gildone

I have to ask: based on what evidence? I'd like to believe this, but the more I read about alternative fuels, the energy returned on energy invested of alternative fuels, their dependency upon oil-based infrastructure extract the necessary resources, manufacture, and deploy them, and outlook for global oil production over the next 5 years (e.g.: http://www.energybulletin.net/node/50175), etc, etc the more I'm not convinced.

Those land grants weren't free, though. In exchange, the railroads had to give the government preferential shipping rates. If I recall correctly from Steve Goddard's book: Getting There, there were hearings on this in Congress in the 1930s and it was determined that the railroads, through the preferential rates, had paid the government back several times over.

That is the location of Ohio Railcar Services. I would guess they are probably there for parts or to be refurbished for private car owners.

I went past this location earlier this year. The cars are still there. I'm wondering if it's this facility: Ohio Railcar Services 5232 Tod Ave SW Lordstown, OH

Apparently he has no problem with public money being spent on highways so he can drive his private car, or on airplanes for that matter. What people? The suits in business class? College students and families with kids? Obviously, this guy thinks trains are for the lower classes-- he's a bigot. Nice. I was passing out cards for the 3-C public meetings to the train watchers in Berea yesterday (not all foamers, by the way. On weekends at least half of them are families with kids). The families were all excited about the 3-C. The foamers were supportive but more tenuously so. One guy said, "There's one reason it's not going to happen-- CSX. They are anti-passenger". I told him that CSX is on record with ORDC as supporting the Ohio Hub. He didn't want to believe me no matter what I said. Then he just said, "It's not going to happen". To which I replied: "If everyone who just wants to throw their arms up in the air and say it's not going to happen would instead speak up in support, then it will happen. The only way to guarantee that it won't happen is to do nothing. The only way to have a democracy is to actually participate." He didn't have a response other than "good luck with the meeting". The two friends he was with were receptive and just said "don't worry about him"

Since opposition to the 3-C seems to be brewing (see article above from Pugu) from the usual suspects (contractors, oil lobby, truckers, etc), I'd love to see some creative, tech-savvy person create a YouTube video showing a person handcuffed to a gas pump with the hand of an oil company executive picking the wallet out of his pocket. Some sort of sound bite could include: "The road builders want to keep you chained to the gas pump so big oil can pick your pocket." Anyone know any creative, tech-savvy people with videography skills and a little extra time on their hands?

Oil Spin http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/09/04/oil_spin?page=full Matthew Simmons, Foreign Policy Last week, four of the world's most outspoken oil aficionados waded into the controversy of peak oil, publishing articles packed with myth and distortion. This "Gang of Four" all claimed the issue was silly, moot, or simply a myth. The four pieces were Pulitzer Prize-winning author Daniel Yergin's seven-page article in Foreign Policy, energy analyst Michael Lynch's three column op-ed in the New York Times, analyst Edward Morse's essay in Foreign Affairs, and scholar Amy Jaffe's paper published by the Baker Institute at Rice University. Here is a quick synopsis of the views expressed by all four writers:

A Ning page has been created to facilitate follow-up to the Sustainable Cleveland 2019 Summit that was held last month (August '09). Here's the summary from the page: http://clevelandsummit.ning.com/ August 12-14, 2009, Mayor Frank G. Jackson hosted an Appreciative Inquiry (AI) summit, bringing together a diverse group of people vested in and dedicated to Cleveland to use their vast knowledge and imagination to create an action plan for building a green economy for Cleveland’s future. The goal was to create a 10-year action plan for economic sustainability that will support business growth; protect the environment; and, create opportunities for individuals to prosper. Sustainable Cleveland 2019 attracted top-notch speakers to help inspire participants and encourage dialogue at next week’s summit, including experts from the White House Council on Environmental Quality, IBM, and Continental Airlines. There are several sub-groups on the page, including a Sustainable Transportation group: http://clevelandsummit.ning.com/group/sustainabletransportation The first two comments are about rail.

This is correct. For a family of 3, it's roughly the same to take the Auto Train as it is to fly and rent a car for a week (but only if you book far enough in advance). For a family of four it is less.

