Stevens wasn't the only target, just the highest profile. The case against others is ongoing and has resulted in 10 convictions to-date.
So yes, while dropping charges when dealing with corruption can be bad in many ways, if the person involved is no longer in the position of power to be corrupted and is seriously unlikely to do it again (being old AND out of power) well, I think its enough.
I have thought about his return to power. There is no way he returns to the Senate. He'd be at least 91 in the next election, running against an incumbent, and dealing with answering these questions all over again.
I disagree. His reputation is shredded. He's 80+ years old. Seems like a fair trade to me.
The 'mistakes' by the prosecutors were pretty egregious. Overturning the verdict is reasonable in this situation. As is not retrying him based on his age and being out of the Senate.
It's not technically 'justice', but in the end it seems like a fair compromise.
None of the things Steven's was accused of receiving illegally were false. Just the amount of value in them.
So a $250,000 felon, or a $80,000 felon..either way he still should be a felon by any reasonable definition.
I'll say that the decision to not retry him is reasonable given his age. His record is, ahem, clean, but his tattered reputation is frankly, well deserved.
you WILL NOT EVER vote an 'unknown' party into the top spot in a country such as the US. So yes a vote for a candidate who isn't D or R is a 'wasted vote' in a presidential election today.
In your local elections however, you do have a real chance to make changes. Vote for people who represent your views and beliefs. Build up a solid voting block of members in the House, THEN the Senate, and finally once you are a stable and electable commodity, THEN you can run a serious campaign for President.
you do not start this stuff from the top. it just won't ever work unless you have someone who is an even bigger populist than Obama was during the campaign. Most of Obama's critics don't like that idea...
You don't start by changing the top. All you do is elect the other of the two you didn't vote for.
Get a sizeable block in the house of your 3rd party members and then you'll have actual impact.
You don't start changing a country from the top down, you start from the bottom and move up, because if you can't convince the people who live next to you to vote for a 3rd party, how the hell do you expect to convince the entire country?
No, a tax cut is not like using a credit card. It's like saying I am spending money because I didn't go into my neighbor's house and take all the money he had hidden in his cookie jar.
I'll submit the CC example isn't the best, you would still have the goods you bought even if you hadn't paid for them yet. I was thinking more along the lines of budgeting, no money has left your pocket (like a taxcut).
How about a real world example. If you are renting a house to someone, and the rent is $1000/month. You plan on $12,000 in income for a year. If you lower the rent you charge by $100/month. At the end of the year you have only $10,800. By taxing at the lower taxcut rates the gov't reduced how much money it took in. So there is the *loss* of revenue. No its not 'spending', that's my point. You didn't get *anything* for that money, it was just given to people.
As for Reagan's tax cuts. Yes revenue increased, but how much did it *cost* us? Revenue is only one side of the equation. And since Reagan's tax cuts only created a Trillion dollars over 10 years, Bush's concept of 10 trillion over 10 years is laughably irresponsible. Unless you can somehow produce 1000% increase. The Clinton surplus was as much Clinton as it was the Republican controlled congress. Two opposing forces cancel each other out and spending goes way down. That was hidden by the dotcom boom increasing revenues, followed by the bust where the cracks in the system from lack of spending started to be noticable. (sound familiar?)
Tax cuts DO have a place in economics, but as for increasing revenues they are woefully behind infrastructure and services like food stamps in terms of their effects. Tax cuts give you about $0.75 for every dollar of tax cuts. Infrastructure gives between $1 and $1.75. Food stamps literally give you over $2 for every dollar spent on the program. I never understand why 'conservatives' don't want to make the highest returning investments possible and instead stay with what gives the rich more money instead...
But if you want to continue the fallacy that 'trickle down' economics work, you might want to check the stock market. It doesn't work. Couple that with very Libertarian 'just let us make money' stock market oversight and you have a complete economic meltdown. Your comment about Obama's stimulus costing $220,000 per job is laughable. Those jobs pay people money, who SPEND it, keeping other jobs viable. Its 'trickle up' economy that is proven to increase revenues. Give money to people who are likely to spend it (low to middle class) and you get many more returns on your investment than giving it to the rich hoping they invest it.
As for government creating nothing of value...well I won't convince you otherwise I'm sure, but you are quite sadly mistaken.
