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April 7, 2012 at 6:18 pm #753605
JanSParticipantredblack…sometimes one can only shake one’s head…
April 8, 2012 at 2:22 am #753606
kootchmanMemberredblack… there is still no taxpayer subsidy .. Where Uncle Sugar takes one tax dollar from the US Treasury and gives it to Big Oil. That’s a subsidy. The oil companies are being targeted by Obama to fund more of his asinine giveaways… not a success yet, or likely to be one either. This is want you liberals all wanted, cap and trade, $ 7 gallon gas…and then food stamps for all.. cause we can’t move this economy forward… and higher energy costs they get passed on to those least able to afford it. Yea, it does make you shake your head and wonder…..
April 8, 2012 at 2:44 am #753607
dobroParticipant“This is want you liberals all wanted…”
That’s the kind of paranoid generalization that renders your comments so meaningless.
April 8, 2012 at 2:45 pm #753608
redblackParticipantactually, yeah. the problem is that the government is getting hardly any of that $4.25 per gallon.
there should be much stiffer federal taxes on gasoline that fund alternative energy and mass transit. take it to the pain point. and punish those who waste gas.
like you all like to say: “freedom (to pollute and consume) isn’t free.”
and regarding your semantics over the word subsidy, the government is giving tax breaks to companies that are making record profits. we are effectively handing them $40 billion per year.
that is a subsidy.
April 8, 2012 at 3:14 pm #753609
DBPMemberIs there a compromise position here?
kootchman & JV: Given that you’re never going to convince people like redblack and me that letting the market prevail on every aspect of energy production, and given that there a lot of folks out there like us, what’s the solution?
redblack: I could ask you the same thing. Given that you’re never going to win kootchman over, and given that there are a lot of people like him out there, is there a middle ground?
–David
April 8, 2012 at 3:18 pm #753610
JoBParticipantIf you invested in solar technology when carter was president .. you have been reaping the benefits for some time.
the trouble with our instant gratification society is that it is too easy to forget that you might actually live to experience the payoff from wise investment .
April 8, 2012 at 4:32 pm #753611
kootchmanMemberIt will supplant fossil fuel when it can do two things. One, be available on demand, when needed. Two is price competitive. We invested in solar tech long before Carter was around… and so far, it hasen’t met either goal. When total energy demand rises, and the cost of fossil fuels and solar reach parity, we will have solar. Not until then. Is is ok for third world nations who need to pump water from the village well. sure… but they can’t afford it. I have solar panels on the RV… they keep the batteries charges..and that is about it. They have been running the solar car race for over 25 years… MIT, CalPoly, Stanford, RIT, etc etc… it’s not ready for prime time… NASA has been developing solar for years.. the use nuclear power for deep space. Yea.. I suppose I like instant gratification.. like my elevators to go up and down … when I want them to. Solar has proven to be cost effective when coupled with a storage system… like road signs.. but no one wants to talk about the toxicity of the underlying battery technology. Let me know when it delivers reliable power for the same kwh cost as coal, natural gas, oil or nuclear… then I am all in. If we invested when Carter was president? We would have been as broke as we are under Obama… cause he is trying it…. 120K jobs and another full percentage point drop in GDP… way to go… I think you should speak with your money…. drop 40K on YOUR roof… but don’t ask me to subsiize it with some goofy energy tax credits to support it.
April 8, 2012 at 4:36 pm #753612
dobroParticipant“but don’t ask me to subsiize it with some goofy energy tax credits to support it.”
so you agree with redblack that tax credits are subsidies?
April 8, 2012 at 5:39 pm #753613
DBPMemberI have solar panels on the roof. I’m not expecting them to pay off any time soon, and I never expected them to provide all my power. So when I had them hooked up, I DIDN’T tell the electrician: “OK, now that I’m getting solar, you can take me OFF the grid, because I’m never going to need City electric again.”
As a result, my computer, water heater, and everything else still runs, even on cloudy days. Even (my gawd!) when it’s pitch-black outside.
kootchman, why do you say stuff like that about the elevators not running? You do understand how grid systems work, right?
April 8, 2012 at 6:04 pm #753614
DBPMemberkootchman has made a lot of points. Some of them are baseless, but some of them are actually well founded.
For example, I agree with him that government should not be subsidizing homeowner solar (via tax incentives) — at least in certain parts of the country — until we can get better turnaround times on home systems. What should the payoff cycle be, exactly? I don’t know. Maybe that’s a discussion point.
