Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Bill USA
Bill USA's Journal
Bill USA's Journal
April 17, 2013
Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison (D), a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, will today introduce legislation that would institute a tax on financial transactions, an effort to raise needed revenue while also limiting risky high-speed trading that has increased volatility in financial markets.
Ellison’s legislation, The Inclusive Prosperity Act, would levy a 0.5 percent tax on stock trades, a 0.1 percent tax on bond trades, and a 0.005 percent tax on trades of derivatives and other investments. Three Democrats — Rep. Peter DeFazio (OR) and Sens. Tom Harkin (IA) and Sheldon Whitehouse (RI) — introduced similar legislation earlier this year that would institute a 0.03 percent tax on all financial trades. That proposal would raise $352 billion over the next decade; Ellison’s seeks to raise roughly $350 billion annually.
“This is a small tax on financial transactions that will allow us to meet the needs of our nation,” Ellison said at the press conference. “And didn’t America step up, on very short notice, for Wall Street when it needed help? Well now the American people need help.”
Such a tax would slow down financial markets that have increased in both speed and volatility thanks to high-frequency trading, which allows firms to use algorithms to make thousands of trades per second. Opponents of a transactions tax argue that it would slow down economic activity and growth, but those claims are hardly proven: the U.S. had a transactions tax after World War II, when it experienced its largest period of growth. While most industry groups oppose the tax, some former financial leaders have come out in favor. “A modest financial transaction tax of less than 1 percent would serve as a remarkably efficient tool to achieve needed reform,” John Fullerton, a former director at JP Morgan Chase, wrote in 2011.
(more)
Democratic Rep. Introduces Legislation To Tax Financial Transactions
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/04/17/1879801/ellison-financial-transactions-tax/Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison (D), a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, will today introduce legislation that would institute a tax on financial transactions, an effort to raise needed revenue while also limiting risky high-speed trading that has increased volatility in financial markets.
Ellison’s legislation, The Inclusive Prosperity Act, would levy a 0.5 percent tax on stock trades, a 0.1 percent tax on bond trades, and a 0.005 percent tax on trades of derivatives and other investments. Three Democrats — Rep. Peter DeFazio (OR) and Sens. Tom Harkin (IA) and Sheldon Whitehouse (RI) — introduced similar legislation earlier this year that would institute a 0.03 percent tax on all financial trades. That proposal would raise $352 billion over the next decade; Ellison’s seeks to raise roughly $350 billion annually.
“This is a small tax on financial transactions that will allow us to meet the needs of our nation,” Ellison said at the press conference. “And didn’t America step up, on very short notice, for Wall Street when it needed help? Well now the American people need help.”
Such a tax would slow down financial markets that have increased in both speed and volatility thanks to high-frequency trading, which allows firms to use algorithms to make thousands of trades per second. Opponents of a transactions tax argue that it would slow down economic activity and growth, but those claims are hardly proven: the U.S. had a transactions tax after World War II, when it experienced its largest period of growth. While most industry groups oppose the tax, some former financial leaders have come out in favor. “A modest financial transaction tax of less than 1 percent would serve as a remarkably efficient tool to achieve needed reform,” John Fullerton, a former director at JP Morgan Chase, wrote in 2011.
(more)
April 17, 2013
There was a period when the U.S. looked like it might avoid the mistakes of some of its European counterparts, who rushed to austerity and have found themselves saddled with stagnant growth. But the U.S. has gotten into the austerity game, most recently with the implementation of sequestration’s across-the-board spending cuts.
And just like its austere European neighbors, the U.K. in particular, it’s now getting a warning from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In its latest report, the biannual World Economic Outlook, the New York Times reports that the organization had some stern words for those who think cutting government spending in the middle of a sluggish recovery is a good idea:
~~
~~
[ font size="3"]
Sequestration is already hurting the U.S. economy, but it’s not the only austerity measure that’s causing pain. Government spending overall has been lower during Obama’s administration than any point since the Eisenhower era. This is at a time of miserably high unemployment and incredibly low interest rates on U.S. borrowing. The U.S. could instead be spending money to rebuild crumbling infrastructure and put people back to work.
