I think it would be more accurate to say that women find advances creepy if they haven't given any signals that it is welcome.
If you walk up to a strange woman, introduce yourself, and she responds with a smile and her eyes dilate, you are probably OK asking something slightly more personal. How you interact is based on how she's interacting back.
If you walk up to a strange woman, introduce yourself, and she's all business. Just shakes your hand, doesn't smile. Remains neutral, eyes don't dilate, face doesn't flush, etc.. You'd best keep things business-like and if your only intent was flirting or asking her out, probably give up at that point.
You make it sound like if you are an attractive person, you can just go up to a strange woman and give her a hug (or more). No, you have to begin with the basic social conventions of getting to know someone, and following normal social cues as to whether the path you are on is welcome.
I can see how some people who are socially awkward might reach your conclusion, but really, it is just exactly as I described.
You could make the case the the 'get to know you' period can take longer if the person is socially awkward or not very attractive, but it is the same 'get to know you' period that any person faces when working up to deciding to flirt or not.
And attraction itself is a very big tent to most women. Lets say you go to a conference. You aren't very physically attractive but you want to meet (note: meet is the first step, not 'advances' or flirting) a woman. You'll have to find something to begin the 'get to know her' period. Notice a book she's read and you've read it too, make a comment about it. Make a joke about something happening at the conference. Give up your spot in a line if she looks in a hurry, etc... rinse repeat continue. And perhaps by the end of the conference you'll notice her smiling more, eyes dilating, etc.. now, and not before, you can start 'making advances' as you put it.
A much more in depth article that describes how scientific opinion has changed over time on this issue. And it points out that I was only partially right. I was basing my statement on stuff I had read probably over 20 years ago.
In a nutshell, both family planning, contraceptive promotion, and economic development are important in reducing population, with each having a greater impact at different stages of a country's growth.
Skip down and read the conclusion only if you want, but the paper overall I found really interesting.
The recent increase in distrust of science has nothing to do with bad vs good science. Nothing to do with Orwellian control (that has been a constant factor). It was the coordinated takeover of the Republican party by the far far religious right.
There's no need to attribute the headline to stereotypes or misunderstandings. Every member of the Republican house and senate (maybe a few exceptions) do not believe in evolution. That is clear proof of being blatantly anti-science due to religious beliefs trumping reality.
Religion is always an issue when it crosses over into politics, yes. But this absurd level of anti-scientific thinking is the result of the far far religious right working in a coordinated fashion to take over the Republican party. It wasn't a natural thing at all. It was a mission. I haven't checked all the links on this site, but the first one on the homepage is a New York Times article, and the second link I checked was from another large newspaper, so it seems somewhat legit. http://www.theocracywatch.org/
Growing up and realizing that people have agendas is certainly true. But even more impacting has been the rise of conflict-style partisan news reporting. Every issue now has two sides, no matter the evidence on either side. Applied to science, it makes listeners skeptical of everything, even when they shouldn't be on any particular issue.
I don't think it was the neo-conservatives, but their, and the general Republican Party's take over by the religious right. New York times article is is copied here: http://www.theocracywatch.org/
How about term limits and new candidates can only use a set amount of public money to run, and after that only accept small individual donations, no super pacs, etc..
It has been particularly bad since Obama became President. McConnell said, "“Well that is true, [making Obama a one-term President is] my single most important political goal along with every active Republican in the country." He next said, something like, "but that is in 2012, and right now we need to fix the Country first".
It should be pretty obvious by the record number of filibusters, that making Obama a one term President was, and still is, the Republicans' number on goal. Nearly ever single piece of legislation, even if proposed by Republicans themselves only years earlier, has been filibustered.
Congress does sometimes pass good stuff, it just isn't widely reported. (And to be fair, often isn't nearly as impacting as the bad legislation).
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/L?d111:./list/bd/d111pl.lst:1[1-383]%28Public_Laws%29|TOM:/bss/d111query.html| Fair pay for women More health insurance for children The stimulus Increased small business loans and support etc..
But isn't it pretty much proven that contraceptive use climbs only after a nation begins to gain wealth? It seems given that fact, that you'd want to build infrastructure and 'teach people to fish' before pushing contraception.
You need the cooperation of the local population, both in terms of general community support, but also in terms of labor. So while aid may be helping to continue a cycle of poverty, aid vs infrastructure is a chicken egg type problem.
