through it. If that is not proof then proof doesn't exist.
And then there is Rick's link above: Animal and Human Health Impacts from Gas Drilling: Peer-reviewed Study
That article is crammed full of PROVEN DOCUMENTED cases. But then there are some folks that just deny that PROVEN DOCUMENTED cases are PROVEN or DOCUMENTED at all. After all, denial is more than just a river in Africa.
Ron P.
Well, I watched it. It's a pretty thoroughly fact-free video. It's mostly MSM talking heads talking about things they know nothing about, and interviewing a lot of dumb people who don't know anything either, but who are willing to talk at great length about how worried they are.
Where are the environmental experts in the video? When I worked in the oil industry, we used to hire people with Ph.D.s in environmental science to tell us what was going on. However, the experts would probably drone on and on about actual facts, and that would completely ruin the impact of seeing people set their well water on fire when they explained WHY their well water caught fire.
One point that is not brought out is that in cattle country, the cattle themselves are a major source of groundwater contamination. Cattle produce large amounts of natural gas themselves, out of both ends, but that is not usually a concern since natural gas doesn't make them sick. The concern is the number of cow diseases they spread through contaminated groundwater. I grew up in cattle country so I know whereof I speak.
Why of course, those videos were of bubbles in the stream were all faked. And all those farmers and homeowners were all just lying, no facts at all.
And here is another video, published by TIME. The Fuss Over Fracking: The Dilemma of a New Gas Boom Now this video talks about fish kills, dead trees, and such. Guess that is all faked also.
And here is an article about what the EPA says about it. Contaminated? EPA Says Fracking “Likely” Polluted Groundwater And there is a link there to the actual EPA report. But the EPA itself is polluted with a bunch of liberals. I guess they are all lying also. Anyway, from the article:
Sounds a lot like what Rockman wrote above. There have never been one documented case? Right, there have only been hundreds of documented cases. Here is just one of them that the EPA has confirmed: Hydrofracked? One Man’s Mystery Leads to a Backlash Against Natural Gas Drilling
How about that, the drilling company is supplying the man with water. Why are they doing that if it nothing can be confirmed. Could this have anything to do with it?
Naw, that's just a coincidence, his water would have gone bad anyway, that gas well 500 feet away had nothing to do with it. Nothing can be confirmed from this. Let's all move on now.
Ron P.
Why of course, those videos were of bubbles in the stream were all faked. And all those farmers and homeowners were all just lying, no facts at all.
No, I'm saying that I've seen bubbles just like that in streams where there is no oil and gas drilling within 200 miles. If they have open water on the stream when it is -30°F, it means they have a natural spring under the stream releasing warm water (kind of a luke-warm hot spring) from deeper formations, and it appears there is methane in the water from associated gas formations. It's called a natural methane seep.
And here is another video, published by TIME. The Fuss Over Fracking: The Dilemma of a New Gas Boom Now this video talks about fish kills, dead trees, and such. Guess that is all faked also.
No, it's TIME, and they try not to let facts interfere with a good story. If you go to the state regulatory authorities, they will have a good explanation for all of it, but of course TIME won't put it in the video.
Sounds a lot like what Rockman wrote above. There have never been one documented case? Right, there have only been hundreds of documented cases.
According to Rockman, there has never been a documented case of direct groundwater contamination from well fracturing in Texas. I have checked the Alberta Environment record for Alberta - 170,000 fractured wells - and there has never been a documented case in Alberta, either.
Norman Numbnuts in East Podunk New York, living between the abandoned Mobil Oil refinery and the local toxic waste dump, may think gas well fracking contaminated his water, but neither Rockman nor I are too sure about his scientific credentials to evaluate it.
Louis Meeks’ well water contains methane gas, hydrocarbons, lead and copper, according to the EPA’s test results.
And where did the lead and copper come from? They don't use lead and copper in fracturing. Maybe he should consider opening a lead/copper mine on his property (I assume the oil and gas companies are already exploiting the oil and gas rights).
The bottom line is that hydraulic fracturing of oil and gas wells has never been know to cause groundwater contamination, at least not in places that know how to regulate it like Texas and Alberta. The reality is that the mainstream media is doing what they enjoy doing best, creating a story by avoiding the facts and only presenting rumors and innuendo.
Give me a break Rocky. There was nothing wrong with the water until they drilled 500 feet away and poured a bad cement job. Or do you think that it was all a coincidence? Really? The well was fine for years but then they drilled just a few feet away and suddenly the well chose that time to go sour? Really now?
It doesn't matter if the copper and lead was not in the fracking materials and was in the land instead. The point is it was not in the water before therefore it was washed into the water table by the crap that leaked through the bad well cementing job.
Ron P.
Are you sure there wasn't lead and copper in his water prior to the wells being drilled? Did he test his water, or did he just assume it wasn't there? People often make the assumption that their well water is okay when it really isn't. You never know until you test it.
