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Yet another indication Joe is clueless.. I dont care so much about the pipeline workers, but I do care about the environment. Blocking pipelines means more pollution, and a hell of a lot of it. But Joe is either not smart enough to understand that or cares more about his image than doing good. No surprise.
@freemo I think you pasted the wrong image. That's not talking about a pipeline. Anyway, are you saying that an oil pipeline does not facilitate burning fossil fuels?
The image is Bidens response when asked about how he blocked the pipeline the effect it would have on workers. So yea its about the pipeline.. why what image do you see?"
And yes i am saying that a pipeline does not facilitate burning oils, well not exactly. Oil can get from point A to point B many ways, the three main ways are train, truck, and pipeline. The quantity of oil transported is based on demand, blocking one of these only causes the oil to move by the other and has no effect on the amount of oil in circulation or consumed.
Combine that fact with the fact that of those three ways pipeline contributes by far the least amount of pollution per barrel.
So the effect of blocking the most evo-friendly mode of transport and forcing companies to utilize significantly less eco-friendly modes of travel is not that there is less facilitation of oil, only that there is far far more pollution and little else to gain.
@koherecoWatchdog Not really the effect is marginal..
That would be like arguing we need to push for more coal energy because coal is less economical and costs people more therefore it reduces consumption.
Increasing price by 10 cents and then ensuring the oil you deliver pollutes x3 as much as it would otherwise is no win.
@freemo You have to pay drivers, pay for the fuel itself, pay for the infrastructure (like office workers) to schedule deliveries, etc. So of course there's a substantial cost savings with the pipeline or the profit-driven oil co wouldn't be trying to do the pipeline. The actual pollution from the trucks/trains is marginal.
@koherecoWatchdog None of that is based on reality unfortunately in terms of the actual data.
The contributed pollution from trucks hauling oil across country is astronomical. Any area that needs a pipeline likely does not have access to trains so its going to be by truck not train.
The cost for drivers is offset by the cost for pipeline engineers. You have fewer pipeline engineers but they cost 5x as much to hire, so thats a moot point.
I dont think you realize just how many trucks we are talking here, 10,000 + more trucks ont he road is a **lot** of pollution.
@freemo it would be ideal to allow the pipeline but then introduce a cost-prohibitive tax on the fuel, but that's impossible to do politically.
@freemo It was tried in California. Sadly, even CA democrats who are generally pro-environment fought fiercely to shut-down the democrat in office who tried to increase the gas tax. Ppl's tune changes as soon as their own lifestyle becomes threatened.
@koherecoWatchdog If you cant implement solutions that reduce oil consumption, real solutions, then better to do nothing.
Blocking pipelines is a huge step backwards and is effectively dumping millions of tons of CO2 into the air with no real benefit other than costing people a few pennies on their gas price which we already know people will easily pay anyway.
@freemo if the fuel cost raises by 10 cents due to market circumstances, car drivers will pay it. But if the cost of fuel increases by 10 cents due to an artificial gas tax, ppl will stop at nothing to send the politician packing and overturn the tax.
@freemo so it's important to embrace scenarios that cause the market price to increase.
@koherecoWatchdog not when those scenarios have a net result of more pollution and not less. Blind ignorance towards a goal without analylizing the results of an action is how we cause more harm than good...
Dice it however you want the simple fact, and what the numbers show, is that if you block pipelines the net result is more pollution, not less. Pipelines contribute negliible pollution, Trains for transporting oil alone (and thats more ecofriendly than trucks) contributes 10 million tons of just CO2 for the transport of oil inside the USA. Trucks produce significantly more than that.
@freemo The figures you're talking about apparently don't account for cost reducing demand. Not that they're sloppy, but how could they? It's guesswork. And as you've said, your working assumption is that a cost increase doesn't decrease consumption. This is why the figures are bad.
@koherecoWatchdog As a data scientist ive worked on this problem before, and yes it factored in cost cutting demand, and it isnt hard to do actually. We look closely how gasoline prices effect consumption and it isnt very significant, and certainly does not outweigh the cost-benefits your describing.
Since I worked on this in a data science role I know the numbers intimately. To give you an idea of just how insignificant the price-demand curve is for consumers:
In 2008 we have the most telling data, the average national gasoline price shot down from $4 dollars a gallon to $1.75 a gallon (nominal price) before rising back up again to $4 dollars a gallon in the year or two that followed.
Despite the price having decreased by more than half there was no noticable difference in number of miles driven by vehicals in on the road (total across all vehicles). In fact it **decreased*** slightly from 3.275 trillion miles traveled per year to 3.2 trillion miles traveled per year.
Likewise as the prices rose again there was no significant difference seen either.
Definitively showing that an increase in gas price (or decrease as the case may be) has a negligible effect on consumption, even when the difference in price is extremely significant.
@freemo @tursiops @Demosthenes i heard that ppl take more recreational road trips when fuel is cheap.
That could be true, but the data shows little if no effect.
Presuming that is true my guess would be that they just replace their normal commute to work with a similar number of miles taking the family on vacation. The net miles in the end being somewhat the same. Just speculation though, all I know is gas prices have a surprisingly small and insignificant effect on consumption.
+bonifartius 𒂼𒄄
@freemo i think of car travel more like other utilities like electricity, you usually have a stable consumption, with the possibility of some savings if you cut down on comfort or are enabled to do so by technical advancement.
@bonifartius yea, as a general rule you wont find price has a very strong influence on consumption.
@koherecoWatchdog Exactly... which is why its good to try to push for an increase fuel tax (particularly if that fuel tax is going towards ecological investments). But should you fail to get such a law passed (and as you say its likely you may not) then its better to do nothing then to block a pipeline out of desperation and cause far far more damage than doing nothing.
@freemo it's a given that car drivers out number non-car drivers, and that they will fight like hell to maintain their lifestyle. And this is not just in the US. Brussels shows the effect of the car lobby bullying to the point that it only costs 30eur to park on the street & the street is so ram-packed with cars that communes disallow garages on (which removes a public parking spot from
@koherecoWatchdog yea the car drivers are of course a big part of the issue, but in fact they arent the bulk of the pollution or the majority of gas consumers. So they really arent where the focus should be. Airplanes and freighters (large boats) are the bigger problem
@freemo ah, my bad.. I pasted the wrong URL (I use bitlbee not a GUI). The pipeline reduces the delivery cost, which has the ultimate effect of increasing consumption.