Hoover Dam
Interstate Highways
the Power grid
running water in homes
cheap mail service
THE INTERNET (and no not Al Gore)
Cops
Firefighters
The gov't creates plenty of value, sadly you've just grown up at a time when you take most of it for granted.
Libertarian: 'be free and left to their own'
Doesn't work so well when your neighbor wants to be left alone working on his 'home grown' nuclear reactor.
Yea, because that's been such a huge problem. The government wouldn't be nearly as intrusive if it weren't for all those idiots building nuclear reactors in their basements.
Ok, how about people hunting near an elementary school? Bullets flying into classrooms is not exactly most parents idea of OK. Yet the hunters were completely within their rights as the law said they had to be 50 yards away from buildings. 50 yards. yeah that's a safe distance to be in front of a gun. Why should we change the law? they were just minding their own business shooting at 'game'. This happened in VA within the last year.
Lets spend 10 trillion dollars (Bush's taxcut) and see what we have to show for it? not much.
That's NOT "spending". It can only be called spending if the government gave the money away. (hint: the government only takes money - it doesn't create anything on its own).
Um, saying the tax cut isn't *spending* is like saying buying stuff on a credit card isn't actually spending either. Whether the gov't wrote a check or simply collected less its still money we don't have and we still owe (a lot of) money. If by choosing to not pay down your debt you reduce your income, yes you've 'spent' that money, as in you don't have it anymore. And we would have had it if the tax cuts hadn't been enacted.
Lets spend 10 trillion improving infrastructure and healthcare. I'll bet we have more to show for it...and we end up MAKING money in the process.
And that will be actual spending. Do you know where that money is coming from? The money that you and your children MAKE. Except the government will then take it to pay back the Fed and the Chinese that loaned out the money.
That money will come from you and me and the guy next door who has a JOB because the gov't stepped in to jump start the economy. Sort of like today when Obama said the US Gov't will stand behind GM auto warranties. Not exactly my idea of fabulous but it will clearly give people more confidence to buy from GM, to then have those vehicles serviced, the auto-techs get paid and lo and behold it's stimulus in action. Acting to keep the economy going when there's no one else able to do it.
That doesn't even take into account the added benefits of having bridges that don't fall down, roads that aren't potholed all to h3ll and quality healthcare for *everyone*. Yes that is all spending, but at least we get something from it.
The option of just standing pat and letting the 'system' work itself out means many more months if not years of hard economic forecasts and more layoffs, foreclosures and greater social costs associated with high unemployment.
Subsidies: the oil industry is already HEAVILY subsidized, much more than alternative fuels...but I'm glad to hear you support repealing those oil subsidies. Then there's the undocumented 'subsidy' of oil in that the true cost of its production and use isn't known yet. The environment, global warming, is by all credible accounts going to have very significant effects around the globe. How much cost is associated there that isn't reflected in oil's price?
The reason we shouldn't offshore drill, or do much more in Alaska is twofold.
1. it wouldn't lower oil prices much more than a NICKEL. $0.05/gallon. it's just not worth the environmental risk. From a Businessweek article, estimates are it *might* produce up to 1% of global production. Currently that's $0.02/gallon but I'll round up assuming increased prices when it comes online in TEN YEARS. The same article actually says it would be closer to 20 years but what's a decade amongst friends right?
2. even if it were 'worth the risk' why not save our oil for when it's really expensive. Why use our reserves now when its relatively cheap? Save for a rainy day so to speak. Don't blow the bridge at the first sign of trouble, save it for when its really needed.
Oil is simply a pipe dream that's going to end. We can throw money at it now by trying to squeeze every last cent out of the ground.
Or we can take that money, and invest in something that will quite literally never run out (unless you're talking billions of years from now). you inflate the cost of the bad behavior (oil) through increased taxation on it, and redirect that money towards alternatives.
While I agree with your arguments, I find one possible flaw:
the world in which everyone else spends less, per capita, on healthcare than the US while covering more people
We spend a good bit more because as a culture we are pretty unhealthy. Compared to Japan for instance, we pale in comparison healthwise.
Dumping the 'me first' culture into a gov't healthcare plan *may* be problematic for a few years/decades until people start to retrain themselves to live healthier.
Doesn't work so well when your neighbor wants to be left alone working on his 'home grown' nuclear reactor.
