"First: OPAC sets the price of oil!"

actually OPEC sets a price, and the only price it sets is that of its own cartel members. OPEC countries produce 38% of the world's oil, and the rest of us produce the balance.

half of the world's largest oil producers (more than 2 million barrels a day) are not OPEC members. we are one of these. the others are:

Russia
Mexico
China
Canada
Norway
United Kingdom

we are something like the second largest oil producer worldwide. we'd be a huge oil exporter except that we burn so much of the damn stuff ourselves. norway produces so much oil it has no national debt.

our problem is not that we don't produce oil in large quantities, it's that we don't have oil reserves sufficient to carry us well into the future.

"There was never an "oil" shortage in the 70's. OPAC turned the taps down."

when i turn my garden spigot off, there's a shortage of water that occurs at the other end of the hose. the fact that the earth's rivers and lakes are still full of water is of little comfort to my grass that needs watering.

"americans want and love big engines."

i don't believe you can call iraq a prime mover in 9/11. however, when we consider the problem we have in the muslim world today, it sure seems to me we can call our dependence on foreign oil a prime mover in not only 9/11, but all of our problems in the islamic world.

yes, i want to hang islamic terrorists by their balls. at the same time, i think we're just at the beginning of an era in which americans are going to start to consider their dependence on foreign oil and what this costs them. when they start to consider what it is they really want, 325 horsepower or another 9/11, the exuberance for having their SUV break 12 seconds for the quarter mile might be tempered.

as you know, it's not hard for detroit to make an SUV that gets 30mpg on the hwy. the problem is that 225hp was acceptable 5 years ago, and 325hp is acceptable today. partially, tho, this is detroit's fault, for marketing this specific aspect of their cars' features. reasonable people can come to some conclusions as to how it is we get weaned from the saudi tit, but our citizens, our government, and detroit, are going to have to engage in a partnership to make that happen, or we're just going to repeat history.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Obama's speech was quite impressive. Well-spoken, intelligent, thoughtful - definitely the future of the party.

Led me to think about the power of oratory, though. I thought his content was good/fine, but his delivery was excellent. I guess the question is whether it's good or bad that delivery is so important.

Or perhaps the question is irrelevant. Good delivery is in itself persuasive and that is that.

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"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security" - Benjamin Franklin
"Don't you see the rest of the country looks upon New York like we're left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers? I think of us that way sometimes and I live here." - Alvy Singer, "Annie Hall"

half of the world's largest oil producers (more than 2 million barrels a day) are not OPEC members. we are one of these. the others are:

Russia
Mexico
China
Canada
Norway
United Kingdom


Ah...But these countries set their production based on OPAC's production (Remember when the Russians a couple of years ago weren't playing ball with OPAC and the price of gas started to go down) . Plus, Oil is a global commity. Just because we produce more it doesn't mean it would stay in the US. Its sold to the highest bidder in I Amsterdam. That brings up another point. If the Iraqi war was about Oil why wouldn't the US just buy it all? We have the money. Even at $40/bl it would be cheaper than invading Iraq.



yes, i want to hang islamic terrorists by their balls. at the same time, i think we're just at the beginning of an era in which americans are going to start to consider their dependence on foreign oil and what this costs them. when they start to consider what it is they really want, 325 horsepower or another 9/11, the exuberance for having their SUV break 12 seconds for the quarter mile might be tempered.

The fact that I like and want a 325 hp engine shouldn't be grounds for another Sept. 11. I'm Canadian (living in the States) and I don't agree with alot of American trade practices towards Canada. But, I don't expect Americans to give up their love of good softwood furniture because a bunch of Canadians threathen to blow up the Hoover Dam or something.


as you know, it's not hard for detroit to make an SUV that gets 30mpg on the hwy. the problem is that 225hp was acceptable 5 years ago, and 325hp is acceptable today. partially, tho, this is detroit's fault, for marketing this specific aspect of their cars' features.

Thats as bad as saying I'm a big fat slob because McDonalds made me upsize everything with their evil marketing.

Cheers!