In other words, you won't get much support for digging a canal from a starving person. Likewise, starvation / desperation leads to short term thinking. People won't wait a season or two while a fruit field matures if the trees can be used for cooking fuel now, and all the fruit can be eaten now.
Some one posted this above, and it was really interesting. http://www.ted.com/talks/willie_smits_restores_a_rainforest.html A multi-phase, scientifically crafted, community supported, systematic way of both providing for the local populace while restoring the environment.
In a nutshell, different parts of the land were identified as needing different strategies to be productive. People were given plots of land, with rules about use. Must let this type of tree remain, must not cut down X, etc.. but can plant x,y,z types of food in years 1, types a,b,c in year 3, etc.. And then 20 or so plots were combined into an organization of farmers that enforced those rules. So if Joe Jackass decides to cut down all the trees holding the soil in place on his plot, the other 19 farming families could chose his punishment.
According to this, http://www.ted.com/talks/willie_smits_restores_a_rainforest.html
He was able to increase rainfall by 20% (restored it to normal). I wonder how much of Africa is suitable for such restoration practices? Of course the chosen plants and overall strategy would be different, but just as building infrastructure promotes growth, I bet that projects to restore forests and jungles would help Africa immensely.
Do you think that you are purchasing less because of DRM / game quality, or just because you might be getting older?
I work at a college, and half the laptops I see are playing some online game. I wonder if younger generations are buying and playing just as many games as we did when younger.
I try to convince as many people as possible that the single only issue they should care about it getting money out of politics.
Once we have public funded elections, the end of citizens united / super pacs, I think we'll start seeing politicians that actually serve the public again.
The idea behind extra punishment for something considered a 'hate crime', is that the crime is thought to affect an entire community of people, not just the victim.
Whatever the community, they will live in fear because of that hate crime. Right now, many gays in many cities are afraid to reveal they are gay by kissing or holding hands for fear of being beaten up. That is the effect of hate crimes.
Society has codified into law the idea that we do not want segments of our society living in fear. Therefore, we've made the punishment extra severe for committing a crime because you detest a certain segment of society. The particular victim is nearly irrelevant when it is proven that the crime was committed because the person wanted to 'hurt gays', or 'hurt blacks'. It wouldn't have mattered which victim, when the person was out to hurt any person of segment X.
I've seen this stated twice now, that wind is a dead end. Why?
Oregon has 7% (up from 1% 12 years ago) wind power now, and climbing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Oregon MIT is really close to large scale power storage http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/liquid-batteries-0214.html
There are numerous examples of offshore wind farms that appear to be working well. We have way more ocean space than land space. I listened to an NPR story about large scale 100+ mile offshore wind farms under development right now.
Sure, it may only be a slice of our total for the foreseeable future, but wind certainly seems like we should keep pursuing it.
From a Harvard study http://www.pnas.org/content/106/27/10933.full.pdf
In the lower 48 states, the potential from wind power is 16 times more than total electricity demand in the United States, the researchers suggested
Why do you think that wind is a dead end? We have it all over Oregon mixed throughout farmland and it is working quite well. For the rest of the country with little farmland, what is wrong with floating offshore wind farms? There are numerous examples of offshore wind farms working. And currently under development are deep ocean wind farms, 100+ miles offshore. We have way more water area than land area.
And cheap, non-rare material batteries are close to commercial existence. http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/liquid-batteries-0214.html .
Your general premise, that a more homogenous society will reach agreement easier is generally true.
However, I think the word you are looking for is culture instead of ethnicity. http://www.p12.nysed.gov/ciai/socst/grade3/whatisa.html?iframe=true&width=100%25&height=100%25 (second link googling for 'culture vs ethnicity' to refresh my understanding from when I majored in Anthropology).
From that essay:
Religion, ethnicity, and culture are among the most difficult concepts to disentangle. The United States is home to many different ethnic groups, perhaps more than are in any other nation.
Culture is considered a broader tent than ethnicity, although there is overlap sometimes. At its most basic definition, per the essay:
Culture, he suggests, is made up of at least three components: what people think, what they do, and the material products they produce.
Religion, ethnicity, food, traditions, etc.. all fall under the definition of culture. Ethnicity is a subset. The US does have a great diversity of ethnic groups. And while our 'melting pot' does make them more homogenous over time, the permanent binding force, the force that comes into play much earlier than the 'melting pot forces' is culture. The American Culture.