Gov't exists because by definition, some of my interests will interfere with some of your interests. We like having cops on the streets (and on Wall Street!) and that costs money, hence we need to pay taxes. There may be valid arguments for and against individual tax or spending issue, but in the end you need to tax in order to be able to provide for basic societal needs.
As for my, admittedly liberal, bias. I take the last 10 years as a perfect example:
Lets spend 10 trillion dollars (Bush's taxcut) and see what we have to show for it? not much.
Lets spend 10 trillion improving infrastructure and healthcare. I'll bet we have more to show for it...and we end up MAKING money in the process.
Glad to see there's some common sense left here. I'm as left-wing as the next left-wing-conspirator, but one of the concepts of 'journalism' is being un-biased.
Anyone who claims HuffPost isn't 'biased' is themselves nicely biased.
Well the point here being that a post was made to a public discussion page, not emails. So it's a browser's traffic signature, connection info, and other stuff.
Tor does a decent job, but as I said, the encryption simply slows down the process it doesn't completely hide you.
That said, a lack of logs on any Tor server in the chain probably cuts off the trail of breadcrumbs. But the info *was* there, it just wasn't persisted long enough to be useful by a court months/years later.
Think of the internet as a giant Fax machine. Just because you don't sign the letter you fax, doesn't mean they don't know where it came from.
Unless you take explicit steps you are not anonymous online *ever*. Even when you do, you're only as anonymous to the point of making it more difficult to find you. The trail is there, however cloudy and convoluted.
An insecure wireless connection on the other hand...does wonders for anonymnity(sp?);-)
I'm pretty sure the previous poster is loony. Even if we happened to have enough oil in this country to even make a *dent* in our demand, then yes drilling our own might make sense. Unfortunately we don't have such reserves.
of course, saving our reserves for a day when oil really is in short supply might make even more sense...
Getting off of oil for transportation is the only viable solution long term.
It's funny, I can't tell whether you're being sarcastic or a complete idiot...
We DO NOT HAVE anywhere near enough oil in this country in any form that we can currently extract. The 'oil shale' pipe dream needs oil prices higher than we've yet seen to be anywhere near economical. And thats assuming massive new tech discoveries to figure out *how* to do it.
Canada's oil sands were becoming economical with the $3-4/gallon pricing. Are you saying we should go back to that?
The point is, we can pay cheap gas for a while, then be screwed when oil really does start to run short globally. Or we can inflate the price of oil *a little* so that alternatives are more attractive and reap 700 BILLION in savings per year once we're off of oil. (hint, Europe has been doing this for years without any of the disasters you cite).
Your idea is to pile on more debt for cheap oil while also investing in new alternatives? You realize that by subsidizing the oil industry, nobody wants to go into alternatives. The more you subsidize oil, the more you have to increase alternative subsidies. You're paying double and triple, or just robbing Peter to pay Paul, either way its just postponing the inevitable and increasing the total cost.
Apollo 1 didn't have this situation since it was a short test. The *actual* missions had much lower partial pressures
Apollo 1 details
"...Since the CM was designed to endure outward pressure in the vacuum of space, the plugs-out test had been run with the cabin pressure at over 16 psi, almost 2 psi above the ambient sea level pressure at Launch Complex 34 and near the upper limits of measuring devices in the spacecraft. This represented over 5 times the oxygen density carried within the Mercury and Gemini capsules while in spaceflight (which was only 3 psi but equal to the partial pressure of oxygen at sea level and thus very breathable)...."
just because it doesn't kill you in 2 minutes, doesn't mean its not dangerous.
criminy, why don't my posts show up now? neither of my previous posts show up when viewing the article normally, I have to click on your message specifically (#id) link in order to see my posts.
Oxygen is not a pollutant either, but in high enough concentrations it can be fatal.
Shell is doing the short-term profit strategy here, plain and simple. And its only viable because the true cost of CO2 producing fuels isn't factored into the equation yet. What is the financial cost of our increased CO2 production? The answer is, frankly, we don't know.
The anti-renewable/pro-oil folks will assume its minimal and just proceed on our merry way. The pro-renewable/anti-oil crowd assumes its going to be a steep cost.
Which seems more rational? build an infrastructure where the FUEL is FREE and significantly less polluting? or continue to spew out millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere from a non-renewable resource?
Will it cost some in the short term to implement? sure, but eventually we'll have to move off oil anyway, why not prevent a possible enivromental disaster in the process?
