Yeah, except for the ridiculous lying, misogyny, racist remarks, authoritarian tendencies, complete disdain for expert opinion, and hair that is the obvious result of a poorly executed medical procedure.
Totally. Wait, are you talking about Bill Nye or Donald Trump?
Increasing frequency and severity of storms may well be a result of climate change, although when it comes to flooding, there are many factors involved.
But, let's look at Bill Nye's explanation:
"As the ocean gets warmer, which it is getting, it expands," Nye explained. "Molecules spread apart, and then as the sea surface is warmer, more water evaporates, and so it's very reasonable that these storms are connected to these big effects."
The only thing that explanation shows is that Bill Nye is not a scientist, but a clown. International scientists didn't "concur" with Bill Nye, most international scientists aren't even aware of the existence of Bill Nye. The fact that this guy is the president of the Planetary Society is a disgrace to the society and the the memory of Carl Sagan.
Which works brilliantly until you try to sum a column of "text" consisting of "125.12", "879.25", and "916.08". So you either force the users to pre-format their fields, or you let them enter things immediately and try to guess what they want.
Not at all. Arithmetic operators could simply work on text-formatted fields, like they do in many scripting languages. Optionally, when you apply an arithmetic operator to a text-formatted field, it could offer to change the format.
Excel's type system and formatting system is simply poorly designed.
Automatic formatting of spreadsheet data was a mistake. Furthermore, it was a mistake Microsoft could have fixed (and still can fix) by flagging and highlighting autoformatted cells that seem inconsistent with the cells around them.
This is the job of editors and peer review. In fact, it is their primary job.
A peer reviewed paper need not be factually true (editors and peer reviewers can't determine that), but it should be largely free of obvious formal errors, like using a date instead of a technical term.
You were arguing that mass transit incolved "coercion" because of subsidies therefore cars are better
You start from the meaningless premise, namely that one "is better" than the other. Better for whom? I have no doubt that for you, mass transit may be better. For me it isn't. The way this is resolved in a free society is that I pay for my preferred mode of transport and you pay for yours.
I argue that both forms receive subsidies so neither is better.
Well, and you continue to be wrong. Cars are not subsidized, public transit is.
Not only does MacKay fail to account for non-propulsive energy usage,
Except no he doesn't.
I'm sorry if you are unable to understand a couple of paragraphs that you yourself cited.
Sorry, but net flows of tax money tells you little about net subsidies;
You claimed that the rest of the UK was subsidising London. If the net flow of money is from London to everywhere else that is not the case.
Yes, and you keep confusing "the net flow of taxes" with "the net flow of money".
I forgot, Americans love being stuck in traffic on the beltway. All the ones I know who live in DC seem to have forgotten that too.
If you took a survey, you'd probably find that most Americans would like nothing better than for Washingtonians to be stuck on the beltway, permanently. Americans really don't like Washington.
But making one company jump through hoops while another gets to ignore them is?
Taxi drivers and companies have to jump through hoops only if they want to have the right to have people flag them down from the curb side. That's all. If they don't want that right, they don't have to jump through any hoops. The restrictions on taxi service exist, after all, to make transactions between two anonymous parties (passenger, taxi driver) a little safer by vetting the taxi drivers.
Uber, Lyft, and limousine drivers don't have to jump through those hoops because they don't have the right to pick up passengers that flag them down. Transactions between Uber passengers and drivers are not anonymous because Uber keeps track of everybody's identity and ratings.
Legally, any taxi driver has the choice of either becoming an Uber/Lyft/limousine driver, or even of doing both simultaneously.
The solution is for Taxi companies to adapt or to push for any legal changes regarding their operations that will allow them to compete.
Being a taxi driver gives you the right to pick up passengers at the curb when they flag you down; Uber drivers don't have that right. That right used to be very valuable in the pre-smartphone era, now it isn't anymore. And that right came with costs and restrictions because cities legitimately were concerned about people getting picked up and robbed by fake taxi drivers. Uber doesn't have that problem, so it doesn't need those restrictions.
Taxi drivers don't need to "push for any legal changes". If the cost and restrictions that come with the right to pick up passengers at the curb side aren't worth the costs and restrictions anymore, they can simply give it up and become Uber drivers.
You're not a taxi service but taxis are potential competitors.
Correct. Just like trains are not cars but potentially compete with cars. Or like ice cream isn't broccoli but potentially competes with broccoli. Do you need any more examples to grasp this concept?
The intent behind is likely to identify low-risk people, rather than identify terrorists. Think of the algorithm they employ as a series of checks and decisions, and after each check, they can decide the accept, reject, or keep looking. After some preliminary checks, if you have a social media account, that's several years old, has a lot of American friends, and looks otherwise innocuous, they will consider that as strong evidence for an accept decision. Otherwise, they will likely go on to the next check.
