A very important element of a Ponzi scheme is the exit strategy.

It must be a plan to fall off the edge of the earth, somehow, or you will be found, and you won't like the consequences.

If you are going to try a Ponzi, you had better have the exit plan in place before you take your first nickel.

When you have achieved your magic number, you bail, and you're gone, and at that point you don't care about the alarms.

I suspect that he hadn't reached his magic number yet, and the down-turn raised a whole lot of questions that he wasn't ready for.

Maybe, he thought he could weather the storm, and continue until he made his magic number.

Maybe, his escape plan vaporized somewhere along the way, and he hadn't figured out a new one.

Drive some of those trucks over here. I'll see what I can do.

Sorry, I have to call F.U.D. on this. This is far too alarmist, IMO, and delivery style counts.

I agree that it is important that we get our energy act together, but, this type of argument turns off rational people, and instead makes them want to dismiss your claims, and ideas, regardless of how accurate, or wonderful they may be.

The more political you make the issue, the more people will dig in their heels, and the less traction you are going to get in your movement.

Electric Cars
As soon as electric cars become a viable economic option, as compared to the oil burners, people will consider purchasing them. And, as oil scarcity increases, the more attractive these vehicles will be to everyone, so they will switch when it is economically feasible for them to do so.

I don't think there is any reason we have to jump into full-tilt production of electric cars. All that is necessary here is to get the price of the technology down to where the early adopters are ready to buy, and get the ball rolling.

The early adopters that are willing to spend the premium, will buy them first, and then the manufacturing costs will begin to fall to where they make more economic sense for the rest of us to purchase them.

In addition, those people that want to live in your villages, won't need their own dedicated car, so that would decrease demand for the new cars, too.

Trains
Rail shipment, comparatively speaking, is cheap, and quite economical, from what I understand. That being said, other than infrastructure, I'm not real certain these need to have diesel engines, and carry fuel. Building infrastructure is expensive, I know, but we're going to have to replace what we have sooner, or later.

The problem with rail transport is that the over-the-road trucks can do long hauls faster, with more agility, and go places the train rails don't. This makes them superior modes of transportation despite the higher cost in many situations.

Even if transporting your goods on the train is the most cost-effective manner, trucks are still required to get the freight from the train to its final destination.

Over-the-road Trucks
I'm pretty sure there will still be enough oil left to perform an orderly phase-out for the rest of the transportation modes that still rely on it, once we get most of the cars switched over to electric.

By then, I hope, we won't be so afraid of nuclear power, and can build infrastructure to make over-the-road trucks electric, too.

(I'm thinking direct power lines with some sort of trolley system -similar to electric buses in metro areas- along highway routes, and battery power/diesel-electric for when the trucks have to leave the highway.)

Let me put it another way, if it comes down to having to use horses, and wagons, and growing your own food, I still prefer that, to living in your designer villages.

Again, I'm not saying that your idea is bad across the board, it just doesn't suit me.

And, it wouldn't suit a lot of others, like me.

On, the other hand, your model will still need farms, ranches, etc., so maybe I can just live on the other side from the village.

Privacy is a subjective term.

Admittedly, I'm spoiled, but, I have lived in places where your closest neighbor is half a mile, to a mile, away. I have also lived in apartments, and condominiums. I currently live alone in my house which is located in a small bedroom community about 30 miles outside of Phoenix, Arizona. (I telecommute whenever possible.)

Compared to the first, the rest (including my current home), don't feel private, at all. (Yeah, I know, wah-wah.)

I think that is more F.U.D.. Please try to have a little more faith in human ingenuity. It may seem that we are headed to doom, and gloom, but, I don't think it is as worrisome as you predict. We'll find workable solutions, and life will go on.
(Unless, of course, we do something really stupid with our nuclear toys.)

"City-dwellers". Yup, I screwed up on that. Having spent my entire life in the western half of the US, I forget that what others call towns are what I tend to think of as cities, and what others call cities, I call places I really don't want to be.

