Is it just me, or are you as amazed and disgusted as I am by the recent item in the news about Exxon-Mobil’s profits? In the last quarter, their profits were up almost 75% to almost $10 billion dollars! As summarized in a recent USA today article by Matt Krantz, Exxon has reported:
* Net income up 75% to $9.92 billion. That is the most a U.S. company has earned from operations in a three-month period [...]
*Revenue up 32% to $100.7 billion. That is greater than the annual GDP of all but just 38 of the world’s economies.
Note also that Royal Dutch Shell reported $9 billion, BP $6.5 billion…. etc.
The reason this all makes me a bit sick to the stomach is that as a civilization, we are spending such a relatively tiny amount of money on research into alternative fuel sources to oil. We are knowingly essentially ignoring all of the things that informed commenters (see here) have told us to prepare for. How are we ever going to stop this craziness, this gluttony, and look to the future? Why are we not looking out for our children’s future, and the future of their children? It’s all so depressing.
So I repeat (and invite you to read my earlier post on just how crazy this is): Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid.
-cvj
January 30th, 2006 at 8:49 pm
Dear Clifford,
BP is one of the leading companies in attempts to find alternative sources of energy.
The normal fuels are not yet too expensive and the development of alternatives is not so profittable so far.
Try to think about the possibility that the invisible hand of the free markets works after all. We’re spending almost exactly as much as we should.
ExxonMobil’s whole revenue is still less than the amount of money that our civilization is annually wasting for nonsenses like the Kyoto protocol – about 150 billion USD per year. One hundred billion is much but not too much.
Best
Luboš
January 30th, 2006 at 9:13 pm
Thanks Lubos…. this is just the usual “business as usual” argument. I am aware that market forces are powerful, but we have brains… we don’t need to (as a society) sit back and just take the line of least resistance. Try to read the post I pointed to and see what I mean.
-cvj
January 30th, 2006 at 10:47 pm
A commentator on today’s NPR Marketplace pointed out that Exxon’s production in 2005 was some 3.5% less than 2004. Even factoring out the two hurricanes and so on, the production in 2005 was 1% less than 2004. Thus, even though additional production would mean more profit, the company was simply unable to bump up production. Moreover, the commentator said that investors are aware of this, and so despite the record profits, the company’s stock has essentially remained constant since March 2005. It all sounded quite ominous – there is simply no more production to be had is what it sounded like.
January 30th, 2006 at 11:01 pm
There are two interesting posts about this at k5: here and here.
In short, if you can find an alternative energy source to fossil fuels, you’re instantly a billionnaire. The incentive to innovate is there, but the problem is that it’s very hard, and, for now, oil is by far the cheapest option.
January 30th, 2006 at 11:15 pm
A (very) profitable US company, imagine that. Paying dividends to its shareholders. Many of them being small investors, who hold XOM in their IRA, 401k and mutual funds. Wow. Most of them holding those shares to save for retirement. Imagine that. Exxon Mobile as an important part of social security.
Just incredible.
Smart people know better than that. We should plan for alternative energy. Planning is always good. It worked so very well in the Soviet Union.
January 30th, 2006 at 11:20 pm
Arun,
the main reason for not producing more oil is that it is simply not necessary. Crude oil inventories are not as tight as people think. And by definition you can produce (in the long run) only as much as gets consumed.
January 30th, 2006 at 11:32 pm
Really, Clifford. Planning ahead for oncoming disasters is so Communist. The free market will shield people from harm, like it did during Hurricane Katrina.
January 31st, 2006 at 12:13 am
Yes, you’re right Sean…. I forgot! How easily one forgets these lessons… Ok…Off to buy my SUV now….
-cvj
January 31st, 2006 at 2:27 am
Watched the video. Lewis gives us a window of 20 to 30 years; that alone should encourage procrastination. Meanwhile, in the absence of any societal “we” to address the problem, our collective fate is in the “invisible hand” of some nebulous, protean entity that responds only to petty self-interest; the free market won’t commit unless technical breakthroughs drastically reduce solar costs. This might happen; it might not.
January 31st, 2006 at 2:39 am
Hi… well…so we have to hope that we can figure it out in 20 to 30 years….assuming that it is not actually 5 to 10 years….. or -20 to -30 years…. the scary thing is nobody knows…… as he says, we might be about to perform the biggest experiment ever performed in history…..