At the same time, I think it’s reasonable for our side to ask that the government not subsidize Big Oil. —Is Big Oil really being subsidized? I don’t know. That’s another discussion point.
On the question of energy techology development in general, it doesn’t follow from kootchman’s arguments about the market that our government should stop investing in alternative energy tech all together. Yes, markets function effectively in some areas of the economy, but not in all. As many Presidents have pointed out, energy policy isn’t just about keeping your lights on, it’s about national security.
If we wait until we start running out of oil to develop an alternative energy infrastructure, then we’ll be forced to buy the technology from others (like the Chinese) who were more far-sighted. Either that or we’ll be forced to live in the dark, as kootchman predicts. In that case, though, we’d be living in the dark not because we ignored the market, but because we put too much faith in it.
(Think Aesop’s fable about the ant and the grasshopper.)
April 8, 2012 at 7:08 pm #753615
redblackParticipantAt the same time, I think it’s reasonable for our side to ask that the government not subsidize Big Oil. —Is Big Oil really being subsidized? I don’t know. That’s another discussion point.
the answer depends on whether or not you believe that big oil should be paying well under the statutory corporate tax rate. as conservatives frequently point out in these forums, at 34%, america has the second-highest statutory corporate tax rate in the world.
but the fact is that the government is collecting nowhere near that rate from big oil.
that is, by definition, a tax break, and it is subsidization.
“where is the middle ground?”
you defined it pretty effectively, DP, when you said that you don’t expect total replacement of fossil fuels immediately, and with your anecdote about reducing – not replacing – your reliance on city light.
kootch, on the other hand, is arguing from the false assertion that liberals want to replace fossil fuels immediately, effectively painting the liberal position as the polar opposite one from conservatives’, which is disingenuous – unless he really believes it, which suggests that he blatantly refuses to see the other side of the coin, or even entertain any policy that doesn’t match what he thinks liberals should be saying.
and i think that one of the reasons that obama campaigned on smart grid technology was a nod to the fact that our power distribution network should be upgraded to allow it to handle electricity from a variety of generation sources based on the availability and efficiency of each: oil-fired, coal-fired, hydro, solar, wind turbines, and tidal power. (even nuclear, which we still use a lot of; although my personal hope is that we don’t build any more of those plants until we figure out what to do with the waste, and we can guarantee that potential disasters don’t irradiate half of the country.)
so can we have a discussion here, or are we going to paint each other as intractable demagogues?
can we at least acknowledge that fossil fuels and their derivatives will become more scarce, and therefore more expensive, as we tap into harder-to-extract-and-refine sources – like the bakkan tar sands reserves, and the similarly hard-to-reach reserves under venezuela?
and that we should be using the oil we have as efficiently as possible – even codifying standards for efficiency?
and that, as a forward-thinking country, we should be exploring multiple sources of energy for our electrical grid?
[sorry for the multiple edits.]
April 8, 2012 at 7:19 pm #753616
redblackParticipantregarding costs: you know how when new technology hits the marketplace, it’s always more expensive?
for example, after two decades of flat tee vee sales and ever-increasing demand, the price has become quite reasonable. don’t you think?
April 8, 2012 at 7:35 pm #753617
DBPMemberI very much like your style on this redblack. You seem like a guy who’s interested in having an intelligent, non-polarizing discussion.
As we know, there are many shades of opinion when it comes to energy policy, so there’s really no need for this discussion to line up along classic left/right lines.
However, one prerequisite for any discussion like this should be that the parties have a basic grasp of the science involved, as well as the economics. In this case, I’m not sure all the parties understand the science . . . [wink wink]
Last time I provided a detailed analysis of wind-energy payback time (via a different thread) our friend’s response was: “You have your experts, and I have mine.”
–He did not, however, disclose who his “experts” were or what they had to say about wind power.
;-)
April 8, 2012 at 8:09 pm #753618
redblackParticipanti think that where polarization occurs is discussion on what our government’s role should be in deciding how we, as a country, generate power.
it seems to me – and please correct me if i’m wrong – that conservatives’ answer is:
none whatsoever. the free market will determine what the most cost-efficient sources of energy will be, and the free market should be the primary arbiter of national energy policy.
why, then, do we give big oil a tax break? aren’t we “picking the winner” here?
secondly, we are witnessing – right this minute – what the free market thinks of renewable, sustainable forms of energy: it doesn’t.
ever since reagan ordered the solar panels removed from the roof of the white house (that carter had installed in the wake of an energy crisis) this country has done practically nothing to reduce our reliance on oil – foreign or domestic. in fact, it has increased.