[/font]
IMF Warns U.S. Austerity Will Slow Growth (Don't they realize this will only encourage the Repubs)
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/04/17/1879521/imf-warns-us-austerity-will-slow-growth/There was a period when the U.S. looked like it might avoid the mistakes of some of its European counterparts, who rushed to austerity and have found themselves saddled with stagnant growth. But the U.S. has gotten into the austerity game, most recently with the implementation of sequestration’s across-the-board spending cuts.
And just like its austere European neighbors, the U.K. in particular, it’s now getting a warning from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In its latest report, the biannual World Economic Outlook, the New York Times reports that the organization had some stern words for those who think cutting government spending in the middle of a sluggish recovery is a good idea:
The fund lowered its estimate of United States growth this year to 1.9 percent, down 0.2 percentage point from its January forecast. While Washington had avoided falling over the “fiscal cliff,” the I.M.F. said that the United States had proved too aggressive in carrying out budget cuts, given its still-sluggish rates of growth and high unemployment levels. It said it anticipated that the across-the-board $85 billion in budget cuts known as sequestration would push down growth levels this year and beyond.
“The growth figure for the United States for 2013 may not seem very high, and indeed it is insufficient to make a large dent in the still-high unemployment rate,” Olivier Blanchard, the fund’s chief economist, said in the report. “But it will be achieved in the face of a very strong, indeed overly strong, fiscal consolidation of about 1.8 percent of G.D.P. Underlying private demand is actually strong, spurred in part by the anticipation of low policy rates under the Federal Reserve’s ‘forward guidance’ and by pent-up demand for housing and durables.”
~~
~~
[ font size="3"]
Sequestration is already hurting the U.S. economy, but it’s not the only austerity measure that’s causing pain. Government spending overall has been lower during Obama’s administration than any point since the Eisenhower era. This is at a time of miserably high unemployment and incredibly low interest rates on U.S. borrowing. The U.S. could instead be spending money to rebuild crumbling infrastructure and put people back to work.
[/font]
April 17, 2013
Thomas Herndon | Michael Ash | Robert Pollin | 4/15/2013
Download 421 kB
Abstract:
[font size="3"]Herndon, Ash and Pollin replicate Reinhart and Rogoff and find that coding errors, selective exclusion of available data, and unconventional weighting of summary statistics lead to serious errors that inaccurately represent the relationship between public debt and GDP growth among 20 advanced economies in the post-war period. [/font]They find that when properly calculated, the average real GDP growth rate for countries carrying a public-debt-to-GDP ratio of over 90 percent is actually 2.2 percent, not -0:1 percent as published in Reinhart and Rogo ff. That is, contrary to RR, average GDP growth at public debt/GDP ratios over 90 percent is not dramatically different than when debt/GDP ratios are lower.
The authors also show how the relationship between public debt and GDP growth varies significantly by time period and country. [font size="3"]Overall, the evidence we review contradicts Reinhart and Rogoff 's claim to have identified an important stylized fact, that public debt loads greater than 90 percent of GDP consistently reduce GDP growth[/font].
Media requests: please contact Debbie Zeidenberg at dzeiden@peri.umass.edu.
>> Download the paper here 1
>> Download the data and code files upon which the results are based
>> Download a text document that describes the files in the code and data archive
1 The current version of this paper was updated at 1:35 pm on April 17, with the following corrections:
(1) The notes to Table 3: "Spreadsheet refers to the spreadsheet error that excluded Australia, Austria, Canada, and Denmark from the analysis." is corrected to read: "Spreadsheet refers to the spreadsheet error that excluded Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, and Denmark from the analysis."
(2) Page 13: “Thus, in the highest, above-90-percent public debt/GDP, GDP growth of 4.1 percent per year in the 1950-2009 sample declines to only 2.5 percent per year in the 1980-2009 sample” is corrected to read "Thus, in the lowest, 0–30-percent public debt/GDP, GDP growth of 4.1 percent per year in the 1950–2009 sample declines to only 2.5 percent per year in the 1980–2009 sample."
Does High Public Debt Consistently Stifle Economic Growth? A Critique of Reinhart and Rogoff
http://www.peri.umass.edu/236/hash/31e2ff374b6377b2ddec04deaa6388b1/publication/566/Thomas Herndon | Michael Ash | Robert Pollin | 4/15/2013
Download 421 kB
Abstract:
[font size="3"]Herndon, Ash and Pollin replicate Reinhart and Rogoff and find that coding errors, selective exclusion of available data, and unconventional weighting of summary statistics lead to serious errors that inaccurately represent the relationship between public debt and GDP growth among 20 advanced economies in the post-war period. [/font]They find that when properly calculated, the average real GDP growth rate for countries carrying a public-debt-to-GDP ratio of over 90 percent is actually 2.2 percent, not -0:1 percent as published in Reinhart and Rogo ff. That is, contrary to RR, average GDP growth at public debt/GDP ratios over 90 percent is not dramatically different than when debt/GDP ratios are lower.