As for oil being profitable...the gov't is the entity that is in charge of 'leveling' the playing field between technologies. Oil is entrenched and has no 'startup' costs. Renewables aren't and so are at a disadvantage, the gov't, assuming they want to encourage renewables can offer subsidies to make them more attractive than oil.
Funny their own friggin website says *Responsible Energy*. www.shell.com.
If all of the *Oil* companies would be honest and call themselves that when its not politically beneficially to do so I would have much less of a problem. But we've had almost a decade now of advertising telling us just how 'environmentally responsible' these companies are and that they AREN'T just 'oil' companies.
So when one of them basically punts and goes back to being 'just oil', sorry they deserve to get slammed.
You're pushing nature back into a bottle at that point, *much* harder than having mitigated the problem before you went off down the hill into the desert.
you mean like hating *yourself* because you can now produce all your own power needs?
Renewables free people from having to be part of such groups. (Personally I like non-profit concepts...and 'credit unions' invariably have better rates than 'for profit' banks...)
Oxygen isn't a pollutant either, but in high enough concentrations can be fatal.
Corporate profits are unfortunately something that is shortsighted. What is the *cost* of putting all the extra CO2 into the air? at this exact moment, probably fairly minimal, but over time as we continue the cost may very well be extreme.
The gov't is the leveling factor, by pricing oil artificially higher to encourage a different direction for a better long term result.
Some will say we don't need it, and while there is general scientific consensus that we do, factual evidence is scarce since we're making predictions about the future. By the time actual evidence exists it will be far to late to 'fix' the problem.
Shell probably sees the writing on the wall, their industry is a monopoly on our transportation...switching to electric or other renewables means they will no longer be that monopoly. Its the govt's responsibility to look beyond short term profits and move us to something sustainable.
Slashdot Mirror
Stevens wasn't the only target, just the highest profile. The case against others is ongoing and has resulted in 10 convictions to-date.
So yes, while dropping charges when dealing with corruption can be bad in many ways, if the person involved is no longer in the position of power to be corrupted and is seriously unlikely to do it again (being old AND out of power) well, I think its enough.
I have thought about his return to power. There is no way he returns to the Senate. He'd be at least 91 in the next election, running against an incumbent, and dealing with answering these questions all over again.
Agreed, he might have gotten an acquittal, but given his own statements saying "asking for this receipt is just to cover our asses" he might not ;-)
in the end I think the result is good enough, he's ruined politically, out of power, and not really worth retrying.
I disagree. His reputation is shredded. He's 80+ years old. Seems like a fair trade to me.
The 'mistakes' by the prosecutors were pretty egregious. Overturning the verdict is reasonable in this situation. As is not retrying him based on his age and being out of the Senate.
It's not technically 'justice', but in the end it seems like a fair compromise.
None of the things Steven's was accused of receiving illegally were false. Just the amount of value in them.
So a $250,000 felon, or a $80,000 felon..either way he still should be a felon by any reasonable definition.
I'll say that the decision to not retry him is reasonable given his age. His record is, ahem, clean, but his tattered reputation is frankly, well deserved.
you WILL NOT EVER vote an 'unknown' party into the top spot in a country such as the US. So yes a vote for a candidate who isn't D or R is a 'wasted vote' in a presidential election today.
In your local elections however, you do have a real chance to make changes. Vote for people who represent your views and beliefs. Build up a solid voting block of members in the House, THEN the Senate, and finally once you are a stable and electable commodity, THEN you can run a serious campaign for President.
you do not start this stuff from the top. it just won't ever work unless you have someone who is an even bigger populist than Obama was during the campaign. Most of Obama's critics don't like that idea...
You don't start by changing the top. All you do is elect the other of the two you didn't vote for.
Get a sizeable block in the house of your 3rd party members and then you'll have actual impact.
You don't start changing a country from the top down, you start from the bottom and move up, because if you can't convince the people who live next to you to vote for a 3rd party, how the hell do you expect to convince the entire country?
No, a tax cut is not like using a credit card. It's like saying I am spending money because I didn't go into my neighbor's house and take all the money he had hidden in his cookie jar.
I'll submit the CC example isn't the best, you would still have the goods you bought even if you hadn't paid for them yet. I was thinking more along the lines of budgeting, no money has left your pocket (like a taxcut).
