[AceOfHeart]

yes porter diamond theory..yawn making me sleepy just thinking on it

[joshs]

I used to think that the five forces were gravity, electric, weak, strong, and magic.

[hrothgar]

For what its worth, what I find most annoying about Global Warming discussions are all of the pork barrel projects that constantly get thrown into the discussion.

For (obvious) reasons the solution to global warming always seems to involve large tax breaks / subsidies for well connected companies. I'm VERY skeptical of the governments ability to make a correct guess whether bio-fuels are going to be a better solution than thermal-solar. Alternatively, I don't expect that congress is going to make a good "micro" decision regarding the relative merits of hybrid cars versus hydrogen cars.

What we need is a carbon tax, phased in over the course of 10 years or so...
Signal the market that gas prices are going to be rising to six dollar a by 2015.
Let private companies decide on the best way to adapt.

[Al_U_Card]

joshs, on Mar 30 2006, 02:39 PM, said:

He studied the japanese electronic industry (as well as many other countries/industries). He had a very interesting observation. While regulation initially drove some companies under, those that survived did so by innovating and ultimately became dominant worldwide becuase there products were better.

Having lived through the event, let us say that:

The Japanese applied the statistical quality control methods of Deming et al (from the WWII U.S. think tanks) while the Americans did not.

There were over 30 "electronics" manufacturers in N.A. in 1960 and only 1 remains (RCA) because they too were dinosaurs intent on extinction.

The Japanese used predatory pricing and supply policies and dumping as well as government imposed import quotas to sustain their electronics giants (Sony, Mitsubishi and Matsushita)

It was economic war and they won all the battles.
They didn't need to innovate they just had to improve and inundate.

[Al_U_Card]

hrothgar, on Mar 30 2006, 03:15 PM, said:

What we need is a carbon tax, phased in over the course of 10 years or so...
Signal the market that gas prices are going to be rising to six dollar a by 2015.
Let private companies decide on the best way to adapt.

Who is the holder of the largest proved reserves of petroleum products? Why, Canada, of course. Back in the 70's before the oil "crisis" the tar sands were uneconomical because it cost almost $20 a barrel to produce oil from them. Methods are better now and we will have lots of oil despite what they say about the demand outstripping supply in 2008 or 2012 or whichever date they choose.

Gas prices will go wherever those that get the profits from them say they will go. Convenient isn't it that

****conspiracy theory alert is in effect********

all this craziness in Iraq has ensured oil prices at $60+ a bbl and that Russia is now making enuf money so that they will be sufficiently healthy to be there with the Americans when the showdown with China occurs....


*****conspiracy theory alert is over*********

The carbon tax is laudable but not as good as the "hurt the earth then we hurt your pocketbook" tax.

[joshs]

hrothgar, on Mar 30 2006, 03:15 PM, said:

For what its worth, what I find most annoying about Global Warming discussions are all of the pork barrel projects that constantly get thrown into the discussion.

For (obvious) reasons the solution to global warming always seems to involve large tax breaks / subsidies for well connected companies. I'm VERY skeptical of the governments ability to make a correct guess whether bio-fuels are going to be a better solution than thermal-solar. Alternatively, I don't expect that congress is going to make a good "micro" decision regarding the relative merits of hybrid cars versus hydrogen cars.

What we need is a carbon tax, phased in over the course of 10 years or so...
Signal the market that gas prices are going to be rising to six dollar a by 2015.
Let private companies decide on the best way to adapt.

I wouldn't mind if our national labs also increased greatly their research level in these areas. Basic research is often prohibitively expensive if done by individual companies (who may or may not be able to maintain their patents). Having shared the cost of basic research, and provided proper economic incentive to companies the government can then get out of the way...

[Elianna]

http://news.yahoo.co...c/coral_death_2

[keylime]

Quite simply, global warming is a farce.