-cvj
January 31st, 2006 at 7:49 am
Clifford,
this is the beauty of a free market. IF oil prices rise people stop buying SUVs.
Just because they are too expensive, no planning necessary.
By the way, crude oil is actually pretty cheap; In many regions gasoline costs less than clean drinking water.
As for alternatives: Evil companies are already working on them, e.g. General Electric is betting on wind turbines. Not because they are an alternative, but because they are profitable.
As for “peak oil” and doom and gloom. The 2nd largest producer (Iraq) is essentially offline for several years now, which is one reason for high prices.
The other reason is the 1998 – experience, when oil was at 11$ and oil producers learned their lesson.
Sean,
as for Katrina. The problem was with government agencies as far as I remember. In a communist country you do not even need a natural disaster for people to suffer.
January 31st, 2006 at 8:18 am
iso42: You should really re-examine your silly argument. Corporations, by the inherent working of markets, are concerned only with the very short-term profits. If, say, they look 20 years down for line (”Not because they are an alternative, but because they are profitable”) they will lose to the companies which are maximizing profit in the short term (since they are not investing money for alternatives).
January 31st, 2006 at 9:32 am
Dear anonymous,
most corporations and investors look “down the line” for several years.
But it would certainly be silly to try to forecast 20 years ahead.
By the way, if you or Clifford or anybody else has an alternative to oil which is
either cheaper or cleaner or both, then congratulations to you.
I would suggest to develop the idea and profit from it.
No 20-year plan is necessary for it. (You guys are really ahead of the Soviet Union. They only had 5-year plans.)
And as I wrote, smart companies (e.g. General Electric and BP) are already making profits this way.
Just one more thought. Unionized labor at GM and Ford is currently threatend with lay-offs, because those car companies are unable to sell enough SUVs.
Do you think the US government should bail out GM and Ford (as has been suggested) to help your comrads, in essence subsidizing SUVs ?
January 31st, 2006 at 10:13 am
market forces clearly resulted in the enviromental protection acts
market forces clearly protected the working class person during the industrial revolution (there is a reason they were called robber barrons)
Market forces clearly would have developed nucular technaolgy durring world war II if our meddling (and some of the logic expresed above) communist government hadn’t forced the issue.
Yes, we accknowledge that pure central planning does not work, however pure free market does not either. Left to it’s self for long enough it will run it’s self back to feudelism (see company mining towns). Communism also had problems in that their leaders were dictators, that never does anything good for a country. Dictators tend to do things that benift them and hurt the rest of the country (sort of like “it’s war time I can do what ever I want” style logic, oh wait it’s an infinite war….) There are a number of rather socialist countries we get along with just fine (England, most of europe)
Is this a sign that you are afraid of what it going on that you almost immadiatly resulted to calling people communists. It should be noted that we arn’t in the cold war anymore, the current name your suppossed to call someone to instantly and irrationally discredit them is “terrist” (pronouced like our president says it)
January 31st, 2006 at 10:26 am
a cornellian,
people who think that profits are “disgusting” are usually called socialists or communists. But you can use a different word if you do not like it.
January 31st, 2006 at 10:30 am
Clifford,
Read A Short History of Progress .
“History repeats iself, but each time the price goes up”
January 31st, 2006 at 10:31 am
Clifford,
Read A Short History of Progress .
: “History repeats iself, but each time the price goes up”
January 31st, 2006 at 10:32 am
Clifford,
Read A Short History of Progress .
January 31st, 2006 at 10:32 am
Windfall tax?
January 31st, 2006 at 10:34 am
Lubos,
Just yesterday, leading scientists indicated that Global Warming needed urgent and immediate attention. Profits aside, we need to move to an energy currency that does not generate greenhouse gases. I think everything, including nuclear is on the table but it looks like from this last report that we’ve got about 20 years to turn it around or it will have a dramatic impact on life on earth.
As Clifford put it some of us are thinking of our children, grandchildren etc. not just ourselves. Maybe thats the difference.
Elliot
January 31st, 2006 at 10:38 am
Sorry, Sean, but big scale planning of these purely economical matters ahead is really a Communist policy.
New Orleans was primarily screwed because Louisiana is the most corrupt state of the Union and New Orleans is its most corrupt city. The importance of all planning is negligible compared to this basic fact.
Clifford, you mention that there is something more in your text than the usual environmentalist irrational screams. I’ve read it several times but have not found it. If you have some great idea how to replace existing fuels with something better, go for it. What I’ve seen is, sorry to say, a Quantoken-like whining.