We could probably debate for hours exactly what the culture is made of, but some terms come to mind: freedom/bill of rights, sense of national pride, consumerism/money oriented, etc.. I work with a very diverse set of ethnic groups, and despite each of them having different religions, foods, music, languages, etc.., they all seem to exhibit signs of being part of the American Culture very quickly after arriving here. Perhaps that might be because they had already bought into the American Culture, and that was the motivation for them moving here.
I see nations that function well follow a simple rule: the higher the ethnic diversity, the stronger your cultural ties need to be in order to bind those groups. The USA is pretty much the best example of a nation that welcomes diversity and ties those groups together with higher level values.
You might be interested in a Ted talk titled "Jonathan Haidt: Religion, evolution, and the ecstasy of self-transcendence". He makes a strong argument that group cohesion has been selected for (biologically) and leads to higher survival rates.
I couldn't find a reference to it, but IIRC from my anthro. major there was also archaeological evidence of rudimentary grain farming around the edges of the fertile crescent, near the base of the foothills, during that time frame (12,500 to 9,500 BC ).
And if I recall survey courses on this subject, the agricultural revolution was not a mystery at all. There was some academic debate about what primary factors started the revolution, but none whatsoever about why agriculture would have been preferred.
"And as many anthropologists etc. have pointed out - the agricultural revolution is a mystery, because the techniques of hunting/gathering had advanced sufficiently by 10000 years ago that they were far superior, in the short-term back then, then farming. "
Anthro. major here (long time ago though). IIRC the vast majority of Anthropologists didn't think that farming replacing hunting/gathering was much of a mystery at all. Sure there were different theories advocating different primary reasons for the rise of agriculture, but one thing they didn't argue about was that the benefits of farming far outweigh the benefits of hunting/gathering.
You even listed one of the major ones in your sentence: long term predictability. The great surpluses that farming produced necessitated advances in storage. That storage meant that farming communities were far more likely to live if they had a bad year.
But that aside, probably the largest factor that propelled farming over gathering, was that farming allowed for specialists. People who specialized in defense, weaving, carpentry, smithing etc.. Once you experience the benefits of having specialists, you would never go back to hunting and gathering.
Agreed. Every one of these people stating how big the US is, and how places like Montana and the Dakota's are examples of why public transit won't work don't have a very good grasp of where the vast amount of people live: In densely populated cities.
side note: Hi neighbor. I'm in Portland. Even in our super liberal 'keep portland weird' town, our public transit isn't that great. There are great options going East/West, but trying living in the SW/Oswego area and taking public transit into the downtown. Such a pain.
I don't have high hopes for the country when even my liberal town can't bother to put in a N/S max line in the most densely populated city in the State.
Darn it, I didn't mean to submit just yet. I wanted to ask if you had found studies or articles showing just why your claim was right. From a money prospective, it seems totally feasible. Last time I looked up articles talking about the costs, I seem to recall things like, for the total cost of the Iraq and Afg. wars, the US could have been close 100% renewable power. (Or maybe 50% or so, I forget. Point being that one war's worth of money seems to get spent ever 10-20 years on a war. Why not take a break from 1 war and apply it to the country....).
Wind and solar are not anywhere near being able to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
Are you making that claim based on the state of battery technology? If so, you're right until the tech gains improvement. If you are claiming that Wind and Solar is not capable of producing enough power, I think you are wrong. Google "could wind and solar provide all of US energy need". There are tons of articles, and at the time my first hit was a stanford.edu study, saying that renewables could provide way more than we need.
When I searched for "oil company profit margin" The first few articles indicated it was 7-10% depending on what type of the oil industry you were involved in. Drilling and exploration was 9.9%.
This shows them in relation to other businesses. http://seekingalpha.com/article/269679-oil-industry-profit-margin-ranks-fairly-low-there-are-bigger-fish
So yeah, they are on the lower end of the spectrum. But just because their profit margin is low, giving that "they sell so damn much of what they produce" to the tune of being the most profitable corporations ever, in the history of the world, and think at the least they can afford to go without our billions in subsidizes.
Regardless, why should it matter what a company's profit margin is when determining tax policy. Shouldn't we always focus on total profit?
Slashdot Mirror
I think it would be more accurate to say that women find advances creepy if they haven't given any signals that it is welcome.
