Re: [asa] $4 gas is here to stay

"Do you see any hope for the future?"

There is of course hope. However, the hope needs to be for a future that's quite different from the present.

Time may eventually prove that our current civilization rests on a hydrocarbon bubble that's soon to deflate. I say deflate, not pop, because market forces will almost certainly lead to a less precipitous drop in hydrocarbon supply than Glenn considers: When supplies drop, prices will rise to the point where they will force behavioral changes that will lead to diminished usage. No one can predict the overall consequences, partly because the consequences will come from millions of individuals making their individual adjustments.

A few consequences are predictable: The rise in prices will create pressures of unprecedented urgency to find alternatives. If no single alternative comes to our rescue, there will be multiple piecemeal alternatives, some of the backyard variety.

Markets driven by profit motive will probably be more effective than government programs. Governments have a tendency to support measures that are stupid and counterproductive when evaluated in terms of increasing energy supply--e.g., windfall profit taxes on oil companies! E.g. #2, subsidizing usage (India and China). E.g. #3, unreasonable restrictions on offshore drilling.

Our best hope is that the decline in conventional supplies will be gradual enough to give market forces a chance to develop adequate alternatives. The hope for gradual rather than precipitous decline gets support from the fact that no one in the West really knows how much oil is left in the Near East and other places. For example, Saudi Arabia asserts that it can raise production to 15 million barrels a day but that demand is not adequate to justify such rise. (If true, this means that some of the recent price increase is speculative bubble.)

Don

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Jack<mailto:drsyme@cablespeed.com>
  To: Glenn Morton<mailto:glennmorton@entouch.net> ; 'Iain Strachan'<mailto:igd.strachan@gmail.com>
  Cc: asa@calvin.edu<mailto:asa@calvin.edu>
  Sent: Saturday, June 07, 2008 3:20 PM
  Subject: Re: [asa] $4 gas is here to stay

  So what is your solution Glenn? I respect your opinion. I dont like your
  short fuse. I think Ian and others have gently raised arguments against
  what you claim, which if true sounds like we are all doomed. I am probably
  30 years younger than you, and have children as young as 2, so I have a
  larger stake in the future than you do I suspect.

  I am not at all optimistic about the future, in fact I am very pessimistic.
  But, I am wearing rose colored glasses compared to you. So, again, do you
  see any hope for the future? If you do, can you describe it?

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: "Glenn Morton" <glennmorton@entouch.net<mailto:glennmorton@entouch.net>>
  To: "'Iain Strachan'" <igd.strachan@gmail.com<mailto:igd.strachan@gmail.com>>
  Cc: <asa@calvin.edu<mailto:asa@calvin.edu>>
  Sent: Saturday, June 07, 2008 2:32 PM
  Subject: RE: [asa] $4 gas is here to stay