Society is sitting back, you say. Nope. The activity and efficiency of the society is maximized if the society is based on the notion of free markets. The idea that government regulation intensifies the efficiency how we use the resources is a communist stupidity that you seem to share.
We have seen this stupidity at work. The industrial communist countries were the most polluted and inefficient countries in the world.
How energy planning looks like in planned economies? A famous Czechoslovak economist Ota Å ik figured out back in 1968 that near Ostrava, there is a power plant and a mine. The power plant burned all coal from the mine, and the mine consumed all electricity produced by the power plant.
If you suppress the free market that is able to evaluate the price of research and other things millions of times better than your low-brow articles, you will end up with hundreds of similar inefficiencies – sometimes going at loops.
You still seem to live in the illusion that you will establish policies that are demonstrably equivalent to the policies in the Soviet bloc, but you will keep the American prosperity. This can’t work, Clifford. If you’re thinking in terms of these anti-market paradigms, you should imagine your country to look like the Soviet Union, not an advanced, clean, and efficient capitalist economy.
What I find shocking is that many communists realized these things themselves in the late 1980s when “Perestroika” was coined. You and Sean seem to be very very far from such a Perestroika.
January 31st, 2006 at 10:42 am
Elliot, I am already tired of these alarmist stupidities and of renaming average and below-average, politically active and biased scientists as “leading scientists”.
Planning 50 years ahead and determining how your grandsons should live is a really bizarre idea that completely suppresses everything about progress and reality. Imagine that people in 1950 or 1900 were dictating us how we should organize the economy today. Unthinkable.
Yet, this is exactly what you want to do – together with the leading bigots – to the people in 2050.
I personally think that the people with these megalomanic plans cannot plan even next month which makes it a bit dangerous to give them the 21st century.
January 31st, 2006 at 10:44 am
Lubos,
Enough with the free market rhetoric. The energy industry is not a free market. It is a monopoly system controlled by an ever decreasing number of ever bigger players. The cost of entry is astronomical. Go back and learn some economics.
The 10 billion was the fruit of the most corrupt administration in history run by 2 ex -energy execs executing “behind closed doors” policies that favored XON and screwed the american people. Any other analysis is naive.
Elliot
January 31st, 2006 at 10:48 am
Elliot,
> The energy industry is not a free market. It is a monopoly system controlled by an ever decreasing number of ever bigger players.
How many oil companies are there in your opinion?
January 31st, 2006 at 10:50 am
Lubos,
So if you don’t support megalomaniac plans I’m sure you don’t think much of PNAC. (the neo-conservative psychotics who want an american empire in the mideast)
You seem to be an expert in everything. Did you study climatology? Are you an expert in the chemistry of the atmosphere? Are you a leading voice in complex multivariable simulations? You are welcome to your opinion but to suggest that other people who do this every day are “below” average and know less about this than you tells us more about you than them.
And yes I do care about my grandchildren (as yet unborn) It’s because of my selfish genes
Elliot
January 31st, 2006 at 10:55 am
Elliot,
let me answer it for you.
There are five major international oil – companies operating in the US (not counting CITGO). There are several hundred independent companies, drilling, refining, exploring, servicing etc.
And this is just in the US. Not exactly a monopoly.
If Exxon would try to “gouge” the market their competitors would be more than willing to jump in and take advantage of artificially inflated prices.
January 31st, 2006 at 11:03 am
wolfgang,
your answer is not an answer. Those top 5 control about 45-50% of the market.
while there are “hundreds” of independent companies how many are fully integrated “well to pump” and could actually compete? How many have distribution systems that could allow them to compete? This is a big boys game and the big boys are winning big with the complicity of their friends in Washington.
elliot
January 31st, 2006 at 11:06 am
A cornellian wrote:
“market forces clearly resulted in the enviromental [sic] protection acts”
Environmental protection acts were not created by the free markets – but environmental protection acts are also not among the most important reasons behind the improving environment. The most important reason behind the improving environment is the free market, the desire of the people to live in a better environment, and the market pressures that force the companies to care about their profits, efficiency, as well as their image.