^This was before people like Tom Patton were in the Senate. Back then the problem was the House, but now with term limits, all these guys do is jump from one chamber to the other when they reach their limits. Patton was in the House then.

Just because I acknowledge that peak oil is an occurring trend and that I acknowledge that, given the time frame we are working under, that problems with the transition are going to result, doesn't translate into me saying it's some sort of world-ending crisis, "repent ye sinner" blah blah The manner in which you have been carrying out this discussion is one of a market fundamentalist because your responses continue to consist primarily of hyperbole and repetition of ideology. I've been providing a point by point response to you that includes a mixture of facts and rational analysis. However, you just ignore and/or dismiss everything I say without any sort of thoughtful, reasoned response. How about being more specific here? Otherwise you're just saying "because I said so". You keep equating any sort of government action with "ramming it down our throats". That's the voice of an ideologue. I tried to explain to you that there is a cadre of people out there who are studying the energy returned on energy invested for all the various alt.energy and technologies and what their conclusions are. You just ignored it with no specifics of your own. What was it that you said below about fundamentalists not needing to provide specifics? You obviously haven't read what I've been saying very closely because I don't reject market economics entirely. I provided you with specific examples where market failures have occurred and are occurring, including with energy, but what has your response been? Nothing. Nothing except saying the equivalent of "you're wrong because markets always work and markets always work because I say they always work". You asked for specifics, I provided some, and you ignored them. Therefore, while you may not be a market fundamentalist, and I'll accept that, you have been responding like one in our discussion. I have acknowledged that there is some market reaction occurring, but somehow you keep ignoring this too. All your examples prove is that there is a level of market participation. It does not prove that the level of market participation is occurring fast enough to enable a smooth transition, which is the problem that those who have been and continue to spend considerable time studying the peak oil problem are saying. I hate to say it, but you also appear to be ignorant of the fact that a lot of your so-called "market reaction" that is occurring in no small part due to government action: subsidies to solar, and wind, tax credits for energy efficiency upgrades to buildings, states changing the regulatory structure of electricity to mandate things like net metering and requiring utilities to pay a fair price for the electricity being generated from rooftop solar panels, R&D money and tax incentives from the federal government and the states (such as the Third Frontier program in Ohio). I think you need to go here: http://www.dsireusa.org/ and look over the extensive list of federal and state incentives that are pushing the market. It's moving faster at the municipal level in many cities (including Cleveland) and the state level in several states. The fact aside that there has been federal action that has been pushing the "market reaction" along as I stated above, the problems at the federal level with getting anything done are more complex than just "the government can't do anything". There are some key reasons for this, as I see it, but this isn't the thread for that discussion. Suffice it to say, when you can come up with some specific, factual and rational counter arguments, rather than virtually ignoring my specific points and repeating your ideology, I'll be happy to continue the discussion. Otherwise, I can see that I've done is waste my time trying to have a reasonable discussion with you.

