Subject: Re: Global oil production could peak in as little as four years!
From: bgoffe@cook.cba.usm.edu (Bill Goffe)
Date: 16 Nov 1996 18:08:15 GMT
Michael Turton (mturton@stsvr.showtower.com.tw) wrote:
: In article <56da4v$omm@usenet.Hydro.ON.CA>,
: Dwight Zerkee wrote:
: >Most technologies are in widespread use as they are the most efficient
: compromise
: >available at the time. If oil becomes too expensive due to decreasing supply,
: some other
: >energy source will become the most efficient compromise (cost vs. energy
: content).
: >Until that happens, there is no economic incentive for firms, individuals,
: etc. to
: >invest money in making the alternative technology more efficient in its use
: of that
: >energy source.
: >
: >dz.
: Unfortunately, there is no support from the history of technology
: for this point of view.
I'm hardly an energy historian, but I would think that the move in Britain
to coal from wood a few centuries back, and whale oil to crude oil in the
century, would be examples.
One of these days, I'd like to read "The Doomsday Myth : 10,000 Years of
Economic Crises," S. Charles Maurice and Charles W. Smithson, Hoover
Institution Press, 1984. They apparently go through a number of such
episodes.
.---. Bill Goffe bgoffe@whale.st.usm.edu
( | Dept. of Econ. and International Business office: (601) 266-4484
)__*| University of Southern Mississippi fax: (601) 266-4920
(_| Southern Station, Box 5072
Hattiesburg, MS 39406-5072
Subject: Re: Ecological Economics and Entropy
From: brshears@whale.st.usm.edu (Harold Brashears)
Date: Sat, 16 Nov 1996 19:23:22 GMT
masonc@ix.netcom.com (Mason A. Clark) wrote for all to see:
>On 15 Nov 1996 14:38:27 GMT, yuku@io.org (Yuri Kuchinsky) wrote:
>
>> Would you like to explain why your suspicion should be valid? It seems to
>> me that for many thousands of years when the global population was stable,
>> the ecological impact was also stable.
>>
>Over what chosen time interval was the human population ever "stable"?
>
>During recorded history there were ecological impacts of population expansion,
>over-grazing, natural disasters (such as floods), and militaristic expansions led
>by demagogues (Attilla?) Humanity and stability don't go together.
>
>The more it changes the more it stays the same.
I am not sure what you mean. Much as I dislike agreeing with Yuri (he
says so much I guess he must be right occasionally, like a busted
analog clock), but, taking world population as a whole the human
population was very stable up until about 6000 BC. Introduction of
agriculture, you know.
It grew slowly but steadily until about 1400, when it started to
increase drastically. There was another spurt at 1800 - 1900.
Interestingly enough though, and contrary to popluar mythology, the
majority of humans who have ever lived are dead. Estimates are from
77 to 80 billion people have lived on Earth, including today's
population. See "Popultaion Studies", edited by K. Kammeyer, CHicago,
Rand Mcnalley, 1975. which contains an article entitled "How Many
People Have Ever Lived on Earth?", by Anabelle Desmond.
Regards, Harold
----
"In other words, a democratic government is the only one in which those
who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it."
---Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 1, pt. 2,
ch. 5 (1840).
Subject: Re: Lawnmower Emissions
From: TL ADAMS
Date: 16 Nov 1996 19:18:06 GMT
Bob Falkiner wrote:
to get very very dirty.
> If you want a quick mass balance lesson, take a 1:20 mix, run it for an
> hour in a lawn mower, and compare that to your car. Then come back to me
> and we'll have another discussion about mass balances.
> not dreaming in any colour..... this is a straight mass balance. take a
> gross emitter at 20 gm/mi HC and multiply it out yourself!!!
Gee, phrase like mass balance I might almost believe you to be a
breathen Chem. Eng.
>
> When Emissions reach ULEV values the urban problems will vanish, and we
> will still be left with this massive beurocracy to support.