“market forces clearly protected the working class person during the industrial revolution (there is a reason they were called robber barrons)”
The workers in the 19th century were protected exactly as much as the society at that time could afford. And because capitalism works, it had to be clear to everyone who was able to think that the conditions in which the workers worked were going to improve dramatically, because of the free markets and the technology they bring, and they indeed did. People like you are still living in the 19th century, unable to comprehend that nearly two centuries that followed have shown that these Marxist ideas of yours are crap. If you want to use arguments from the 19th century even in 2006, be my guest, but don’t be surprised that only morons will join you.
“Market forces clearly would have developed nucular [sic] technaolgy [sic] durring [sic] world war II if our meddling (and some of the logic expresed [sic] above) communist government hadn’t forced the issue.”
I can imagine that the peaceful nuclear technology could have been developed by the free markets but it is true that it was not. Incidentally, this is one of the reasons why I think that defense (or “wars”) are among the primary concerns that a government should be responsible for.
“Yes, we accknowledge [sic] that pure central planning does not work, …”
We? Do you speak for a whole party or just its central committee? You whom you call “we” are a gang of biased people who are not able to think independently and rationally and who copy their politics from each other. But having many such people does not make the idea any better: it is still the same stupid Marxist propaganda from the 19th century.
Looking at the “depth” of the ideas and the typos, Cornell does not look terribly good these days.
January 31st, 2006 at 11:45 am
Dear Elliot,
concerning your comments that energy does not belong to the market and similar fantasies – such as the statement that energy industry is a monopoly:
If there were just ExxonMobil and BP, it would be enough to prove you wrong because monopoly is derived from the number “one”. But if there also exists Shell and dozens of others, what you’re saying is not just wrong… It’s plain stupid.
Competition and other essential features of the free market are more important for the energy sector than for many other sectors of the economy.
I’ve never heard about PNAC but yes, I definitely support free markets and democracies in the Middle East, too. If their development requires an investment, I am ready to contribute to such an investment.
Yes, I have studied climatology, but your statement that I am an expert in *everything* is almost certainly an exaggeration.
Best
Lubos
January 31st, 2006 at 12:04 pm
Lubos,
Here you go
http://www.newamericancentury.org
If this isn’t megalomania on a grand scale I don’t know what is.
These are the guys behind the Iraq war. Syria? Iran? Saudia Arabia? next?
Monopoly status does not under antitrust law mean only one. It means a concentration of power in a group that can be anticompetitive. Try and go open up your own gasoline company and tell me how easy it is to enter this market.
O. K. I guess your an expert in “almost” everything
Elliot
January 31st, 2006 at 12:16 pm
> Try and go open up your own gasoline company
It is certainly not easy to compete with very efficient companies.
But Wal-Mart is doing exactly this. They try to get into the business of
gasoline distribution. Of course they are an evil company also,
and their profits are as “disgusting”.
January 31st, 2006 at 12:27 pm
Lubos,
I’m sorry about this, but it needs to be said. Consider it a periodic reality check.
We’re all reasonably smart people here. You present us with a choice:
In the blue corner, we have……
Choice A: Listen to (and act upon) the words of science (like Nate Lewis who I quoted in the referred to post at length) who study the physics of energy, the politics of energy, the physics of the alternatives (which nobody seems to have read….I give details),… who’ve sat on panels with government and other relevant organisations and basically know what they are talking about……
and then we have, in the red corner….
Choice B: Follow a smart kid who’s on the temporary Harvard faculty, sitting in his ivory tower (or whatever colour it is) and who studies….string theory. I repeat: String theory. String theory. String theory. In other words, what (other than string theory, about which he knows a lot) is he qualified to talk about with such assumed authority and at such great length and aplomb, and remarkable impoliteness? Nothing. Let me spell it for you folks: n-o-t-h-i-n-g.
Ok. I think I know which choice I’m going to make. Is there anyone confused about the options here?
-cvj
January 31st, 2006 at 12:37 pm
“Non-free” (socialist/communist) economies, i.e., where government plays a big role(of course, it does in the US too, but that is another story), are not all failures. For example, China, Japan, India, and Taiwan are all doing very well. Don’t forget the US owes trillions to the first two, not a wise choice in the geopolitical sense.
January 31st, 2006 at 12:39 pm
but Clifford…. isn’t string theory THE theory of “everything” LOL
Elliot
January 31st, 2006 at 12:56 pm
Clifford,
when I look at the webpage of Nate Lewis I find all kinds of interesting science.
I do not see the part where his group explains why profits are “disgusting” and why I have to be “very afraid”.