The authors also show how the relationship between public debt and GDP growth varies significantly by time period and country. [font size="3"]Overall, the evidence we review contradicts Reinhart and Rogoff 's claim to have identified an important stylized fact, that public debt loads greater than 90 percent of GDP consistently reduce GDP growth[/font].
Media requests: please contact Debbie Zeidenberg at dzeiden@peri.umass.edu.
>> Download the paper here 1
>> Download the data and code files upon which the results are based
>> Download a text document that describes the files in the code and data archive
1 The current version of this paper was updated at 1:35 pm on April 17, with the following corrections:
(1) The notes to Table 3: "Spreadsheet refers to the spreadsheet error that excluded Australia, Austria, Canada, and Denmark from the analysis." is corrected to read: "Spreadsheet refers to the spreadsheet error that excluded Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, and Denmark from the analysis."
(2) Page 13: “Thus, in the highest, above-90-percent public debt/GDP, GDP growth of 4.1 percent per year in the 1950-2009 sample declines to only 2.5 percent per year in the 1980-2009 sample” is corrected to read "Thus, in the lowest, 0–30-percent public debt/GDP, GDP growth of 4.1 percent per year in the 1950–2009 sample declines to only 2.5 percent per year in the 1980–2009 sample."
April 17, 2013
In the debate over government spending, the central data point wielded by fans of austerity is the claim that once a country reaches a debt load over 90 percent of its economy — a threshold the United States is approaching — economic growth goes into a tailspin. That argument came from a 2010 study by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. After surveying a wide number of countries, they found that, on average, once the 90 percent mark is crossed, economic growth slows. Though the paper always had problems that kept many economists from embracing it, that didn’t stop it from becoming “the most influential article cited in public and policy debates about the importance of debt stabilization” as Slate’s Matt Yglesias put it.
There were already problems with the Reinhart-Rogoff study, but up until now, other researchers haven’t been able to replicate or pick through its numbers. A new paper finally has, and as Mike Konczal over at Next New Deal reports, it dug up some truly mortal flaws.
First, Reinhart and Rogoff excluded the post-war years for certain countries that enjoyed robust economic growth despite debt levels well over 90 percent. They also chose a skewed method of weighting the data: for example, New Zealand’s single year of terrible growth while over the 90 percent threshold wound up counting just as much as Britain’s 19 years of healthy growth. And they even incorrectly input at least one Excel spreadsheet formula, wrongly excluding several countries form their calculations.
In short, the central argument in support of austerity — cited by MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, the New York Times’ David Brooks, and multiple times by House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) — is now defunct. No one disputes that a country should avoid a big build-up in debt over the long-term. But every concrete signal we’re getting from the American economy — our high unemployment, our low inflation, our extraordinarily low interest rates, and our negative real interest rates — are a signal that more debt spending in the short term to fight the depression is perfectly appropriate. Thanks to the austerity drive that was heavily influenced by Reinhart and Rogoff’s study, American lawmakers ignored those signals (and plenty of others) and cut spending, delivering the most destructive fiscal policy we’ve had in any recession since at least 1980.
New Research Undermines The GOP’s Austerity Offensive Against U.S. Economy
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/04/16/1875631/new-research-blows-a-hole-in-gops-austerity-agenda/In the debate over government spending, the central data point wielded by fans of austerity is the claim that once a country reaches a debt load over 90 percent of its economy — a threshold the United States is approaching — economic growth goes into a tailspin. That argument came from a 2010 study by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. After surveying a wide number of countries, they found that, on average, once the 90 percent mark is crossed, economic growth slows. Though the paper always had problems that kept many economists from embracing it, that didn’t stop it from becoming “the most influential article cited in public and policy debates about the importance of debt stabilization” as Slate’s Matt Yglesias put it.
There were already problems with the Reinhart-Rogoff study, but up until now, other researchers haven’t been able to replicate or pick through its numbers. A new paper finally has, and as Mike Konczal over at Next New Deal reports, it dug up some truly mortal flaws.