Why? Local CA agencies rise and fall with budgets and whims of the
governors. I/M programs have come and gone, suceeded and failed. Areas
have achieved Ozone attainment status and programs have been dropped.
Have more faith in the citizens, they won't fund a program that they
don't see a benefit for, Well, not entirely true.
I cut apart of your statement about 90% of the reductions have been made
that can be made. Your very right about this. The big reductions that
were made in the early days are behinds us. To get further reductions
from automobiles is going to be very difficult. Diminishing returns on
the dollar. One of my early comments was that a new source standard
for lawnmowers was the one of the good options for biggest reduction
for the dollar. It isn't the PVC valve in terms of reductions of tons
for an investment of $10.00, but its has a much higher tons/dollar ratio
than a extreme I/M plan. And if we look at the politics/justice issues
its a cost being born on the purchasers of new equipment as opposed as
a cost on the owner of older vehicles, assumption is that they don't
have the ability to pay.
So lets get a whole new arguement started. Do any of you all know
about the carbon adsorbtion cylinders that are going to be required
on all new cars in 98 (? or 99). Its purpose is to capture the
vapors displace during refueling, which makes stage two vapour balance
system in Cal. and others unneeded. Me, I'm not please at this.
If you want to control these VOC's and of course reduce the publics
exposure to benzene, why not go to requiring vapour balance system
at all gas stations. It does not make sense to me, instead of a
moderate cost to the gas station owners (and yes, I know that this
cost will be paid eventally by the consumers), the plan is to force
the consumer to pay a larger cost for the Carbon sorbers. And you get
less of an emission reduction, as the onboard cylindar will only reduce
the emissions from new cars. Politics, go figure.
Subject: Re: Dangerous Solar (was Re: Global oil production could peak in as little as four years!)
From: TL ADAMS
Date: 16 Nov 1996 19:29:54 GMT
bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de (Bruce Scott TOK ) wrote:
>
> I went to several talks roughly 1978-82, and watched the presenters get
> shriller at each one, telling us, "this is happening now, this is our
> tomorrow", etc, etc. An SF author (I think it was even G Harry Stine)
> got wise, calling them "hell beamers" :-)
> Bruce Scott, Max-Planck-Institut fuer Plasmaphysik, bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de
>
Gee, I'd almost forgot about the microwave menance.
I never understood the physics well enough to understand why the
receivers needed to be so large, or maybe I do. If I understand
the waveform of ultrasound in biotissues, I should be able to figure
it out. Ah, I'm too lazy to figure out why tens of thousand of acrea
need to be sacrificed for the collector stations.
Sure would have been neat to have a few of these over Iraq. Not sure
if it wouldn't have been cheaper than the thousands of cruse missles
at 3/4 of a million a piece.
But seriously, whenever the future energy growth is extrapolated
(always a bad thing to do), don't overlook the possibillity that
high energy operations like Aluminum production might be done on the
lunar surface, or in orbit. Solar energy in that environement is pretty
cheap. We've got the technolgy almost now, why assume that things
will always be as they are now.
Subject: Re: Dangerous Solar (was Re: Global oil production could peak in as little as four years!)
From: William Royea
Date: Sat, 16 Nov 1996 12:07:03 -0800
Rod Adams wrote:
> William, do you really expect that cleaning
> solar cells will be a lucrative profession that attracts the most
> careful individuals provided with the latest and greatest in safety
> equipment?
If this is your only "energy" cost, yes. The only concession I'll make
is that the initial manufacturing/installation costs of solar panels is
not cost effective if you only account for the direct costs of nuclear
and coal. If you take into account the cost of the wars we wage, the
cost of nuclear waste disposal, the cost of security, etc. etc. I can
easily see us paying $20/hour to these solar panel cleaners and still
coming out ahead.
> William, you are dead wrong on this comment. The amount of concrete
> needed to build a containment vessel is well documented, but even if
> it were not, you could do a rough calculation based on the size
> of the building and the thickness of the walls.