Oh really? People don't want Social Security? People don’t want public schools and parks and public roads? People don't want consumer protection laws? People don't want any regulation at all of the environment so we can go back to the days when we were like China is now? (Just to name a few things...) I didn't say the market wasn't going to bring any changes. I said in the instance of peak oil, most experts (who have devoted considerable time and effort studying the problem, including some that tend to be pro market) are saying the market won't bring the changes fast enough. As I explained, those who have studied this in detail agree that a smooth transition requires a minimum of 20 years. We’re at 10 or less. 6 according to some oil companies. I don’t think you appreciate the scale of infrastructure changes that are required to adapt to an energy system that doesn’t revolve around oil. It will take decades to change. We’re already on a short lead time with peak oil, the market didn’t perceive it when it should have. The market is bringing a few technologies forward, but it is not preparing us for a smooth transition. Another example would be that many fisheries around the globe have begun to crash. This is a problem that has been known for nearly 20 years, but that didn’t stopped “the market” from deploying bottom trawlers to “increase” the catch. Bottom trawlers are hastening this long known problem with fisheries, but “the market” hasn’t stopped using them. There is no perception in “the market” that fisheries are a finite resource. Timber production is dropping in timberlands that have harvested multiple generations of trees. This is what happens when timberlands aren’t managed properly. The way “the market” has managed timberland is to maximize profits now, not maximize the productivity of timberlands for the long haul, because that means smaller profits now. The Oglalla Aquifer under the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas has been dropping for decades. The solution of “the market” hasn’t been to manage the aquifer sustainably but rather to just drill deeper wells and mine the groundwater that much faster. There is no perception that the aquifer is finite. The solution “the market” wants for looming water problems west of the Mississippi isn’t market based at all... it’s is to spend public money to divert water from the Great Lakes. You’re obviously a market fundamentalist. That’s fine. You’re welcome to your opinion. But, the facts bear out that while there are things that markets do well, there are also things they don’t do well. I’ve given some examples above, and there are more in the remainder of my post. Again, there is a market failure here. “The market” has not taken into account the cost of screwing up the Earth’s natural carbon cycle– which is exactly what we have done. Carbon taxes and cap-and-trade are ways to make fossil fuels bear their true cost because the market has failed to do it, and we are getting climate change as a result (Incidentally, cap-and-trade, championed by the administration of George H.W. Bush, was very successfully used to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions in the 1990s, and it worked). “The market” has also failed to recognize a host of energy efficiency measures (amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars of savings annually) that could have been profitably implemented years ago. Yet “the market” falsely assumed that if there were any profitable energy efficiency measures out there, they would have been implemented by now. Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) has written extensively about this over the years. There are lots of papers at RMI’s website (www.rmi.org) and lots of interviews with Lovins can be found on the web (both written and video) I suggest you do some research in this area, if you want to learn more. One of the things the market is notorious for is externalizing as many costs as possible and foisting as many of those costs as possible on the public and the public sector. “The market” has wrongly assumed that the environment has no economic value other than for the extraction of resources, and in various and sometimes subtle ways has wrongly assumed resources are infinite. It assigns no value to vibrant communities and healthy families, which require, among other things, that people earn living wages. “The market”instead exploits people and pushes hard to drive down wages. “The market” assigns no value to clean air and clean water, and if it wasn’t for government involvement in these areas, the Cuyahoga River would still be catching fire. “The market” assigns dollar values to things, but not all things are properly quantified by dollars. For example, good teachers and qualified paramedics, firefighters, and policeman provide more intrinsic value to society than professional athletes and movie stars. Yet, “the market” assigns far higher dollar values to athletes and movie stars. But, as the experts in the peak oil crowd predicted, as the peak is approached, we would not see gradual price increases, but price spikes followed by economic downturns and temporary drops in price followed by spikes again. So far, it looks like they are right. What you have been saying and how you are saying it amounts to “the market will work because I say it will”. Only if the government acts by changing its current policies toward land use, energy, and transportation. Very few people are saying the suburbs should go away. You’re also assuming that we will be able to do a one-for-one switch from oil to other forms of energy to keep all the cars running as they are now. That’s not likely. Not only is oil is unique in its concentration of energy for use as a transportation fuel, but all the other technologies are in some way oil dependent whether it’s petrochemicals or oil-intensive resource extraction techniques necessary to mine at all of the metals and minerals and the energy intensive methods necessary to process them. Serious researchers of peak oil continue to look at the energy returned on energy invested for non-conventional oil and alternative energies and technologies. The numbers keep showing that we are going to have to learn to get by on less energy than we are used to. That’s going to translate in to changes in how we inhabit the landscape and how we remain mobile that are different than what we are used to. I have news for you... land use is already restricted by zoning codes that have been replicated across the vast majority of the country that make anything but automobile-centric sprawl illegal. So, what you are in effect saying is that you oppose loosening of those restrictions to make other forms of land use legal. It is the height of hubris to assume we are too dumb to plan for the future. It is precisely our failure to make decisions for our descendants in advance that we are up to our eyeballs in both public and private debt and expecting them to pay it back. It is the height of hubris to, even at this late hour, fail to recognize that fossil fuels are finite resource and that they should have been treated with more respect long ago. It is the height of hubris to steal from our descendants by spending the Earth’s natural capital faster than it can be replenished. It is the height of hubris to knowingly continue to screw up the very environment that sustains our lives and from which we have, in one way or another, derived all of our economic wealth.