How about a real world example. If you are renting a house to someone, and the rent is $1000/month. You plan on $12,000 in income for a year. If you lower the rent you charge by $100/month. At the end of the year you have only $10,800. By taxing at the lower taxcut rates the gov't reduced how much money it took in. So there is the *loss* of revenue. No its not 'spending', that's my point. You didn't get *anything* for that money, it was just given to people.
As for Reagan's tax cuts. Yes revenue increased, but how much did it *cost* us? Revenue is only one side of the equation. And since Reagan's tax cuts only created a Trillion dollars over 10 years, Bush's concept of 10 trillion over 10 years is laughably irresponsible. Unless you can somehow produce 1000% increase. The Clinton surplus was as much Clinton as it was the Republican controlled congress. Two opposing forces cancel each other out and spending goes way down. That was hidden by the dotcom boom increasing revenues, followed by the bust where the cracks in the system from lack of spending started to be noticable. (sound familiar?)
Tax cuts DO have a place in economics, but as for increasing revenues they are woefully behind infrastructure and services like food stamps in terms of their effects. Tax cuts give you about $0.75 for every dollar of tax cuts. Infrastructure gives between $1 and $1.75. Food stamps literally give you over $2 for every dollar spent on the program. I never understand why 'conservatives' don't want to make the highest returning investments possible and instead stay with what gives the rich more money instead...
But if you want to continue the fallacy that 'trickle down' economics work, you might want to check the stock market. It doesn't work. Couple that with very Libertarian 'just let us make money' stock market oversight and you have a complete economic meltdown. Your comment about Obama's stimulus costing $220,000 per job is laughable. Those jobs pay people money, who SPEND it, keeping other jobs viable. Its 'trickle up' economy that is proven to increase revenues. Give money to people who are likely to spend it (low to middle class) and you get many more returns on your investment than giving it to the rich hoping they invest it.
As for government creating nothing of value...well I won't convince you otherwise I'm sure, but you are quite sadly mistaken.
Hoover Dam
Interstate Highways
the Power grid
running water in homes
cheap mail service
THE INTERNET (and no not Al Gore)
Cops
Firefighters
The gov't creates plenty of value, sadly you've just grown up at a time when you take most of it for granted.
Libertarian: 'be free and left to their own' Doesn't work so well when your neighbor wants to be left alone working on his 'home grown' nuclear reactor.
Yea, because that's been such a huge problem. The government wouldn't be nearly as intrusive if it weren't for all those idiots building nuclear reactors in their basements.
Ok, how about people hunting near an elementary school? Bullets flying into classrooms is not exactly most parents idea of OK. Yet the hunters were completely within their rights as the law said they had to be 50 yards away from buildings. 50 yards. yeah that's a safe distance to be in front of a gun. Why should we change the law? they were just minding their own business shooting at 'game'. This happened in VA within the last year.
Lets spend 10 trillion dollars (Bush's taxcut) and see what we have to show for it? not much.
That's NOT "spending". It can only be called spending if the government gave the money away. (hint: the government only takes money - it doesn't create anything on its own).
Um, saying the tax cut isn't *spending* is like saying buying stuff on a credit card isn't actually spending either. Whether the gov't wrote a check or simply collected less its still money we don't have and we still owe (a lot of) money. If by choosing to not pay down your debt you reduce your income, yes you've 'spent' that money, as in you don't have it anymore. And we would have had it if the tax cuts hadn't been enacted.
Lets spend 10 trillion improving infrastructure and healthcare. I'll bet we have more to show for it...and we end up MAKING money in the process.
And that will be actual spending. Do you know where that money is coming from? The money that you and your children MAKE. Except the government will then take it to pay back the Fed and the Chinese that loaned out the money.
That money will come from you and me and the guy next door who has a JOB because the gov't stepped in to jump start the economy. Sort of like today when Obama said the US Gov't will stand behind GM auto warranties. Not exactly my idea of fabulous but it will clearly give people more confidence to buy from GM, to then have those vehicles serviced, the auto-techs get paid and lo and behold it's stimulus in action. Acting to keep the economy going when there's no one else able to do it.
That doesn't even take into account the added benefits of having bridges that don't fall down, roads that aren't potholed all to h3ll and quality healthcare for *everyone*. Yes that is all spending, but at least we get something from it.