Having said that, it's still a dumb idea. The potential for them to accidentally find something somewhere in your social graph, or to misinterpret an online posting of yours, is just too high. Given the current political climate, merely supporting the wrong presidential candidate, the NRA, or BLM might rub some bureaucrat the wrong way. They will certainly keep that data, download and keep your social graph, and use that for retrospective data mining as well, in particular if someone a few edges away from you ends up running afoul of the law.
Note also that the EFF gets the constituional issues wrong again: there is no First or Fourth Amendment protection for non-citizens at the border. One can argue about whether it should be so, but immigration and border control can legally discriminate against non-citizens on the basis of ethnicity, race, gender, national origin, speech, political views, and religion; it can also search personal effects as much as the administration tells it to. And the US works the same in this regard as other countries.
Let's conside London, since that was under discussion. Consider how diving in London would be if: (a) the tube was switched off (hint: a tube strike) (b) with the tube operating as normal The existence of mass transit has a direct, positive effect on the use of private tansport.
(1) You're arguing there that transit subsidies have a positive effect, not that they don't exist. (2) Ending subsidies for London transit wouldn't abolish it, it would simply force Londoners to pay the true cost of what they actually use.
This figures I quoted included the complete power use including station lighting, escalators etc etc etc. Try again, bucko!
You need to read and understand what you cite, "bucko". Not only does MacKay fail to account for non-propulsive energy usage, his argument isn't even about actual energy usage of the London subway system, it's an estimate of what a system might achieve under "ideal" conditions and if they are willing to give up the flexibility of a private vehicle.
Yes, a net flow of money from X to Y does indeed demonstate that Y does not subsidise X. The net flow of tax money is from London outwards, so London subsidises the rest of the UK, much like the blue states subsidise most of the red ones.
Sorry, but net flows of tax money tells you little about net subsidies; you need to look at what the money is spent on and who benefits, as well as opportunity costs. For example, my state gets tons of federal funding for crap we don't want; that isn't a "subsidy" of the state.
Mostly I'm arguing for policies so the tanspot system affecting the daily lives of 10 million people doesn't collapse.
Indeed, that's what you're actually doing: trying to find arguments to justify the conclusion that the subsidies need to keep flowing. And you're right: eliminating subsidies overnight would be a disaster for London. But that merely means that Londoners have become dependent on subsidies, not that the subsidies are good.
That's why, as far as the US is concerned, it's best for cities to avoid getting into the unenviable situation the the UK and London are in in the first place.
Over here, all taxes go into a central pool, from which budgts are allocated.
Nevertheless, the amount of money that is raised from taxes on driving exceeds the amount of money spent on driving by the government; therefore, driving as an activity is not subsidized by government. On the other hand, the government spends much more on public transit than public transit brings in in revenue. herefore, public transit is heavily subsidized by government. It's pretty straightforward; even an Oxford-educated intellectual should be able to figure it out.
And secondly, everyone uses the roads in some manner without a single exception.
True. And those other road users don't even pay for it. Which means that the taxes on driving not only pay for driving on roads, they also subsidize other road users.
Furthermore, I point out that the per-mile energy costs you cite are likely false, because something that costs several times as much per mile as a car almost certainly uses more energy per mile as well, it's just that mass transit uses that energy for inputs other than propulsion.
In other words you have no evidence but you want that to be true, so you're taking it as a fact. Okey dokey.
I'm pointing out that a correct analysis of the energy efficiency of transportation systems needs to take into account all places where energy is consumed to deliver the good of transportation, not just propulsion alone. Neither MacKay nor you have done that, hence, your claim that the London subway system is so much more efficient than driving is unsupported. In addition, I'm pointing out that looking at the per mile costs suggests that your claim is likely wrong, since cost and energy usage are generally proportional. So, in fact, so far, you have no evidence, you simply want it to be true.
There seems to be some debate. Dictionaries give a much wider definition that wikipedia. Wikipedia is not the arbiter of truth.
Well, and I am simply pointing out that you are an "intellectual" in the sense of Sartre/Chomsky/Sowell. In fact, your beliefs, attitudes, and political views are typical of European intellectuals in the sense of Sartre/Chomsky/Sowell.
Do you have any evidence that I'm a specialist in dfamation, or are you just engaging in defamation?
I was just quoting Chomsky to illustrate the narrow meaning of the term "intellectual". But, yes, you keep giving examples of Chomsky's actual point; you just did it again ( Your arguments have been so far "it's not efficient because teh gubbmint is teh evul! #trump2016".).
You cliamed that the rest of the country subsidises London. That's also a misrepresentation. If you excised London from the UK, the total amount of money going to the other regions would drop.
"If you remove X, then Y gets less money." does not imply that "Y does not subsidize X."
Well, I'll continue to use my brain then and you can continue ot do whatever it is that you do.
I have no doubt that you will continue to use your brain to argue for policies that enrich you and your class at the expense of others. It's what European intellectuals do.