Well of course, how can he talk about the quality of water he uses everyday without running scientific tests on it. We all know that sometimes human tongue confuses an ice-cream for a jalapeno, and sometimes hundreds of people make the same mistake at the same time.
Well of course, how can he talk about the quality of water he uses everyday without running scientific tests on it.
He shouldn't be using the well water without testing it first. You can get some really nasty surprises if you test your well water.
The classic case was a study that the Whiteshell Nuclear Research Establishment in Manitoba did. They tested the well water near the nuclear facility for nuclear contamination, and as a control study, they tested the water from wells near Winnipeg. Guess what? The water from some of the control wells near Winnipeg was far more radioactive than the water from wells near the nuclear facility.
You never know if your well water is flowing through a potential uranium mine, or in the case above, through a potential lead/copper mine.
One of the points made in "Gasland" is that the whole official system is corrupted. Samples of black water and are declared "O.K.".
KD
I don't think the whole system has gone corrupt. There are lots of corrupt people sure but there are a lot of independent honest guys as well. I'd like to compare this to the tobacco campaign or the DDT campaign, where it took decades for the truth to come out even though it was there right in front of your eyes.
It's easy to fool people by giving anecdotal evidences or sponsoring counter research. There are a lot of tobacco ads from the 50's showing old men smoking claiming that they had been smoking for forty years yet nothing had happened to them. I myself know of many such old people but that doesn't prove a thing.
Something similar is happening here. I for one don't think that the issue is all black, as Rockman points out if done properly risk can be contained but I am not in the white camp either. When you are dumping such toxic chemicals into the ground it's bound to contaminate water tables at some places, get into the food chain at some point of time. To think otherwise is to ignore human nature and chaos theory. The question is whether it's worth the risk ?
You want cheap gas, you got it.
One of the points made about "Gasland" is that many of their facts are bogus and they don't give the real story of what is going on with what they are filming. In fact, the documentary is designed to alarm people rather than inform them. The whole thing is very, very misleading about what is going on in the natural gas industry, and deliberately so.
Repeating false claims over and over again does not make them true.
It does make you sound like an industry shill, though.
State of Colorado, Oil and Gas Conservation Commission
Do you want me to find any other studies by government authorities refuting statements in Gasland? If you want, I can find lots of them for you. Face it: Gasland wasn't a real documentary - the filmmakers did no fact checking at all.
Under an appeal to authority argument Rocky actually drills for oil.
Your credentials are...?
Actually, I didn't drill for oil myself - I designed pollution monitoring systems and hazardous waste management systems for people who did drill for oil.
The government reporting requirements were very rigorous and the penalties were extreme. If they had spilled or vented any toxic waste and not reported it to the government they could have gone to jail. My systems monitored what they did and automatically reported anything that went wrong to government authorities. This kept them honest and out of jail, and the company from being nailed with big fines.
Where pollution is concerned it is better to be proactive about preventing it happening than reactive in trying to deny it happened.
"It's a pretty thoroughly fact-free video. It's mostly MSM talking heads talking about things they know nothing about, and interviewing a lot of dumb people who don't know anything either, but who are willing to talk at great length about how worried they are."
That's very condescending, RMG.
Things they know nothing about?
They know that they are worried: about their kids' health, probably about their property values, and almost certainly about the divisions that this hot-button issue creates within their community.
Their fears could be overblown, but given the anecdotal & video evidence that's out there (and I'm thinking of oozing cats' eyes, not flaming taps) their fears are entirely understandable.
You are fond of speaking about your farm background, and I enjoy hearing about it. I presume that you expect people here to believe that you are speaking the truth, and that you "know whereof you speak" (and so you should expect us to believe you).
Why then would you not accord the same respect to others with first-hand experience, like the lady with the bubbling creek, or the afflicted cats?
Something isn't right on these farms, and dismissing people who are concerned as "dumb" does nothing to help us get to the truth.
Do unto others, please....
The state regulatory authorities have the power to shut down the oil company operations if they think there's a problem with them. The fact they didn't shut them down indicates to me that they don't think they are the problem.
It sounds like a state official looked at the lady's bubbling stream and thought it was okay to drink. She was upset about that, and thought it was the oil company's fault, but that was just her opinion.
As for the cats eyes - It's probably cat conjunctivitis (pink eye), a common problem in cats most likely caused by feline herpesvirus, but it could be caused by a couple of different types of bacteria. The latter can be cured with antibiotics, the former is more difficult to treat. Regardless, the cats need a vet's opinion and the right eye drops.
"It sounds like a state official looked at the lady's bubbling stream and thought it was okay to drink. She was upset about that"
RMG,
Did you get that far in the ABC film? What you say bears no relation to what was said in the film.