Peak oil isn't a theory. It's how all oil wells and well fields behave. Drill them with all the best available technology that there is, and they produce on a more or less bell-shaped curve. Production rises, peaks at a maximum production rate then either falls or plateaus for a while then falls. There's no conspiracy out there to use peak oil as "a pretext for heavy-handed government intervention". Most experts agree that in order to have a smooth economic transition to a post-peak oil economy requires at least a 20-year lead time. That's because there are a lot of infrastructure changes that have to occur in order to switch to other energy sources and become more efficient with energy use. One of the things markets don't do well is provide a proactive response to something that requires such a long lead time. That's the rub with peak oil. It has been long predicted by the peak oil crowd that the price signals markets need to react would come too late for a smooth transition. And, they appear to be correct. It's now looking like we have less than 10 years. (This doesn't mean apocalypse, by the way, it just means the transition will be more difficult and more disruptive that it would have been if we had started sooner). Changes are going to come as a result of peak oil whether the government does anything or not, and some of those changes are not going to be popular. It's just reality. Like it or not, government sets some of the key conditions and rules of the marketplace by what it chooses to tax, regulate, or spend money on. Sometimes what government does works and sometimes it doesn't, but I am tired of the market-fundamentalist theories that markets always know what's best for society. There are things that markets do well and there are things that markets don't do well, and it's long past time that we acknowledge that. There are things that the government can do that would be helpful... like bring more balance to our transportation system, properly set the price of driving at it's true costs instead of riddling it with hidden subsidies, reduce subsidies to fossil fuels so that they are priced more closely to their true costs, etc. That's enough for now... gotta go...

KJP already addressed this well, but I'm going to add my 2 cents.... I hate to have to keep repeating this... starting at 79 mph is a successful model that has been done in 14 other states that fund passenger trains. Many of those routes are still only operating at 79 mph. The Downeaster in Main operates at 69 mph. Ohio isn't doing anything new, untested, or unproven. One example: in North Carolina, their two state funded corridors both take longer than driving, but they are popular. There are plans to speed them up, but the fact that they haven't been yet hasn't prevented people riding them in healthy numbers. By the way, I already have at least 7 instances this year when I would have used the 3-C, and that doesn't count additional trips I probably would have made just because the train would be there.

Response to Lynch/Yergin: Commentary: Michael Lynch, Daniel Yergin--The Denizens of Peak Oil Denial by Steve Andrews and Randy Udall http://www.energybulletin.net/node/49998 (Note: Commentaries do not necessarily represent ASPO-USA's positions; they are personal statements and observations by informed commentators) Last week Michael Lynch and Daniel Yergin pummeled the concept of peak oil in two mainstream media outlets. Lynch's feisty but nearly fact-free op-ed for the New York Times and Yergin's more scholarly reflection in Foreign Policy whipped up further discussion in the blogosphere. Although the majority of on-line responses to Lynch's piece were negative, peak oil advocates were put on the defensive. The two critics employ distinctly different separate styles — Yergin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and suave, savvy corporate schmoozer, while Lynch resembles the kind of pit bull that enjoys attacking bicyclists from behind. Both have been pounding away at peak oil since its "modern renaissance" began with the March 1998 article in Scientific American, "The End of Cheap Oil." These two masters of denial enjoy flogging peak oil. It's clearly what their paying clients in Big Oil want to hear, and sometimes the peak oil community inadvertently hands them ammo that is too good to pass up....

Prophets of doom?? Alarmism? Uh, that's over the top. Since when is acknowledging the reality of peak oil translate into doom and alarmism?

^If refining capacity was the problem, then it should have only been the price of the refined products that spiked, not the price of crude. It was the price of crude that was the problem.

