Pay in time or pay in cash

An article on CNN today discusses fears of higher gas prices in the wake of the hurricane have caused runs on gas stations in places, many of them far from the eye - or even the winds - of the storm.

Let the prices go up.

Here's the key passage: 

Canadian Ian McIntosh said gas prices jumped 57 cents per gallon overnight in Milton, Ontario.

"This stuff's in the tanks, it's just sitting in the gas stations, they're using this as a windfall event," the retired teacher said.

It's in the tank because the price went up, meaning you don't have cars stacked 15 deep to get undervalued gas.  But it does mean that if a fire truck or an ambulance or a man whose wife is having a baby three hours away and needs to fill up right now needs that gas then it will be there.

Increased prices in CANADA are a result of the fact that that gas is more valuable for now elsewhere - or more scarce because of events beyond anyone's control.  The prices go up to try and avoid what's happening in the places where the prices is staying the same - panic.  People getting gas they don't currently need because of the fear of paying twenty cents more for a few days.

Are there proprietors who cheat the system?  Of course, but no more than you see in the non-profit or government sectors.  Instead of always trying to cast blame, let's see some folks making a few more rational choices.

But everyone else is doing it!

This is brilliant.

I wish I'd read it before my previous post, but it serves to further the point. Thanks, Offa!

Even Rolling Stone gets it

The great danger of confronting peak oil and global warming isn't that we will sit on our collective asses and do nothing while civilization collapses, but that we will plunge after "solutions" that will make our problems even worse. Like believing we can replace gasoline with ethanol, the much-hyped biofuel that we make from corn.

That's the lead-in to a July 24th article from Rolling Stone that provides the best argument against use of ethanol I have ever read. It's full of fun facts:

• Even if the entire U.S. corn crop were used to make ethanol, the fuel would replace only twelve percent of current gasoline use.
• Filling the gas tank of an SUV with pure ethanol requires more than 450 pounds of corn -- roughly enough calories to feed one person for a year.
• the energy balance of corn ethanol is only 1.3-to-1 - making it practically worthless as an energy source.
• Corn is already the most subsidized crop in America, raking in a total of $51 billion in federal handouts between 1995 and 2005 -- twice as much as wheat subsidies and four times as much as soybeans. Ethanol itself is propped up by hefty subsidies, including a fifty-one-cent-per-gallon tax allowance for refiners.

Read it and and you will see that ethanol is not the answer to our future energy needs. You will also see the problems that come from government subsidies and having elected laymen pick technological winners and losers instead of having the market decide.

HT: Mercia Rising

Too liberal for liberals?

I'm currently in a uber-liberal mountain town out west on business. I got a press release under my door at the hotel this morning, accompanying my bill, letting me know about the simul-case of the Live Earth concerts going on around the world. From 3-7, they would have a big screen set up in the park so people could come and watch the concerts, allowing town folks to "take a stand...to confront and combat the global climate crisis."

The City will be at the event, answering questions about global warming and giving away a variety of energy-efficient compact florescent light bulbs, low-flow shower heads, and water-saving kits.

Very helpful. And sparsely attended. I saw about seven people sitting there. They were set for hundreds. Whoops.

My favorite thing is that it said these concerts were "designed to catalyze a global audience to cure the climate crisis." Because by listening to music, we all become instant climate doctors.

When I walked by, I did not become an instant climate doctor. I did, however, get a Shakira song stuck in my head.

Martians drive SUVs too?

Though I have not come out strongly in favor of any of the candidate (or non-candidate candidates) in the presidential race, I do like this commentary by Fred Thompson about global warming. An excerpt:

Some people think that our planet is suffering from a fever. Now
scientists are telling us that Mars is experiencing its own planetary warming:
Martian warming. It seems scientists have noticed recently that quite a few
planets in our solar system seem to be heating up a bit, including Pluto.

More in this good editorial from today's Providence Journal, which tempers its alarmism a bit based on these new facts.

HT: Mercia Rising

Conspiracy I say!

A couple days ago I posted about scientists who found that skin cells from mice may be as good or better than embryonic stem cells. Today, the Washington Post reports (in the Style section?!) on discussion that there may be a conspiracy afoot to kill efforts to fund American use of human embryos in stem cell research. Why? The research about the mice skin cells appeared in Nature the same day that the U.S. House of Reps was to vote on a bill to loosen restrictions on human embryo testing. What's more, a similar thing happened back in January.

Conspiracy? Really??

Choice quote from David Ropeik, a risk assessment expert at Harvard: "The fact that people are imputing anything more than sheer coincidence is 'just more proof that inside the Beltway the thinking is so myopic. They see the whole world through their own lens, and are blinded' to common sense."

Well said.

Of note: those commenting to the article on the Post's website seem to tilt towards agreeing with the ridiculousness of the article. I particularly like this one: "Ah yes, conspiracy lurks everywhere....maybe these stories come up because opposition to fetal stem cell research pushed scientists to look elsewhere...maybe?"

No babies were harmed in the creation of this post

This is interesting - a team of scientists has found a method to create "embryonic" stem cells without the embryo. They use mice cells, and they do this and that to it and, tada, stem cells. Though the scientists' goal was not to avoid the moral questions of embryonic stem cells, this new approach may succeed in that nonetheless.

I find this interesting for a couple reasons. First, if further tests continue to support the researchers' conclusions, it goes against what "everybody knows" in the stem cell debate, which is that nothing works better than embryonic stem cells. Superior results are not a static thing, and true value for society comes from a constant quest towards better methods, products, services, and ideas.

The other interesting piece is that no government money - or at least very little - seems to have gone into this study, which again counters another popular notion that progress won't happen unless the government gets involved. Looking at the Acknowledgements in the paper, it appears that all the lead researchers are privately supported, save for one who gets some money from the Canadian government.

For all the time we spend debating this and so many other issues, all of us would probably be better off if we spent more time pondering new solutions instead of just arguing over the ones we have now.