Posted on 01/16/2008 3:45:36 PM PST by dufekin
Then I’m set since I drive a 30’s truck!
Heinlein's Shipstones?
At best this reads like poor parody, at worst it fits his career goals; from WIKI (excerpt):
“Charles Bensinger, co-founder of Renewable Energy Partners of New Mexico, describes Kunstler’s views as “fashionably fear-mongering” and uninformed regarding the potential of renewable energy, biofuels, energy efficiency and smart-growth policies to eliminate the need for fossil fuels.[2] Contrarily, Paul Salopek of The Chicago Tribune finds that, “Kunstler has plotted energy starvation to its logical extremes” and points to the US Department of Energy Hirsch report as drawing similar conclusions[3] while David Ehrenfeld writing for American Scientist sees Kunstler delivering a “powerful integration of science, technology, economics, finance, international politics and social change” with a “lengthy discussion of the alternatives to cheap oil.”[4]
Kunstler, who majored in Theater at college and has no formal training in the fields in which he prognosticates, made similar predictions for Y2K as he makes for peak oil.[5][6] Kunstler responds to this criticism by saying that a Y2K catastrophe was averted by the hundreds of billions of dollars that were spent fixing the problem, a lot of it “in secret,” he claims.[7]
In June 2005 and again in early 2006, Kunstler predicted that the Dow would crash to 4,000 by the end of the year.[8] [9] The Dow in fact reached a new peak by 2007. In his predictions for 2007, however, Kunstler admitted his mistake stating “Let’s get this out of the way up front: the worst call I made last year was for the Dow to crumble down to 4000 when, in fact, it melted up to a new all-time record high of about 12,500. The reason we saw this, in my opinion, was that inertia combined with sheer luck to keep the finance sector decoupled from reality…”. He also predicted, however, that in 2006 the United States housing bubble would start to deflate, which appears to be borne out by latest data. [10] However, unlike Kunstler’s Dow predictions, which were uniquely his, the bursting of the United States housing bubble was widely forecast before Kunstler began discussing it. [11]”
Ampere-hour tax! Price it out of existence!
18 cents current, plus 42 cents increase called for by 'bridge collapse commision' -->60 cents/gallon fed gasoline tax; divided by fleet averages MPG, for about 3 cents/mile times ampere-hours/mile, to get a base rate, then triple that "too pay for the cleanup of abandoned fossil-fuel infrastucture...", then do the comaparable thing with state & local levels.
As long as the Smoke Nazis allow it, you could do a lot worse. Except for about 3 years, we haven't been without a woodstove since 1984, in 5 different houses. Burning one upstairs, and another downstairs right now.
A 25W desk fan circulates the air, but convection works almost as well. No pellets to buy...we cut our own wood on the property, to get rid of dead or dying trees, and any blow-downs...and no need for electricity for the stove to work. We COULD buy coal, as the upstairs stove does have both wood & coal fire grates in it, but no need.
10F outside, and only got up to 22F today, but the only time the (1,500W) electric heater kicked in was while we were cleaning ashes, and going in & out to bring in wood to refill the wood boxes, then restarting the fires.
To the contrary, we find more oil everyday. The problem with our oil supply is that environmentalist will not let us get the oil we know exists, nor economically build the refineries to distill it to useable fuels.
Less environmentalist = more oil = cheaper gas.
Well, that takes care of about 1 billion (the rest are the presumably "peaceful Muslims" we keep hearing about) excess population. That would certainly put a dent in world consumption. It would also free up all that Middle East real estate that is wasted on them.
A Democrat includes McCain. His positions are indistinguishable from the other 3 individuals who admit being Democrats. A RAT would screw up the economy, foreign policy, the war on terror and 2nd amendment rights.
I figure I have 15 years to salt away some extra money for retirement. I don't want half of that spent with retards in charge of the government.
Because you owe property taxes every year. You never really own your property. The government lets you live on it as long as they get their annual tribute.
When he calls, tell him you've just adopted his radical positions on motor vehicles. You'll have the horses hitched to the wagon in about 30 minutes. ETA will be about 45 minutes.
