JayB

"Don't cry for me, Argentina!" Ok....I've gotta side with the paranoid libs on this one. I ate some serious crow back when I actually believed that a western US generating capacity shortage was underway....when in fact Enron was manipulating the market. If you want to read a good synopsis of the factors which precipitated the power crisis - there's a good summary published by the CBO here: http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=3062&sequence=0 Manipulation of the spot market seems to have played a role in boosting prices, but the structural problems brought about by the manner the energy market was regulated in California were far more significant factors in precipitating the crisis. At its worst - a significant part of the supply shortage was due to generators withholding power, not because they were trying to manipulate the market to their advantage, but because the geniuses in Sacramento capped retail prices but allowed wholesale prices to float. When demand increased along with the economic activity, and an extremely hot summer led to a seasonal surge in demand, and a commensurate increase in prices, the utilities could not pass along the increased costs to their customers, nor were they allowed to stop selling power at a loss - so they were forced to borrow money to buy power, and continued to do so until their finances eroded so badly that generators who had power to sell them declined to do so for fear of not being paid. In the end - California elected to lock itself into long-term power contracts that, once the crisis had passed - resulted in consumers and taxpayers getting stuck paying for power at above market rates, thereby enhancing the profit margins of the very same entitities that the state was attempting to put in check. The Sarbanes-Oxley act that congress enacted after the audit driven corporate scandals has done much the same thing for the accounting companies, nearly all of which are recording record profits this year.

"The point that was being discussed was the validity of criticism of complex science issues by folks who can find the hole in the ground." Surely this condescension must be based upon something more substantial than a degree in ecology, or the professional practice thereof.

Most of the majors have stated that their goal is maximizing profit, rather than reserves or production, and have thus declined to accept the terms that the states with the most oil are giving at this point. Quite a few of the deals are going to the smaller, more aggressive oil companies who are willing to take on more risks, or to state companies owned by countries that are getting concerned about energy security - like India or China. There was a good article about this in the WSJ recently, and perhaps in the economist as well.

Speaking of Doomsday prophets from the dwindling twilight of your glory days - how many of your boy Ehrlic's predictions came true? You are surely old enough to recall the publication of "The Population Bomb," the bet with his nemisis Julian Simons, and the outcome of the said bet. BTW - how'd you get broadband in the yurt? And how many revolutions of the hand-crank generator are necessary for you to peruse the internet for 1/2 hour?

Yeah but JB aren't you forgetting the Republican admin's ability to manipulate the market to keep prices/profits artifically inflated for their campaign donors/corporate bitches? Can you specify the precise mechanisms by which they are doing so? And if you knows them, it stands to reason that that the folks who are involved in energy trading would know them - and develop strategies in the futures markets and elsehwere to profit at the governments expense. Maybe you can take a moment or two and plot moves in the futures markets versus known interventions in the markets by the administration - undertaken of course, as part of a secret-yet-public-enough-for-you-to-know-about-it agenda to line their donor's pockets - to substantiate your case here. Should make for some good reading.

Unequivocal in the sense that a warming trend has been empirically confirmed, or that the model that stipulates that the said warming is solely the result of a higher atmospheric CO2 concentration has been proven? I think that most of the people that you are writing off probably have a bit more nuanced take on the evidence that you give them credit for. Very few would look at a table of emperical data which documents the phenomenon and dismiss it out of hand. However, if they are displaying some of the critical thinking that you praise elsewhere, their thoughts will probably turn to the icecaps which covered a significant percentage of the land mass in the Northern hemisphere - at the very least - and conclude that their dissapearance was probably due to something other than the Clovis people's wasteful and self-indulgent lifestyle. I personally don't think that people who want to know how much of the observed warming is due to increased C02 concentration due to the combustion of fossil fuels, and how much is due to natural cycles that we simply have no control over before taking drastic action are behaving irrationally at all. Even once this information is known it would probably be a good idea to attempt to calculate the costs and the efficacy of making the changes required for maximal reductions in C02 emissions versus the benefits. If a massive cut in CO2 emissions will result in, at best, a net difference of 1 degree farenheit - but the costs would drive global economic growth below the levels of population growth - then the tradeoff might not be worth it - as the resultant poverty could very well lead to quite a bit more misery and environmental damage than the climate change itself would produce. You and j_b ditched the cars and moved into the solar powered yurts yet?