>
> If you even attempted to run the numbers, you would find that even a
> thin layer of concrete spread over 75 acres (Solar 1) uses
> more concrete than a typical 1000 MW nuclear power plant containment
> building. Solar 1, however, only generates about 50 MW peak power.
Why do you insist on developing Solar 1 plants? Solar one is a poorly
engineered solar plant. If you had solar cells on rooftops rather than
on dedicated land, you would already have the structural support. And
don't give me this BS about rooftops not being able to sustain such
loads.
> Again, there are numbers that refute your claim. If you put all of
> the high level nuclear waste produced in US nuclear plants over their
> entire operating lives into approved storage containers and lined the
> containers up on a football field, you would not completely cover
> the field. (The containers are about 15 feet tall.)
Boy, I'd sure love to work at that facility.
> That material, as well as most other material often referred to as
> nuclear waste, is also just as recycleable as the cadmium needed
> in the batteries of your solar system.
> You also stated that no matter how you generate electricity, you still
> need to store it. That is false, my friend.
Looking back on what I stated, you are right, I am wrong. Nonetheless,
the peak load hours are during the summer, right smack in the middle of
the day, when the sun is at its peak. You will have storage
requirements, but cadmium is not necessary, because even the load
levelers used today in other countries run off lead-acid batteries just
fine.
If all the nuclear waste is recyclable as you claim it is, why the hell
are we burying it in the ground in sealed containers. That sounds more
like a land fill than a recycling plant.
William
Subject: Re: Dangerous Solar (was Re: Global oil production could peak in as little as four years!)
From: William Royea
Date: Sat, 16 Nov 1996 12:11:25 -0800
Mike Asher wrote:
>
> Hehehe. Are you serious with this argument? First of all, the total area
> of every rooftop in the country is certainly a "vast collection area".
> Secondly, falls are already the second leading cause of accidental death in
> the US. Even if "trained individuals" did perform the cleaning, it is
> these same individuals that die by the thousands every year from falling
> off roofs. Also, to think that most homeowners will pay someone to come
> out weekly or monthly and clean their collectors is ludicrous-- most people
> will do it themselves.
I am serious with this argument. Moreover, if you'll re-read what I
orignially wrote, I stated that rooftops do not constitute a vast
collection area "DEDICATED" to energy collection.
Why do you find it so outrageous that homeowners would be willing to
pay for someone to clean solar arrays? I won't disagree that the
initial cost of manufacturing and putting up solar cells is currently
too
costly to be a feasible replacement for coal or nuclear- that is if you
only consider the direct costs of coal and nuclear and assume that
you're
paying for the solar array coverage area. However, once up and
running, the only maintancence comes down to cleaning the arrays, and I
would argue that that is far cheaper than the price of energy today.
Suppose it was mandatory that you allow energy companies to put solar
cells on your rooftop. These companies wouldn't have to compensate you
for doing so, and the startup cost would then be considerably cheaper.
Your energy costs would come primarily from cleaning the solar arrays.
> > The containment system for a nuclear plant uses far
> > more concrete than any equivalent-power producing solar array.
>
> Wrong. A 1000 megawatt nuclear reactor requires approximately 4000 tons of
> concrete. We've never been able to build a 1000 megawatt solar plant but
> the ten megawatt plant "Solar One" required almost 20,000 tons of concrete.
> Five times as much material, for 1/100 the power output....and Solar One
> is only online during the _daytime_. I will add that, during its short
> period of operation, Solar One managed to catch fire and burn, seriously
> injuring two workers. So, in a couple of years of operation, a 10 MW
> solar plant managed to cause more human injury than decades of operation by
> over 100 domestic nuclear reactors. But solar power *is* safe, because we
> think it to be so.
Look, I'm not saying that Solar One is a well-engineered solar plant. If
you put solar arrays on rooftops, the structural support is already
there.