I was making the point that roads involve as much "coercion" as you put it as mass transit.
You were making that point, and it is false. The only people coerced to pay for roads are people using roads, because road-related taxes more than pay for roads. But plenty of people who never use mass transit are forced to pay for mass transit.
An intellectual is someone who uses his or her intellect. You know, someone who thinks.
You are right that the term "intellectual" should refer to "people of high intellect" and/or "people who use their intellect", but the term actually means something much narrower. That's the sense in which people generally understand the term, as you can see in quote by Sartre (The Intellectual is someone who meddles in what does not concern him.) and Chomsky (The Intellectuals are specialists in defamation, they are basically political commissars, they are the ideological administrators, the most threatened by dissidence.) Sowell analyzed the economic motivations of intellectuals in detail. Yes, you are an intellectual in the actual meaning of the word.
You will never convince me that using my brain is a bad thing
True, I probably won't. In any case, plenty of frauds, crooks, dictators, and politicians throughout history have been using their brains, they have simply been using their brains for their own personal gain and to hurt and violate the rights of others. It takes a lot of intellect to manipulate and defraud others.
Really? Because you seem pretty bitter about London having a good transport system.
You brought up London as an example of an "efficient" public transit system, and I was simply pointing out that that efficiency comes at a steep price, namely government coercion, high prices, massive government subsidies, high housing densities, expensive real estate, and much less functionality than personal transit. Furthermore, I point out that the per-mile energy costs you cite are likely false, because something that costs several times as much per mile as a car almost certainly uses more energy per mile as well, it's just that mass transit uses that energy for inputs other than propulsion.
Given that mass transit clearly isn't as efficient as its proponents claim, the question is why the idea won't die. And the reason is simple: mass transit is in the interest of the intellectual class; low-level members of the intellectual class like yourself may actually use it; people like George Soros and Donald Trump benefit from it financially; and for people like Hillary Clinton, it's money flowing to her political base.
Londoners want it but you haaaaate that the locals get to decide how their taxes are spent in this regard because you seem to consider that objectionable.
This hinges on the claim that Londoners actually pay more in taxes than they consume in government services; a dubious claim if you look at the methodology by which people arrive at such conclusions.
In any case, you are misrepresenting the nature of the decision that voters and local politicians face. It's not that there is a pot of money that got raised from local tax payers that they now decide on how to spend; that would be the right thing to do. But the money goes into a big pot in federal and state government, and the question local politicians and voters usually face is of the form "do you want this money for public transit, or do you want to lose it altogether". Now, given the UK's political system, those decisions may not be transparent to you, but those are the actual questions voters face around here when voting on local tra
The roads for private cars built themselves. True story. [...] The excess taxes generated by London are more than all mass transit subsidies across the entire country combined, so we pay for our own transport and yours too. Apparently this is the height of arrogance.
You certainly don't pay for my transport, since I live in the US. But since the taxes on cars and gasoline already more than pay for roads in the US, the much higher taxes on cars and gasoline in the UK certainly pay roads in the UK. So, no, your reasoning is faulty: Londoners do not pay for the roads of other people in the UK.
No, I'm mocking you because your a moran.
I, on the other hand, think that you are a typical, smart European intellectual, who is using his skills to manipulate society into bestowing privileges, wealth, and power on his social class.
If you shaft London, you won't get to keep the money for yourself, the money will dry up, along with a whole bunch of extra. [...] Oooooh you're not a brexiter too are you?
I really don't care much about what happens to London or the UK or the EU, having left for good. I simply don't want failed European policies to be adopted in the US, which is why I object to Europeans misrepresenting what those policies actually achieve.
The general statement "mass transit is inefficient" implies it is efficient across the board. That is clearly false. The more correct thing to say would be it's inefficient when done badly like in the US. A big, fat DUH results.
No, quite the opposite: mass transit is not very energy efficient unless there is massive government coercion involved of one form or another (London, Japan, etc.). But that is a "big fat DUH": obviously, if you apply enough force and wreck people's lives enough, you can get energy usage as close to zero as you want to. Just look at North Korea: one fifth of Japan, one tenth of the US. Lack of government coercion isn't "doing things badly"; quite the opposite, it is the way free societies ought to operate.
Well, they get you from place to place, so there's a substantial overlap in function.
No, there is actually very little overlap in function, since transit doesn't cover most times and locations that people travel to/from.
A car is not hte be-all and end-all goal to which all other things must be compared
Since the goal of mass transit policies is to switch people from cars to mass transit, of course, you must compare mass transit to cars. In addition to coercion, mass transit in practice requires massive additional subsidies and taxes, which also means that people need to discuss whether those taxes are justifiable.
In fact, whether you realize it consciously or not, the real reason you are so desperately defending mass transit is that you are absolutely dependent on those subsidies: the more the UK decides to cut its subsidies for London infrastructure, the more your cost of living and transportation goes up.