Most of the oil companies are enjoying record profits at the moment for a number of reasons, but perhaps the most important is that most of the oil that they are pulling out of the ground comes from fields that were aquired when oil was at the $10 a barrell range, and they were able to negotiate relatively high margins in exhange for making the investments necessary to develop them - so you've got a resource that you are extracting at a low fixed cost while the price climbs to record highs. That's a recipe for record profits no matter what it is that you are selling. This situation may last a while longer, but certainly not indefinitely as anyone sitting on top of an undeveloped oil-field is driving a much harder bargain with anyone that wants to develop it - so at some point the oil companies margins will go down, and costs per barrell will increase, and profits will decline accordingly.

I heard that same story with only a few details changed about 8 or 9 years ago. I suspect urban myth. Yup. http://www.snopes.com/weddings/embarras/bothered.htm

I think the real root of all the hostility and tension between the US and the Euros as of late has as its root, our parochial inability to understand the profound attachment that our European brethren have to their speedos and their one-piece ski suits....

I think this is the book he was referring to:

Looks like it's here: http://www.questalb.com/about.asp

Way to dredge up a classic. This has to be my favorite cc.com dogpile of all time.

www.nwog.org Anyone know where it went?

Word. Actually, I kind of thought the idea was cool but I wouldn't want anyone to see me using it or carying it around. Sort of like a stick clip....

You are probably a bit hypoglycemic in the mornings if you are working out before eating. Having a glass of OJ and a bit of coffee before I head in seems to make me feel better during a morning workout, and I try to eat shortly after I'm done.

All I want to know is, where are the vector diagrams, topological theorems, and appeals to various mathematical postulates to reinforce one's points. The last conversation that we had that had the same techno-wankage to relevance ratio was the discussion of normal forces on ice-screw loading with floating versus fixed handles. FWIW I'm not sure how to resolve the shock-loading versus equalizing conundrum with a cordalette, but it probably involves sizing up the pieces you've got and the overall situation that you are in and deciding which approach is less likely to result in death.

Alternates: Mortise is to Tenon...

As Chuck mentioned - Chris posted a pretty sweet TR and some other stuff before ever mentioning a book. I'd say his contributions are at least on par with Joe's. Admit it - you are just upset because the publishers rejected your 11"x17" Vantage/Zeke's Boulders coffee-table book with the Haiku's and interperative essays, and you are taking it out on others. Even the add on multimedia feature which included the shirtless guy with the goatee doing the interpretive dance based on the base-of-the route pantomiming of the moves on Skip-Em-Or-Clip-Em wouldn't make them bite...

No one seemed to give JoJo any flack for pitching his guidebook here, and his level of participation in the site was the same or lower than Chris's, and I was glad to get information on Don's updated Guide to West Coast Ice, and learn when Jason and Alex's book would be hitting the shelves. I think there's a balance one can strike here. It's obviously not my site, but I think there's a big difference between someone using the BB to get the word out about a small print-run guidebook that covers an area that cc.com users regulary climb in, and Norton logging onto the site to shill Sandy Hill Pittman's tell all expose. And in the case of folks like Don, Jason, and Alex - I think it's cool that long-time contributors can use the site to get the word out about their books, and exchange information with their readers.

Nice looking book Chris. I may pick that up just to keep the fires stoked until the time comes when I can head down there for a climbing trip.

It's there if you scroll through the rest of his gallery...

