[PascalsWager]

Originally Posted by AricsE90

Actually this is a social science, since there is little to no proof.
There is no quantitative cost on the degradation of the ozone, let alone the lack of reality in burning fossil fuels in the realtion to burning up the ozone layer. (In other words, global warming, witch is a complete myth)

First, let me agree that this isn't a climate change debate and I'm really playing devils advocate here.

I think those with asthma or other respiratory conditions would argue that emissions would lead to a quantitative cost: flareups that require additional treatment and/or attention due to smog/etc. That treatment costs money.

And although I'm not a scientist so take this as a laymans thought, I was taught and have read in numerous journals that burning fossil fuels DOES degrade air quality, produces noxious fumes like carbon monoxide and add heavy metals, for example, mercury in air/water when burning coal (not 'clean coal scrubber' tech).

Are you stating that burning fossil fuels doesn't harm the air quality?

I think we've all seen the SoCal/Mexico City smog pictures, and if you recall, Olympic athletes cried foul running through smoggy Beijing in 2008.

[PascalsWager]

Originally Posted by Efthreeoh

But that is true with any human activty. There are always "negative externalities" to everything. The point is they balance out. For example, if a couple has sex, and a child results, which they can't afford to raise, the child goes on welfare, and we (society) all pay the cost of rasing the child. If that couple doesn't drive and doesn't contribute to "global warming" (read here I don't believe in man-made global warming - a different debate), then they are paying for my driving that does warm the globe. I pay for their child, they pay the extra cost of my gasoline. Fair is fair.

A seductive argument, to be sure. But i think your example is a little too simplistic - things are much more complicated and uneven....This isn't a couple buddies exchanging a few beers for gas money to square up.

A better way to say it is that there 'can' or 'could' be negative externalities to human activity. But there are also positive ones, too, no? I'd argue they are probably equally difficult to define as we are getting into probabilities, assumptions, and the like.

[alexwhittemore]

Originally Posted by PascalsWager

I'd assume the 'hidden' cost of air quality degradation due to CO2 and NO2

Nothing social about it - its scientific fact that burning fossil fuels emit gasses that deplete ozone and generally degrade air quality.

Now, the tricky and loaded part comes when trying to quantify that cost. I wont even try, but I will admit there is a cost.

Air quality degradation, sure, but modern pollution controls do a really good job of managing that. The real killer is greenhouse gas emission.

Originally Posted by mlifxs

I could be dating myself here, but they used to say that all the disease caused from horse poop in the streets was a "negative externality"....or something like that.

Totally accurate. Employ of modern waste management systems like sewers and municipal trash collection is directly responsible for a huge portion of the ~100% increase in life expectancy since the beginning of the 20th century.

Originally Posted by Efthreeoh

But that is true with any human activty. There are always "negative externalities" to everything. The point is they balance out. For example, if a couple has sex, and a child results, which they can't afford to raise, the child goes on welfare, and we (society) all pay the cost of rasing the child. If that couple doesn't drive and doesn't contribute to "global warming" (read here I don't believe in man-made global warming - a different debate), then they are paying for my driving that does warm the globe. I pay for their child, they pay the extra cost of my gasoline. Fair is fair.

It is true that everything has negative externalities, but to assume that they automatically balance out is naive. On one hand, you could make the argument that poor people, by virtue of being unable to afford the capital investment of a car, must take public transit and thus absorb some of your own gas-guzzling (I don't mean to accuse, but for the sake of argument let's assume that by reasonable metrics you do use an inordinate amount of gas).

On the other hand, I can make the argument that poor people STILL have the need to get to work and, in the US, often don't have the option of public transit regardless, thus are forced to drive. In this situation, they still can't afford modern, more fuel efficient cars, thus they end up with an old car with crappy mileage rather than a new Prius.

Now of course, the real point is that these arguments directly contradict each other, which isn't to say that the externalities ACTUALLY balance out, but IS to say that one of them is flat-out wrong, and in the absence of actual science, postulating on which one is right is total bullshit.