(And, yes, I will be taking the first reasonable opportunity I can, to get further away from Phoenix - notorious sprawl, as you probably know.)

We will adapt to different ways of life, as necessary, and we will likely do it only when necessary. (We in the general sense.)

Honestly, keep up the good thinking. I appreciate people who try to come up with solutions.

Whoops. I left out the point of the post.

I'm not sure BMI is a good measure any way you cut it.

I broke the 200lbs. mark at eleven years old.

I'm only 5'10". My heaviest weight was 272lbs. playing football in high school.

My lightest weight as an adult was 203lbs. with almost no visible fat about 7 years later.

Lately, I'm somewhere in the middle. I probably said "super-size me" a bit more than I should have, and I'm not real keen on exercise anymore.

You left out 'highly annoying'.

While I applaud your enthusiasm, and believe this is a pretty good idea for those that would be happy in that environment, your opinion of what the best living conditions are is vastly different than mine.

This model of living effectively sends shivers up my spine.

My preferred way of living is to be away from population centers, and only visit them when I have a need to do so.

If I want to be around people, I'll go find them. If I need supplies, I'll go to a place where I can get them.

Believe me, you don't want me around when I've had my fill of people. (The asshole switch really flips on.)

If this means that occasionally I'll have to slug along in the occasional 10-mile long traffic jam, I'm okay with that.

I don't see it as a waste of time, at all.

Sometimes less is more, but oftentimes, less is simply less.

So lets make sure we focus on ways to improve energy efficiency for everyone, not just those that would prefer to be city dwellers.

That's a good question. There have been a couple of small discussions about it lately.

I know it goes against the grain of "Information Should Be Free", but, as many have pointed out to me, Good Professional Journalists deserve to make a living, too. So, I hope this idea isn't too unpopular.

Maybe the online newspapers can stay competitive on the net.

What if they were to form cooperatives (or whatever the correct business type is called) where the news they publish is only on their site, and indexed by them only. They could then simply tell Google (if necessary) that they only want their main site to come up in the search results.

The online newspapers could then take advantage of the .htaccess, or robots.txt, files, and control it easily.

The only problem that would remain would be to make sure that the public knew about their news coop, then they could actually keep some sort of control over the content. Since they are in the newspaper business, so it shouldn't be too hard to tell their readers where to find them.

This would allow them to charge a subscription fee (I hope not), and would likely attract better advertising opportunities, and allow them to continue to function mostly as normal. In other words, they probably wouldn't have to tighten their belts so much that they put more journalists out of work.

As for local news, each participant could maintain their own sub-domain with their local stories on it. (e.g., chattanooga.newscoop.net)

They won't have the advantage of Google bringing all those additional eyes to their stories, but they could maintain some sort of viable business that way.

Any thoughts? (Constructive criticism, is desired here.)

+1, scary-but-plausible

Of course, we won't have to worry too much about that until the manufacturing actually comes back to the US.

(Whoa, I wrote a bit of a novelette here, sorry about that.)

I don't really disagree with you. When an issue makes it to true hot button status, like this has, then, I too wish people would make the time to educate themselves on the particular issue.

Unfortunately, this eventually creates a trend of just about any issue that someone decides is most important to them, ends up blown way out of proportion, and becomes added to the list of hot-button issues.

The issues that perhaps deserve this extra personal exposure most become difficult to identify, and the the quandary comes back to which issue is the most important to spend your time researching.

I won't speak for anyone else here, but, when I see an issue that the arguments are largely dogmatic, with a sprinkling of science thrown in, I tend think that perhaps my efforts would be better spent worrying about things I am likely to have more ability to help produce a beneficial outcome over.

I believe the pragmatic approach to global warming is to let the scientific branch of society determine the nature of the problem, verify it, and work with engineers to determine a workable set of options as solutions, which they then bring back to the persons responsible for making decisions. (Presidents, Kings, Prime Ministers, Dictators, Congress People, etc.)