Just to the left of the crux pitch of Online at Static Point. 5.10a R in the guide book. Might have been scarier before the old 1/4" leepers were replaced with modern bolts. The difficulty of the climbing felt more or less on par with Online, but perhaps a bit more runout. From what I remember, there's a small ledge that you'd go sliding over if you blew the crux section below the anchors. If you do Online and feel solid it might be worth a look. Speaking of slab climbs with a reputation - anyone out there done Artie Rip?

fuck marks- let's face it! the system he designed killed more people then any other, including hitler. fuck you you pinko commie puking shit for brain bastard. Prepare for ritual denunciation and the liberal* interjection of the words "Neocon" and "strawman" into the copiuous rebukes you earn for your heresy..... *adjective. Syn "copious," "Plentiful," "abundant"

Hey there smart guy, did you even click through the link? Apparently not. So here it is again: http://www.enviromission.com.au/index1.htm Solar Tower involves no voltaic cells. 200MW . No fuel inputs. No emissions. No external moving parts to kill birds. No altering rivers. One person to operate. No moving parts aside from the turbines. Night generation available through thermal mass. Pilot will be constructed in Australia. Prototype has already been tested. Initial cost is significant, yet there are virtually no on-going costs once built. New nuke plants involves tremendous costs in security, construction, regulatory approvals, waste handling, etc. I think it's a neat idea - but I think it's much more plausible that the higher costs associated with generating power in such a manner have had more to do with limiting the adoption than a conspiratorial behavior amongst energy companies. Whatever you think of corporations, they have never shown a great reluctance to reap an easy profit, and the fact that no significant private money has gone into funding these things with an eye to running them on a for profit basis at some point in the future is telling. This notion that corporations that profit from existing technologies are both hell-bent and capable of stifling any and all innovations that threaten their profitability, if true, would have resulted in the erradication of all technological progress long ago. Candlemakers would have snuffed out the lightbulb, buggymakers would have shut down the automobile manufacturers, ship-owners would have shut down the railways, water-mill owners would have killed-off the steam engine, typewriter manufactures would have killed off the pc, slide rule manufacturers would have done away with t he calculator, broom manufacturers would have offed the vacuum cleaner, etc. If the advantages and profits associated with a new technology are both real, and significant, the odds of any competitor with a rival technology being able to stifle their adoption and the public's knowledge of their existence - both crucial elements of any good corporate conspiracy - are virtually nil. There have been cases where the risks and costs associated with developing a new technology are so high relative to the potential returns that no corporation or consortium thereof has been willing to make a significant investment in them - as was the case with space travel - but my hunch is that they do not make up a significant percentage of all innovations. I think it looks interesting and would be quite happy to see the money that currently goes to, say, farm subsidies plowed into this sort of thing instead, but I'm just not buying the wild-eyed, beard-and-foggy-glasses-on-the-street-corner "The technology is OUT THERE - RIGHT NOW, man - but the corporations don't want you to know about it..." rationale for the limited deployment of this or any other alternative energy technology.

Doesn't take much with this crowd, does it? This sort of reminds me of the response I get when I decide to forgo indulging the polite fictions that surround popular notions about what determines weight loss or weight gain, and assert that the law of conservation of energy applies to humans as well, and that an increase in one's mass is the result of consuming more calories than one expends on a persistent basis. Period. The usual result is flat out anger, denial, a plethora of anecdotes concerning overweight friends that - literally - only ate a carrot and a stick of celery a day while working in a slave labor colony in the middle of the Sahara for 10 years - and still put on hundreds of pounds of weight. Or the conspiracy theories involving the fast food industry, their cohorts in the advertising business, the agribusiness folks and their lobbyists in DC - everything but a willingness to put the responsibility where it lies and a acknowledge disagreeable reality. I don't think it's a coincidence that the same people who believe that fast-food marketing is the ultimate cause of obesity, also tend to be the one's that believe in all manner of conspiracies - such those concerning the reasons why we generate most of our power from fossil fuels - and vice versa.