In other words, you have no logic onle appeals to emotion to justify your position. Got it.
There is no "emotion" in observing that you are rich, privileged, and arrogant; you demonstrated that clearly with your own comments. The way you mock people who aren't as rich or privileged as you are is disgusting.
I expect will continue to do so because you don't like it is that the book also quotes numbers for the entire country of Japan, which still puts public transport above cars in terms of efficiency.
Yes, obviously you can. And in order to achieve that efficiency, people have to live like the Japanese do: tiny apartments, high housing densities, highly structured and conformist lives. A country can become even more efficient by turning itself into a communist dictatorship, imagine that!
Getting into a debate about whether people urbanize (they do) or whether they like it is of no consequence to the actual measurable efficiency.
First, we have already established that high urbanization does not imply high energy efficiency.
Second, it is highly relevant whether people want to urbanize or are forced to urbanize: forcing people to urbanize in order to achieve energy efficiency certainly works, but it takes away people's freedoms. If you want to argue that that's OK, then you need to answer the question: what level of force are you willing to apply for energy efficiency? Why wouldn't you just outlaw personal automobiles altogether? Would you stop at purging the entire countryside with military force? Would you stop at shooting half the population to cut energy output in half? Where are your limits?
No, I'm ignoring it because the original argument was that public transport was inefficient. Demonstrably it is not.
Demonstrably it is in the US.
Furthermore, I strongly suspect it is even in London, for the simple reason that cost translates pretty directly into energy expenditure: since the London subway costs at least twice as much per passenger mile as an automobile (even more counting subsidies), it probably uses more energy as well. Energy for moving the vehicle is only part of the total energy budget.
It seems pretty unbiased since it doesn't present the changes required as either positive or negative
The book ends with a call to action, so it clearly has an agenda. More importantly, both the book and you are being deceptive by reasoning as if public transit delivered the same functionality as a personal automobile.
Based on my extensive experience riding public transport and driving, my fellow transport passengers are much better behaved than my fellow drivers.... Try coming saaaaf. We have more green spaces, cheaper, larger houses, fewer basement obsesses molemen and a thing I like to call "suburban rail
Which is really what all of this comes down to: you are a rich, arrogant, privileged Londoner who wants to justify his lifestyle so that the subsidies that keep London going keep flowing in.
So basically you're saying all the verifiable numbers about urbanisation are wrong because reasons.
Not at all. I'm saying many people urbanize because they have to, not because they want to. Furthermore, the "verifiable numbers about urbanization" are that the US is already more urbanized than the UK, so whatever argument you are trying to make about transport and urbanization needs a bit more thought on your part.
As opposed to your argument which is "I don't like what he says so he's wrong".
The specific fact you quoted, namely that the London Underground and Japanese trains are quite energy efficient in terms of passenger miles, is literally correct. Where he and you are wrong is in calling this "better transport". Moving at 20 mph and paying $0.60 per mile for the privilege after subsidies would be a lousy deal even if it were otherwise as convenient as a car. But it isn't even that: you need to walk to/from stations, are bound by schedules, have to switch trains, have to put up with fellow riders, and can't carry large amounts of cargo. And on top of the pure per mile cost, you also have to pay the massive housing costs and put up with poor quality housing simply for living within walking distance of a London subway station. In addition, the energy efficiency of the London Underground is simply not achievable for public transportation in general, something MacKay's book also points out.
Now, people like MacKay and you may be able to pay those costs and/or not mind the tradeoffs that the London Underground or commuting by bike involves, but declaring your choices as normative for everybody else is wrong, as in unacceptable. MacKay at least grudgingly acknowledges that in his book, you seem to be utterly oblivious to it.
I'm not engaging with those numbers because you're moving the goalposts. The original claim was that mass transit is inefficient.
My original claim was "There wouldn't be a "meaningful reduction in the greenhouse-gas emissions" even if we eliminated all emissions from personal transportation in the US", obviously true based on the numbers I cited. In addition, I pointed out that "Mass transit is also not all that much more efficient than personal cars.", obviously referring to actual mass transit usage in the US, which is substantiated by the numbers I pointed to.
More than half the world's population lives in cities. So you can take your fact-free, emotional arguments and shove 'em. Reality disagrees with you.
Many people move to cities because they have to, not because they want to. Most families prefer detached houses with yards, meaning densities at which London style transit efficiencies are not achievable.
Can't rebut the argument or facts, so attack the man!
Quite the contrary: you couldn't come up with fact-based arguments for why switching to public transit would result in meaningful reductions in GHG, so you resorted to an appeal to authority ("professional physics professor from one of the top universities in the world"). I'm pointing out that MacKay isn't even much of an authority to appeal to: he largely stopped publishing in his field a decade ago and then jumped onto the global warming bandwagon.
IOW you can't find anything wrong with it, so you're going to misuse pithy quotes from smart people.