>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu<mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu> [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
>> Behalf Of Iain Strachan
>> Sent: Saturday, June 07, 2008 12:25 PM
>> To: Glenn Morton
>> Cc: asa@calvin.edu<mailto:asa@calvin.edu>
>> Subject: Re: [asa] $4 gas is here to stay
>>
>> > And you know, I simply HATE this constant use of informal logical
>> fallacy of
>> > ad hominem (abusive). So the blinking what if Ditmar is from an ant-
>> nuclear
>> > lobby????? His mother might be a dog as well. But all of that is
>> totally
>> > and utterly irrelevant to whether or not his arguments are right.
>>
>> Glenn,
>>
>> Cutting out the worst of your invective against me, which I've already
>> made complaints to the list-owner about, as there is concern about the
>> tone of debate on this list, I will respond publicly to this one
>> point. I believe that whether or not Ditmar is in the anti-nuclear
>> lobby is EXTREMELY important as to whether his arguments are right,
>> and that there is a serious point to be made here that doesn't deserve
>> to be dragged down with suggestions about whether his mother is a dog.
>
> I didn't have a single thing to say about you. I had everything to say
> about
> your argumentation that he is to be doubted simply because he is
> anti-nuclear. To me, that is such bad argumentation that it needs to be
> pointed out.
>
> And you once again claim that his beliefs are important to his argument.
> There isn't a single logic book which would verify your claim. Even
> communists can tell the truth, so can anti-nuclear people. If one can't
> analyze the logic of arguments here, this place has truly decended into
> political correctness in my long absence, which I am soon to resume,
> probably to your happiness.
>
>
>>
>> First. I was not ad-hominem-ing Ditmar. I didn't even suggest that
>> he was in the anti-nuclear lobby - you extrapolated that from what I
>> said.
>
> Maybe I made a mistake. It wasn't ad hominem abusive, it was ad hominem
> circumstantial.
>
> "The other interpretation of the fallacy of argumentum ad hominem, the
> 'circumstantial' variety, pertains to the relationship between a person's
> beliefs nd his circumstances. Where two men are disputing, one may ignore
> the question of whether his own conention is true or fals and seek instead
> to prove that his opponent ought to accept it because of his opponent's
> special circumstances. Thus if one's adversayf isa clergyman, one may
> argue
> that a certain contention must be accepted because its denial is
> incompatible with the Scriptures. This is not to prove it true, but to
> urge
> its acceptance by that particular individual because of his special
> circumstances, in this case his religious affiliation. Or if one's
> opponent
> I, say a Republican, one may argue not that a certain proposition is true,
> but htat he ought to assent to it because it is implied by the tenets of
> his
> party. The classical example of this fallacy is the reply of the hunter
> when
> accused of barbarism in sacrificing unoffending animals to his own
> amusement. His reply is to ask his critic, "Why do you feed on the flesh
> of
> harmless cattle?" The sportsman here is guilty of an argumentum ad hominem
> because he does not try to prove that it is right to sacrifice animal
> life
> for human pleasure, but merely that it cannot consistently be decried by
> his
> critic because of the critic's own special circumstances, in this case his
> not being a vegetarian. Arguments such as these are not really to the
> point: they do not present good grounds for the truth of their conclusions
> but are intended only to win assent to the conclusion from one's opponent
> because of his special circumstances. They frequently do; they are often
> very persuasive.
> "In the previous paragraph we described the use of the
> circumstantial ad hominem to get one's adversary to accept a conclusion.
> It
> is also used as the basis for rejecting a conclusion defended by one's
> adversary, as when it is argued that the conclusions arrived at by one's
> opponent are dictated by his special circumstances rather than based upon
> reason or evidence. Thus if a manufacturer's arguments in favor of tariff
> protection are rejected on the grounds that a manufacturer would naturally
> be expected to favor a protective tariff, his critic would be committing
> the
> fallacy of argumentum ad hominem (circumstantial). This type of argument,
> though often persuasive, is clearly fallacious." Irving Copi,
> "Introduction
> to Logic," MacMillan, 1972, p 75-76
>
> Now, from your pemail I understand that I upset you when I said your
> argumentation wasn't very good. If on a scientific discussion board, one
> can't analyze the logic of a person's argumentation, then what is the
> point
> of the board, to sing kumbahyah and have group hugs? I truly am sorry that
> you have taken such offence to my merely pointing out the illogic of the
> argumentation. But isn't science about dissecting arguments? You are
> certainly welcome to point out where I am illogical (and I think you tried
> with that comment to me about YECs). I will welcome it if you show me
> where
> I am being illogical. It might take some work on your part but it will be
> worth the effort to improve my thinking skills.
>
>
>>
>> However, if you say so-what if Ditmar is from the anti-nuclear lobby.
>> I say it is actually very important, by analogy with the kind of
>> arguments YEC's make, where they leave out vital bits of evidence that
>> don't agree with their position. The same thing applies to people who
>> strongly take one side or the other in a controversial issue, and
>> nuclear power is such a controversial issue.
>
> Iain, you are proving my analysis of your argument. Compare this with what
> Copi said. Surely you can see the similarity (even if it makes you madder
> at
> me).
>
> If they leave out bits of evidence, then point those bits out (as you
> did)
> but don't act as if everything the guy says can't be true. I have been
> forced to acknowledge to many YECs that they were correct on various
> issues
> of geology--because they were. For me to hold my ground and say they can't
> be right because they leave bits out in other places isn't logical. Sorry,
> but that is the way I feel. I am not trying to make you mad. All I care
> about is the logic of the argument--which is what I criticized and you
> took
> badly.
>
>
>> My argument is very simple. Ditmar claims that self-sustaining
>> tritium breeding is IMPOSSIBLE, apparently on the grounds that you
>> need to use every neutron that burns a Tritium nucleus to breed
>> another Tritium atom. He even underlines his point by highlighting
>> that bullet point in red.
>
> But I never quoted Dittmar as saying that, which might indicate that I
> don't
> agree with him in that regard. I do feel that his arguments on uranium
> supply, which I did cite, say something important about energy supply. And
> I
> pointed out that few of those reactors are in operation. Since my last
> email
> I wrote I did some research. There are 36 plants being built. The US has
> none of them. If we are to replace oil with nuclear energy, I calculated
> that if the world oil production declined at 4% per year, we need to build
> 80/year with the number required in the future declining with the decline
> rate of oil. At $1.4 billion per plant, we would need something like $110
> billion in construction. Yes we could do it, but will we? I think not.
>
>
>>
>> The argument is patently nonsense, and it must be obvious that
>> millions of pounds of research money wouldn't get spent on a
>> technology that could never work for such a simple reason. Beryllium
>> is used as a neutron multiplier, and Ditmar omits to tell us this, and
>> lets us believe that the technology is attempting to achieve the
>> impossible.
>>
>> Now I don't know if Ditmar is in the anti-nuclear lobby or not & I
>> never suggested that he was. But he's either a very sloppy researcher
>> and didn't bother to find out how you get a breeding ratio > 1, or if
>> he IS in the anti-nuclear lobby, then I suggest that IF THAT IS THE
>> CASE, then he is being deliberately dishonest in not giving us the
>> facts. Reading his talk one might think "How stupid all those
>> scientists are being expecting to get self-sustaining tritium
>> breeding!"
>
> Technically you are correct that you didn't call him anti-nuclear but
> merely
> cited (why I don't know) that he is praised by anti-nuclear people. That
> isn't much different than logically saying that Obama is wrong on health
> care because he is supported by William Ayers, or that he is not to be
> trusted as president because he said there were 58 states. The point of
> his
> praising by the anti-nuke advocate shouldn't have been raised in an arena
> where facts and logic are supposed to rule. And, in this note you say it
> is
> important to his argument about uranium if he is in the anti-nuclear lobby
> or if he is wrong on tritium. Logically I don't see the connection. He
> might
> be right on one issue and wrong on another. I find myself that way many
> times. If I have to be correct on absolutely everything before I can be
> believed on anything, then I must tell you, don't believe a word I say.
> But
> then, applying that standard to you, I don't think I need to believe you
> on
> anything either.
>
>
>>
>> And finally, Glenn, I did not miss your point that we probably need
>> alternative energy much sooner than nuclear can provide. It's a very
>> worrying situation, and I'm not suggesting that nuclear is going to
>> save us. I was merely criticizing the evidence you presented.
>
> Well, in my mind, bringing up the possibility of breeder plants which will
> never be built is hardly dealing with the points I raised. If we don't'
> build them, I stand by the argument. We will run out of uranium fuel
> before
> we can turn U238 into other isotopes.
>
>
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Received on Mon Jun 9 05:53:45 2008