First, Reinhart and Rogoff excluded the post-war years for certain countries that enjoyed robust economic growth despite debt levels well over 90 percent. They also chose a skewed method of weighting the data: for example, New Zealand’s single year of terrible growth while over the 90 percent threshold wound up counting just as much as Britain’s 19 years of healthy growth. And they even incorrectly input at least one Excel spreadsheet formula, wrongly excluding several countries form their calculations.
In short, the central argument in support of austerity — cited by MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, the New York Times’ David Brooks, and multiple times by House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) — is now defunct. No one disputes that a country should avoid a big build-up in debt over the long-term. But every concrete signal we’re getting from the American economy — our high unemployment, our low inflation, our extraordinarily low interest rates, and our negative real interest rates — are a signal that more debt spending in the short term to fight the depression is perfectly appropriate. Thanks to the austerity drive that was heavily influenced by Reinhart and Rogoff’s study, American lawmakers ignored those signals (and plenty of others) and cut spending, delivering the most destructive fiscal policy we’ve had in any recession since at least 1980.
April 17, 2013
When the history books are written about the 2012 presidential election, the leaked video of Mitt Romney disparaging half of the country as a bunch of lazy, greedy, government moochers may very well have its own chapter, and yet Republicans are quick to forget just how damaging the remark was.
The latest is Congressman Rob Woodall (R-GA), who leapt to the defense of Romney during a town hall meeting last month, doubling down on the 47 percent comment while also proposing that Americans should have to pay taxes in order to vote in elections:
The comment was flagged by the Huffington Post, which points out that the statistic is deeply misleading. Included in Woodall and Romney’s broad dismissal of 47 percent of the electorate are millions of retired seniors who no longer have an income and millions more low-income families and individuals who do not meet the $20,000 liability threshold for federal income taxes. And all of these people still pay into government programs through sales taxes and, in many cases, payroll taxes.
Woodall’s comment that “the bottom 30% of American citizens profit from the tax code” conveniently neglects to mention that most of the tax credits in question were shepherded through Congress by Republican administrations.
GOP Congressman Says Poor People Don’t Pay Enough Taxes
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/04/15/1865461/gop-congressman-says-poor-people-dont-pay-enough-taxes/When the history books are written about the 2012 presidential election, the leaked video of Mitt Romney disparaging half of the country as a bunch of lazy, greedy, government moochers may very well have its own chapter, and yet Republicans are quick to forget just how damaging the remark was.
The latest is Congressman Rob Woodall (R-GA), who leapt to the defense of Romney during a town hall meeting last month, doubling down on the 47 percent comment while also proposing that Americans should have to pay taxes in order to vote in elections:
“You know, folks mock Mitt Romney for what he said, but he’s right. Forty-seven percent of American citizens pay zero in income taxes. It’s just true,” Woodall said, according to remarks recorded by Georgia Fair Share.”
(...)
“In fact, the bottom 30% of American citizens profit from the tax code because they’re getting refundable tax credits back,” Woodall says in the video. “I don’t care if you’re paying a dollar. You need to believe that you are involved in the process, and you need to have skin in the game.”
The comment was flagged by the Huffington Post, which points out that the statistic is deeply misleading. Included in Woodall and Romney’s broad dismissal of 47 percent of the electorate are millions of retired seniors who no longer have an income and millions more low-income families and individuals who do not meet the $20,000 liability threshold for federal income taxes. And all of these people still pay into government programs through sales taxes and, in many cases, payroll taxes.
Woodall’s comment that “the bottom 30% of American citizens profit from the tax code” conveniently neglects to mention that most of the tax credits in question were shepherded through Congress by Republican administrations.
April 16, 2013
What is encouraging is that their research also shows that these effects are reversible. They took baby rats born to inattentive mothers and switched them with rats born to attentive mothers and found that the inattentive mothers babies raised by attentive mothers did NOT show abnormal reactivity to stressful situations (emphasis my own):
Perhaps these people who hug their guns and elevate them to a place of such importance (and have caches of guns and ammo in their homes) are people without enough glucocorticoid receptors and thus show an inordinant stress response, leading them to feel frightened and insecure in environments which others do not consider frightening. This might point to a long term response to epidemic gun violence in the form of helping mothers in more challenging situations to raise their children in such a way that they won't grow up to be fearful, insecure, paranoic adults who need gun-security blankets to reduce their feelings of insecurity and to give them a much needed feeling of being 'powerful'. IF they didn't feel so weak and afraid inside, they wouldn't need a gun to give them an apparently much needed feeling of being [font size="3"]powerful[/font].