If you walk up to a strange woman, introduce yourself, and she responds with a smile and her eyes dilate, you are probably OK asking something slightly more personal. How you interact is based on how she's interacting back.
If you walk up to a strange woman, introduce yourself, and she's all business. Just shakes your hand, doesn't smile. Remains neutral, eyes don't dilate, face doesn't flush, etc.. You'd best keep things business-like and if your only intent was flirting or asking her out, probably give up at that point.
You make it sound like if you are an attractive person, you can just go up to a strange woman and give her a hug (or more). No, you have to begin with the basic social conventions of getting to know someone, and following normal social cues as to whether the path you are on is welcome.
I can see how some people who are socially awkward might reach your conclusion, but really, it is just exactly as I described.
You could make the case the the 'get to know you' period can take longer if the person is socially awkward or not very attractive, but it is the same 'get to know you' period that any person faces when working up to deciding to flirt or not.
And attraction itself is a very big tent to most women. Lets say you go to a conference. You aren't very physically attractive but you want to meet (note: meet is the first step, not 'advances' or flirting) a woman. You'll have to find something to begin the 'get to know her' period. Notice a book she's read and you've read it too, make a comment about it. Make a joke about something happening at the conference. Give up your spot in a line if she looks in a hurry, etc... rinse repeat continue. And perhaps by the end of the conference you'll notice her smiling more, eyes dilating, etc.. now, and not before, you can start 'making advances' as you put it.
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/2804102.html
A much more in depth article that describes how scientific opinion has changed over time on this issue. And it points out that I was only partially right. I was basing my statement on stuff I had read probably over 20 years ago.
In a nutshell, both family planning, contraceptive promotion, and economic development are important in reducing population, with each having a greater impact at different stages of a country's growth.
Skip down and read the conclusion only if you want, but the paper overall I found really interesting.
The recent increase in distrust of science has nothing to do with bad vs good science. Nothing to do with Orwellian control (that has been a constant factor). It was the coordinated takeover of the Republican party by the far far religious right.
There's no need to attribute the headline to stereotypes or misunderstandings. Every member of the Republican house and senate (maybe a few exceptions) do not believe in evolution. That is clear proof of being blatantly anti-science due to religious beliefs trumping reality.
Religion is always an issue when it crosses over into politics, yes. But this absurd level of anti-scientific thinking is the result of the far far religious right working in a coordinated fashion to take over the Republican party. It wasn't a natural thing at all. It was a mission. I haven't checked all the links on this site, but the first one on the homepage is a New York Times article, and the second link I checked was from another large newspaper, so it seems somewhat legit. http://www.theocracywatch.org/
Growing up and realizing that people have agendas is certainly true. But even more impacting has been the rise of conflict-style partisan news reporting. Every issue now has two sides, no matter the evidence on either side. Applied to science, it makes listeners skeptical of everything, even when they shouldn't be on any particular issue.
I don't think it was the neo-conservatives, but their, and the general Republican Party's take over by the religious right. New York times article is is copied here: http://www.theocracywatch.org/
Wanna shake up the system?
How about term limits and new candidates can only use a set amount of public money to run, and after that only accept small individual donations, no super pacs, etc..
One can dream I guess:)
It has been particularly bad since Obama became President. McConnell said, "“Well that is true, [making Obama a one-term President is] my single most important political goal along with every active Republican in the country." He next said, something like, "but that is in 2012, and right now we need to fix the Country first".
It should be pretty obvious by the record number of filibusters, that making Obama a one term President was, and still is, the Republicans' number on goal. Nearly ever single piece of legislation, even if proposed by Republicans themselves only years earlier, has been filibustered.
Congress does sometimes pass good stuff, it just isn't widely reported. (And to be fair, often isn't nearly as impacting as the bad legislation).
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/L?d111:./list/bd/d111pl.lst:1[1-383]%28Public_Laws%29|TOM:/bss/d111query.html|
Fair pay for women
More health insurance for children
The stimulus
Increased small business loans and support
etc..
But isn't it pretty much proven that contraceptive use climbs only after a nation begins to gain wealth? It seems given that fact, that you'd want to build infrastructure and 'teach people to fish' before pushing contraception.
You need the cooperation of the local population, both in terms of general community support, but also in terms of labor. So while aid may be helping to continue a cycle of poverty, aid vs infrastructure is a chicken egg type problem.