You're comparing a system that's been around for some time (nuclear)
with a beaurcratic prototype of a system that hasn't even been adopted
in
this country. There are better ways to go about solar energy collection
than Solar One.
William
Subject: Re: Ecological Economics and Entropy
From: dlj@inforamp.net (David Lloyd-Jones)
Date: 16 Nov 1996 20:47:56 GMT
brshears@whale.st.usm.edu (Harold Brashears) wrote:
>I am not sure what you mean. Much as I dislike agreeing with Yuri (he
>says so much I guess he must be right occasionally, like a busted
>analog clock), but, taking world population as a whole the human
>population was very stable up until about 6000 BC. Introduction of
>agriculture, you know.
The way I look at it, this was the information revolution. People
started categorizing stuff: animals by which ones were tame enough to
keep, which ones you should kill before they killed you or got away;
plants by which ones would grown if you planted them. Arithmetic: how
much seed will give us how much food, leaves how much that it's safe
to eat now?
The agricultural revolution, because it is more knowledge intensive
than steam and electric power, ships, trade, or war, is the _last_ of
all things to develop. It's happening now, made possible by electron
microspcopy and molecular biology, satellite land surveys and
hydrology, derivatives-based pricing, and so on.
This is why the most advanced countries have agricultural surpluses,
and import their manufactured goods from less advanced countries.
-dlj.
Subject: Re: Open letter to all Photovoltaic producers and merchants
From: Anco S. Blazev
Date: 16 Nov 1996 14:40:04 -0700
Hello there,
Mosl Roland wrote:
: Let's talk about marketing.
: Do You really think, that You don't need marketing?
: Go out to the street and ask the people on the street.
: 1.) Do You know what Phatovoltaic is?
: 2.) Have You experience with Photovoltaic beyond
: the application at a pocket calculator?
: This test will bring You the total proov! You need marketing!
: The best product will be discovered by only a few customers,
: if there is no marketing.
Yes, although marketing is an integral and very important step in any
product development -- PVs included -- the problem with PVs in the US now
days is not due to lack of marketing, but rather to Government and Big
Interest policies and actions. These negative activities drive prices
sky-high and peoples' interest in PVs down. Way down!
People know all about PVs, and they know how prohibitively expensive this
product is. The question then is, "Why? And what could be done about it,
before we run out of fossil fuels?"
If you solve this problem(s), then we could talk about marketing in the
US. Until then we are stuck with marketing PVs overseas. And there only!
Best regards,
Anco Blazev, Ch. E.
Dir. of Technology
Alpha Solarco, Inc.
510 E. University
Phoenix, AZ, U.S.A.
Subject: Re: Paul & Anne Ehrlich's Betrayal of Science and Reason
From: jmc@Steam.stanford.edu (John McCarthy)
Date: 16 Nov 1996 21:04:11 GMT
In article <56kscv$5eb0@sat.ipp-garching.mpg.de> bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de (Bruce Scott TOK ) writes:
>
> John McCarthy (jmc@Steam.stanford.edu) wrote:
> : In article <56f98q$4dfn@sat.ipp-garching.mpg.de> bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de (Bruce Scott TOK ) writes:
> :
> : > John McCarthy (jmc@Steam.stanford.edu) wrote:
> : > : There is only one thing actually false in Ehrlich's story of the bet.
> : > : Having to pay more than $500 on a $1,000 futures contract is not "a
> : > : small sum" relative to the size of the contract. The tale is fuzzy in
> : > : other ways than not mentioning how much Ehrlich had to pay. Of
> : > : course, for a man who got a $350,000 prize for making repeated false
> : > : predictions, $500 is a small sum. To mention only the false
> : > : prediction in _The Population Bomb_ is again fuzzing up matters.
> : >
> : > It is, actually. Futures contracts are dangerous if you don't know what
> : > you're doing, because you can end up losing (and being liable for) much
> : > more than the amount of the contract. That 1000 above is probably
> : > margin on something worth more like 10,000. I don't know if the usual
> : > margin is as high as 10-1, but for oil before the Gulf War, though, it
> : > was usually above 5-1 and was only lowered to about 3 or 4 to 1 (8,000
> : > per contract, price between 22 and 32, in the last two months of 1990)
> : > because of the volatility.