I think those are your conclusions and it seems that you ae a string theorist in an ivory tower as well …
January 31st, 2006 at 12:59 pm
Dear Clifford,
I don’t think you should be listening to anyone. You should first of all try to think and observe the reality which is what neither of you is quite willing to do.
In other words, both choices A,B of yours are wrong, and it is too bad that you can’t figure it out.
Moreover, I have no idea who is Nate Lewis, and even Wikipedia with half a million articles does not help me.
All the best
LM
January 31st, 2006 at 1:07 pm
Let me just add a disclaimer: when I say that “neither of you is trying to do it [think independently] right now”, at this very moment the sentence excludes Wolfgang – who apparently has enough freedom on his Paradise Island.
I also agree with Wolfgang that your comments about our ivory towers from you are not overly fair given the fact that you’re sitting at another tower.
Also, I could cite dozens of economy Nobel prize winners to “prove” that your points about the economy and funding of research are wrong, but this is just not my approach. Unlike you, Clifford, I prefer arguments over authorities.
Another issue: the comments about the “temporary” character are inappropriate. If tenure has any meaning, the meaning is nothing else than the goal to make the scientists independent, so that they don’t have to follow someone else, regardless whether he or she is A or B.
You seem to contradict this very purpose of tenure, and with such an attitude, let me say that the very institution of tenure is just wrong. I don’t care about tenure and I don’t care about the people who prefer beliefs in various Nates Lewises over arguments.
January 31st, 2006 at 1:13 pm
Iso42, Lubos, et al:
How many people died in Cuba during Katrina (and previous hurricanes)?
January 31st, 2006 at 1:31 pm
Motl: “Unlike you, Clifford, I prefer arguments over authorities.”
Hahaha. Lubos, you are one funny clown, I’ll give you that. Look what you said about Woit after his discover interview:
“How can they really distinguish who knows his or her science and who is just trying to damage science and confuse everyone else? I think that everyone should try to learn how to use a scientific database such as scholar.google.com. For example, if a magazine interviews a person whose opinions about a particular class of questions are presented as scientifically relevant, a careful reader should try to make a search. And compare [ed: Motl means compare the citations of the publications]. Of course that these numbers are not a holy word. And for the experts, they should not matter at all because they should have independent ways to evaluate statements about their field. But I am absolutely convinced that for an outsider, they are infinitely more reliable than the texts written by scientifically challenged journalists.”
Clearly consistency is not one of your (apparently, very few) admirable traits. For things like energy crisis, global warming etc., for which we are outsiders, the above would apply to you and the whole debate here.
Reading your posts reminds me of Shakespeare:
“It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
January 31st, 2006 at 1:43 pm
Folks, try to keep to substance here. Let’s not get personal.
January 31st, 2006 at 1:45 pm
Lubos, I’m just a regular guy with only 24 hours in each day who does not have the time to develop expertise on everything under the sun (and beyond)…. so in fact, like everyone else, I listen to people who know what they are talking about and base my arguments and judgements on things they have told me. This is what everyone (except perhaps the truly enlightened like yourself) has to do, since not everyone is an expert on everything. So I make a judgement based on someones qualifications, their arguments, and on the *real* (not imagined) data that they present. I’m sorry I have this human frailty, but there it is.
So given that, I make the choice I mentioned.
The fact that you’ve never heard of Nate Lewis should cause you some embarassment Lubos, since you claimed not to find anything in the posts I pointed to, which I encouraged you to read before continuing your… commenting…. and now it is clear that you have not done so, since the *entire post* I pointed to is a discussion of a talk by Nate Lewis. So you’re claiming great expertise, and you have not even taken time to read something highly relevant -full of data and informed argument- placed right under your nose….. That’s really funny actually!!
-cvj
January 31st, 2006 at 1:56 pm
Let me say something material instead of these content-less debates meant to highlight someone’s prejudices.
BP is currently presenting itself as “Beyond Petroleum”. It’s an image that many people buy because many people like to hear this kind of nonsense. They’re paying $100 million for this campaign every year. Of course, it’s not really based on reality. See e.g.
http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0103/0103bp.htm
The reality is that there is no known plausible way to replace petroleum by something else and better, and the obvious way to go is to improve the chemistry and other properties of fuels we use today and the machine that consume them.