Can Epigenetics explain insecure people & an inordinant magnitude stress response (e.g. gun hugging)
One aspect of the legislative responses to gun violence being discussed is that of the addressing the psychological aspects of gun violence with the idea being to identify and treat risky individuals or at least to better understand what the contributing factors are that produce some individuals acting out with mass violence.
I applaud the recognition of the need to better understand the psychological factors that contribute not only to individuals engaging in mass violence, but also to better understand the psychodynamics behind the need of some individuals to have multiple guns around to deal with their feelings of insecurity - what might be called the "gun hugger" syndrome. What made me think of this is the people who have these stashes of a large number of guns and large amounts of ammunition. The poor things must be struggling with a hell of a sense of insecurity and fear of not being able to cope. It seems as if they can never have too many guns or a big enough stash of ammunition. This points to a psychological issue that is driving these individuals behavior.
An article, "Trait vs. Fate", in the May 2012 issue of Discover magazine discusses research that may shed some light on this matter. THe article discusses recent developments in the field of epigenetics studying such traits as over-anxious behaviors and lower tolerance of stress.
Epigenetics is the study of "changes in gene expression or cellular phenotype, caused by mechanisms other than changes in the underlying DNA sequence"..."It refers to functionally relevant modifications to the genome that do not involve a change in the nucleotide sequence."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics). In other words, epigenetics is the study of how environmental factors can produce changes in gene exression via methyl groups attaching themselves to DNA and RNA molecules and altering the gene expression which can even lead to these mythl groups being passed down to offspring.
The article discusses the work of two researchers in the field who have shown that a mother rat which is not attentive to its offspring can result in methyl groups attaching themselves to DNA molecules within the babies (hippocampus) brain cells, which then altered the gene expression such that the baby rats show more sensitivity to stress than those baby rats raised by attentive mothers.
"They began selecting mother rats who were either highly attentive or highly inattentive. Once a pup had grown up into adulthood, the team examind its hippocampus, a brain region essential for regulation of the stress response. In the pups of inattentive mothers, they found that genes regulating the production of glucocorticoid receptors, which regulate sensitivity to stress hormones, were highly methylated; in pups of conscientious moms, the genes for the glucocorticoid receptors were rarely methylated.[/font]
Methylation just gums up the works. So, the less (methyl groups attached) the better, when it comes to transcribing the affected gene. [font size="3"]In this case, methylation associated with miserable mothering prevented the normal number of glucocorticoid receptors from being transcribed in the baby's hippocampus. And so for the want of sufficient glucocorticoid receptors , the rats grew up to be nervous wrecks."
What is encouraging is that their research also shows that these effects are reversible. They took baby rats born to inattentive mothers and switched them with rats born to attentive mothers and found that the inattentive mothers babies raised by attentive mothers did NOT show abnormal reactivity to stressful situations (emphasis my own):
"the rats born to attentive mothers but raised by inattentive ones grew up to have low levels of glucocorticoid receptors in their hippocampus and behaved skittishly. Likewise, those born to bad mothers but raised by good ones [font size="3"]grew up to be calm and brave and had high levels of glucocoritciids receptors[/font].
Perhaps these people who hug their guns and elevate them to a place of such importance (and have caches of guns and ammo in their homes) are people without enough glucocorticoid receptors and thus show an inordinant stress response, leading them to feel frightened and insecure in environments which others do not consider frightening. This might point to a long term response to epidemic gun violence in the form of helping mothers in more challenging situations to raise their children in such a way that they won't grow up to be fearful, insecure, paranoic adults who need gun-security blankets to reduce their feelings of insecurity and to give them a much needed feeling of being 'powerful'. IF they didn't feel so weak and afraid inside, they wouldn't need a gun to give them an apparently much needed feeling of being [font size="3"]powerful[/font].
April 11, 2013
Petition WH for law requiring Congressmen to wear logos of their supporters on their suit jackets
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1011604
April 11, 2013
Petition WH for law requiring Congressmen to wear logos of their supporters on their suit jackets
[FONT SIZE="5"]NOW HERE'S AN IDEA WHOSE TIME HAS COME![/FONT]
PLEASE SIGN.