I'm sorry, I forgot you have trouble connecting the dots, so let me be more explicit. MacKay's book is a collection of observations about individual energy usage, but he neglects social, political, and economic factors. That is, his recommendations will not have the effect he suggested they would be having.
If growing up means becoming like you: one who argues based on emotion and logical fallacies then no thanks, you can keep it!
Growing up means that you stop arguing based on emotion and logical fallacies, like you are currently doing.
I noticed that you found no fault with my numbers. The fact remains: personal transportation is a small percentage of worldwide GHG emissions, and any reductions in this area have no meaningful effect on climate change.
Yes, and those happen to be the relevant numbers, because they are far more typical than London. What do you see? 1.6 MJ/passenger-km for transit, 2.3 MJ/passenger-km for cars. Public transit by bus is actually worse on average than passenger cars. So, not a lot of room for improvement.
The second area to look at: all road transportation worldwide contributes less than 10% to GHG, but the majority of those are commercial vehicles. Passenger cars are less than half that. So, even if you managed to eliminate all passenger cars and replace them with transit worldwide, you might reduce GHG emissions by maybe 1%; if you do it only in industrialized countries, it's a fraction of a percent. Utterly useless.
More importantly, though, people simply don't want to switch to public transit. Maybe you would like living in a cramped shithole like London, but a lot of people don't.
In other news a professional physics professor from one of the top universities in the world has no credibility when it comes to energy. Right.
McKay largely stopped publishing real science some time in the early 2000's. Newton also was a "professional physics professor" (are there non-professional ones?), so I guess his occult studies must also be science! Grow up, man, you're not in grad school anymore.
Leela: Granted, we later learned some positive things about recycling. But a better solution is to use our electronics as long as possible, instead of throwing them out in the first place. I'm gonna start by keeping my old cell phone, even if it is outdated.
Announcer: With the new eyePhone, you can watch, listen, ignore your friends, stalk your ex, download porno on a crowded bus, even check your E-mail while getting hit by a train. All with the new eyePhone.
see, e.g. P134: the amortized efficiency of the London Underground including the energy requires to run the stations is about 5x that of car usage.
Well, yes, that is London. Unless the entire country moves into an overcrowded city with astronomical real estate prices and huge social problems, that is not what is achievable for humans. Feeble attempts at arguments like that only show that you and the climate lobby (like the MacKay) simply have no credibility and are being deceptive.
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Totally. Wait, are you talking about Bill Nye or Donald Trump?
Increasing frequency and severity of storms may well be a result of climate change, although when it comes to flooding, there are many factors involved.
But, let's look at Bill Nye's explanation:
The only thing that explanation shows is that Bill Nye is not a scientist, but a clown. International scientists didn't "concur" with Bill Nye, most international scientists aren't even aware of the existence of Bill Nye. The fact that this guy is the president of the Planetary Society is a disgrace to the society and the the memory of Carl Sagan.
Not at all. Arithmetic operators could simply work on text-formatted fields, like they do in many scripting languages. Optionally, when you apply an arithmetic operator to a text-formatted field, it could offer to change the format.
Excel's type system and formatting system is simply poorly designed.
Automatic formatting of spreadsheet data was a mistake. Furthermore, it was a mistake Microsoft could have fixed (and still can fix) by flagging and highlighting autoformatted cells that seem inconsistent with the cells around them.
This is the job of editors and peer review. In fact, it is their primary job.
A peer reviewed paper need not be factually true (editors and peer reviewers can't determine that), but it should be largely free of obvious formal errors, like using a date instead of a technical term.
Where the hell did he say he "supports Republicans"? Do you automatically assume that people who "hate Obama" are Republicans?
You start from the meaningless premise, namely that one "is better" than the other. Better for whom? I have no doubt that for you, mass transit may be better. For me it isn't. The way this is resolved in a free society is that I pay for my preferred mode of transport and you pay for yours.
Well, and you continue to be wrong. Cars are not subsidized, public transit is.
I'm sorry if you are unable to understand a couple of paragraphs that you yourself cited.
Yes, and you keep confusing "the net flow of taxes" with "the net flow of money".
If you took a survey, you'd probably find that most Americans would like nothing better than for Washingtonians to be stuck on the beltway, permanently. Americans really don't like Washington.
Taxi drivers and companies have to jump through hoops only if they want to have the right to have people flag them down from the curb side. That's all. If they don't want that right, they don't have to jump through any hoops. The restrictions on taxi service exist, after all, to make transactions between two anonymous parties (passenger, taxi driver) a little safer by vetting the taxi drivers.
Uber, Lyft, and limousine drivers don't have to jump through those hoops because they don't have the right to pick up passengers that flag them down. Transactions between Uber passengers and drivers are not anonymous because Uber keeps track of everybody's identity and ratings.
Legally, any taxi driver has the choice of either becoming an Uber/Lyft/limousine driver, or even of doing both simultaneously.
