Tom Toles for January 18, 2015

Yup. With gas cheap under $2, why worry about that climate business any more! We’ll just crank up the AC!

Still driving my 2002, 1.6l LPG car, with 138 000 miles clocked. LPG’s 60p a litre at the moment (91UScents, or US$3.44 per US gallon). Regular is at £1.15(US$6.57 p/US gallon). My, how you all suffer. :-|

Where’s the button for, keep drinking the cool-aide.

Cheap energy: destroy climate. Expensive energy: destroy climate. The choice has been made; we’re committed to fulfilling our role as the exterminators of most life on this planet.

I was referring to the non-human life on the planet. And at the rate we’re going, it’ll be a 95% die-off. Of species, not just individuals.

Good reference, but it has nothing to do with your remarks and if it does, it goes against your general point of view- though I’m never sure what the hell your writing about.

The biggest problem in the world today is what kind of car Al Gore drives.

absolute BULLCRAP!

Back a hundred years ago, when automobiles were catching on, Standard Oil opened gas stations across the country. If anyone tried to open a competing station in any town, the S.O. would lower its prices, and supported by the company, sell at a loss until the competitor was driven out of business. Then S.O. could raise it’s prices again. The power of Big.S.O. could afford to operate stations at a loss in order to maintain its control. In the last fifty years or so, one has seen several repetitions of a pattern. Fuel efficiency and alternative power sources are bad for the Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela, Russia, and the Koch Brothers, among others. Whenever it has seemed likely the great oil-consuming societies are moving toward efficiency and self-sufficiency, oil prices drop, and stay low just long enough to prevent more efficient technologies from getting established, or consumers from getting wise. Every gas-guzzling SUV purchased is money in the bank for those sell oil on the world market. Every time an American makes do without a car, or buys a very efficient one, such as a hybrid, every time the US transportation fleet becomes more efficient, it weakens the petrostates, and means (among other things) less money for jihadists. Now, some of this fluctuation is just good old-fashion marker forces at work. Demand falls, prices do as well. Demand increased, prices rise. But does anyone really think that oil-producers never “game the system” in the way Standard Oil once did? Does anyone think that the pushers are only interested in the welfare of the addicts?

Thomas Malthus was right…

Thanks for that, Martens.

If a working nuclear fusion reactor could be created, that would be fine. Hydrogen fuel cells and other innovation would be great, too. Though as Mr. Skrain says, infrastructure is a problem. I have no idea why you link “liberal” with anti-nuclear ignorance. NIMBY is more of the problem, especially when it comes to disposing of nuclear waste products, especially in the Age of Terrorism. (I have sometimes wondered what would have happened if the 9/11 highjackers had gone after nuclear power plants rather than office buildings.) Do you want to live next door to a power plant? Coal, nuclear, wind, any of it? I’ve lived for 35 years within earshot of a nuclear power plant. I say earshot because I hear it’s warning siren being tested regularly. We have iodine pills in the medicine cabinet provided by the power company, “just in case.” France is full of nuclear power plants. They are much more heavily dependent on nuclear power than we are in this country. Do you regard France as lacking in liberals, or a bastion of conservatism?

Of course, there’s no irony in snarking about Family Feud when your only evidence is a survey. You might not know that surveys aren’t really a way of arriving at meaningful scientific data.

My problem is hypocrisy.

Admitting you have a problem is the first step, so good going, even if you did veer into irrelevant babble right after you said that.

I really hope that we can think this through. It would be a shame to develop all this intelligence just to see it rebound against itself. But we need to think in new ways — the ways of thought suitable for paleolithic conditions are not suitable for what we face now.

Really a gross oversimplification.

Also followed some of the links within that article; thanks.