(and fuel efficiency standards for cars are pretty pathetic, in my opinion. at times, it makes me wonder how much collusion is occurring between detroit and big oil.)
therefore, in my opinion, the government’s role should be to incentivize the free market to make oil cheaper by increasing its efficient use and decreasing its ubiquity. and as i’ve pointed out, the obama administration has granted more oil leases than previous administrations have.
a democrat ordering drilling here and now: is that not a compromise?
the consequences of not reducing our reliance on fossil fuels and not encouraging their efficient use is that one day they will become so scarce and so expensive that we are left paying through the nose for the means to drive, fly, and heat our homes. you think $4.25 per gallon is bad? maintaining the status quo is only going to make it worse.
if we can’t forestall that day, shouldn’t we have a seamless transition to other forms of energy? or do we wait until the last minute, when the costs and time for building new generation sources cripple our country even further?
these are concerns that the free market seems unwilling and incapable of answering.
April 8, 2012 at 9:17 pm #753619
DBPMemberI think you’ve captured the hard-line conservative stance pretty well, r/b. But then, it’s not exactly mysterious.
As far as this:
in my opinion, the government’s role should be to incentivize the free market to make oil cheaper by increasing its efficient use and decreasing its ubiquity.
—I agree that the government should incentivize efficient use of oil, but primarily because I see this as being an issue of resource scarcity. If we don’t use oil efficiently now, we won’t have it to use in the future, period.
I don’t agree with the part about increasing ubiquity, because that works against the using-it-efficiently objective. Human nature being what it is, we tend to waste most what we perceive as being most plentiful — regardless of its inherent value to us. We’ve been polluting the air and water at the highest rate precisely because we’ve been living with the illusion that air and water are inexhaustible resources. Which they’re not.
Moreover, the burning of oil generally is a pollution issue, not just a wise use issue. So my counterproposal would be: yes on the efficiency and no on the ubiquity.
But how to do both at the same time?
April 8, 2012 at 10:58 pm #753620
kootchmanMemberI get 40 mpg in a car that can easily hit 140 mph. Couldn’t even imagine that 25 years ago. That would have been a 450 hp, normally aspirated engine, V-8, straight from Detroit. The technology for that engine came from European and Japanese engineering.. in response to increased oil prices. When it is in short supply, engineering will turn to more efficient use. Natural Gas, relative to coal and oil is dirt cheap. And the boom in natural gas fired generation facilities has been fantastic. Predicting the future is a tad hard… you want hi speed rail… I believe that technology is already obsolete. Business travel is the bulk of airline traffic.. as are hotel bookings, rental cars… etc… we are teleconferencing like crazy … our face to face encounters are on hi def screens with as many a 12 collaborators online at the same time…. yet you want to spend billions to subsidize a system that is already obsolete. No we won’t need low skill laborers to suck up excess labor supply.. but we will need electrical engineers, software developers, and a robust increase in bandwidth. Take a look at the current status of the California high speed rail.. what a farce that has turned into,, and that was a government trying to shape the future. What Democrat ordered drilling? Not Obama. The increase in supply is off private land dude… Texas and North Dakota. Obama hasn’t done squat to increase supply… and we all know it.
high speed rail boondoggle
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-08/high-speed-rail-takes-californians-for-a-ride.html
BTY redblack… when the Germans went into the Caspian for the Plostsky oil fields… those panzers were burning coal derived fuels from the Ruhr deposits. We have hundreds of years of coal deposits .. mother nature spend around 450 million years creating them… until oil became so cheap… most cities powered themselves and street lights with coal gassification. See Gas Works Park?
“Coal can be converted to liquid or gaseous fuels through a number of processes. Some of these were pioneered in the Second World War to provide fuel for airplanes and tanks. Germany in particular employed a number of technologies, including lignite distillation, Fischer-Tropsch processes, and hydrogenation.”
April 8, 2012 at 11:46 pm #753621
JanSParticipant8th paragraph:
April 9, 2012 at 12:09 am #753622
kootchmanMemberExactly Jan…. the man caved … but we are NOT drilling for oil… he is now ordering leasing permits, and preliminary seismic stiudies… about three years too late. The drilling capacity came from new fields in Texas and North Dakota… and we know Obama…. we know his flavor. If he gets four more years, he will shut that down the day after he gets into office. This is the “wink wink nod” phase of the campaign. As I crank up the iTunes to “Won’t get Fooled Again”. How many NEW drilling permits did he authorize in the last three years? Where bit meets soil? The chill that ran down the electorates back… his side bar with Medvedev told us all we needed to know…..