Trevor

Slowman, it's nice to see you wade in to the OT thicket. I had suspected you stayed out to maintain at least the appearance of neutrality, but evidently I was incorrect. Hopefully your presence will civilize the proceedings here. Or maybe we can drag you down to our level.

I think what you're saying about energy dependence is correct. However, I sort of doubt that too many of our citizens think about their choices in terms of geopolitical consequences. For every person that buys a Prius, there are ten that buy Navigator because it makes them feel safe and powerful on the road. Unless you impact them where it hurts directly - the pocketbook - they won't make the choice that benefits all - only the choice that benefits them. The same logic pervades the safety decision - people will choose larger vehicles because they believe they are safer, despite the fact this decision makes the entire field more dangerous, like an arms race. Or as the book "High and Mighty" described, it's like a person sitting on a phone book in a Manhattan movie theatre - you're forced to compete or be left out or worse. All this despite the statistics that say that SUVs (at least before the latest generation of car chassis-based SUVs) are less safe than medium or large cars (other than in car/SUV crashes). This is aggravated by the fact that the CAFE standards don't apply to SUVs, as well as the famous tax break to vehicles over a certain gross weight. What is the effect of this? Well, among others, it gives automakers a rather large gross margin on SUVs, as compared to passenger cars. They then plow this money back into marketing/advertising which encourages consumers, often by appealing to their worst instincts, to buy more SUVs.

However, if I recall correctly, the percentage of energy use devoted to passenger vehicles is like 33% overall, with the rest coming from power plants. So the answer then has to come from alternative energy sources, which takes time and investment to make happen.

In the absence of active government activity in research and development, as well as other policy tools, only high oil prices will encourage people to conserve and invest in other energy sources, but that takes time. The intermediate effects aren't all that pleasant, as the 70s showed us. It's almost impossible to have inflation and a recession at the same time, but we found out that a supply shock to a highly price inelastic product will do it, and quite nicely at that.

I'd like to think that we can get together and get the right thing done, but I think under a regime that favors less interference with industry and markets, it's going to take a supply shock of some sort to get it done. Consumers generally respond to prices and tangible benefits, not gentle encouragement from well-wishers.

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"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security" - Benjamin Franklin
"Don't you see the rest of the country looks upon New York like we're left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers? I think of us that way sometimes and I live here." - Alvy Singer, "Annie Hall"

Actually, if you want to follow this line of inquiry, I'll refer you to the reams of articles written before and during the war was consummated, most notably by Seymour Hersh at the New Yorker (the same guy who broke My Lai and the Abu Ghraib scandals).

Basically, the argument that the Administration believed in the presence of WMDs doesn't hold water. The CIA analysts covering this area had already complained that the Administration, instead of taking their findings as the conclusions of these experienced analysts as exactly that, kept applying not-so-subtle pressure on the intelligence services to come up with a pre-determined conclusion. And when that wasn't working well, they then went to their own intelligence service, the DIA, pressured them to produce intelligence which fit their conclusions, as opposed to the other way around. The term to describe this in intelligence circles is "stovepiping". And if I'm not mistaken, it's one of the reasons that the 9/11 Commission is recommending unifying the intelligence services. The sheer lack of an honest broker in collecting all this information is somewhere between incompetent and tragic, given the consequences.

By the same token, the Administration's claims that post-war chaos was unavoidable are wholly disingenuous. As Anthony Zinni has already noted, in the run-up to a war you always make post-war planning, involving stabilizing the peace, prevention of looting, basic services, involvement of NGOs, etc. However, as noted in an article in the Atlantic Monthly earlier this year, because all of these things are inherently difficult and challenging, the Administration deliberately avoided all of them because they felt that they represented obstructions in the path to war. You can judge for yourself what you think of that. And the soldiers there desperately trying to stabilize the country should know as well.

Unfortunately, none of this fits in a slogan you can put behind a podium, or a bumper sticker, so it remains for people to find out on their own, if they're at all interested in investigating the truth.