Being a taxi driver gives you the right to pick up passengers at the curb when they flag you down; Uber drivers don't have that right. That right used to be very valuable in the pre-smartphone era, now it isn't anymore. And that right came with costs and restrictions because cities legitimately were concerned about people getting picked up and robbed by fake taxi drivers. Uber doesn't have that problem, so it doesn't need those restrictions.
Taxi drivers don't need to "push for any legal changes". If the cost and restrictions that come with the right to pick up passengers at the curb side aren't worth the costs and restrictions anymore, they can simply give it up and become Uber drivers.
Correct. Just like trains are not cars but potentially compete with cars. Or like ice cream isn't broccoli but potentially competes with broccoli. Do you need any more examples to grasp this concept?
The intent behind is likely to identify low-risk people, rather than identify terrorists. Think of the algorithm they employ as a series of checks and decisions, and after each check, they can decide the accept, reject, or keep looking. After some preliminary checks, if you have a social media account, that's several years old, has a lot of American friends, and looks otherwise innocuous, they will consider that as strong evidence for an accept decision. Otherwise, they will likely go on to the next check.
Having said that, it's still a dumb idea. The potential for them to accidentally find something somewhere in your social graph, or to misinterpret an online posting of yours, is just too high. Given the current political climate, merely supporting the wrong presidential candidate, the NRA, or BLM might rub some bureaucrat the wrong way. They will certainly keep that data, download and keep your social graph, and use that for retrospective data mining as well, in particular if someone a few edges away from you ends up running afoul of the law.
Note also that the EFF gets the constituional issues wrong again: there is no First or Fourth Amendment protection for non-citizens at the border. One can argue about whether it should be so, but immigration and border control can legally discriminate against non-citizens on the basis of ethnicity, race, gender, national origin, speech, political views, and religion; it can also search personal effects as much as the administration tells it to. And the US works the same in this regard as other countries.
(1) You're arguing there that transit subsidies have a positive effect, not that they don't exist. (2) Ending subsidies for London transit wouldn't abolish it, it would simply force Londoners to pay the true cost of what they actually use.
You need to read and understand what you cite, "bucko". Not only does MacKay fail to account for non-propulsive energy usage, his argument isn't even about actual energy usage of the London subway system, it's an estimate of what a system might achieve under "ideal" conditions and if they are willing to give up the flexibility of a private vehicle.
Sorry, but net flows of tax money tells you little about net subsidies; you need to look at what the money is spent on and who benefits, as well as opportunity costs. For example, my state gets tons of federal funding for crap we don't want; that isn't a "subsidy" of the state.
Indeed, that's what you're actually doing: trying to find arguments to justify the conclusion that the subsidies need to keep flowing. And you're right: eliminating subsidies overnight would be a disaster for London. But that merely means that Londoners have become dependent on subsidies, not that the subsidies are good.
That's why, as far as the US is concerned, it's best for cities to avoid getting into the unenviable situation the the UK and London are in in the first place.
Nevertheless, the amount of money that is raised from taxes on driving exceeds the amount of money spent on driving by the government; therefore, driving as an activity is not subsidized by government. On the other hand, the government spends much more on public transit than public transit brings in in revenue. herefore, public transit is heavily subsidized by government. It's pretty straightforward; even an Oxford-educated intellectual should be able to figure it out.
True. And those other road users don't even pay for it. Which means that the taxes on driving not only pay for driving on roads, they also subsidize other road users.
I'm pointing out that a correct analysis of the energy efficiency of transportation systems needs to take into account all places where energy is consumed to deliver the good of transportation, not just propulsion alone. Neither MacKay nor you have done that, hence, your claim that the London subway system is so much more efficient than driving is unsupported. In addition, I'm pointing out that looking at the per mile costs suggests that your claim is likely wrong, since cost and energy usage are generally proportional. So, in fact, so far, you have no evidence, you simply want it to be true.
Well, and I am simply pointing out that you are an "intellectual" in the sense of Sartre/Chomsky/Sowell. In fact, your beliefs, attitudes, and political views are typical of European intellectuals in the sense of Sartre/Chomsky/Sowell.
I was just quoting Chomsky to illustrate the narrow meaning of the term "intellectual". But, yes, you keep giving examples of Chomsky's actual point; you just did it again ( Your arguments have been so far "it's not efficient because teh gubbmint is teh evul! #trump2016".).
"If you remove X, then Y gets less money." does not imply that "Y does not subsidize X."
I have no doubt that you will continue to use your brain to argue for policies that enrich you and your class at the expense of others. It's what European intellectuals do.
You were making that point, and it is false. The only people coerced to pay for roads are people using roads, because road-related taxes more than pay for roads. But plenty of people who never use mass transit are forced to pay for mass transit.