The option of just standing pat and letting the 'system' work itself out means many more months if not years of hard economic forecasts and more layoffs, foreclosures and greater social costs associated with high unemployment.
Subsidies: the oil industry is already HEAVILY subsidized, much more than alternative fuels...but I'm glad to hear you support repealing those oil subsidies. Then there's the undocumented 'subsidy' of oil in that the true cost of its production and use isn't known yet. The environment, global warming, is by all credible accounts going to have very significant effects around the globe. How much cost is associated there that isn't reflected in oil's price?
The reason we shouldn't offshore drill, or do much more in Alaska is twofold.
1. it wouldn't lower oil prices much more than a NICKEL. $0.05/gallon. it's just not worth the environmental risk. From a Businessweek article, estimates are it *might* produce up to 1% of global production. Currently that's $0.02/gallon but I'll round up assuming increased prices when it comes online in TEN YEARS. The same article actually says it would be closer to 20 years but what's a decade amongst friends right?
2. even if it were 'worth the risk' why not save our oil for when it's really expensive. Why use our reserves now when its relatively cheap? Save for a rainy day so to speak. Don't blow the bridge at the first sign of trouble, save it for when its really needed.
Oil is simply a pipe dream that's going to end. We can throw money at it now by trying to squeeze every last cent out of the ground.
Or we can take that money, and invest in something that will quite literally never run out (unless you're talking billions of years from now). you inflate the cost of the bad behavior (oil) through increased taxation on it, and redirect that money towards alternatives.
While I agree with your arguments, I find one possible flaw:
the world in which everyone else spends less, per capita, on healthcare than the US while covering more people
We spend a good bit more because as a culture we are pretty unhealthy. Compared to Japan for instance, we pale in comparison healthwise.
Dumping the 'me first' culture into a gov't healthcare plan *may* be problematic for a few years/decades until people start to retrain themselves to live healthier.
Libertarian: 'be free and left to their own'
Doesn't work so well when your neighbor wants to be left alone working on his 'home grown' nuclear reactor.
Gov't exists because by definition, some of my interests will interfere with some of your interests. We like having cops on the streets (and on Wall Street!) and that costs money, hence we need to pay taxes. There may be valid arguments for and against individual tax or spending issue, but in the end you need to tax in order to be able to provide for basic societal needs.
As for my, admittedly liberal, bias. I take the last 10 years as a perfect example:
Lets spend 10 trillion dollars (Bush's taxcut) and see what we have to show for it? not much.
Lets spend 10 trillion improving infrastructure and healthcare. I'll bet we have more to show for it...and we end up MAKING money in the process.
Glad to see there's some common sense left here. I'm as left-wing as the next left-wing-conspirator, but one of the concepts of 'journalism' is being un-biased.
Anyone who claims HuffPost isn't 'biased' is themselves nicely biased.
Well the point here being that a post was made to a public discussion page, not emails. So it's a browser's traffic signature, connection info, and other stuff.
Tor does a decent job, but as I said, the encryption simply slows down the process it doesn't completely hide you.
That said, a lack of logs on any Tor server in the chain probably cuts off the trail of breadcrumbs. But the info *was* there, it just wasn't persisted long enough to be useful by a court months/years later.
Think of the internet as a giant Fax machine. Just because you don't sign the letter you fax, doesn't mean they don't know where it came from.
;-)
Unless you take explicit steps you are not anonymous online *ever*. Even when you do, you're only as anonymous to the point of making it more difficult to find you. The trail is there, however cloudy and convoluted.
An insecure wireless connection on the other hand...does wonders for anonymnity(sp?)
I'm pretty sure the previous poster is loony. Even if we happened to have enough oil in this country to even make a *dent* in our demand, then yes drilling our own might make sense. Unfortunately we don't have such reserves.
of course, saving our reserves for a day when oil really is in short supply might make even more sense...
Getting off of oil for transportation is the only viable solution long term.
It's funny, I can't tell whether you're being sarcastic or a complete idiot...
We DO NOT HAVE anywhere near enough oil in this country in any form that we can currently extract. The 'oil shale' pipe dream needs oil prices higher than we've yet seen to be anywhere near economical. And thats assuming massive new tech discoveries to figure out *how* to do it.
Canada's oil sands were becoming economical with the $3-4/gallon pricing. Are you saying we should go back to that?