> : >
> : > If Erlich had been _badly_ wrong, he could have lost several times more
> : > than he did. If you bought call on Jan 91 oil at 25 dollars in Sep 90
> : > (before the doubling of the margin) and it had only dropped to 23, you
> : > would have lost half your contract. That is miniscule compared to what
> : > actually happened to the price. Most people lost everything and landed
> : > in debt.
> :
> : Bruce Scott is confused.
>
> : No margins were involved in the bet.
>
> : Ehrlich could not have lost more than $1,000. If the price of the
> : metals had gone to zero, $1,000 is what he would have lost. Since the
> : price only halved (in constant dollars), he only had to pay about
> : $500. Simon was the one with the unlimited risk. If the price of
> : metals had gone up by a factor of 10, he would have had to pay $9,000.
> : If it had gone up by 100, he would have had to pay $99,000.
>
> It is John McCarthy who doesn't know what he talking about. What he
> describes is a "call option", not a "futures contract", although he
> indeed calls it a "futures contract", which is why I, not knowing the
> story of the bet, assumed it was a "futures contract".
I just looked up "futures contract" in the on-line Encyclopedia
Britannica as it refers to the commodities market. As far as I can
see, my original usage was correct and Bruce Scott's vehement
correction was mistaken.
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/
During the last years of the Second Millenium, the Earthmen complained
a lot.
Subject: Re: The Limits To Growth
From: ssusin@emily11.Berkeley.EDU (Scott Susin)
Date: 16 Nov 1996 21:51:04 GMT
Steinn Sigurdsson (steinn@sandy.ast.cam.ac.uk) wrote:
: ssusin@emily11.Berkeley.EDU (Scott Susin) writes:
: > Steinn Sigurdsson (steinn@sandy.ast.cam.ac.uk) wrote:
: > : Steinn Sigurdsson writes:
: > : > ssusin@emily11.Berkeley.EDU (Scott Susin) writes:
: > : > > Steinn Sigurdsson (steinn@sandy.ast.cam.ac.uk) wrote:
: > : > > : BF FF FI
: > : > > : p q p q
: > : > >
: > : > > : 1995 2 20 10 1 100
: > : > >
: > : > > : 1996 2 15 11 5 170 <- WRONG: 102 is correct.
: > : > I'd like to see that calculation explicitly.
: > : Ah, I see, your index is
: > : Sum_i (New price_i * Old Quantity_i)/Sum_i (Old price_i*Old Quantity_i)
: > Thanks for giving me the credit, but I didn't invent the concept
: > of a price index. _Everybody_ who's ever calculated one knows that
: > the idea is to hold the quantity constant, and measure only the change
: > in price. Your method doesn't do this, and so it's _wrong_. This is
: > not a matter of opinion. Most of you criticisms of the fish CPI rest
: > on your confusion of prices and quantities and so they are wrong too.
: No hold on a second here. I constructed my example
: to hold the quantity constant - 20 or 21 units of
: fish are sold each year, which is reasonable assuming
: people eat roughly constant amounts and that the
: supply is fixed by the catch effort, not variable, which
: is a reasonable assumption.
20 isn't 21. You are backtracking with increasingly implausible
explanations of what you were trying to do. A price index
holds the bundle of goods constant. That is, the vector of
quantities, not the sum of the quantities.
Consider how absurd your "method" would be if applied to the whole CPI,
which includes not only fish, but also cars. We can't sum fish and
cars, as you'd like to, since the units aren't the same. By the same
reasoning, if we could sum them, as you do, then the units must be the
same, and there is no reason to have an index.
Also, you've once again demonstrated that you don't know
what economists mean by "supply."