You are right that the term "intellectual" should refer to "people of high intellect" and/or "people who use their intellect", but the term actually means something much narrower. That's the sense in which people generally understand the term, as you can see in quote by Sartre (The Intellectual is someone who meddles in what does not concern him.) and Chomsky (The Intellectuals are specialists in defamation, they are basically political commissars, they are the ideological administrators, the most threatened by dissidence.) Sowell analyzed the economic motivations of intellectuals in detail. Yes, you are an intellectual in the actual meaning of the word.
True, I probably won't. In any case, plenty of frauds, crooks, dictators, and politicians throughout history have been using their brains, they have simply been using their brains for their own personal gain and to hurt and violate the rights of others. It takes a lot of intellect to manipulate and defraud others.
You brought up London as an example of an "efficient" public transit system, and I was simply pointing out that that efficiency comes at a steep price, namely government coercion, high prices, massive government subsidies, high housing densities, expensive real estate, and much less functionality than personal transit. Furthermore, I point out that the per-mile energy costs you cite are likely false, because something that costs several times as much per mile as a car almost certainly uses more energy per mile as well, it's just that mass transit uses that energy for inputs other than propulsion.
Given that mass transit clearly isn't as efficient as its proponents claim, the question is why the idea won't die. And the reason is simple: mass transit is in the interest of the intellectual class; low-level members of the intellectual class like yourself may actually use it; people like George Soros and Donald Trump benefit from it financially; and for people like Hillary Clinton, it's money flowing to her political base.
This hinges on the claim that Londoners actually pay more in taxes than they consume in government services; a dubious claim if you look at the methodology by which people arrive at such conclusions.
In any case, you are misrepresenting the nature of the decision that voters and local politicians face. It's not that there is a pot of money that got raised from local tax payers that they now decide on how to spend; that would be the right thing to do. But the money goes into a big pot in federal and state government, and the question local politicians and voters usually face is of the form "do you want this money for public transit, or do you want to lose it altogether". Now, given the UK's political system, those decisions may not be transparent to you, but those are the actual questions voters face around here when voting on local tra
You certainly don't pay for my transport, since I live in the US. But since the taxes on cars and gasoline already more than pay for roads in the US, the much higher taxes on cars and gasoline in the UK certainly pay roads in the UK. So, no, your reasoning is faulty: Londoners do not pay for the roads of other people in the UK.
I, on the other hand, think that you are a typical, smart European intellectual, who is using his skills to manipulate society into bestowing privileges, wealth, and power on his social class.
I really don't care much about what happens to London or the UK or the EU, having left for good. I simply don't want failed European policies to be adopted in the US, which is why I object to Europeans misrepresenting what those policies actually achieve.
No, quite the opposite: mass transit is not very energy efficient unless there is massive government coercion involved of one form or another (London, Japan, etc.). But that is a "big fat DUH": obviously, if you apply enough force and wreck people's lives enough, you can get energy usage as close to zero as you want to. Just look at North Korea: one fifth of Japan, one tenth of the US. Lack of government coercion isn't "doing things badly"; quite the opposite, it is the way free societies ought to operate.
No, there is actually very little overlap in function, since transit doesn't cover most times and locations that people travel to/from.
Since the goal of mass transit policies is to switch people from cars to mass transit, of course, you must compare mass transit to cars. In addition to coercion, mass transit in practice requires massive additional subsidies and taxes, which also means that people need to discuss whether those taxes are justifiable.
In fact, whether you realize it consciously or not, the real reason you are so desperately defending mass transit is that you are absolutely dependent on those subsidies: the more the UK decides to cut its subsidies for London infrastructure, the more your cost of living and transportation goes up.
There is no "emotion" in observing that you are rich, privileged, and arrogant; you demonstrated that clearly with your own comments. The way you mock people who aren't as rich or privileged as you are is disgusting.
Yes, obviously you can. And in order to achieve that efficiency, people have to live like the Japanese do: tiny apartments, high housing densities, highly structured and conformist lives. A country can become even more efficient by turning itself into a communist dictatorship, imagine that!
First, we have already established that high urbanization does not imply high energy efficiency.
Second, it is highly relevant whether people want to urbanize or are forced to urbanize: forcing people to urbanize in order to achieve energy efficiency certainly works, but it takes away people's freedoms. If you want to argue that that's OK, then you need to answer the question: what level of force are you willing to apply for energy efficiency? Why wouldn't you just outlaw personal automobiles altogether? Would you stop at purging the entire countryside with military force? Would you stop at shooting half the population to cut energy output in half? Where are your limits?
Demonstrably it is in the US.
Furthermore, I strongly suspect it is even in London, for the simple reason that cost translates pretty directly into energy expenditure: since the London subway costs at least twice as much per passenger mile as an automobile (even more counting subsidies), it probably uses more energy as well. Energy for moving the vehicle is only part of the total energy budget.