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"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security" - Benjamin Franklin
"Don't you see the rest of the country looks upon New York like we're left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers? I think of us that way sometimes and I live here." - Alvy Singer, "Annie Hall"

"They then plow this money back into marketing/advertising which encourages consumers, often by appealing to their worst instincts, to buy more SUVs."

yes, and this is why government sometimes must exercise its muscle to save us from our baser instincts.

my favorite person to debate is a libertarian, because i enjoy going through the consequences of an american society without a judiciary, without anti-trust laws, without health department standards, building standards, federal drug approval, and on and on.

in all these cases, government's job is to protect us from our baser instincts. it's to keep the body politic from sliding to the lowest level. i hate getting building permits just to add to my house. however, isn't it nice to know that houses on the resale market must always conform to a set of standards? that's the flip side.

so, unfortunately, we now find ourselves in a crisis, both ecologically and geopolitically. we must stop using oil. if we don't, we'll compromise the air and water, and we'll stay entrenched in moslem countries. we'll open ourselves up to further global terrorism with us as the target. we'll retain the duty of policing regional and internal security of foreign oil producers.

hey, i'm not a left-wing wacko. i'm a fiscal conservative. this is just business. in 1990 we had to invade iraq, occupy kuwait, and occupy arabia. in so doing we've caused ourselves no end of grief. 9/11 doesn't happen absent our involvement in middle east oil. this isn't to say we're responsible for 9/11. but when you walk unprotected in the bad side of town at night, the fact that others commit bad acts to you must be tempered by the fact that you might've chosen a different neighborhood in which to walk.

in this case government ought to employ a carrot/stick to save us from our baser instincts. any number of ways to do this. take tobacco taxes for example. if you're going to give yourself a stroke by smoking, you need to pay for it up front, a buck a pack at a time. you're a 4 packer a day for 30 years, well, that's $40,000 you've paid toward your eventual hospital bill. likewise, if 12mph highway is important to you, fine. have at it. but you're going to have to pay higher registration costs per year, or a luxury tax, or a steeper gas tax, or some combination. that's your cost for keeping us energy dependent.

but, don't take this money and throw it in the general treasury. use it ONLY for oil independence. use it to pay incentives to individuals and industry that employ creative and ingenious ways to use less oil. let that money pay for tax credits for those who use solar power (and, tax credits for those who buy bicycles!).

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

bush has plans of similar expense (going to mars, for example).

<<<

I haven't seen the specs on Bush's Mars plan (I didn't know he actually had one . . ) but there's a great book called 'The Case For Mars' written by Robert Zubrin that lays out exactly how we could have an ongoing program of exploration and settlement (yes I said settlement) on Mars for $30-50B (depending on whose numbers you believe) for the first mission, and $10-20B for each successive mission.

more here - www.marssociety.org

has any politician, when speaking to millions, ever said in as few words as possible "this is the problem these are the specifics of what I propose?
NO, to be a talking bobble head (politician) you have to speak in generalities and sound bites. You can not lay out in great detail what you will do. It does not appeal to the broad masses. The more specific one is the less the appeal to a greater audience.
If I say, I'm going to make sure all triathletes can afford a new set of race wheels, you think great, new race wheels for me. But if I say, I'm going to make sure all triathletes can have a new set of race wheels by doing three things. 1. increasing race fees with a wheel tax, 2. Subsidize lower income triathletes with vouchers where they volunteer at races and get a rebate for wheels and 3. establish a cabinent level position that reports to me on this very subject. Suddenly it sounds way to comlicated and smeels like crap.
Broad based rhetoric allows a politician to lay out the foundation of something without building the house needed for the final project.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

Yes - the tragedy of the commons is a fundamental problem when you have scarce resources, and no method for regulating the allocation thereof.

I enjoy libertarians - they're quite amusing. Everyone wants to be a libertarian, until they don't. Everyone wants the government to stay out of their affairs until of course, they need the government. When somebody infringes upon their rights, then government should come swooping in. And if they're abusing their rights to shared resources, well, hopefully nobody notices. And well, the free market will take care of things like pollution, drug standards, the environment, etc. So what if a few people die to serve as a signal to others? As long as it's nobody I know. They're almost as bad as the objectivists, who seem to believe that anything they want to do to the planet is fine, because that's what it's there for. Everything exists to serve man.