: Thus what changes is the price, and if the people
: measuring the price index of "fish" fail to
: separate the "basic fish" from the "fancy fish"
: they will see an apparent rise in the index of 70% or so,
: because they will see constant sales of "fish units"
: put people paying a higher price in the second year.
Now you claim that you knew that your example merely _demonstrates
an error_. Fine, I agree.
I even agree that there are goods (like VCRs), where the BLS
may make such errors. However, I don't agree that the BLS
ever makes such errors in the fish index. It's not hard
to tell cod from haddock from fish sticks. You accuse
the BLS of being unable to do this, which is absurd.
: If they manage to distinguish the two different classes
: of fish, they still see a rise in price, which does
: not reflect a supply shortage - which what this sub-thread
: was originally about, remember?
A rise in price can be due to a decrease in supply or an increase
in demand. I've never asserted otherwise.
Frankly, although it an understanding of supply and
demand would shed a lot of light on the proper interpretation
of the rise in the price of fish, it's too simple a model
and it won't tell you the whole story.
: > : That does indeed give a 2% year-year increase in the CPI,
: > : which is quite reasonable, and I would think the natural
: > : response of FF price in response to sharply rising demand
: > : is that it go up - where as your example assumed it went down
: > : with rising demand... Whence Econ 101 there?
: > No. My example assumed that people bought more and at the same
: > time, the price went down. This is consistent with the supply
: > curve shifting out. It is also consistent with both curves
: > shifting at the same time. In general, data about prices
: > and quantities tells us _nothing_ about supply and
: > demand. If you ever take econ 1, this question will be on
: > the test.
: I seriously doubt I'll be taking econ 1, I already have enough
: letters after my name and prefer to get economic theory straight
: from my colleagues.
: I'm puzzled at your assertion about the relationship between
: prices and quantities - they assuredly tell us _something_ about
: supply and demand (eg. the supply can not possibly have been
: less than the quantity sold... and last I checked, at fixed
: supply and rising demand the usual response is for the price
: to rise).
Ask your collegues to explain to you the difference between
"the quantity sold increased" and "demand increased."
The latter refers to a shift in the curve, and the former
merely describes two points that may or may not be on the
same curve.
: Your constructed price examples, BTW, appeared nonsensical
: and artificial for the purpose of showing a declining CPI
: in the presence of increased sales of a value added product.
To you perhaps, but my example is in line with the facts.
You assert that there has been a shift to expensive, processed
fish. This may be so. But if so, it caused the fish CPI to
rise _less_ then otherwise. That's because processed fish,
although more expensive, has not been rising in price as
fast as fresh fish.
: > : > My assumption was FI = 100*(2*15+11*5)/(2*20+10*1)=170
: > : > I assumed the price of fancy fish would rise a little
: > : > due to increased demand, but that most of the
: > : > price difference reflects labour intensive value
: > : > added (ie BF and FF are the same raw fish, but FF
: > : > has value added as it is, say spiced&ready; to cook,
: > : > while BF is just a plain fillet).
: > : >
: > : > > : 1997 2 10 12 11 178(since1996)
: > : > > : 304(since 1995)
: >
: > : With the (correct) CPI calculation the 1996-1997
: > : increase is now 6%, and 12% over 1995. Note the quantity
: > : of raw material in demand is still not increasing.
: >
: > : > > You really should understand the basics before you make esoteric
: > : > > criticisms. A price index holds the bundle of goods constant over
: > : > > time. This is the whole point. Because you don't understand this,
: > : > > your calculations are wrong.
: >
: > : My apologies, I misunderstood your defined index. You are mistaken
: > : if you believe there is unique definition of a price index,
: >
: > There is more than one way, yes, but _all_ of them hold the
: > quantities constant between two years. Your method doesn't do this,
: > and so it is not a price index.
: I did hold the quantity constant between the years! Add them
: up (well, except for letting q slip one unit in the middle
: year, that was an unnecessary refinement).