ExxonMobil knows them, and even though it has recently funded some global warming whackos, too, it is still the morally superior company. It also incidentally reduced its CO2 emissions by 35 percent in the last 30 years or so. But it did not do it because of some silly environmental propaganda but simply because the decrease is correlated with ExxonMobil’s profit – according to the very basic rules of economy.
ExxonMobil clearly says that we will continue to use the conventional fuels for the years to come, and try to improve their properties by slow evolution. Eventually, when a known better replacement is found, we can talk about it. But it’s not today. Meanwhile, we have a lot of oil available for a very long time: those who mine it don’t even have the interest to “discover” more than necessary. And once the oil starts to decrease, its price will grow and encourage the alternatives.
Encouraging the alternatives in advance is un-economical, irrational – it is just about political brainwashing. This is exactly the type of nonsensical approach that was coined in the totalitarian systems where some mediocre powerful politicians decided that it could be a good idea. Of course, in about 50% of cases, these were bad ideas.
January 31st, 2006 at 1:59 pm
Wolfgang says:
cvj says: – Brilliant deduction! Well done! Yes they are my conclusions. Uh…where do I claim otherwise? Yes they are my impressions. I wrote those posts. They have my signature on them. Well spotted. I never once said that Nate Lewis said those things…. You’re very very sharp.
And yes I’m a string theorist (says so on my website…well done…), and yes I live in the ivory tower of academia (again, points for observation there). I never said that I was not! What is your point exactly?
The difference is that:
(a) I’m not claiming to be an expert on global warming, or energy, or economics, or potitics; I actually *am* aware that my expertise stops at high energy physics (string theory mostly). I’m just giving/sharing my impressions of things, which is what this blog is about.
(b) I’m not claiming that the actual experts are in fact not experts
(c ) I’m not arguing long and hard and loudly based upon facts (a) and (b)…..
That’s my point.
Thanks for your astute observations….
Cheers,
-cvj
January 31st, 2006 at 2:06 pm
Nathan Lewis is just presenting a complete fog about his visions of the 20-30 year future. No one can predict when the new breakthrough will be found. I am not interested in such nonsense, especially if his visions seem to be politically biased. Of course if he had something material, people in the energy companies would be immediately working on it.
It is easy to see (from scholar.google.com or elsewhere) that he has found no results about fuels that would be considered scientifically relevant by the rest of the expert community, and I have no idea why you think that what a random chemist says about the future of fuels should be so terribly interesting for me. I don’t think it’s too interesting. Some people I know, including some senior readers of my blog, know much more about fuels than this guy, and I’ve been getting much better lectures about these issues.
January 31st, 2006 at 2:13 pm
Clifford,
> What is your point exactly?
that it is important to distinguish Nate Lewis’ research from your opinions.
January 31st, 2006 at 2:13 pm
Lubos:- Thanks. That’s very enlightening, in fact.
Cheers,
-cvj
January 31st, 2006 at 2:15 pm
Wolfgang,
Thanks for clearing that up for everyone!! LOL!!
Cheers,
-cvj
January 31st, 2006 at 2:17 pm
One more thing about these 20-50 year predictions.
This format has become very popular for some “scientists” because in 20-50 years, all these wrong predictions will be forgotten. On the other hand, 20-50 years is a short enough time for some people to find such predictions “relevant”. Just like Paul Ehrlich predicted mass starvation of hundreds of millions of Americans for the future that was decades away, similar people are doing these predictions in the context of global warming, oil, and related hypothetical disasters.
Such predictions are effectively untestable. They’re not scientific. No one can plan 50 years into the future and no one should even try. Only megalomanic people who want to throw the whole civilization into a new medieval era in which everything will be frozen for 50 years are thinking in this way. The rest of us knows that most of the relevant questions are uncertain already in the 5-year future.
January 31st, 2006 at 2:19 pm
So Lubos, you don’t pay into any heathcare or retirement accounts then? Impressive.
-cvj
January 31st, 2006 at 2:19 pm
Clifford,
you are welcome.
One last comment, I judge the various blogs by the way how commenters with different opinions are treated.
Unfortunately, phsycis blogs seem to be among the worst.
January 31st, 2006 at 2:20 pm
This stuff (Lubos, above but one) is not just LOL, it’s roll on the floor with your legs in the air LOL!!…. and I’m supposed to be preparing my class…..
-cvj
January 31st, 2006 at 2:22 pm
I stumbled: Unfortunately, physics blogs seem to be among the worst.