I am a liberal, and I'm proud to say so. Somebody noted not long ago that without liberals, women and blacks would not have the right to vote, children would be working in factories, we wouldn't have social security, and our food and water wouldn't be guaranteed to be safe to drink and eat. Markets wouldn't function correctly, with monopolies and oligopolies abound, as well as even more fraud. Basically every positive social change in the century has been due to liberals fighting, and often dying, for the rights that we so casually value today. I consider the "tax and spend" image to be nothing more than a slanderous stereotype propagated by the right simply because they know that it works, despite that it has little foundation in fact. For a party that likes to act as if it has the market cornered in morality, it often acts as if there were no moral structure in the universe. The basis of my liberalism is simple - the fundamental and empirical fact of the matter is that there are some problems and issues that government is simply the only entity big enough and powerful enough to be able to impact positively. Ignoring them doesn't make them go away - only attacking them with the biggest tools available can help. That said, government often in its bureaucracy screws it up, but to use this as an excuse to do nothing at all is simply morally reprehensible. However, what it takes to understand the philosophy is the basic recognition that circumstances for different people vary wildly, and that because I am comfortable or feel empowered, doesn't mean that that is the case for everybody. The aim is to make the field as level as possible, both because it's the right thing to do, and because it's our best chance to get the best out of everybody.

As for the energy situation, I suspect that most people don't know or simply don't care about how much of our foreign and military policy has something to do with securing our energy needs. The right will try to claim, disingenuously, that it's about democracy and human rights, but these are things they have not such a good track record with. It's all about the oil. That's not inherently a bad thing; it's just that if we're going to act in this way, we should be upfront and not obscure behind a rather shallow facade. It hurts our credibility to do so.

But the fact of the matter is that there are two basic energy sources for the planet - solar and geothermal. Pretty much all of the energy on the planet comes from one or the other, in one form or another. The question is do we exploit only one form of it, petrochemicals, until it no longer exists, or do we try and exploit more plentiful, and ultimately, more sustainable and renewable sources? Not to mention, direct solar and other similar sources save about three or four steps versus oil, as well as a few million years.

You would think the choice would be pretty clear, but evidently, as politics would have it, not the most expedient.

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"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security" - Benjamin Franklin
"Don't you see the rest of the country looks upon New York like we're left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers? I think of us that way sometimes and I live here." - Alvy Singer, "Annie Hall"

>>Why would you have deleted the liberal posts?<<



Easy answer. Because I'm not a liberal.

If I had my own tri web site-which I don't and never will--and was putting my $$ and time into it like Empfield does-- I wouldn't want the place stunk up with the anti-Bush crap, NY Times "news", and pathetic Michael Moore reviews.

So, I think it's cool that Dan created a room for off-topic discussion. I hope it works out.

you know what's the great thing about not being able to vote?

it's that you realize how important that is!

The only way to get Americans to demand a change in anything, is to make the current status quo painful, especially if the pain is located in the checkbook. If govt. wants to encourage Americans to demand higher mpg cars, I don't think .25 or .50 cents is going to do it. Until gas is running around $5/gal, I think we will keep on keeping on with big cars. People don't even consider gas mileage when buying big SUVs and cars. It's all about status symbols. What possible need does anyone have for a Hummer? What kind of "Sport Utility" vehicle has in car DVD players and all leather upholstery with massage and heat built into the seats? What soccer mom needs 350 horses under the hood? I agree with you. The reason we have representative govt. is because the majority of people don't have the time or inclination to actually become expert on most of the issues facing our country. Our govt.'s responsibility is to represent the will of the people, but also to keep us from running ourselves into the ground. We're a republic, not a democracy.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

(coming late to this discussion)

The aforementioned action was taken for the sole purpose of fulfilling a campaign promise made to win West Virginia in 2000. Bush made this promise to gain electoral votes, pure and simple.

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----------------------------------
"Go yell at an M&M"

Francois, remember, your vote only counts if you vote for the candidate that won your state. That candidate then gets all the electoral votes from your state. If you vote for the loser in your state, you vote counts nothing. only people who vote for the winners get their vote counted. It all comes down to the electoral college, not the popular vote. Are you a disenfranchised non-voter yet?

I will now type in franch a secret message so no one will know what I am saying

Je ne parle pas francais.