[helene_t]

hrothgar, on Mar 30 2006, 10:15 PM, said:

What we need is a carbon tax, phased in over the course of 10 years or so... Signal the market that gas prices are going to be rising to six dollar a by 2015. Let private companies decide on the best way to adapt.

I agree 100%. This has never been a popular solution, though.

I can understand that politicians prefer to be listed in future history books as something more sexy than good tax collectors.

\begin{conspiracy_alert}
And I can understand why those bureau- and tecchnocrats who make a living of implementing government policy have a preference for more complex instruments than taxes alone.
\end{conspiracy_alert}

What I can't understand is that the general public is not more positive towards polution taxes. Apparently, economics is contra-intuitive to many people.

[Gerben42]

Dwayne please explain why global warming is a farce in context of this graph (from Wikipedia) showing the global mean surface temperature as a function of time. Let us marvel why all the leading climatologists are wrong.

[Sigi_BC84]

cherdano, on Mar 30 2006, 08:28 PM, said:

Since energy efficiency in the U.S. is still on a low standard compared to Europe (not sure you will believe this, but for example the insulation of a typical house in the U.S. is ridiculously bad compared to everything you would find in Europe), it should be even easier to substantially reduce CO2 emissions of the US economy without any negative impact.

This is not a matter of believe, because just by looking at the energy consumption per capita (which is about three times higher in the US compared to Europe) it becomes very clear that the US should be able to reduce their energy throughput by a huge margin before it becomes a problem for the economy.

The truth is that they simply don't want to care, because it's so much easier to squander resources heads on and only look at growth, growth, growth.

What I think is really sad is that obviously the US public has successfully been talked into believing statements like those made by Todd (I draw this conclusion from the fact that even educated and critical people like Todd are prone to believe these lies).

--Sigi

[Gerben42]

Quote

, because just by looking at the energy consumption per capita (which is about three times higher in the US compared to Europe)

THREE times higher? Now I know that compared to Europe:

* Gas prices are about two times lower
* This doesn't matter much since the cars require at least twice more on average

* People prefer to take the car rather than other methods of transportation in the US, in Europe much more people take the train on middle distances (500 km and the like).
* Which is not surprising since fast trains are not in use in the US but common in Europe (TGV, Eurostar, ICE)

* Europeans are more aware of the damage they cause to the environment than Americans

(Notice that these are all averages - I'm sure all you forum posters are different)

But still a factor 3 is more than I expected.

[Sigi_BC84]

Gerben42, on Mar 31 2006, 11:19 AM, said:

But still a factor 3 is more than I expected.

Well, this is a rough figure that I've heard before and I cannot cite an official source at this moment, but lets look at this list:

(http://en.wikipedia....onsuming_states)

------->8
Countries in decreasing order of oil consumption. (Barrels per day, as of 2003.)
United States 20,033,504
Japan 5,578,386
China 5,550,000
Germany 2,677,443
------->8

So compared to Germany, consumption is about 2,2 times higher (measured in barrels of oil per head per year). NB I've used the population figures for 2006, but the numbers above are for 2003, so the actual ratio is a bit worse (since the US population has increased by about 5% since 2003).

Apparently it's closer to 2 than to 3 when comparing with major industrial nations like Japan or Germany.

--Sigi

[helene_t]

But Sigi, arent you confusing oil consumption with energy consumption?

[Gerben42]

Energy consumption for some major countries (1999 data) as percentage of total:

USA: 25.0%, population 4.6%, factor: 5.4
France: 2.9%, population 0.9%, factor: 3.2
Germany: 3.9%, population 1.3%, factor: 3.0
Russia: 7.0%, population 2.5%, factor: 2.8
Japan: 5.8%, population 2.1%, factor: 2.8
United Kingdom: 2.6%, population 1.0%, factor: 2.6
China: 9.9%, population 21.2%, factor: 0.5
India: 3.1%, population 16.6%, factor: 0.2

Now looking at CO2 emissions per capita (2002 data)
in tons/year

USA: 19.92
Russia: 10.55
Germany: 10.46
Japan: 9.52
United Kingdom: 9.15
France: 6.34
China: 2.93
India: 1.05

The magic word in France is: Nuclear energy

[pbleighton]

"Quite simply, global warming is a farce."