January 31st, 2006 at 2:25 pm
Clifford, I’m happy that you’re laughing. Other people can actually learn something, but extracting laughter is great.
I am also preparing a class.
By the way, this post of yours is very related to Sean’s “Science President”.
In the State of the Union address, Bush will promote green fuel.
http://money.cnn.com/2006/01/31/news/economy/pluggedin_fortune/index.htm
January 31st, 2006 at 2:27 pm
Wolfgang:- I’m merely acting incredulous because you went to such great pains to point out that my opinions and feelings are…..my opinions and feelings. I just find that rather funny….I’m sorry that you don’t. I did not say anything about your opinions per se. I’ve been a bit hard on Lubos (and only Lubos) since he has gone rather far in his attacks on the entire edifice of what is supposed to be informed opinion vs random claims. I find that a cause for concern and felt that it needed to be pointed out. Everyone who comes and comments here is in fact afforded a great deal of courtesy, whether they agree with me or not, and especially if they demonstrate that same courtesy in their dealings with all the other guests.
-cvj
January 31st, 2006 at 2:29 pm
Lubos, take this any way you like, but you are one of the greatest and most consistent sources of amusement I’ve ever found on the web.
Now teach those young minds well, good sir.
Cheers,
-cvj
January 31st, 2006 at 2:30 pm
Dear Wolfgang,
“physics blogs seem to be among the worst.” – I agree. It’s great that we’ve upgraded to an antiblog because otherwise the previous sentence would smell of self-criticism.
Ask some people whom both of us usually disagree such as Nigel and Quantoken whether they find Cosmic Variance of the Frame more tolerant and open-minded.
Best
LM
January 31st, 2006 at 2:34 pm
Lubos,
That fuel certainly is green for some folks like the shareholders at XOM.
January 31st, 2006 at 3:12 pm
Expecting the market to fix these problems is not necessarily reasonable because of externalities that are not factored into prices and are therefore poorly controlled by markets. See for example,
http://www.bized.ac.uk/current/mind/2003_4/271003.htm
At any rate, the energy market is not free in the US. It is already manipulated by government policy. From a recent Discover article:
http://www.discover.com/issues/feb-06/features/energizer/?page=2
At least in this case it seems that freer markets can actually help the environment, but this isn’t expected to be the case generally (see first link).
January 31st, 2006 at 3:22 pm
#44, LM: As you indicate, “No one can predict when the new breakthrough will be found.” . Coupling this with our inability to time the CO2 doomsday countdown, we’re operating in a zone of maximum uncertainty and maximum risk. This is not an acceptable situation to any responsible terrestrial biped.
Your approach is wait-and-see; it’s too passive. We can’t entrust the future to an undemocratic, unsympathetic free market; the free market’s only universal interest is profit – hardly reassuring. Survival, of course, is also of basic interest to the participants in the new economic order, but in its current state of self-organization, the free market is incapable of dealing wih global concerns.
When the free market is sufficiently self-organized to deal with these global issues, democracy can be declared officially very, very dead, having been entirely replaced by global plutocracy.
The alternative is not communism; the alternative is the restoration of democracy. In a democracy the power is vested in the people. The ‘free’ world is now a plutocracy; the ascendency to policy status of Hayek’s irresponsibly laissez-faire economics is just a symptom of the corruption of democracy by the insidious logic of money.
January 31st, 2006 at 3:41 pm
> an undemocratic, unsympathetic free market
Democrazy and free markets usually come together. Yu cannot really have one
without the other, at least not in the long run.
> the free market’s only universal interest is profit
This is simply wrong.
Your and my interest is profit. The market itself does not care about it.
January 31st, 2006 at 3:57 pm
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7564816/site/newsweek/
The accounting rules of the time did not require these obligations to show up on GM’s balance sheets.
I have no doubt that the free-market is a great optimizer – but it produces results only as good as the meta-rules that apply. If we do not correctly account for all of the costs of doing business, eventually reality catches up. Accounting is not entirely tied to reality, some of it is based on convention; but market decisions are made based on this convention.
The same holds with pollution and the environment and non-renewable resources – are we correctly accounting for all the costs that our economy incurs? If we are not, our market decisions are made based on incorrect information, and sooner or later reality catches up.
That the free market will take care of everything is predicated entirely on a correct accounting of costs and benefits. And I don’t see anyone here that advocates central planning, but rather a change in the way we account for things.