: I think you misunderstand what the concept of an "index" is,
: it is not unique to economics, nor is there a law of nature
: as to how the indices are constructed. I can give you real
: life examples if you want.
If you were merely trying to show how to calculate the average price of
fish per pound, regardless of what types of fish were bought, then you
hardly needed such an elaborate example. And this would not be an
index, BTW, since the units would be meaningful.
: > : indeed there is continued dispute over just how to
: > : allow for the change in composition of the value of
: > : goods weighed in your typical index.
: > : > > I've corrected your 1996 value. You've calculated a 70% increase in
: > : > > _expenditures_ on fish, but this is not the same as an increase in
: > : > > price. The increase in expenditures mostly occurred because quantity
: > : > > increased. The _price_ only rose 2%.
: > : > Ah, the quantity in the above calculation actually
: > : > _decreased_ from 1995 to 1996, there 21 units
: > : > of "fish" sold in 1995, and 20 units in 1996.
: > : > That was a deliberate assumption - and a realistic
: > : > one. The mean retail cost of fish in this example
: > : > increases sharply because of value added at the retail
: > : > level, not because of a supply-demand response.
: > In your example, the price index goes up because people have
: > switched to something whose price was increasing. It
: > is irrelevant that they switched to something with more "value
: > added" and a higher price.
: No, it is not irrelevant, it is the whole point.
: I think you've forgotten why this became a point of
: debate in the first place.
: > Suppose processed fish is more expensive, but its price is rising
: > at a slower rate. Then if people buy more processed fish and
: > less fresh fish, the CPI won't rise as fast. In fact,
: > this is what has happened. The price of fresh and frozen fish
: > has risen much faster than the price of processed fish.
: This is because there has been technological deflation
: in processing cost, plus some gains from economy of scale.
: The point remains, how finely do the people who construct
: CPIs discern the differently handled, processed and marketed
: products? If they fail to distinguish sub-categories of
: products they will see spurious index inflation in certain
: plausible scenarios.
:
: > : > Since the basket or retail good used to calculate
: > : > consumer price indices includes specifically
: > : > processed, value added goods, not generally wholesale
: > : > raw materials, some of the variation in the index
: > : > must be due to this.
: > : > As it happens this actually happened with fish
: > : > sold in the US over the period where you noted
: > : > a CPI rise above inflation. They sold cod in both
: > : > 1970 and 1995, but in 1995 the cod was more likely
: > : > to be frozen, breaded and ready to nuke.
: > : This point remains.
: > And this made the CPI rise _less_ than it otherwise would have.
: Ah, no, if the fancy fish had never taken off the CPI would
: be constant. So the switch to a "fancier" retail product
: drives a rise in the CPI which is unrelated to the cost of
: the raw material, or the supply of the basic product.
: Ergo you can't assert that simply because CPI for "fish"
: rose more rapidly than the general CPI, that this implies
: anything much about fish supplies.
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Scott Susin "Time makes more converts than
Department of Economics Reason"
U.C. Berkeley Thomas Paine, _Common_Sense_
Subject: Re: Conversion of "absolute" environmental thermal energy to "potential energy".
From: Anco S. Blazev
Date: 16 Nov 1996 15:13:01 -0700
mfriesel@ix.netcom.com wrote:
: keithb says;
: Energy from the Environment.
: >
: > It is conceded that the extraction and conversion of the
: > Thermal Energy ( K) of the environment, to Potential...
: ....and so on. I could have sworn he was going to ask me to send only
: $11.95 for a free book, or something.
No, he is a Physisist. And these people are different than the rest of
us, mere mortals. They live on the 5th dimension's, 9th level and look at
the world thru a modified Fresnel lens, while hanging upside down from an
anti-gravitationally adjusted, speed / time corrected pendulum. Thus
they see almost everything in a much different way than we, two-legged,
vertically oriented, 3D, RGB, mammals do.
Just an opinion. But then, I'm a Chemist, so who knows...
Best regards,
Anco Blazev
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