The only thing that counts is the price of fuels at the pump. In my area today, gasoline sells for US$2.89 per gallon. Right now in the UK, gasoline sells for the same as US$ 7.50 per gallon. Even at the lower US price, there are already conversion technologies that can break even in cost to convert coal and other hydrocarbon resources into diesel and gasoline.
As much as we may not like it, our economy could still function with gasoline at $7.50 / gallon. In fact, we are assured by many well meaning people on the left, like Al Gore, that we would actually be better of if gasoline cost that much.
With every dollar of increased retail price of fuels, more and more conversion technologies become viable and can be financed to provide all our fuel needs. Indeed, on source I reviewed stated that there are enough convertible hydrocarbons in our sewage sludge to replace all our oil imports.
In light of this, lists like this “Ten ways” are just foolish, agenda-driven drivel. We are fools to allow such authors to be anywhere near the levers of public policy. Sadly, all too often they are the ones leaning on them.
Oh, OK. Get up at 3am to walk 10 miles to work; to get there by 7 and work 12 hours taking care of sick infants; then get home by 10 pm. You’re an idiot.
Plug in hybrids. This is the wave of the future in transportation. These vehicles are hybrids with bigger batteries, with longer ranges, that can be plugged into an outlet when the vehicle is not in use. They can travel < 40 miles on battery alone, so for most commutes, they do not use gasoline. This alone will extend the use of gasoline beyond our lifetimes.
If there were a more serious need to save fuel, we would simply re-zone our cities to make most commuting possible without cars, by building high density inner city cores, with good public transportation. While this seems almost un-American to many people, it can be done well, making a healthy, high culture, exciting city within walking distance.
Coal already is becoming increasingly impolitic, even for the uses to which we now put it. Most Americans already want an end to coal in electricity generation, according to media interpretations of polling data. And the Democrats seemingly want policies destined to enforce rolling blackouts as a regular part of life for most Americans, or at least those few that still could afford any electricity (at much higher prices) after paying their taxes and buying some food.
So I really do not foresee the proliferation of coal-to-oil technologies because of political, not economic, thermodynamic, or technological constraints. The American people through their elected Democrat (and some Republican) representatives clearly demand drastic cuts in the fuel usage of their fellow compatriots and pine for the consequent unending economic depression. Political problems similarly prohibit the extraction and refining of petroleum within most unexploited sections of the American territory. Witness the ongoing fracas over the technologically novel possibility of oil drilling in the icy Chuchki Sea.
“This obsession with keeping the cars running at all costs could really prove fatal.”
Wait until he needs an ambulance.
Hey, they can carry him to the hospital on a stretcher.
No I can’t and furthermore why are you buying into this nonsense?
More Rush, less Marxists.
Most Americans do NOT want this garbage; they might say they do, but they want their cars more. When they find out global warming is a hoax, they will DEMAND more drilling, more refineries, and will tell all you dufeses to shove it.
Plug-in hybrids? I agree. A few people already employ this technology, and it looks feasible for mass production. Notwithstanding battery problems in a few specimens, the Toyota Prius apparently proved a huge success. But apparently Kunstler doesn’t agree; I’m far more optimistic about the power of technology than he. But if theoretically we face oil decline under good public policy, this technology and its inevitable acceleration would work wonderfully. Proliferation of plug-in hybrids, however, requires electricity production, and the Democrats almost categorically oppose it, preferring rolling blackouts and prohibitively expensive electricity rates.
I’ve read variations of these predictions for many years. One of my grad school texts was the foolish prediction of Paul Hawken that we must all accept a level of disintermediation (1981), that is we would all start mowing our own law and fixing our own car and such. There are folks who enjoy that sort of thing and there are folks for whom the economics support that kind of choice. I am neither. The disintermediation principle violates the economic principle of trade-offs, that we make choices based on evaluation of alternatives. It also violates the history of progress through creative destruction. We abandon old ways when we discover new ways and figure out how to make them preferred ways.
This clown doesn’t acknowledge the existance of human genius beyond his own very limited understanding of economics and technology development.
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