Standard Oil's near monopoly only lasted maybe 30 years and by the time they were broken up their market share had been dropping for many years and was down to 65%. The market was in fact doing exactly what I claimed, competitors saw the profits to be made in the oil industry and found ways to compete. Furthermore, during this period, Standard Oil greatly increased efficiency, found new uses for waste products, and lowered prices for consumers dramatically.
In a true free market there would be very few very wealthy people because any industry that generated massive profits would also attract massive competition. The most profitable industries have gotten that way because of government interference not in spite of it.
The maximum marginal tax RATE may have decreased but the total amount of taxes collected has not decreased over the long term. Besides, taxes are just one form of government interference in the market. All government spending is ultimately a tax so simply trading greater deficits or money printing for taxes isn't an improvement.
Agricultural subsidies, copyrights, patents, bailouts.....
What are these UDIDs used for? Could it be that these were collected from the owners via a Trojan app or web site or whatever?
Thermoelectric coolers use way too much current for a reasonably sized solar panel. A standard, well insulated cooler would probably be fine. Wrap it in a blanket if you need more insulation.
Around here, the excuse the phone company uses is woodpeckers poking holes in the lines.
That's only true if the rate of interest on the bonds exceeds the rate of increase in energy costs. That seems unlikely today.
I can't help but wonder when this will collide with "Smart Growth" which is a push in many communities to cram more people into smaller areas surrounded by open space as an alternative to urban sprawl.
Well put.
"Natural" climate change tends to be very slow, what we are experiencing now isn't.
We actually don't know that. Once you start talking about times much older than modern records you're dealing with things like ice cores which cannot generally be dated very precisely. What we do know is that there have been many long periods of relative stability followed by rapid changes. As rapid as today? We really don't know.
What made the "hockey stick" graph interesting was NOT that it showed that temperatures hadn't risen recently but that those very real increases didn't show up in the tree ring data and therefore we cannot use the same tree ring data to show that it wasn't as warm or warmer fairly recently.
If the predictions of AGW come true then all life on earth is doomed.
What predictions? The IPCC report said that the most likely scenario was around 2 degrees over the next 100 years.
In short, if the AGW theory is true, and our fossil fuels don't run out, then all human and mammalian life on this planet is doomed. It's just a matter of time.
Well, that's true regardless of AGW.
You prefer tyranny and murder to rational discussion and I have nothing more to say to you on the matter. From your earlier post
I call on my government and the government of all nations and peoples to use the powers granted to them during war time to neutralize these and other denialists who represent and clear and present danger to the United States of America, the U.K. and all other nations and people, using whatever means is necessary.
The IPCC does not predict "a couple of degrees," in the sense that 2.0C is the upper boundary. That's about a midline case.
Yes, that was what our best scientists think is the most likely scenario. If you're going to claim a scientific basis for your argument then that's the one you've got to go with. The IPCC also listed little or no change as a possibility but you wouldn't think it reasonable for me to base my argument on that right?
>> "Humans are only responsible for a small fraction of the CO2 going into the atmosphere."
That's true. But we're responsible for basically all of the change in CO2 concentrations over the last hundred years....
Yes, I'm well aware of all of that.
We keep using China as an excuse for ignoring our own responsibilities, even though they only emit about a quarter what we do on a per-capita basis.
What possible logic suggests that CO2 levels are more effected by per-capita output than total output? Imagine for a moment that tomorrow the U.S. instituted a 90% tax on the top 10 CO2 producing industries. The result would be that those industries would move to countries without such taxes and the production of CO2 would continue. It could be China but it could also be just about anywhere else too. All it takes is a handful of cheaters to ruin the whole plan. The only thing that would change for the U.S. is that we'd be poorer and less able to cope with the results.
Second, your projections assume that alternative energy technology will remain at its current cost. That simply will not happen. The cost of photovoltaics has been dropping by 50% every six years pretty much since the things were invented. It's a veritable Moore's Law of solar power, and it hasn't shown any sign of slowing. So within ten years, it's very likely that the cheapest way to add new energy to the grid will be with solar power.
If you're right (and I think you are) then we would be best off waiting until that happens.
Right now, the cheapest form of energy isn't coal or natural gas: it's energy efficiency
That is certainly true in some cases but there are so many subsidies and tax breaks and regulations on all sides it's really hard to be sure what the true cost of anything actually is. What I am pretty sure of is that current policies that take dollars from the poor via fees added on to their electric bill and transfer them to the rich in order to subsidise solar panels are probably counter-productive. The free market, for all it's faults, is generally better at math than Congress.
It sounds like you'd be right at home in North Korea.
"Ninety percent of baseball is half mental." -- Yogi Berra