The point is, we can pay cheap gas for a while, then be screwed when oil really does start to run short globally. Or we can inflate the price of oil *a little* so that alternatives are more attractive and reap 700 BILLION in savings per year once we're off of oil. (hint, Europe has been doing this for years without any of the disasters you cite).
Your idea is to pile on more debt for cheap oil while also investing in new alternatives? You realize that by subsidizing the oil industry, nobody wants to go into alternatives. The more you subsidize oil, the more you have to increase alternative subsidies. You're paying double and triple, or just robbing Peter to pay Paul, either way its just postponing the inevitable and increasing the total cost.
I'm pretty sure military budgets are inflated for black-ops type stuff, but that they go to reduce oil costs as well?
Do you have evidence for your assertion?
Oxygen Toxicity
..."
O2 bad link
Apollo 1 didn't have this situation since it was a short test. The *actual* missions had much lower partial pressures Apollo 1 details
"...Since the CM was designed to endure outward pressure in the vacuum of space, the plugs-out test had been run with the cabin pressure at over 16 psi, almost 2 psi above the ambient sea level pressure at Launch Complex 34 and near the upper limits of measuring devices in the spacecraft. This represented over 5 times the oxygen density carried within the Mercury and Gemini capsules while in spaceflight (which was only 3 psi but equal to the partial pressure of oxygen at sea level and thus very breathable).
just because it doesn't kill you in 2 minutes, doesn't mean its not dangerous.
criminy, why don't my posts show up now? neither of my previous posts show up when viewing the article normally, I have to click on your message specifically (#id) link in order to see my posts.
ugh
Let me say that firstly, CO2 is not a pollutant
Oxygen is not a pollutant either, but in high enough concentrations it can be fatal.
Shell is doing the short-term profit strategy here, plain and simple. And its only viable because the true cost of CO2 producing fuels isn't factored into the equation yet. What is the financial cost of our increased CO2 production? The answer is, frankly, we don't know.
The anti-renewable/pro-oil folks will assume its minimal and just proceed on our merry way. The pro-renewable/anti-oil crowd assumes its going to be a steep cost.
Which seems more rational? build an infrastructure where the FUEL is FREE and significantly less polluting? or continue to spew out millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere from a non-renewable resource?
Will it cost some in the short term to implement? sure, but eventually we'll have to move off oil anyway, why not prevent a possible enivromental disaster in the process?
As for oil being profitable...the gov't is the entity that is in charge of 'leveling' the playing field between technologies. Oil is entrenched and has no 'startup' costs. Renewables aren't and so are at a disadvantage, the gov't, assuming they want to encourage renewables can offer subsidies to make them more attractive than oil.
Shell is an Oil Company.
Funny their own friggin website says *Responsible Energy*. www.shell.com.
If all of the *Oil* companies would be honest and call themselves that when its not politically beneficially to do so I would have much less of a problem. But we've had almost a decade now of advertising telling us just how 'environmentally responsible' these companies are and that they AREN'T just 'oil' companies.
So when one of them basically punts and goes back to being 'just oil', sorry they deserve to get slammed.
except that the road out of the desert is uphill...steep
You're trying to put nature back into a bottle at that point. That will *far* outstrip the costs of mitigation at an earlier point (i.e. now)
except that its uphill...steep.
You're pushing nature back into a bottle at that point, *much* harder than having mitigated the problem before you went off down the hill into the desert.
you mean like hating *yourself* because you can now produce all your own power needs?
Renewables free people from having to be part of such groups. (Personally I like non-profit concepts...and 'credit unions' invariably have better rates than 'for profit' banks...)
Oxygen isn't a pollutant either, but in high enough concentrations can be fatal.
Corporate profits are unfortunately something that is shortsighted. What is the *cost* of putting all the extra CO2 into the air? at this exact moment, probably fairly minimal, but over time as we continue the cost may very well be extreme.
The gov't is the leveling factor, by pricing oil artificially higher to encourage a different direction for a better long term result.
Some will say we don't need it, and while there is general scientific consensus that we do, factual evidence is scarce since we're making predictions about the future. By the time actual evidence exists it will be far to late to 'fix' the problem.
Shell probably sees the writing on the wall, their industry is a monopoly on our transportation...switching to electric or other renewables means they will no longer be that monopoly. Its the govt's responsibility to look beyond short term profits and move us to something sustainable.