Then the responsibility to determine the proper action to take needs to be addressed by the decision makers. To do this responsibly, they need to consult with the economists to determine what the most reasonable solution (as presented by the scientific community) to implement would be (in terms of cost-effectiveness), and set the priority of the problem accordingly to the rest of the issues that would hopefully be handled in the same way.

Once the proper action is determined for each issue, and the relative priority is set, then the decision makers need to determine how many of these issues they can really afford to deal with (in terms of what resources we have available, not how expensive is it, because it has already been prioritized), and then act accordingly.

The issues that are not dealt with get put back into the pool of things to be dealt with when it is possible to do so, and they will be re-prioritized with the next issues that are found.

Where this comes off the wire, is when an issue doesn't get prioritized in the way that some think it should, they become angry about it, and issue becomes political.

At this point, science is thrown out the window, and the proponents use emotional arguments in an attempt to give their issue higher priority, when, in fact, the reason it was put off, was it just didn't make the cut in terms of priority, or possibly that the solutions presented were deemed too costly to implement on the grand scheme of things.

The natural reaction to this for the decision makers is to attempt to put down the emotional arguments, which really doesn't work well in society, so they fight fire with fire, and their argument becomes emotional, too.

We end up with a great big mushroom cloud of emotion, where logic and reason are supposed to prevail, but are, for the most part, conspicuously absent.

Until we can agree to remove the emotion from the arguments, and simply concentrate on the problem, and its viable options, I think we will continue to spin our wheels.

As to the question itself, lets ask Joe Public what he thinks: (my observations)

Is Global Warming happening?

"Maybe so. If for no other reason than the warming trend that has happened since the last Ice Age."

(But, it is not because Joe Public has a tangible way (to him) to know for sure. If he did, there would be no buts about it.)

Do you (or anyone else) know exactly what is causing it?

"No, but, I don't think we are helping matters as much as we could with our environmental practices."

(So, Joe would likely agree that there is something we should do to attempt to mitigate the effects of what we are doing to our environment.)

Do we know what actions we can take to stop Global Warming?

"No. But, that is why we have scientists, and engineers."

(Joe Public doesn't know what the right action(s) to solve Global Warming are and doesn't think it is his job to know.)

Joe, what should be do about Global Warming?

(Joe Public is now paying attention to all of the arm-waving, and both sides of the argument are pretty intimidating to him.)

"On one hand, you have the 'We have to do SOMETHING!' crowd, which makes me think, 'Yep. Gotta do something because it sounds like the right thing to do.'"

"On the other hand you have the 'What if we do the WRONG something, and bites us in unexpected ways?' crowd which makes me think, 'Well, maybe we ought to wait for a better understanding before we act.'"

End of interview.

At this point, Joe Public is effectively paralyzed, and the pressure coming from both sides instills a need to make a decision, which is likely to be dogmatic, and will end up doing nothing other than intensifying the argument.

Joe has an alternative to self-educate himself about Global Warming, but, his time is valuable to him, so it's a task, and a half, in his eyes. And, he figures that scientists, and engineers, should be doing this for him, as that's their vocation.

If this problem is really as big as it is made out to be, he should drop everything he's doing, and begin studying the problem for himself. On the other hand, if it isn't, he will consider it a waste of his time. Either way, he will resent having to do the work because it takes away from his most important resource, which is his time.

Unfortunately, the sheer amount of work required to form a completely well-informed opinion, could take him years to study existing efforts to a point where he is satisfied with the veracity of what he is being told, and only then can make a truly responsible decision.

Any effort to self-educate that is less than that, will be omitting data, and views, that may be pertinent to the discussion, and he may just as well go back to the sound bites he hears on Fox News.

So, here we are.

If I were a decision maker, here's how I would want to handle it:

I think the only realistic solution would be to make some token effort that appeases both sides of the aisle, and hopefully lets the argument die down, and fall under the radar, eventually.

In the meantime, I would ask the scientific community to continue to (quietly) study the problem, find any possible solutions, then bring them to the table (quietly), and we'll work together (quietly) to address them as soon as it is practical to do so.