The book ends with a call to action, so it clearly has an agenda. More importantly, both the book and you are being deceptive by reasoning as if public transit delivered the same functionality as a personal automobile.
Which is really what all of this comes down to: you are a rich, arrogant, privileged Londoner who wants to justify his lifestyle so that the subsidies that keep London going keep flowing in.
I understand how objects work, I still don't like PowerShell.
Not at all. I'm saying many people urbanize because they have to, not because they want to. Furthermore, the "verifiable numbers about urbanization" are that the US is already more urbanized than the UK, so whatever argument you are trying to make about transport and urbanization needs a bit more thought on your part.
The specific fact you quoted, namely that the London Underground and Japanese trains are quite energy efficient in terms of passenger miles, is literally correct. Where he and you are wrong is in calling this "better transport". Moving at 20 mph and paying $0.60 per mile for the privilege after subsidies would be a lousy deal even if it were otherwise as convenient as a car. But it isn't even that: you need to walk to/from stations, are bound by schedules, have to switch trains, have to put up with fellow riders, and can't carry large amounts of cargo. And on top of the pure per mile cost, you also have to pay the massive housing costs and put up with poor quality housing simply for living within walking distance of a London subway station. In addition, the energy efficiency of the London Underground is simply not achievable for public transportation in general, something MacKay's book also points out.
Now, people like MacKay and you may be able to pay those costs and/or not mind the tradeoffs that the London Underground or commuting by bike involves, but declaring your choices as normative for everybody else is wrong, as in unacceptable. MacKay at least grudgingly acknowledges that in his book, you seem to be utterly oblivious to it.
My original claim was "There wouldn't be a "meaningful reduction in the greenhouse-gas emissions" even if we eliminated all emissions from personal transportation in the US", obviously true based on the numbers I cited. In addition, I pointed out that "Mass transit is also not all that much more efficient than personal cars.", obviously referring to actual mass transit usage in the US, which is substantiated by the numbers I pointed to.
You "have been moving the goalposts" ever since.
That's sort of like saying that you're improving the memory of an SSD drive by disabling its garbage collection logic.
Many people move to cities because they have to, not because they want to. Most families prefer detached houses with yards, meaning densities at which London style transit efficiencies are not achievable.
Quite the contrary: you couldn't come up with fact-based arguments for why switching to public transit would result in meaningful reductions in GHG, so you resorted to an appeal to authority ("professional physics professor from one of the top universities in the world"). I'm pointing out that MacKay isn't even much of an authority to appeal to: he largely stopped publishing in his field a decade ago and then jumped onto the global warming bandwagon.
I'm sorry, I forgot you have trouble connecting the dots, so let me be more explicit. MacKay's book is a collection of observations about individual energy usage, but he neglects social, political, and economic factors. That is, his recommendations will not have the effect he suggested they would be having.
Growing up means that you stop arguing based on emotion and logical fallacies, like you are currently doing.
I noticed that you found no fault with my numbers. The fact remains: personal transportation is a small percentage of worldwide GHG emissions, and any reductions in this area have no meaningful effect on climate change.
Yes, and those happen to be the relevant numbers, because they are far more typical than London. What do you see? 1.6 MJ/passenger-km for transit, 2.3 MJ/passenger-km for cars. Public transit by bus is actually worse on average than passenger cars. So, not a lot of room for improvement.
The second area to look at: all road transportation worldwide contributes less than 10% to GHG, but the majority of those are commercial vehicles. Passenger cars are less than half that. So, even if you managed to eliminate all passenger cars and replace them with transit worldwide, you might reduce GHG emissions by maybe 1%; if you do it only in industrialized countries, it's a fraction of a percent. Utterly useless.
More importantly, though, people simply don't want to switch to public transit. Maybe you would like living in a cramped shithole like London, but a lot of people don't.
McKay largely stopped publishing real science some time in the early 2000's. Newton also was a "professional physics professor" (are there non-professional ones?), so I guess his occult studies must also be science! Grow up, man, you're not in grad school anymore.
MacKay's book is not even wrong.
Leela: Granted, we later learned some positive things about recycling. But
a better solution is to use our electronics as long as possible, instead
of throwing them out in the first place. I'm gonna start by keeping my
old cell phone, even if it is outdated.
Announcer: With the new eyePhone, you can watch, listen, ignore your
friends, stalk your ex, download porno on a crowded bus, even check your
E-mail while getting hit by a train. All with the new eyePhone.
Mom (v.o.): From Mom.
Leela: A new eyePhone? Forget this junk.
Too many deodorants! Government needs to step in and put a stop to this waste! Let's wreck the economy... for humanity! /Bernie Sanders
Well, yes, that is London. Unless the entire country moves into an overcrowded city with astronomical real estate prices and huge social problems, that is not what is achievable for humans. Feeble attempts at arguments like that only show that you and the climate lobby (like the MacKay) simply have no credibility and are being deceptive.
Actually relevant numbers are here.