January 31st, 2006 at 4:09 pm
> the free market will take care of everything
The market itself does not care one way or another.
Free people will take care of their problems and issues and will provide products and services for others if they are allowed to keep the profits from those products and services.
As for accounting, I would think this board (struggling to comprehend the basic concepts of market economies) is the wrong place to discuss such issues
PS: Apologies for my typos, e.g. “democracy” etc.
January 31st, 2006 at 8:09 pm
#60 iso42: Capitalism is democracy’s shadow because capitalism is the economic method that shares the democratic elements, individualism and free choice. When democracy allows capitalism to run amok, however, democracy and capitalism switch roles so that capitalism becomes the logical basis for power and democracy becomes a mere formality (eg. Rome/Crassus).
Re. “..universal interest..” – reification isn’t always a bad thing, given that abstract entities can manifest in effects equivalent to behaviors, but I admit it was a sloppy sentence.
#62: “the free market will take care of everything” is ok; again, personifications of abstractions work for abstractions that have effects readable in the ‘real’ world.
January 31st, 2006 at 10:50 pm
Unfortunately, I think that most people think of the atmosphere as being unimaginably vast, just as they mistake the oceans as being unimaginably vast (the state of the ocean could be another interesting topic here). This is my favorite way of visualizing the smallness of our ecosystem and potential impact of all the gases we pump into the atmosphere —
The earth is 12,756 km in diameter. 90% of our atmosphere is contained within the first 53 km of the surface of the earth, so we’ll use 53 km as a good rough estimate of the depth of the atmosphere. Therefore the ratio of the depth of the atmosphere to the diameter of the earth is roughly 0.00416.
Imagine a very large globe of the earth sitting on your desk, say 1 meter in diameter. The depth of the atmosphere on that globe would therefore only be 4.16 mm !!!
Now imagine all of those cars and trucks belching gas at rush hour all over the US, Europe, and China; all the dirty smokestacks in Texas and the Midwest and in China; and all of those two cycle scooters and charcoal stoves and ovens belching smoke day in and day out all over Indian and China. Imagine flying around the world in a plane in the dark. Remember the almost unending carpet of lights down there flying over the US and Europe? And if it’s dimmer over parts of India and China, you can be sure that those charcoal stoves are still cooking down there.
February 1st, 2006 at 10:21 am
“Your approach is wait-and-see; it’s too passive.”
Dear Sisyphus,
I don’t have an energy breakthrough myself and I guess that you don’t have it either, so your suggestions that you are “active” can only mean that you are an active crackpot or charlatan.
Billions of dollars are spent for such things both at the commercial as well as governmental level. If you think that “activists” who are ignorant about everything and who think that it’s very useful if they just push something in a particular direction are misguided and counter-productive simpletons.
Best
Lubos
February 1st, 2006 at 11:38 am
#65 LM: Really, Dr. M, my suggestion that ‘wait-and-see’ is too passive doesn’t imply that I’m an activist, let alone an active crackpot or charlatan; in truth, I’m sitting on the fence considering possible options and have rejected yours for the reason stated.
My post was something of a mixed bag, but it consisted mainly of a critique of the free market – in which you have so much faith – which imo hasn’t reached a state of self-organizationis sufficient to allow it to act as a purposeful entity capable of dealing with any global issue.
I also indicate that when the free market does reach the state of self-organization that makes it is capable of purposeful action, that more evolved free market will necessarily be anti-democratic.
The ‘restoration of democracy’ comment may seem a little non-sequitur and, as a solution, a tad too tangential to be of any relevance to the CO2 situation, but I see the over-all problem as a matter of the source of power; humanity’s interests are unlikely to be served by a system to which the people have no access, except as individual consumers.
I know that you don’t regard Nathan Lewis as an authority, but he made sense to me, and that’s the most substantial thing I have to go on at the moment. Watch the video and tell us where he’s wrong.
I do think that there’s a good chance that the system as it is will come up with a technical fix, but with so much at stake, I’d like more assurance that we’re doing all we’re capable of – and that would involve input from a benign, people-friendly government.
Regards
February 26th, 2006 at 1:54 pm
I’m an economics undergrad doing research. I’ve found it very hard to find a breakdown of the major gasoline companies in the US by market share. I’ve found one from California, but I’m looking for somthing that includes the whole US. Anybody know of a good sourse?
-paulrdorasil@hotmail.com