As for the cats & cattle in the BakkenWatch video, it is again apparent that you are commenting without actually examining the evidence.
The lady makes several references to veterinarians coming out, but being unable to diagnose & treat these problems, yet you proclaim that "it's probably pinkeye" and that what's needed is a vet's opinion and a few eye drops.
Do you really think the lady and her vets are that stupid?
I've never heard a cat breathe like the one at 2:20, etc.
Also, the cats in this video certainly aren't right, either.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN_YwQp4pzY
We can criticize the video as dramatic & tearful, etc, but I have a hard time believing that someone would deliberately poison their animals, film the outcome and post it, thereby inviting investigative authorities and charges of animal cruelty.
Or deliberately give themselves a rash, devalue their own property and that of their neighbours, etc.
This NYT article is only anecdotal and completely unscientific, so you are unlikely to find merit in its content. But as with your own first-hand experiences, these people know whereof they speak. Until we know otherwise, we should accept their concerns in good faith:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/magazine/fracking-amwell-township.html...
Look, I've worked in gas fields and I've worked on farms and ranches. The chemicals the farmers and ranchers used were far more toxic than anything we had in the gas fields. Farmers are use pesticides and herbicides that are more toxic than anything that you, as a private consumer, are allowed to get your hands on. They really should wear respirators and protective clothing while they are spraying the stuff, but I've never seen them do that.
I used to use a mask and protective clothing while I was spraying ordinary everyday garden chemicals on my plants. The neighbors would say, "Wow! That stuff must be really dangerous!" Well, no, it was the same stuff they were using, but unlike them I had a degree in chemistry and I read the toxicology reports on the chemicals.
But, to get back to the sick cats, that issue is a source of irritation to me because we had cats living in most of our natural gas processing plants. They were in charge of mouse control. It was possible to control the mice with traps and poisons, but the plant managers decided it was more environmentally friendly to go down to the SPCA and get a cat.
They were very pampered cats. They had all their shots. The plant operators loved them and would put their veterinarian's Certificate of Health up on the control room wall next to their own technical school diplomas. The cats would prowl the plant at night, looking for mice. They would freak the plant receptionist out by presenting her with mouse bits in the morning. If anything had gone wrong with the Plant Cat, it would have been an immediate crisis and the vet would have been called immediately.
OTOH, the cats on the farms and ranches were pretty much disposable. They were always dying of something or other, and nobody paid any attention.
Rock & Ron
The Bamberger health study states, "The most striking finding of our investigation was the difficulty in obtaining definitive information on the link between hydrocarbon gas drilling and health effects" (p. 66).
The abstract states, "Complete evidence regarding health impacts of gas drilling cannot be obtained due to incomplete testing and disclosure of chemicals, and nondisclosure agreements. Without rigorous scientific studies, the gas drilling boom sweeping the world will remain an uncontrolled health experiment on an enormous scale" (p. 51).
Rock, you want what we all want, including Dr. Bamberger. But current practices make proven, documented cases almost impossible to obtain.
The fracking issue reminds me of the thalidomide tragedy: a novel technology with obvious benefits, adopted with enthusiasm on a significant scale, then a time-lag before the first few tragic cases come forward, the usual denial by industry & regulators, then evidence of the severe down-side becomes overwhelming.
As with first-hand reports of climate change by the Inuit, I see no reason to discount the anecdotal & video evidence shown here (please don't let the first 40 seconds of music put you off):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=850VKyFnxIk
What is needed is a thorough, impartial examination of all the alleged/apparent impacts of the entire process: air quality, improper storage & disposal, aquifer contamination, earthquakes/tremblors, etc.
Rick, you are correct, it is hard to get through the tight secrecy of the oil and chemical companies. And the nondisclosure agreements are a nightmare. But there is hope. As my post above shows, the Environmental Protection Agency is now involved. Now the Right Wing Republicans in this country think these folks are in league with the Devil but nevertheless they still have a lot of clout.
And the more fish that dies, the more trees that die, the more cattle that die, they will likely get the idea that people could start dying also. Then perhaps someone will start to pay attention.
Oh yes, one more point. They have just invented a car that runs on water. The only catch is the water has to come from North Dakota. ;-)
Ron P.
Rock, you want what we all want, including Dr. Bamberger. But current practices make proven, documented cases almost impossible to obtain.
As Rockman has pointed out, and I can confirm, the state regulatory authorities already know what chemicals have been used, or can find out if they want to know. (It depends how experienced they are in regulating the oil industry.)
Dr. Bamberger doesn't know because this is confidential information. He has to find out from either the state authorities or the oil companies what it is, and he will probably have to jump through a lot of hoops to get the information. Maybe he doesn't know who to ask, or just doesn't like jumping through hoops. Maybe they don't want to talk to him because they think he's an idiot. Who knows?