The key to solving it in my mind is to keep it from getting political as much as possible.

This has been hashed around quite a bit in this discussion, but, I think it is important to redundantly point out that regardless of the paper's credibility, it is not proper for a bureaucrat to decide what is worthy of being put forth for peer review. Deciding whether a paper is junk, or not, is up to the peers who review the paper, otherwise the peer review process becomes tainted.

Actually, I believe you. But, it seems that you are asking that we non-climatologists perform the peer review in this case, instead of letting the peer review process work like it is supposed to.

As logical as it sounds to tell people to educate themselves by reading the paper (and supporting documents) for themselves to come to their own conclusion, that logic breaks down when you take into consideration all of the other issues that are important that people are expected to make informed decisions about, in addition to whatever topic is being discussed.

It is not realistic to expect every person to research all the ins-and-outs, and ramifications, of everything that is important.

We have to put our faith in experts, trusting that peer review works, and raise the bullshit flag when something happens that jeopardizes the peer review process. Otherwise, we would spend every waking moment researching all of these important things on our own, and end up accomplishing nothing ourselves. That removes our ability to work on the things that we may be experts in.

There is just too much going on to be well-informed on every topic that could be important, and it is impossible to assign proper priority to each topic, without relying on expert opinion.

And, yes, that arguments coming from both sides are so heavily laden with emotional propaganda, does make me sick. I think both sides are guilty as sin in this respect.

Sarcasm: ON
Thanks!
Sarcasm: OFF

That's a good point, and yes, I did consider it before posting.

The merits of your statement actually set up another argument that I am in the passionate minority over, but they are even more off-topic than we are now, so I won't expand on how to prevent the criminal mentality.

The main point I was trying to make is that I don't think it is reasonable to expect people share the burden equally when they make a conscious decision that reduces the actual burden for everyone. These burdens should be adjustable, IMO, based on how much of the resource that you actually use.

I'm not saying that we childless folks should pay zero, that would be incredibly selfish, but I also don't think it is fair to say that we should have to pay the full share, either. By default, we are making the burden less for everyone.

I think if we were to implement sliding scales for these types of things, where you picked up a greater share of the burden based on your use of these resources, that people might be a whole lot more conscious of the consequences of the decisions they make, and might just make those decisions in more responsible manner (e.g., have 2 kids, instead of 10, because you know it is easier to support financially).

Yes, I think this would add additional complexity, but not much more than to create a table where the education tax rate that you pay is in the column that corresponds to the number of children you have. I think this would go a long way towards making the system seem fair, and equitable.

You know, this kind of thinking has always rubbed me the wrong way. Who the heck are you to make that judgment?

I have no kids, and don't intend to have any kids. I think I, and others like me, might just be entitled to a bit of break on that.

After all, only 12 years of my life were spent using those resources. I don't mind throwing a reasonable amount into the kitty for that.
(Even though that was parents responsibility, really.)

If my kidless status changes, I do see it as my responsibility to pay for the resources required to educate my kid(s).

Why is it again, that I need to pay to educate other people's ankle-biters?

I pay the taxes, but I sure don't like paying them.

It's like adding insult to injury when I see how inefficiently those dollars are spent by the time they get to the public education system.

So, to sum up your first three paragraphs, there are very few people who you would consider qualified to make informed judgments on the matter.

That comes off a bit on the academically snobbish side to me. I hope you didn't mean it that way.

If Global Warming is likely to be a human race ender (or some other really nasty outcome), then I would think that you would want all the smart people you could find working on it, without regard to their chosen specialty.

I also wonder how many absolutely brilliant people are out there, that don't have the "proper" academic degree, that could lend incredible insight to the problem that won't be given the time of day because they chose a different path in their studies?

As to your last paragraph, I could not agree more.

Used car salesmen can probably provide a lot of insight, too.

Emotional Purchases ~ Impulse Buying ~ FUD have strong similarities.

Impulse purchase