In other words, you won't get much support for digging a canal from a starving person. Likewise, starvation / desperation leads to short term thinking. People won't wait a season or two while a fruit field matures if the trees can be used for cooking fuel now, and all the fruit can be eaten now.
Some one posted this above, and it was really interesting. http://www.ted.com/talks/willie_smits_restores_a_rainforest.html
A multi-phase, scientifically crafted, community supported, systematic way of both providing for the local populace while restoring the environment.
In a nutshell, different parts of the land were identified as needing different strategies to be productive. People were given plots of land, with rules about use. Must let this type of tree remain, must not cut down X, etc.. but can plant x,y,z types of food in years 1, types a,b,c in year 3, etc.. And then 20 or so plots were combined into an organization of farmers that enforced those rules. So if Joe Jackass decides to cut down all the trees holding the soil in place on his plot, the other 19 farming families could chose his punishment.
According to this, http://www.ted.com/talks/willie_smits_restores_a_rainforest.html
He was able to increase rainfall by 20% (restored it to normal). I wonder how much of Africa is suitable for such restoration practices? Of course the chosen plants and overall strategy would be different, but just as building infrastructure promotes growth, I bet that projects to restore forests and jungles would help Africa immensely.
Do you think that you are purchasing less because of DRM / game quality, or just because you might be getting older?
I work at a college, and half the laptops I see are playing some online game. I wonder if younger generations are buying and playing just as many games as we did when younger.
I try to convince as many people as possible that the single only issue they should care about it getting money out of politics.
Once we have public funded elections, the end of citizens united / super pacs, I think we'll start seeing politicians that actually serve the public again.
The idea behind extra punishment for something considered a 'hate crime', is that the crime is thought to affect an entire community of people, not just the victim.
Whatever the community, they will live in fear because of that hate crime. Right now, many gays in many cities are afraid to reveal they are gay by kissing or holding hands for fear of being beaten up. That is the effect of hate crimes.
Society has codified into law the idea that we do not want segments of our society living in fear. Therefore, we've made the punishment extra severe for committing a crime because you detest a certain segment of society. The particular victim is nearly irrelevant when it is proven that the crime was committed because the person wanted to 'hurt gays', or 'hurt blacks'. It wouldn't have mattered which victim, when the person was out to hurt any person of segment X.
I've seen this stated twice now, that wind is a dead end. Why?
Oregon has 7% (up from 1% 12 years ago) wind power now, and climbing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Oregon
MIT is really close to large scale power storage http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/liquid-batteries-0214.html
There are numerous examples of offshore wind farms that appear to be working well. We have way more ocean space than land space. I listened to an NPR story about large scale 100+ mile offshore wind farms under development right now.
Sure, it may only be a slice of our total for the foreseeable future, but wind certainly seems like we should keep pursuing it.
From a Harvard study http://www.pnas.org/content/106/27/10933.full.pdf
In the lower 48 states, the potential from wind power is 16 times more than total electricity demand in the United States, the researchers suggested
Why do you think that wind is a dead end? We have it all over Oregon mixed throughout farmland and it is working quite well. For the rest of the country with little farmland, what is wrong with floating offshore wind farms? There are numerous examples of offshore wind farms working. And currently under development are deep ocean wind farms, 100+ miles offshore. We have way more water area than land area.
And cheap, non-rare material batteries are close to commercial existence. http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/liquid-batteries-0214.html .
Your general premise, that a more homogenous society will reach agreement easier is generally true.
However, I think the word you are looking for is culture instead of ethnicity. http://www.p12.nysed.gov/ciai/socst/grade3/whatisa.html?iframe=true&width=100%25&height=100%25 (second link googling for 'culture vs ethnicity' to refresh my understanding from when I majored in Anthropology).
From that essay:
Religion, ethnicity, and culture are among the most difficult concepts to disentangle. The United States is home to many different ethnic groups, perhaps more than are in any other nation.
Culture is considered a broader tent than ethnicity, although there is overlap sometimes. At its most basic definition, per the essay:
Culture, he suggests, is made up of at least three components: what people think, what they do, and the material products they produce.
Religion, ethnicity, food, traditions, etc.. all fall under the definition of culture. Ethnicity is a subset. The US does have a great diversity of ethnic groups. And while our 'melting pot' does make them more homogenous over time, the permanent binding force, the force that comes into play much earlier than the 'melting pot forces' is culture. The American Culture.