]
http://beingliberal.upworthy.com/i-cant-wait-to-see-the-obama-administrations-reply-to-this-amazing-and-totally-r-2?g=2&c=upw1
April 11, 2013
We’re producing more natural gas these days than we can use, thanks to new techniques to extract gas from shale. A recent report from the M.I.T. Energy Initiative, “The Future of Natural Gas,” called methanol “the liquid fuel that is most efficiently and inexpensively produced from natural gas.” China has already taken notice. Automakers there, like Chery, Geely and Shanghai Maple, have all introduced vehicles capable of running on methanol. Indeed, methanol is so much less costly per mile than gasoline that illegal fuel blending is rampant in China.
Unfortunately, most cars sold in the United States offer consumers no choice beyond gasoline. The so-called flex fuel vehicles that are now on the market are warranted to operate only on gasoline and ethanol. If Congress were to enact an open fuel standard that required new cars to be warranted to run on all-alcohol fuels, including methanol, natural gas could compete with oil in the liquid fuels market. Producing these cars would cost about $100 more. And these fuels could be distributed through the current refueling infrastructure with only slight retrofits.
The current global spot price for methanol made from natural gas is $1.13 per gallon, without any subsidy. Methanol produces about half the energy per gallon as gasoline, so you need to burn twice as much to go just as far. But it is still cheaper than gas. It would cost approximately $3 today, including taxes, distribution and retail markup, to travel the same distance on methanol as on a gallon of gasoline, according to calculations by the Methanol Institute, a cost that is well below the current national average for gasoline. If the economics of natural gas change, a flex fuel vehicle could still run on methanol made from coal, biomass and possibly recycled carbon dioxide, if that technology proves economical.
~~
~~
Another way to run cars on natural gas is by using compressed natural gas, or C.N.G. These vehicles require a dedicated fuel line and a large gas canister in the trunk. However, the cost of converting a light-duty vehicle to C.N.G. is over $10,000. Such an upfront cost would be reasonable in high mileage users (over 35,000 miles per year) like taxis, buses and garbage trucks, but is too high for a typical car owner, and the return on investment would take many years, even with current low natural gas prices.
The Methanol Alternative to Gasoline - as a way to enhance our energy security. We are gambling
that we can take three or four decades to convert to sexy-tech electric cars and not experience an oil supply disruption in that time. I don't know if anybody has noticed but things have become MUCH more unpredictable and dangerous in the Middle-East in the last couple years. Iran closing in on nuclear capability, Syria, the Arab Spring.... this is like playing hot potato with live grenades. And we don't even have to have a real oil supply disruption -- just enough of a likelihood to spook the oil speculators and the price of oil goes through the roof..
The rise in the price of oil in the past several years has started to cut into our economic growth. If speculators start betting on a supply disruption those bets themselves could put us back into a deep recession. Lower economic growth and elevated unemployment -- and employment anxieties really makes selling the more high-tech and more expensive technologies even more difficult. This will slow the adoption of said technologies. And along with the instability in the middle-East we have China, India and the rest of the developing world increasing the demand for petroleum which solidifies a continuing strong upward trend in the price of petroleum.
We should be using whatever technologies we have to reduce our consumption of gas and oil. but that's not likely to happen.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/24/opinion/methanol-as-an-alternative-to-gasoline.html?_r=1&
We’re producing more natural gas these days than we can use, thanks to new techniques to extract gas from shale. A recent report from the M.I.T. Energy Initiative, “The Future of Natural Gas,” called methanol “the liquid fuel that is most efficiently and inexpensively produced from natural gas.” China has already taken notice. Automakers there, like Chery, Geely and Shanghai Maple, have all introduced vehicles capable of running on methanol. Indeed, methanol is so much less costly per mile than gasoline that illegal fuel blending is rampant in China.
Unfortunately, most cars sold in the United States offer consumers no choice beyond gasoline. The so-called flex fuel vehicles that are now on the market are warranted to operate only on gasoline and ethanol. If Congress were to enact an open fuel standard that required new cars to be warranted to run on all-alcohol fuels, including methanol, natural gas could compete with oil in the liquid fuels market. Producing these cars would cost about $100 more. And these fuels could be distributed through the current refueling infrastructure with only slight retrofits.