Amtrak's Auto Train Leaves Driving in the Dust: http://www2.tbo.com/content/2009/aug/23/tr-amtraks-auto-train-leaves-driving-in-dust/ Of course, in the comment section another clueless person berates subsidies to rail but says nothing about roads or aviation subsidies...

Forwarded to me by BuckeyB: ABC News Video of car-free german city. I think it's the same city that articles have been posted about in various places in the UO forums: http://gmy.news.yahoo.com/vid/15288400

I like BuckeyB's idea of connecting Akron to the 3-C by waiting for the 90 mph build-out of the CLE-PGH and 3-C corridors and connecting Akron via a DMU between Ravenna and Galion. The DMU could easily be coupled to the corridor trains giving Akron service to both YTO-PGH and Galion-Columbus-Dayton-Cinci.

^no problem... I actually remembered some of my 5 years of geology from college (haven't used it since).

This is a perfect example of peak oil disinformation that routinely gets spread around by the same few people. Michael Lynch, author of this Op-Ed is one of them. Go to link for entire article. There is a good rebuttal at The Oil Drum: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5711 I inserted some comments in red http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/25/opinion/25lynch.html?_r=1&th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print ‘Peak Oil’ Is a Waste of Energy By MICHAEL LYNCH Amherst, Mass. REMEMBER “peak oil”? It’s the theory that geological scarcity will at some point make it impossible for global petroleum production to avoid falling, heralding the end of the oil age and, potentially, economic catastrophe. Well, just when we thought that the collapse in oil prices since last summer had put an end to such talk, ... It did not put an end to "such talk" it has been argued by the peak oil crowd that price volatility would be a hallmark of approaching the peak in production whereby there would be spikes in prices that would slow the economy which in turn would cause a temporary drop in demand then, as the economy recovers, the price spikes return. Like many Malthusian beliefs, peak oil theory has been promoted by a motivated group of scientists and laymen who base their conclusions on poor analyses of data and misinterpretations of technical material... I've never seen anything written by Lynch that explains what these "misinterpretations" are.

^actually, it's based on the production profiles in the oil producing countries. Whether a well, well field, a collection of well fields in an entire country, production follows a bell-shaped curve. Once a country passes its production peak, it doesn't ever recover. 54 or 55 of the 65 countries that produce oil are past their peaks.

The oil we have been using is, in fact, oil from biomass-- mostly algae from a warmer period in the earth's history that began in the Carboniferous Period which began roughly 360 million years ago and ended about 200 million years ago. Virtually all oil has been found in sedimentary rocks of marine origin. Our coal reserves were also formed during this period and is found in sedimentary rocks of both marine and freshwater origin (swamps, bogs, lakes, etc). It is biotic oil theory that has lead us to successfully find the oil we've been using. It should also be noted that the existence of liquid methane on Titan and on planets in the outer solar system are not evidence of abiotic oil on earth. Early in its geologic history, the Earth's atmosphere contained a lot of methane, but it was in the gaseous form. It's liquid on Titan and the outer planets because it's so damn cold out there. The composition of the Earth's atmosphere has changed since then. It is doubtful that there is very much methane deep in the earth's mantle. When the earth was a molten blob as it formed, density separation occurred and as a result, the core and mantle are dominated by heavier elements. Any carbon that may exist there, and the evidence of it is not strong, is not enough to matter as far as producing recoverable oil. It is also important to remember that oil formation zone is between roughly 7,500 and 15,000 feet below the earth's crust. Below that, the heat and pressures are just too great to have anything but methane. Furthermore, iIf methane were to seep up and form in the "oil zone", it would also be found in rocks of non-marine origin, not just marine origin. Long story short, the abiotic oil theory is weak. So weak, in fact, that it is not generally accepted among geologist as a source of commercially recoverable oil. There is a good discussion of abiotic oil here: http://www.energybulletin.net/node/2423

How Walkability Raises Home Values in U.S. Cities http://blog.walkscore.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/WalkingTheWalk_CEOsforCities.pdf EFFECTS OF WALKABILITY ON PROPERTY VALUES AND INVESTMENT RETURNS http://www.u.arizona.edu/~gpivo/Walkability%20Paper%208_4%20draft.pdf