"Dr. Bamberger doesn't know because this is confidential information. He has to find out from either the state authorities or the oil companies what it is, and he will probably have to jump through a lot of hoops to get the information. Maybe he doesn't know who to ask, or just doesn't like jumping through hoops. Maybe they don't want to talk to him because they think he's an idiot."
RMG,
You are not doing your reputation any favours here today.
You have not even given Dr. Bamberger's study a 10-second peek, otherwise you would know from the first page that "his" first name is Michelle.
How can you (or Rockman) confirm that "the state regulatory authorities already know what chemicals have been used"?
How can you be sure that state authorities possess the info to give a researcher (or that they would be authorized to do so) if it's proprietary info?
As Dr. B. points out, "[This study] is also not a study of the health impacts of specific chemical exposures relating to gas drilling, since the necessary information cannot be obtained due to the lack of testing, lack of full disclosure of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) names and Chemical Abstract Service (CAS) numbers of the chemicals used, and the industry's use of nondisclosure agreements.... our study illustrates not only several possible links between gas drilling and negative health effects, but also the difficulties associated with conducting careful studies of such a link (p. 53-54)."
You make it sound like Dr. B and her colleague are lazy researchers who can't be bothered jumping through a few hoops in order to obtain essential data.
In fact these scientists repeatedly explain the difficulty of doing what you think they should have done (but you can't be bothered to give their 27-page, thoroughly sourced study even 10 seconds of your time).
I would also have thought that as one who grew up on a farm, you would probably have a genuine interest in the obvious lethality of wastewater to livestock, which might have prompted you to examine the paper in detail.
No I didn't read the paper this morning because my internet connection was on the fritz - my browser kept timing out while I was trying to download the paper. It was very frustrating so I gave up and did something else.
However, now that my connection has stabilized, I have read Dr. B's paper. The main trouble with it is that it is using anecdotal evidence rather than controlled studies, and anecdotal evidence is the worst kind of evidence. In particular it says, "Cases were determined by requesting referrals from environmental groups and groups involved in influencing shale gas policy and studying its effects." - which is to say it uses a severely skewed sample group.
If you're trying to do a proper analysis to determine whether there is a health problem or not, at a minimum you have to do case-control studies such as were used to demonstrate the link between tobacco smoking and lung cancer. Otherwise your results are basically meaningless.
How can you (or Rockman) confirm that "the state regulatory authorities already know what chemicals have been used"?
There is a difference between "knowing" and caring and then doing the job the public might think you are doing.
The BP/Gulf spill with industry submitting to regulators penciled forms for the regulators to submit in ink is an example of the problem of watching the watchers.
Rockman may be right and the counter argument be correct. The pivot point of the regulators might just not be the people presented as being.
It's real simple: if frac'ng caused any of the problems you described (which is a possibility) then show the the data and prove it.
Who's going to gather the data, who's gonna pay for the gathering of that data and who's entitled to access the gathered data?
Darwinian is rather low on the pecking order - why would he have the data? If a firm gathered the data - why would they show it to anyone if the data was not 100 to 110% supporting the "we didn't do it" position?
What is the incentive for the 'well owner' to actually go gather the data? If it turns out they did screw up - the gathered data becomes discoverable in the court action. So why would anyone go and get damning data?
"I could point out many dozens of frac'd fields that are not just close to residential areas/towns but are actually directly under those locations."
I guess the contrast for me is between the Australian situation (which is much more like the ND region) where most rigs are in rural/remote areas.
Most concerns are around groundwater and soil contamination, particularly in the ag/cropping areas - there seems to be less concern in the grazing areas which are not suitable for ag/cropping.
There is a company trying to start in the Sydney basin, but is running up against significant opposition. They have backed down on 'fraccing' for now.
A lot of the development is happening at a fairly rapid pace - I am not confident that our authorities are on top of the situation (yet).
This is one of the locations that Rockman is talking about - It's back of the Oklahoma State Capitol Building. Note the oil rig on the right.
The Oklahoma City Oil Field lies directly under the state capitol building. In reality, there are more wells tapping the oil under the capitol, but the others were directionally drilled in from nearby properties.
Yes, interesting.
The chances of that in Australia would be virtually nil.
An update today:
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/tighter-controls-for-mining-and-coal-s...
The chances of that in Australia would be virtually nil.
You have to realize that the Oklahoma City Oil Field was a big oil field, and the state government owned the mineral rights under the capitol grounds. It's not as if the state politicians were going to let a lot of free money get away from them just because it might upset a few of their neighbors. They were more focused on all the voters whose taxes would be lower as a result.
The first really big oil discovery in Canada occurred in Leduc, a suburb of Edmonton, the provincial capital of Alberta. The Alberta government owned the mineral rights on the Mother of all Canadian oil fields. Do you think the politicians were going to stop the drilling just because a few landowners complained? Not a chance.
Sure, I understand your point - different country and different historical circumstances.