We could probably debate for hours exactly what the culture is made of, but some terms come to mind: freedom/bill of rights, sense of national pride, consumerism/money oriented, etc.. I work with a very diverse set of ethnic groups, and despite each of them having different religions, foods, music, languages, etc.., they all seem to exhibit signs of being part of the American Culture very quickly after arriving here. Perhaps that might be because they had already bought into the American Culture, and that was the motivation for them moving here.
I see nations that function well follow a simple rule: the higher the ethnic diversity, the stronger your cultural ties need to be in order to bind those groups. The USA is pretty much the best example of a nation that welcomes diversity and ties those groups together with higher level values.
You might be interested in a Ted talk titled "Jonathan Haidt: Religion, evolution, and the ecstasy of self-transcendence". He makes a strong argument that group cohesion has been selected for (biologically) and leads to higher survival rates.
I couldn't find a reference to it, but IIRC from my anthro. major there was also archaeological evidence of rudimentary grain farming around the edges of the fertile crescent, near the base of the foothills, during that time frame (12,500 to 9,500 BC ).
And if I recall survey courses on this subject, the agricultural revolution was not a mystery at all. There was some academic debate about what primary factors started the revolution, but none whatsoever about why agriculture would have been preferred.
"And as many anthropologists etc. have pointed out - the agricultural revolution is a mystery, because the techniques of hunting/gathering had advanced sufficiently by 10000 years ago that they were far superior, in the short-term back then, then farming. "
Anthro. major here (long time ago though). IIRC the vast majority of Anthropologists didn't think that farming replacing hunting/gathering was much of a mystery at all. Sure there were different theories advocating different primary reasons for the rise of agriculture, but one thing they didn't argue about was that the benefits of farming far outweigh the benefits of hunting/gathering.
You even listed one of the major ones in your sentence: long term predictability. The great surpluses that farming produced necessitated advances in storage. That storage meant that farming communities were far more likely to live if they had a bad year.
But that aside, probably the largest factor that propelled farming over gathering, was that farming allowed for specialists. People who specialized in defense, weaving, carpentry, smithing etc.. Once you experience the benefits of having specialists, you would never go back to hunting and gathering.
Agreed. Every one of these people stating how big the US is, and how places like Montana and the Dakota's are examples of why public transit won't work don't have a very good grasp of where the vast amount of people live: In densely populated cities.
side note:
Hi neighbor. I'm in Portland. Even in our super liberal 'keep portland weird' town, our public transit isn't that great. There are great options going East/West, but trying living in the SW/Oswego area and taking public transit into the downtown. Such a pain.
I don't have high hopes for the country when even my liberal town can't bother to put in a N/S max line in the most densely populated city in the State.
Darn it, I didn't mean to submit just yet. I wanted to ask if you had found studies or articles showing just why your claim was right. From a money prospective, it seems totally feasible. Last time I looked up articles talking about the costs, I seem to recall things like, for the total cost of the Iraq and Afg. wars, the US could have been close 100% renewable power. (Or maybe 50% or so, I forget. Point being that one war's worth of money seems to get spent ever 10-20 years on a war. Why not take a break from 1 war and apply it to the country....).
Wind and solar are not anywhere near being able to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
Are you making that claim based on the state of battery technology? If so, you're right until the tech gains improvement. If you are claiming that Wind and Solar is not capable of producing enough power, I think you are wrong. Google "could wind and solar provide all of US energy need". There are tons of articles, and at the time my first hit was a stanford.edu study, saying that renewables could provide way more than we need.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/renewable-energy-baseload-power.htm
Even if you make the assumption that the world can take that much C02, the energy return is horrible. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WBiTnBwSWc&t=28m
But I wouldn't put it past our world to stay on oil until every last variation has been used up.
When I searched for "oil company profit margin" The first few articles indicated it was 7-10% depending on what type of the oil industry you were involved in. Drilling and exploration was 9.9%.
This shows them in relation to other businesses. http://seekingalpha.com/article/269679-oil-industry-profit-margin-ranks-fairly-low-there-are-bigger-fish
So yeah, they are on the lower end of the spectrum. But just because their profit margin is low, giving that "they sell so damn much of what they produce" to the tune of being the most profitable corporations ever, in the history of the world, and think at the least they can afford to go without our billions in subsidizes.
Regardless, why should it matter what a company's profit margin is when determining tax policy. Shouldn't we always focus on total profit?