The current global spot price for methanol made from natural gas is $1.13 per gallon, without any subsidy. Methanol produces about half the energy per gallon as gasoline, so you need to burn twice as much to go just as far. But it is still cheaper than gas. It would cost approximately $3 today, including taxes, distribution and retail markup, to travel the same distance on methanol as on a gallon of gasoline, according to calculations by the Methanol Institute, a cost that is well below the current national average for gasoline. If the economics of natural gas change, a flex fuel vehicle could still run on methanol made from coal, biomass and possibly recycled carbon dioxide, if that technology proves economical.
~~
~~
Another way to run cars on natural gas is by using compressed natural gas, or C.N.G. These vehicles require a dedicated fuel line and a large gas canister in the trunk. However, the cost of converting a light-duty vehicle to C.N.G. is over $10,000. Such an upfront cost would be reasonable in high mileage users (over 35,000 miles per year) like taxis, buses and garbage trucks, but is too high for a typical car owner, and the return on investment would take many years, even with current low natural gas prices.
April 11, 2013
if the United States ever plans to deal seriously with climate change, the transportation sector will have to change drastically. And the National Academy of Sciences report concludes that no one single policy or technology will do the trick.
Case in point: In the past few years, the Obama administration has enacted a series of ambitious corporate average fuel economy standards that will require new cars to get around 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. (That will translate into about 35.4 miles per gallon on the road.) That sounds impressive, but the NAS study concludes that current standards aren’t enough to hit even that 2030 goal for oil use.
In fact, the report argues, it’s tough to find any single technology that can cut oil use in half by 2030 on its own. Making conventional cars more efficient won’t do it. A major push on electric vehicles won’t do it. The only things likely to work are a massive switch over to natural-gas vehicles (which would, in turn, make it much harder to hit the greenhouse-gas goals) or a combination of efficiency, electric vehicles, and advanced biofuels:
[div class="excerpt" style="width:auto;border: 1px solid #000000;"]
Electric vehicles: The NAS report estimates that electric vehicles (they're talking PHEVs here, not conventional hybrids) will catch on relatively slowly in the next few decades, even if battery costs drop by a factor of 5, because “limited range and long recharge time are likely to limit the use of all-electric vehicles mainly to local driving.” What’s more, it will be hard to meet long-term emissions goals through plug-in vehicles alone so long as the electric grid is still powered by fossil fuels. Still, the report notes, electric vehicles are an extremely promising way to curtail gasoline use. ____ (that is, as long as time is not an issue_Bill USA)
Natnl Academy of Sciences: to cut U.S. gasoline use in half by 2030 no one technology will do it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/03/20/how-to-cut-u-s-oil-use-in-half-by-2030/if the United States ever plans to deal seriously with climate change, the transportation sector will have to change drastically. And the National Academy of Sciences report concludes that no one single policy or technology will do the trick.
Case in point: In the past few years, the Obama administration has enacted a series of ambitious corporate average fuel economy standards that will require new cars to get around 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. (That will translate into about 35.4 miles per gallon on the road.) That sounds impressive, but the NAS study concludes that current standards aren’t enough to hit even that 2030 goal for oil use.
In fact, the report argues, it’s tough to find any single technology that can cut oil use in half by 2030 on its own. Making conventional cars more efficient won’t do it. A major push on electric vehicles won’t do it. The only things likely to work are a massive switch over to natural-gas vehicles (which would, in turn, make it much harder to hit the greenhouse-gas goals) or a combination of efficiency, electric vehicles, and advanced biofuels:
[div class="excerpt" style="width:auto;border: 1px solid #000000;"]
Electric vehicles: The NAS report estimates that electric vehicles (they're talking PHEVs here, not conventional hybrids) will catch on relatively slowly in the next few decades, even if battery costs drop by a factor of 5, because “limited range and long recharge time are likely to limit the use of all-electric vehicles mainly to local driving.” What’s more, it will be hard to meet long-term emissions goals through plug-in vehicles alone so long as the electric grid is still powered by fossil fuels. Still, the report notes, electric vehicles are an extremely promising way to curtail gasoline use. ____ (that is, as long as time is not an issue_Bill USA)
Profile Information
Member since: Wed Mar 3, 2010, 05:25 PMNumber of posts: 6,436