How dramatic!

How convincing!



Peter

[mike777]

Interesting discussion so far. For non Americans who ask us to consume less energy and drive less I do not think you understand what the vast majority of Americans want and vote for. Please keep in mind it was not Bush who stopped Kyoto treaty but Congress who voted against it something like 2000-1. . That means no one wanted it but a few rich people in California and Mass. .

We want to consume more energy for less money not less energy for more money
We want to drive our cars more not less, we want gas prices much lower not higher, we want gas taxes much lower not higher. Please note as fuel economy increases we drive more miles for the same price and therefore use just as much oil not less!

If you radically increase gas taxes, at the margins(poor people) you will drive them out of their cars but only until the next election when they are sick of waiting in the rain and snow for the bus. The other choice they have is to stop working.


Our impression of China and India is they want to consume much more energy than they do now not less. They seem to be voting for expanding the economy as fast as they can and as the middle class expands they will demand cleaner environments down the road when hopefully nanobots can srub the sky and water clean. Cheap renewable fuel cells will make us all laugh about 200$ oil prices.

The oceans may rise 20 feet but we can all move to Greenland(no ice sheets) and become Danish and european. .

In the USA less than 50% of the population pays income taxes because they do not work or make too little to pay taxes. Unless you want to go to a VAT tax and have huge unemploment/stalled economies as much of Western Europe does we need to discuss this more.

In fact Eastern Europe seems to be left out of this discussion? As for Western Europe are not minorities rioting for more jobs and still burn 100 cars a night(but not reported in the French press) in France while rich middle class kids march for 100% job protection from them?

As a cute side note of life in Europe compared to America, British Bridge Magazine printed a series of articles of life in France for an Englishman. This guy walked to his local store for his daily food supply every day, I mean every single day. In America we would drive even if the store is across the street, keep the engine running with the kids and dog in the car and drive back home. All along complaining how much gas costs and how we need to blame Bush, Congress, the middle east and everyone else . We love our Cars!

[Al_U_Card]

keylime, on Mar 30 2006, 06:05 PM, said:

Quite simply, global warming is a farce.

I agree. Unfortunately, a farce (Webster's) is defined as "any event with a futile or absurd outcome". How sad for us all.

[Gerben42]

Quote

As a cute side note of life in Europe compared to America, British Bridge Magazine printed a series of articles of life in France for an Englishman. This guy walked to his local store for his daily food supply every day, I mean every single day.

Strange, I would consider this normal. Also I wouldn't want to drive one of these huge American cars.

Quote

If you radically increase gas taxes, at the margins(poor people) you will drive them out of their cars but only until the next election when they are sick of waiting in the rain and snow for the bus. The other choice they have is to stop working.

Nonsense. Since you are all consuming so much there is enough money to make the bus system work. BTW in the US cities I've been to (Chicago, LA, NY and DC) there is already a good public transport system. I only wonder why not more people are using it, is it because they love their cars so much?

{conspiracy theory mode}
The Kyoto protocoll is just a conspiracy to get Americans to buy foreign cars that are twice as efficient as their own big car-like monsters.
{/conspiracy theory mode}

[mike777]

Gerben I grew up in Chicago and my family did not own a car. I hated watching my Mother wait for the bus or train in the snow to go to work. I hated waiting in the cold for the bus to go to school. If that is a good transportation system and compared to most cities it is, it will be impossible to get us out of our cars, we will move to the South, ok I did, or just quit our jobs and let the younger generation support us with their taxes. . Thank you very much.

As a cute side note while it has been a few years since I visited Europe I noticed the cars in 2 very recent movies. In Belgium everyone including the cops and the robbers drives BMW or Mercedes. In France (CACHE movie), at least in Paris, drive little rat cars.