You may very well be right about the non-efficient continuing to purchase the same vehicles, gas tax or guzzler tax be dam*ed. But the worst is that the non-efficient crowd continue to consume and pollute as they do now. In addition to the guzzler tax, maybe we should increase their annual registration renewal by 500% too.

Yet, you think they'll implement this new guzzler tax program properly? You are arguing out of both sides of your mouth, here. Taking an existing program (CAFE) and improving it (raise the numbers, and do so more frequently) seems a pretty straight-forward thing to do - I imagine Clinton or Bush could figure this out even). BTW, I'd like to still see the incompetent government *try* to get a guzzler tax rolling. Almost any attempt would be better than nothing.

I never said anything of the sort. In fact *I* drive alone in my long commute to work to provide for my family, so I'd be paying the extra for my proposed gas-tax as well. It's just that my HCH2 will make a gas-tax more bearable. And if a gas-tax was too painful for me, I might consider the other alternatives (mass-transit, car-pooling, etc.). Each person is always free to do as they see fit, but there should be consequences for our actions. Pain-at-the-pump will push more people to ride the bus, or buy a more efficient car (like I already did), or simply drive less (combine trips, use the phone, tele-commute, etc.).

Yes, I believe none of us knows *EXACTLY* where to draw that line between efficient and inefficient, and ALL of us need to wake up and try to do better: rich, poor, wasteful and efficient. Resting on our relative efficiency is like saying "I've done my part, that's all I can do". The people who would still by the inefficient vehicle with the high gas-guzzler tax would not feel "punished". They'll just feel that it's the cost to get what they want - there's no punishment there. Plus, putting older more inefficent cars out to pasture sooner (as many will be traded in for more fuel efficient cars) is a by-product of a consumables (gas) tax. The guzzler tax does nothing to get these older cars off the road sooner - in fact, many of the currently desirable older vehicles (my MB560SL for example) may become a little *more* desireable, since I nor a subsequent owner would pay any guzzler tax. This *could* be addressed by my annual registration fee-hike idea, though. I'd sell my MB, then.
A gas-tax IS an extra burden on the poorest, I agree. Of course I don't want this to push them over the edge into starvation. There must be a workable solution to aid the poor. However, I believe not taxing the consumable (gas) is not the answer, as it will not provide any incentive to reduce our usage. OPEC and other forces may make this point moot anyway soon, by pushing oil prices ever upward. If gas prices shoot up to $4-$5 a gallon on their own, I'll be OK without a gas tax. What do we do then about the poor?
I quite agree, but we must not water down what is meant by efficient. Your 25/25 is probably a good start, but it should increase over time. Oops, starting to sound like the concept of CAFE standards
I don't see why both programs couldn't go hand-in-hand.

 

If you are not going to consider sources that are related to respectable media sources that you do not like, then why should anyone who disagrees with you consider sources that are related to media sources that they do not like?

The gasoline guzzler tax should be enough to make many of them find more fuel efficient vehicles more appealing. It takes advantage of the fact that companies do pretty much whatever they can to help out #1, and doing nothing while a gasoline guzzler tax eliminates their market share would go against that philosophy.

This is not some massive government plan. This is simply a tax and a tax rebate. If they implement it word for word, there should not be a problem, but you are right, I am giving the government too much credit, since it is highly likely that they will mess this up too.

I do not know about you, but I am in New York, and the bus system here is not exactly the safest form of transportation, even when ignoring the driving habits of the bus drivers. The chances of getting mugged or worse are quite high. Do you really want to lower the standard of living to that?

I already have, at what the vehicle manufacturers could do if they made fuel economy their #1 priority and make significant engineering investments in it, twenty-five miles per gallon. I also recall stating earlier in the thread that at some time after that, the figure could be raised to 30 mpg. If that is done, at some point every vehicle on the road will be getting at least 30 mpg and that will be a remarkable improvement over the 19.8 mpg average that we have today. Trading such a gain for minor gains, which is what will happen with a gasoline tax is not a good idea.

If a gasoline tax is such a solution, as it is billed to be, then the price hikes in the 1970s would have fixed everything, but they did not, things tapered off. Your natural response would be that the high prices were not enforced, but as time passes (say a decade), the economy evolves, inflation occurs, people cease to care (like they did after the War of Southern Secession), the high tax will cease to be so high and you will be exactly where you started while at the same time, you will have succeeded in causing many people great grief. I do not know, but I just do not find such a method productive.

By the way, it does not matter if people who would buy fuel inefficient vehicles anyway do not feel punished, as they will be subsidizing the purchases of those who do not buy inefficient vehicles, whose purchases will be much more substantial in quantity than theirs.

In America, cars can be almost as consumable as gasoline. Instead of taxing the gasoline and then having to help the poor, why not avoid the need to help the poor in the first place by lowering gasoline prices and seeing to it that vehicles that are being phased out are replaced with more efficient ones? You can do much less harm that way, as vehicles are always being phased out and replaced. Within 50 years, pretty much all of the vehicles of a period are eliminated from the fleet, much like it is with the vehicles from the 1950s, as automobile manufacturers made more appealing cars with features like power brakes and power steering and people wanted them. If gasoline guzzlers were taxed to the point where the fuel economy must improve or it will no longer be economically feasible to produce them as no one would buy them, then this natural process will allow the United States to see huge gains in fuel economy, as vehicle manufacturers will continue to make new vehicles more and more appealing; failing to do so would be bad for business. Fuel economy has been poor for so many years, that a transition period will not bad the worst possible thing. The worst possible thing will be to do things that the past has shown ineffective at anything but lowering the standard of living, as the result will be much the same.