(In practice, it is the case that poorer, underdeveloped countries are by and large significantly less efficient than developed ones. Only when you're using as much resource as is available to you does it become economically attractive to invest in efficiency. An interesting case study is China - China is growing at such a rate they can't get all the energy they want, and thus they are simultaneously the worlds largest producer and second largest importer of coal, and also the worlds largest investor in renewable energy sources.

Originally Posted by AricsE90

There is no quantitative cost on the degradation of the ozone.

It's true, which makes assessing how 'worth it' it is in a dollar sense to protect those things REALLY difficult. This is true of virtually every externality assessment. For example, when deciding where to locate a new coal power plant based on land cost, cost of pollution controls, etc: It is a cold, hard fact that the pollution released by burning coal causes cancer. There are no two ways around the fact that, by placing a new coal plant in an urban area, the people downwind of the plume will experience an increase in cancer rates. The question is, at what point is that a problem and at what point do you really not care? (As a limit, a 50% increase in mortality downwind would be insane, unconscionable, and in most jurisdictions criminally negligent for everyone involved, whereas an increase in per-year mortality of 1 death in 100k is almost unquantifiably small). In this case, the EPA typically uses a value of around 8 million US dollars per life, a price point set under Bush.

let alone the lack of reality in burning fossil fuels in the realtion [relation] to burning up the ozone layer.

Well, okay, I shouldn't even walk into this fire, but flame suit on.

The fact that 'ozone' is even a part of this discussion implies a critical lack of understanding, so we'll start here. In fact, you're totally correct (if only accidentally). Tailpipe emissions DON'T 'burn up' ozone. In fact, they create it. The problem is, upper atmospheric ozone is very helpful to us, but ozone is, in fact, poisonous to humans so producing it at ground level is bad. I know you won't click on it, but I'll include this helpful link for those interested anyway.

(In other words, global warming, witch is a complete myth)

We really prefer not to use the term 'global warming', because to a layman it sort of invokes an intuition about climate that's contradictory to the reality. For example, 'warming' implies that you'll get less snow than last year. To some extent this is true, but to some extent it's categorically false - the reality is that average warming implies greater atmospheric moisture, which directly results in MORE snow for the time being.

Although ON AVERAGE, 'warming' is technically accurate. Humans just have a very, very difficult time comprehending what 'average' actually means in practice.

Anyway, the real point is, on the list of people legitimately qualified to have a scientific opinion, nobody agrees with you.

[alexwhittemore]

Originally Posted by PascalsWager

This isn't a couple buddies exchanging a few beers for gas money to square up.

Actually I find even this to be bullshit. My roommate always says "it all comes out in the wash" with respect to how many beers either of us owes at any given time, but keeping track, it's totally not true. Mostly it's just not enough of a differential to care.

[Efthreeoh]

Originally Posted by PascalsWager

A seductive argument, to be sure. But i think your example is a little too simplistic - things are much more complicated and uneven....This isn't a couple buddies exchanging a few beers for gas money to square up.

A better way to say it is that there 'can' or 'could' be negative externalities to human activity. But there are also positive ones, too, no? I'd argue they are probably equally difficult to define as we are getting into probabilities, assumptions, and the like.

I was being simplistic for a reason, as to not write a dissertation on the subject as a PhD study. But the point is, if you look at the economic definition of "negative externalities" it is a socialistic definition where there are "haves" and "have nots", and the have nots allways get screwed. I was merely pointing out that you can look at it as ALL of us can get screwed by someone else's activity. i.e. it is a stupid argument to try and add some social cost to the price of gasoline and say it is really $10/gallon because the air quality is a bit worse, or the earth will die 20 years before it really should. I'd point to the fact that since the invention of the automobile a quarter of us on this forum would have died at birth or within 1 year after.

[alou]

Originally Posted by NikosBM

A costco fill up I presume?

Nope, local Petro-Can.

[John 070]

But I remember 89 cents in 2001. In 12 years it only quadrupled. For once my salary exceeded inflation! . (But my salary has not gone up as fast since 2009, it was back down to $1.39 in Jan '09).