I am simply saying there would be no chance of that happening in Australia today.
From the article above:
Similar conditions apply to the building of wind farms:
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/wind-energy-companies-attack-baillieu-...
It just isn't going to happen here.
Hey, I just thought of something that could give a clue to what is happening in North Dakota and other places where fracking is occurring. Fracting fractures the shale, freeing up the gas and oil... Right?
So could fracking fracture the cap rock as well? Is that possible where the fracking is very close to the cap rock?
Ron P.
No. In general hydraulic fracturing will not fracture the cap rock, and even if it does, there are numerous other impermeable rock layers between the fracturing zone - typically a mile deep - and the shallower groundwater formations.
As Rockman says, the usual problem with wells is a surface casing failure or a bad cement job, and in North American drilling these are rather rare. (The claim of a 50% failure rate in well casings is just plain ignorant.)
If well casings are made of concrete and steel, then over time many of them will fail. It may take a long time but they will fail.
I am not an oilman but I think well castings are poured... from the top of the well. Haliburton has special trucks that pour castings. They are cement, no steel involved. Of course it is a very special type of cement. But if there is a shift in the earth the castings will most definitely rupture.
Tests Warned Of Cement Flaws Before Blowout
Listen to NPR tell the story here. (This story is over one year old.)
Ron P.
The surface casing, the casing that is set through the fresh water zones, is steel and is cemented into place by pumping the cement down the center. A shoe at the bottom of the casing deflects the cement up the outside of the casing. So it is down the center and then up the outside. When they get a good circulation of that cement from top to bottom they quit pumping the cement. After all of that sets, the rig drills on and if they need to set more steel casing, because they think they have found a producing formation, they put it through the surface casing and then circulate cement down the center of that and up the outside. So you end up with multiple concentric rings of cement and steel through the fresh water zones.
Thanks Ronmac, that is very informative, and makes sense. You obviously know your oil drilling. Hope you post more often. Thanks again,
Ron P.
An additional comment on cementing: not my domain, but I had understood from my student days that in general the cement job is a volume displacement process, whereby they calculate the volume of cement needed to fill the space between the casing string and the surrounding borehole. That amount of cement is then mixed and pumped, with an 'extra' factor as a safety buffer. The problem in some cement jobs is that the cement does not make it back up to the desired point on the outside of the casing - either because the calculation underestimated the volume needed (maybe unrecognised bad hole conditions) or some other leak in the open hole during pumping. Either way, the cement bond log should give an indication of how complete and how good the cement job was, in case further cement work is needed.
One of my clients is currently trying to fix suspected bad cement jobs on a gas field in Bangladesh. The well(s) has been leaking gas now for years, possibly from shallower, 'non-completed' gas bearing sands above the pay sands. This gas finds its way to the surface. I am told that one side effect of the gas seepages is an illicit glass manufacturing cottage industry has developed in the area by the seeps as the locals tap into the gas to make their glass wears and generally tap the free energy.
http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=195399
Other anecdotes about the problem can be found by searching for articles on 'Titas gas field leak'
GM temporarily idles Chevy Volt production due to lack of demand....
http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/02/10563905-volt-productio...
Violent tornado rampage in 11 states leaves 31 dead
An atmosphere juiced up on CO2!
From the Drumbeat above
There is more energy in the atmosphere as we are cooking the place up. It has to dissipate in different ways and this is the consequence. Directly proportional to energy use and deforestation (over-population), the more we use the more we heat up the planet.
An atmosphere juiced up on CO2!
That is a guess.
We Humans lack a system where only the CO2 can be changed to show the effects of CO2.
No. We don't. It is called a laboratory. We can confirm the first hnd effects of various CO2 levels very easy. It is he 2:nd and 3:rd hand effects tha are trickyer. But the 1:st hand ones are piece of apple pie.
And yes, it was done already in the first hakf of the 19:th century.
The 1st 1/2 didn't have jet planes, ISS, and if the boffins are right - drifting through an interstellar dust cloud.
And that 1st 1/2 doesn't have the same amount of sensor data that the 2nd 1/2 did.
Actually it is factual and solidly backed up by data. Remember the saying, "Check the data 3 times and then read the Theory once." Well, in this case the data is unequivacol, since CO2 levels in the atmosphere have increased every year since they first began collecting DATA in 1958. The more CO2, the more energy is absorbed by the atmosphere and must be dissipated in any number of ways, like increasing ocean temperatures or faster moving weather systems, tornados etc.
Fact is denialists have no data whatsoever. Zero. You have nothing to support your position.
http://co2now.org/ At top click on historical CO2
My feeling at this point is apparently most people like yourself are unwilling to admit GW, so bring it on. We're going to find out what happens as more CO2 gets added and with it higher levels of energy that must be displaced in more destructive ways.
Actually it is factual and solidly backed up by data.