I agree, it should increase at some point in time. If it is instituted, I would expect that as little as seven years later, a 5 mpg increase to the requirements of the tax could be made. Any further increases beyond that are beyond what I can foresee.

As for why they cannot go hand-in-hand, I will tell you. One tax works with market forces while the other ignores it. Ignoring market forces is not sensitive to people's needs, especially to the needs of the people who will be in need if such measures are taken. A gasoline tax will have people starve (or worse, if they take public transportation here in New York) while a gasoline guzzler tax will place no additional burden on them, unless waiting until that new car is more fuel efficient or paying a tax because they could not wait for vehicle manufacturers to improve their vehicles so they avoid the tax is considered a burden.

 

Indeed, here's more to that regard:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php...even_J._Milloy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Milloy

Who to believe, paid lobbyist shill or hundreds of peer reviewed scientific journal entries. That's a tough one.

The junkscience website has been thoroughly discredited by many. Do you have another source?

~X~

 

I guess my tongue-in-cheek reponse was too subtle. I was jokingly letting you know that for some here a FOX News source is enough to end the debate. I was just beating Xyrus to the punch. The ELF death threat was the clue.

I'm humored how peer-reviewed reports get spun on every side by activists and lobbyists, but we are all happy to believe the spin we agree with and not the spin we don't. Milloy does essential the same thing that Greenpeace or The Sierra Club, or The Center for Science in the Public Interest, or the WorldWatch Institute or World Wide Fund for Nature, or the Audubon Society. They all are pushing an agenda that supports their own existence.

If Milloy was as open as he could be, he'd allow comments on the end of his CO2 piece so that others could directly counter anything. I prefer blogs that are completely open to criticism. It appears that www.junkscience.com has switched to a format that allows comments, but it doesn't appear that Milloys existing articles are up for review. I'd be interested in seeing what the folks at www.realclimate.com would say about Milloys CO2 piece.

 

NOAA is government funded scientific organization that studies climate and weather. NASA is government funded organization that also studies climate and weather. To add to this, there are hundreds of Universities around the globe that are contributing volumes of information on climatic studies. All of these are submitted for formal peer review.

If you have sources of equal credibility, then please post them. But junkscience is most certainly not.

The rest of your post is along similar thinking, though the "luxury" tax I was talking about had little to do with luxury and more to do with those who can afford the big gas-guzzling beasties.

~X~

 

The scientific journals are only giving a portion of the picture, as they are censoring all scientific papers that can be construed to question global warming:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...01/wglob01.xml

Until scientific journals have an open mind and allow peer review to occur openly and freely, one can only find the full picture by reading websites that have been thoroughly discredited by those who express differing opinions. I do not know about you, but I do not think that a censored science is a science that we should consider as being thoroughly peer reviewed and correct.

You cited Wikipedia; here is a link to a study conducted by a professor at the University of Maryland that concludes that Wikipedia is biased:

http://doubletap.cs.umd.edu/WikipediaStudy/

I would research sourcewatch.org, as I have never heard of it, but given that it has watch at the end of its domain name and all of the websites that I have seen with similar domain names are biased, I do not think that researching it will be necessary.

 

Ahhhhh, once again, I see the problem:
That is exactly what 'peer review' means, they censor nonsense. Now if someone has some whackie idea about turning water into gasoline, they can find plenty of forums, including the "Telegraph." But those folks are known to be fools for whatever entertaining item comes down the pike.

The reason for "peer review" is to make sure the report has quality. That someone didn't screw-up their sums, conduct a flawed experiment, or make a false claim. It is a quality system that keeps the nonsense out.

Bob Wilson

 

Peer review means that everything is out in the open for any scientist to review and criticize so that every conceivable point is thoroughly covered, not that they censor what they perceive to be nonsense on the shakiest of grounds.

There were a bunch of college students that were able to get a paper that a computer fabricated accepted by a scientific convention and they were subsequently expected to give a speech on it, until they told the convention that it was fabricated, as part of an experiment. Even sadder is that the paper's title on its own did not make any sense. Here is the url to a news article on it:

http://www.newscientisttech.com/chan...24963.700.html

So the notion that a paper has to not fall into a reviewer's definition of nonsense is nonsense. It only has to be done according to appropriate scientific form, of which many of the the papers questioning the notion of global warming that these scientific journals rejected were; otherwise, they would not have been rejected on the ground that the information exists on the internet, as how many papers do not fall into that category?

 

Ah HAAA! I see your problem:
It means no such thing. A peer reviewed paper is one that is submitted to a panel of editors who read the paper; offer corrections if merited; and reject those submissions that don't meet the mark. I've been on both sides of the process and it is one of the best ways to make sure what is published is worth reading.

Bob Wilson

 

Define what is worth reading in the context of a scientific paper. Is it something that you do not agree with or something that a hundred of you do not agree with?

Edit: This is supposed to be a discussion of oil prices. I really think that we should return to the discussion. I am leaving what I originally wrote in this post as I had already posted it before noticing how off topic we were. If the next poster would like to return to the topic of oil prices without touching this tangent, please do; otherwise, I will do so myself. On the topic of oil prices, oil is now $53.53. How low do people think that it will go?