[ctuna]

About 35 cents a gallon when I started driving
around 1965. When the oil embargo hit and it doubled
overnight we thought that's it. I remember being shocked the
first time it went over a buck.
The middle class has basically been destroyed by inflation
caused by going off the Gold Standard. The inflation that doesn't exist according to the people that keep redefining what inflation is to say it doesn't exist.

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehicles...t_fotw364.html

[3s4u2]

On Wednesday I paid $2.82 per gal.(US) at a Texaco just outside of Royce City Texas. Came back through today it was $3.05!

[iDriveanXi]

In '99 it was .99 for reg in the summer in NJ, probably was .89 in other months. I remember $13 would fill my truck. I was in San Diego when gas started to climb in '05. It was $1.29 I recall seeing and thought, damn, this is gonna be expensive!

[krhodes1]

When I first started driving in the mid '80s 93 octane gas was $.99/gallon. BUT, I made all of $4/hr. I much prefer paying today's prices and making what I make now.

And after paying better than $12/gallon in Europe on my Euro Delivery trip, you will NEVER hear me complain about the prices in the states. That was a nasty convergence of high gas prices and wretched exchange rate that summer.

[///Mposter]

1998 about 16 years old. At the Phillips 66 station in SA,tx. The price was $0.74 a gallon. That was when $5 got you more than half a tank. Now $5 is barely a blip on the needle . $5 is what I burn idling before I burn $10 with my 6 injectors at WOT taking off. Well it is what it is. When gas reaches the minimum wage , then maybe people will realize that the policies set in place by the wonderful government is not so nice.
(End rant)

[dmcxii]

When I got my license gas was 29.9 cents a gallon at the local cheap place, about 34 cents at the majors. I could put $2 in my mom's Buick and cruise all night. I recall the big deal was hitting a dollar a gallon about 1979 or so (Google "Arab Oil Embargo").

[DuckySpud]

Fuel is cheap in the US!

In the UK, its currently £1.38 per litre for me.

Works out £5.18 for a US Gallon

Converted to USD, $8.40 per gallon....

[alexwhittemore]

Originally Posted by ctuna

The middle class has basically been destroyed by inflation
caused by going off the Gold Standard.

Your friendly weekly reminder that all the gold ever mined would cover only half of the US GDP at present market value.

[John 070]

Originally Posted by alexwhittemore

Your friendly weekly reminder that all the gold ever mined would cover only half of the US GDP at present market value.

I knew I should have gotten the gold package on my 1998 Nissan, it was phat back then. The badges would be worth today, more than my 335i

[Efthreeoh]

Originally Posted by dmcxii

When I got my license gas was 29.9 cents a gallon at the local cheap place, about 34 cents at the majors. I could put $2 in my mom's Buick and cruise all night. I recall the big deal was hitting a dollar a gallon about 1979 or so (Google "Arab Oil Embargo").

God how old do you feel when a youngster recommends googling something that you lived through - LOL. And that was the SECOND Arab oil embargo; the first was 1973.

So it was worse than that. In the late 70's the US was pushing to switch from English measurement to Metric and the gas pumps at the time used mechanical clockworks for measuring fuel. The pumps of the time were not designed for a fuel price above 99 cents and since they were mechanical they could not be changed for gas above 99 cents, so most stations started pricing gas by the half gallon. Worst, some stations were going metric at the same time, so the pumps were metric, but still didn't account for a fuel price above 99 cents. You ended up never knowing how much you were paying for gas because you were trying to convert gallons to liters using half-gallon pricing; what a mess it was. Unscrupulous gas stations were ripping people off right and left. (needless to say President Carter lost re-election...)

[roundle]

Gas is about 1.75 per liter here in The Netherlands. If you do the conversion, it works out to about $9.50-10.25 per US gallon. Costs me about 130-140 USD to fill up each week. A little painful, but you get use to it.

I recall when gas has was under a buck, in Maine circa 1998/99. Was pretty awesome especially since my 944 had a 20.5 gallon tank.