April 9, 2012 at 12:53 am #753623
redblackParticipantDP: to be clear, i said and meant increasing efficiency and decreasing oil’s ubiquity. i.e. making it not as much of a primary source of fuel.
April 9, 2012 at 1:02 am #753624
redblackParticipantWhen it is in short supply, engineering will turn to more efficient use.
if that was the case, cars would have become more efficient the first time we butted heads with iran over oil.
Natural Gas, relative to coal and oil is dirt cheap.
for now. it’s still not easy to mine.
you want hi speed rail… I believe that technology is already obsolete. […] yet you want to spend billions to subsidize a system that is already obsolete.
yeah. you say its obsolete. simple observation says otherwise. airline ticket sales continue to climb. airports are busier than ever – and expanding.
yet airlines continue to lose money. why? because oil isn’t getting any cheaper.
high speed rail? i don’t just want us to subsidize it. i want us to build it, operate it, and own it. but if the private sector wants to do the right, altruistic thing and partner with its country, that’s great.
it would be a refreshing change.
April 9, 2012 at 1:50 am #753625
JanSParticipantso, Kootch, it’s all or nothing with you? It has to be on your schedule, your timeline, or done exactly as you feel, or it’s never good enough? Arm chair quarterbacking is super easy, isn’t it? Go do his job for a month…
(shaking head – what an unhappy, miserable person you seem to be)
“President Obama, while in New Hampshire last Thursday, countered Republican charges that he was to blame for the rising pain at the pump. “We’ve opened millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration, and approved more than 400 drilling permits since we put in place new safety standards in the wake of the gulf oil spill,” Mr. Obama said.” from paragraph 8, second link..
April 9, 2012 at 2:23 am #753626
dobroParticipantI know DBP would like a civil discussion and a search for the middle ground, but here’s a quote from 3 yrs ago by writer John Cole that has some relevance…
“I really don’t understand how bipartisanship is ever going to work when one of the parties is insane. Imagine trying to negotiate an agreement on dinner plans with your date, and you suggest Italian and she states her preference would be a meal of tire rims and anthrax. If you can figure out a way to split the difference there and find a meal you will both enjoy, you can probably figure out how bipartisanship is going to work the next few years.”
April 9, 2012 at 3:29 am #753627
kootchmanMemberI am not miserable in the least. And no surprise I have every right to point the finger at his job performance. There are millions of us who just aren’t in awe of stumble bum governance. I don’t have to drink the Kool Aid or eat the anthrax with rims. Ir’s scary how close your Messiah is taking us to fiscal ruin.. the job really isn’t worth that much, take the money go on the speaker circuit..please. . Let me parse that this way…” since the run up in gas prices, and to look like I am actually doing something to save my ass in November, I have grudgingly opened some new federal lands, not enough to spare the five or six months of agonizingly high gas prices. or bring them online in time to moderate the run up in prices in part because of my devalued dollar policies of trillions in printed money.. but I think my devotees won’t notice or check”
From the EIA
“Withdrew areas offered for 77 oil and gas leases in Utah that could cost American taxpayers millions in lost lease bids, production royalties, new jobs and the energy needed to offset rising imports of oil and natural gas.
Cancelled lease sales in the Western Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic coast and delayed exploration off the coast of Alaska and kept other resource-rich areas off-limits.
Finalized rules, first announced by Secretary Salazar on January 6, 2010, to establish more government hurdles to onshore oil and natural gas production on federal lands.
Withdrew 61 oil and natural gas leases in Montana as part of a lawsuit settlement over climate change
While it was waiting for EIA to update its numbers, the Institute for Energy Research conducted its own analysis of Department of Interior data in February. It came to the same conclusion: “Production on federal lands is down, while production on state and private lands is up.
April 9, 2012 at 3:40 am #753628
kootchmanMemberThe House report also said Obama has had only one offshore lease sale in 2011, and that was in December, “narrowly” avoiding making 2011 the first year without an offshore lease sale since 1953.
And oil and natural gas production on federal lands has plummeted by more than 40 percent compared to just 10 years ago.
Sorta puts a different spin on it eh?
April 9, 2012 at 3:43 am #753629 -
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