DirkGntly - Well said. I however choose to ignore your intelligent, well thought out argument and blame the high gas prices on the following:
-George W. Bush. Bush has known connections to the oil industry and is therefore in favor of high oil prices so he can get even richer.
-The Republicans. They’re just evil so they must have something to do with this.
-Evil energy companies. For years, these companies have prevented development of alternative to gasoline. If it wasn’t for them, the world would be driving on cars powered by rainbows.
-People who drive SUVs or any car nicer than a VW hippy bus. Everyone should drive a tiny fuel efficient car no matter how large their family is, how bad their winter weather is, or how much money they make.
-Saudi conspiricies. The Saudis are secretly stockpiling all the oil in an elaborate scheme to drive up prices.
-People who won’t use mass transit. Mass transit is comfortible, reliable and accessible to everyone. Once we design our cities so every possible destination is connected by rail, tram, bus or monorail, we’ll be all set.
If all you in other countries are paying so much more than I am, why aren’t you upset? Instead of being surprised at my “sense of entitlement” why don’t YOU feel entitled to do something about the prices which are even worse for you than they are for me? Even if you drive a more efficient car, you’re still getting screwed.
Next time you say “this back pain is killing me,” remember that logic.
Which Lies do you speak of?
Are you pointing to anyone in the thread or do you wish to make an external cite?
Because we realise that taxation is an effective and fair mechanism by which to dissuade us from burning fossil fuels. Yes, it disproportionately inconveniences the poor, and so we attempt to ameliorate that effect via other welfarist means, but if the consequences of not limiting emissions are as negative as bad case scenarios, we will all be the poorer.
This is a very good point. The climb in gas pump prices is just the first ripple to become noticeable to the consumer. Watch the airline industry for more effects as the price to fly climbs dramatically. Soon, the family vacation flight to Orlando will be out of the question, and people will vacation closer to home. Then machined goods will start climbing, etc.
OK, here’s something to consider - for what it’s worth, a guy that I used to know told me that his father worked on an oil pipeline in Alaska, and claimed that the caribou population in the area that they were drilling in increased.
Before we worry about the problems that drilling in the ANWR might cause, we ought to first look at the effects on the caribou population that other oil drilling in other parts of Alaska have had. Does anyone know if the populations of animals in the areas that have already been worked on have indeed decreased? I see many sites claiming that they have actually increased.
True. I was unfair. But the assertion is easily falsifiable with a simple experiment, not so? 
Prove that anything that any of the reasons that enviromental extremists use in their argument against offshore developement or ANWAR is true.
I can’t address the argument, if you don’t state what it is.
The only real argument I’ve heard (or Made) was that there is not enough oil to make a real difference.
The other arguments I have occasionally heard are the impact on wildlife and that it is really just an effort to maintain/increase employment levels. These are both non-factual debates as much as opinions. If this is what you’re deriding, fine I cannot argue them logically.
Because the taxes collected on fuel help to build our good public transport. I own a car that gets almost 40mpg but even then it just sits in its parking space almost all week. For my daily commute (around 60 miles roundtrip) I ride a bicycle to the train station, and then the train to work (only takes me about an hour each way, but with the traffic here, the car takes just as long). I only use the car for longer trips or weekly grocery shopping. That means I can get by on one tank of gas (about 60 Euros or US$ 73) per month. Why do people in the States use the car to go everywhere? Wouldn’t it help if you sometimes rode the bicycle the five miles to the post office or bank? This guy seems to agree with me.
Lower Oil prices in a few years acording to this guy:
http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-opyer244395448aug24,0,6197131.story?coll=ny-viewpoints-headlines
quote: " There will be a large, unprecedented buildup of oil supply in the next few years."
Assuming the refinery issues can be managed.
Or you can subscribe to Matt Simmons who says roughly that we don’t know because oil reserve data is secret and that we may be heading to the point where demand surpasses the peak of geological production.
From what I read around the web ( :dubious: ) oil production will peak around 2012 to 2020. The Saudi’s say that they can increase production and maintain high production for at least till 2050. There is one retired, Saudi, ex official who does not agree with that statement.
But don’t worry, the economist say that oil can’t be running out or else the market would be bidding it up even higher or demand will fall due to higher prices ( at what point would that be $10 gallon?).
I can confirm this. I have several friends who worked on the North Slope, and they reported that, contrary to reports of interfering with caribou calving, the caribou actually preferred to give birth on the concrete drilling pads; apparently they could avoid some of the mosquito swarms on the pads. This caused disruptions in drilling operations because of policies to not disturb the caribou.
I suspect that they would merely detail the effect of the platforms on the local landscape and ecology. Now, you and they may differ on whether those effects are unacceptable or even negative, but it would be difficult to dispute that the erection of multiple drilling platforms will not change the local ecology in some way. If you were to shrug and say “So what? Those effects are trivial”, one could not prove you wrong. However, that would not warrant characterising the labelling of such effects nontrivial as “lies”, surely?
Ah, semantics. I see what you’re saying, Sentient Meat, but a lot of the environmentalists really do make it sound like the ANWR is going to be obliterated by the proposed drilling. If it’s true that the caribou are actually helped, not harmed, then “lies” seems to be an appropriate word for the misinformation we’re talking about here.
Lest we think that Europeans are being the responsible stewards that they claim to be, I have some numbers for you, courtesy of the EPA:
Hmmm…I’ll be damned. I see a whole boatload of Europe in there, like ALL THE CARS. And before someone tries to deflect the Bentley or Aston by saying that Ford owns them, I’d like to point out that Bentleys and Astons have had historically bad fuel economy and it is nothing new to Ford.
If you’d like I could try to find some company-wide CAFE standards. I KNOW that would be eye opening. BMW, Mercedes and Audi (actually most of the Volkswagen Group) are particularly negligent in this regard if my back issues of Car and Driver and Road & Track and Motor Trend can be trusted.
To me they’re lies. I recognize enviromental damage. Contaminate ground water, kill off large amounts of wildlife or fish, destroy vast tracts of vegetation unnecessarily, etc. that is an enviromental problem. Upseting the the far, hard Left or enviromental extremists over trivial matters like just being there is not a true enviromental problem.
Of course, Airman, I said not that Europeans were perfect, but that they largely accepted high fuel prices as a means of dissuading fossil fuel use. Even then, there are clearly many Europeans who disagree and use inefficient vehicles (although if I may say, choosing European car manufacturers as your critical statistic is a rather odd choice - if a European owned an inefficient European car they would still contribute fewer emissions if they used it less.)
The LOGICAL thing to do here is to fund research for the development of solar-powered cars and other alternative energy sources. As long as oil is in the hands of those Middle Eastern oil ticks, we are all screwed.
So in other words it’s not the vehicle, it’s how often it’s used?
Make up your mind. Do SUVs suck because they’re gas hogs? If so, you can look no further than the Continent for a good bit of the gas hog problem. Or is it because they’re driven so much? If gas hogs are OK when they’re driven less (as you seem tobe saying) then you need to ease off the “Large, wasteful, gas hogging vehicles” schtick.
Well, OK, but I still think that’s rather strong. Even an increase in caribou would still represent an upset of the ecological equilibrium which they are surely justified in at least pointing out?
However, I’d agree that it’s not an environmental disaster. My point is that fuel emissions do risk a true disaster, and not just in a corner of one continent.