There are other factors at play - the output of the Sun along with the intersteller dust cloud we are supposed to be drifting through. Then you have the dampening effect of the aerosol mist from the jet planes - there was a 3 day live test of that effect back at the start of the 21nd century. Not to mention the change in 'industrial pollution' and its past damping effect. Perhaps even the effects of CO2/Water vapor from Man at the edge of space at the ISS.
The CO2 explanation is a model - Humanity doesn't have an alternative Earth where one can modify JUST the CO2 to see if the model matches reality.
My feeling at this point is apparently most people like yourself are unwilling to admit GW,
Really?
Is that what you think my reason for posting what I did was?
If CO2 released by Man can change the weather - as some want to put forth, then could the Air force talking smack here be correct and some of the effects are attempts at geo-engineering to get to the date as mentioned?
higher levels of energy that must be displaced in more destructive ways.
Is not war energetic destruction? Are are there not elements of humanity that seem to do better than others when there is destruction? Why isn't weather being destructive just more mothers milk to such people/organisation?
Those are all manmade effects reducing GW. In other words w/out them the world avg. annual temp. would be much higher. Most reports are about 1 degree C.
Ever heard of ice cores? Yes, there are many periods of Earth history that have been compared to current CO2 levels. The only reason it isn't hotter yet, is because of dimming, which you mention, and lag time from the added energy entering the atmosphere and absorption by the oceans. It will catch up to us sooner or later.
Also, increased CO2 levels isn't a theoretical human induced model, but rather atmospheric chemistry. Ever heard of the greenhouse effect?
I'm not going to do the searches for you and provide links. You need to do this for yourself for your own education on this topic.
I have no idea what you are going on about here. But I'm also not going to go back and forth on this. If someone wants to be in denial there is no force on Earth that can change their minds. So think or believe what you will.
Ever heard of the greenhouse effect?
Yes, and water vapor can be a bigger driver. A whole lot more water than CO2 in the atmosphere.
Not to mention the placement of the water vapor - the last 60 years have offered up whole new ways of getting water up to places it was not before.
I have no idea what you are going on about here.
Why not read the PDF in the link?
The CO2 explanation is a model - Humanity doesn't have an alternative Earth where one can modify JUST the CO2 to see if the model matches reality.
And rather than admit that there is no way to run an actual experiment to show CO2 and ONLY CO2's effect is correct - you go back to the model idea.
I'll ask my normal question of those concerned with CO2 in the air - have you buried charcoal yet and if so - how much? I personally am up to 1/4 a ton I've made in cooking this and that with my charcoal making stove - how about you?
Regarding water vapor--it is probably not worth pointing out to you since you seem to think you know more about the situation than all the dozens of established scientific bodies that have concluded that GW is real, caused mostly by CO2 and methane, and dangerous--but you might pull out globe some time and observe how much of the earth is covered with water...lots of it.
All of that water is available to the atmosphere any time conditions allow. That is why water vapor is, indeed, a powerful feedback, but not much of a forcing.
Carbon from ff, on the other hand, is not readily available to the atmosphere until we industriously drag it out of the ground and burn in up in our clever devices. That is why this is a powerful forcing, that increases global temperatures, thus kicking in fast feedbacks like water vapor and albedo changes.
But then you could go to dozens of sources to get this rather obvious and readily available information, such as SkepticalScience and RealClimate. The fact that you didn't bother to do so before blathering nonsense about this very important issue suggests that you do not really care to know. I will remember this about you for the future.
You must understand how the water vapor acts. Water makes out most of the greenhouse effect. The other gasses combined mkes out a tiny 9-23%, depending on the local conditions. So why do we care so much about CO2, methane and all the others if they are less than 1/4th of the entire heat balance?
This may be news to you, but water evaporates when perssure is low and temperature is high. The reversed conditions, and watr vapor condense. That is what causes such phenomenas as rain, frost, dew or hail, to mention a few.
CO2, methane and the other does however stay there no matter the temperature or pressure. It is stable and don't care about the weather.
Now, what would happen if we removed all the stable GHGs from the atmosphere? Since it is only a tiny bit of the entire thermal insulation up there, temperatures would only drop a tiny bit. But this tiny dropin temperature would make a tiny amount of water vapor condense as snow, rain, dew, frost or whatever. And since water vapor is such a strong greenhouse gas, taking out only a small amount of water vapor will make it very cold. You know the nights in Shara are very cold, while they are very hot in Kongo. It is because of this effect.
Now, with some of the water vapor gone, it is a lot colder, and now large amounts of water vapor will condense (as snow or frost mainly, because it is cold now). With much water out of the atmosphere, it gets realy chilly, all water in the atmosphere condense, and the world oceans freeze over, all the way down to the equator.
