geez
[bones] It’s dead Jim [/bones]
I know this thread has been resurrected from the dead, but after reading it, I still have one question. Was there ever a cite that such a film was made? Not that the tundra has no trees, that’s not what the dudes wanted. Hell, I know the tundra has no trees, if it did, it wouldn’t BE “the tundra” (the “Tiaga”, perhaps). But was the claim that such a film actually said that teh lack of trees was due to the Oil drilling ever actually backed up.
Anthracite:
Well, I think we can both celebrate the fact that the provision to open up ANWR was stripped from the budget bill. I am also celebrating my birthday today, so I think I will try not to spend too much time responding in detail to your post but will just throw at some quick general points.
Well, the oil industry is a pretty big industry…so much so that, as was noted, whether or not you include it in the average tax rate results in a change in that average by 1% point. So, the sort of fluctuations that you seem to worry about (e.g., in your example of one company) would tend to be pretty small.
I mean, sure, one could perhaps come up with other reasons to justify a different tax rate for this industry than for industries as a whole…But, I think as a rough measure of an effective subsidy to a large industry, this isn’t a bad measure at least as a first cut.
Well, my point is that they are not all blatantly political sources. The one you chose (which I couldn’t find referenced either by UCS or Sierra Club, by the way) may have an axe to grind. And, to a lesser degree, some of the ones given by the Sierra Club and UCS do seem to have certain beliefs that could lead to biases…But, the U.S. Office of Technological Assessment…Surely, you don’t think that study is biased!!! I think we would all be a lot wiser if we read through that entire study. [I downloaded and started to read through it but I have trouble reading massive treatises on the computer screen and I don’t want to print out several hundred pages.]
So, what you have done is taken one study, one that we don’t have much independent verification on, and have quibbled with various aspects of it. You may be right to a certain degree in your quibbling although much of it seems to amount to saying that this isn’t an exact science and different people can get different estimates. Well, of course…Hell, there is currently an argument raging about how much the EPA should value a human life in its cost-benefit analyses. You talk about something that is not an exact science! But, does that mean we shouldn’t believe anything about anything that the EPA estimates in this regard.
All in all, I think you are missing the forest through the trees. Are these studies difficult to do and will different ones arrive at different conclusions? Of course, that has even been demonstrated by the range of estimates on the Sierra Club page.
Does that mean we cannot say that there are extensive externalized costs associated with automobile usage and associated with usage of oil in particular and thus we just have to believe the market has it all right? I say absolutely not!
And, yes, Anthracite, since many of these studies deal with costs of automobile usage in general, they don’t all reflect back on oil in the sense that some of the costs are independent of what the cars run on. However, the point that I will make again (without trying to sound like a broken record…but as long as you don’t acknowledge it, I want to reiterate it) is that, e.g., even if the specific cause of sound vibration damage is not the fact that cars run on oil, the fact that this cost is externalized still means cars…and thus the fuel that cars run on which at this point happens to be oil…will be overused relative to how much they and it would be used if the cost was internalized.
By the way, to prevent any confusion, I should note that the Office of Technology Assessment, whose study I refer to was an organization formed by Congress to provide it with studies and information on technology issues and is not in any way affiliated with the somewhat-similarly-name International Center for Technology Assessment where the study that Anthracite talked about come from. The latter is clearly a sort of advocacy group on these issues.
To my knowledge, this claim about what this purported film said has not been backed up by any cite.
Since you seem unwilling or tired of this, let me make a few points which I’ll purposely keep non-argumentative, so you won’t have to feel burdened to respond.
With respect, my person’s refute of an overly-touted piece of crap is not a “quibble”. But expect to see me “quibble” on it, and other studies, which bend the truth or out and out lie on energy and environmental matters.
It’s all about the truth, admitting what you know, and admitting what you don’t know. At one time, I believed that the ANWR did in fact have enough oil to more than justify development. But I’m a scientist, and I did the research, and found out my assumption was incorrect. That most likely I was wrong, and that truth did not support my beliefs.
Which is one reason I went out of my way to link you to an article on the EIA which is contrary completely to my beliefs a year ago.
Because it’s not about being right or being political. It’s about the truth, or about the most logical and reasonable conclusions which can be drawn from the available evidence, keeping in mind the sources and magnitudes of potential errors, omissions, and bias.
However - in the Online World, rather than meaning I have “scientific integrity”, it means I am a “dumbfuck”.
I feel you misunderstand my position.
I do acknowledge that noise pollution results from automobile use, as well as that there is some cost involved (albeit I have no idea as the magnitude).
I do not acknowledge that the noise pollution which exists can be rolled back into a dollar per gallon charge on gasoline with any accuracy. I feel that the methods and techniques used to attempt to quantify this in the studies shown are not just scientifically bankrupt, they are ethically bankrupt as well, and I feel that no reputable researcher would support the conclusions drawn based on the evidence (or lack of it) provided.
If we want to talk about who’s acknowledging what, I could point out a great many points I brought forth from the article (which I see quoted very often on environmental and activist websites), such as claiming that police and fire and EMT funding is an “oil subsidy”, which were not acknowledged either.
The ANWR is safe for now, so perhaps this thread is at a close. However, I don’t feel the point is moot, as this issue will return, and will return again.
And I still think exploratory drilling is needed. Not development, but an assessment. The EIA and other organizations admit to a very large uncertainty in the estimates of reserves. But I think both sides are against finding out what is there, so it will never happen in the near term. I think the developers are fearful the reserves will be less, and the environmentalists are fearful the reserves will be more.