And thats only for removing some CO2 from the atmosphere. It wasn't that unimportnat after all, was it? And if we add more CO2, what will happen next? The same process in reverse. Water will evaporate, and it will get much warmer.
So bottom line is: think of water as a magnifyer of the effects of CO2. Just like with your audio system at home.
Putin supporters claim election win. Exit polls say he has about 60% of the vote. Well over the 50% he needs to avoid a second round.
Putin 'elected Russian president'
Edit Live Results (English) from RT News at http://rt.com/on-air/
Or website at http://rt.com
Actual votes counted so far have Putin at 63.1%
Further edit: Putin gives victory speech to his supporters with tears in his eyes.
A new Enbridge pipeline problem on a major line:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/04/us-enbridge-fire-idUSTRE8230K6...
This pipeline problem comes at a very bad time for Canadian oil exporters, which have already seen the price of Syncrude and other oils from the 'tar sands' plunge to record discounts to WTI (West Texas), the benchmark for futures trading.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-01/syncrude-discount-narrows-after...
Well even the guru Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is starting to wake up to reality:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/commodities/9122311/Plateau-Oil-meets...
Selected quotes:
- What is deeply troubling is that Brent crude should have reached fresh records in sterling (£79) and euros (€94) - with a knock-on effect on US petrol prices, mostly tracking Brent - even though the International Monetary Fund has sharply downgraded its world growth forecast-
- Oil is not supposed to ratchet defiantly upwards in a downturn, which is what we have with the Euro zone facing a year of contraction in 2012, and much of the Latin bloc sliding into full depression. Japan‘s economy shrank in the fourth quarte -
- The unpleasant fact we must all face is that the relentless supply crunch - call it `Peak Oil’ if you want, or `Plateau Oil’ - was briefly disguised during the Great Recession and is already back with a vengeance before the West has fully recovered.-
Thanks for that Andy,
I had not seen it.
One of Evans-Pritchard's main points is that what's going on is not supposed to happen.
That reminds me of the use of the word, "unprecedented," in the first two sentences of the Hirsch Report.
In case anyone is interested, there's an ongoing discussion in Comments re. this Globe article (listed in this Drumbeat above):
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/eric-reguly...
Japan can't seem to catch a break.
Tokyo Prepares as Scientists Predict Big Quake
Unusual for the prediction to be so specific, new modeling or extreme caution?
Is there any sort of upvote/downvote scheme here so that rants or low info content postings can be ignored, a la Slashdot or reddit? Some of the comments are information rich and interesting, some are fanatical, some are silly. A shame to ignore the site just because it is hard to hear over the static of true believers advocating...well, whatever it is they are advocating.
Has anyone in any study on controversial topics (global warming, peak oil, fracking, Lady Gaga) presented quantitative forecasts of impacts where both the mean and variance/standard deviation/error bars/etc. are reported? Without a characterization and mention of parametric and structural uncertainty, any argument for significant policy changes has limited credibility, even if you and several close acquaintances really really really think you are right and use ALL CAPS to boot. Anyone familiar with the computer energy/economics models of the late 1970s done by MIT and others would understand why a skeptical attitude regarding predictions, even with error bars, is the prudent way to go. But uncertainty estimates at least suggest that the possibility of alternative inputs, scenarios and points of view were considered.
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I want to thank The Oil Drum for giving me an education in how society interacts with energy. I put this education into some use recently, and the results have been pretty startling.
Go back to a Drumbeat about three years ago, March 18, 2009. Someone asked "how would Shakespeare write up peak oil"?? I was an academic at a large research university and I was already looking at images of fossil fuels in literature at the time. Mostly I was checking into modern writers, who featured cars or buldozers in their work. This question that night made me jump! OK, I thought, I WILL look for images of fossil fuels in Shakespeare. OK, not petroleum, but coal. I felt a sharp sense of challenge....
I found the best mention was in "Romeo and Juliet", lines one and two: 'prime real estate' as far as location is concerned for announcing thematic concerns. Line 1: "Gregory, on my word, we'll not carry coals"/Line 2: "No, for then we should be colliers".
If you check the March 18 Drumbeat you will see my ideas about "Romeo and Juliet". Those were the basics, I think I spent a day or two on that.
But I thought there might be more. I researched a lot into the use of coal in Shakespeare's era. Yes, it was very heavily used, a lot of forests were gone, population climbing, urbanization well underway.
Long story short: some months later it hit me what "Juliet is the sun" means. There is a secret play in "Romeo and Juliet".
Man meets the Sun (the party scene with language of worship, early mankind worshipped the sun as a god)
Man develops a great relationship with the sun (agriculture)
(The balcony scene);
Man leaves the sun (dawning of the industrial age): morning after the wedding, farewell scene; into exile from the sun economy, the set of flows of matter and energy coming to man from the sun.
Man returns to the Sun (tomb scene, economic collapse, Romeo's suicide, I guess it's self-inflicted pain.)--now, don't panic, this collapse process, as we've discussed here, could take a long time, maybe centuries. And Juliet isn't really dead, just comatose. And elsewhere Romeo says "I dreamt my lady found me dead and wakened me with kisses", so Shakespeare leaves room for hope after all.
But it seems that he knew, centuries before, what is becoming clearer to more of us now. There are limits and we would be collectively proactively unable to process that information. We would deal with it later, in response to bumping up against these limits.
My article about this(I wrote it up) will be published in a peer-reviewed academic journal later this year and when it's available, I'll try to post the link.
Thank you to The Oil Drum, again, all of you, all of us, for all that you do.
Coal was used for heating in by the poor in London, but nowhere else. Rich people in London still used wood into the 19th century. It took several centuries of development to get the technology (fireplaces and chimneys) to use coal for domestic heating without stinking the house out with sulphurous fumes and rotting the brickwork. If you were poor you put up with the fumes, if you were rich you bought charcoal or firewood rather than seacoal. The actual quantity of firewood used doesn't change much until about 1800, its just that as London grows, the proportion of those using wood drops.
The idea that people turned to coal because the trees were gone is a myth. If anything the causality is the other way round. Woods were cleared for farmland once they no longer had value for supplying fuel.
Coal was a poor person's fuel in Shakespeare's London. "Gregory, on my word, we'll not carry coals" and "No, for then we should be colliers" is snobbery and fear of contamination. Once you had carried coals, the stink of them would make you no good for anything else. What's being established here is the class of the characters. Today's parallel would be Europeans objecting to Chinese polluting their world with that nasty black stuff except its CO2 rather than SOx that nauseates them.
I read that even by 1630, the rich in London were using coal for heating. Wood was simply too expensive.
And "Gregory, on my word, we'll not carry coals" could also (besides being read as an expresion of the servant's snobbery, being aware of hierarchy and desiring to be higher) be a subtle statement of refusal to approve of coal (Shakespeare's secret) and after all, it's "on his word"......
And it's also a prediction of what will happen. We won't carry coals one day when they aren't economical to produce anymore. There's an end in sight, distant though it may be. Thus the line is mesmerizingly complex and rich!
You can see the secret play on the "History of Man and the Sun" for yourself in "Romeo and Juliet" by having a look at the scenes where they play together. These scenes are virtually hermetically sealed....no one else contributes, except calling in with phrases like "Juliet!" like the Nurse does.
When I discovered this secret play I was quite shocked (though I read a book later by Ron Rosenbaum called "The Shakespeare Wars" that speculates on secret plays in Shakespeare and he actually wonders if there is one in "Romeo and Juliet", though he has no idea what it could be: he bases it on possible innuendo in the "fish lives in the sea" speech by Lady Calulet to Juliet: "The fish lives in the sea and 't'is much pride/for fair without the fair within to hide. That book in many's eyes doth share the glory/That in gold clasps locks in the golden story"(I.ii.90-4)). Well, yes, bingo. I wish I could tell Ron Rosenbaum that he was right. Maybe one day!!
Yet I think it's for real. I think Shakespeare didn't like what coal was doing to England. But he knew that people couldn't refuse to use it either. We're still addicted to fossil fuels, berate them as we will. We're still in exile from the sun. But possibly our great grandchildren might live more on a solar budget....much more. Then Shakespeare will have been proven right.
Juliet is the sun. I think it means, poetically, that it's the only source of energy we can count on for always.
Shakespeare would never have been heard of if it wasn't for coal. Coal was what allowed London to expand without impoverishing itself, and meant there were lots of people that could afford to pay to watch his plays.
If anything the analogy is with Europe and China today. Europe takes the benefits of cheap imports produced with Chinese coal while looking down on them as dirty polluters, just as the rich of 1600 London were happy to take the benefits of work produced by the filthy coal heated masses. Shakespeare enjoyed the benefits of coal, he just didn't want to get his hands dirty or smell the sulphur.
There's a reasonably stable relation between the cost of seacoal and wood fuels in London all the way through into the 18th century. It cost about double to supply the same amount of heat with wood that it did with coal. It only took about 10 miles of land transport to eliminate that differential, so coal isn't used away from the immediate vicinity of pits inland. Its London, not England, that was using coal.
Colorado gas prices 50 cents cheaper than national average
As it happens, the only oil refinery in Colorado, and the biggest in the Rocky Mountain states, is owned by Suncor Energy, the giant Canadian oil sands producer. Suncor has upgraded the refinery to handle Western Canadian Select, the heavy oil it ships to the US.
Recent prices:
North Sea Brent Blend: $124/bbl
West Texas Intermediate: $107/bbl
Western Canadian Select: $78/bbl
Its feedstock costs are roughly 2/3 of what refineries in the Northeast US are paying for oil.