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San Diego big business and the city whistle past the greenhouse-gas graveyard
Yeah - safety and security are one issue - recent NY Post photographs probably don't help. I think working within an automobile-dominated transportation system - tougher CAFE MPG standards, congestion pricing, etc. would be a more important priority than trying to get everyone to take public transit.— December 8, 2012 12:49 p.m.
San Diego big business and the city whistle past the greenhouse-gas graveyard
Like Bob Roberts, I challenge the intrinsic assumption that public transit is good for the environment. I don't think favoring public transit over automobile transit is good for the economy OR the environment. As described in http://www.freakonomics.com/2012/11/07/can-mass-t… "Might studies that demonstrate transit is greener be similarly wrong? They might. The reason is that many studies of energy efficiency by mode often make questionable and — depending on the author’s point of view — self-serving assumptions. The main trick is to look at autos with but one passenger and compare them to transit vehicles in which every seat is full." "According to the Department of Energy’s Transportation Energy Data Book, in 2010 transporting each passenger one mile by car required 3447 BTUs of energy. Transporting each passenger a mile by bus required 4118 BTUs, surprisingly making bus transit less green by this metric"— December 8, 2012 8 a.m.
You will get hoodwinked on San Diego stadium costs
Look on the bright side. I don't think San Diego will get ripped off as blatantly as Miami just did; the Marlins brazenly having a "fire sale" to get rid of most of their highly paid players now that their nice new taxpayer-funded stadium is open.— December 6, 2012 9:29 p.m.
San Diego big business and the city whistle past the greenhouse-gas graveyard
In terms of global temperatures and climate - of course throughout the lifetime of the Earth they have varied quite a bit - long before man was around. But the CO2 levels and ocean water pH levels show a strong spike up at about the time of the industrial revolution to now. That's a pretty big coicidence I would think.— December 5, 2012 9:17 p.m.
San Diego big business and the city whistle past the greenhouse-gas graveyard
I don't think mass transit has proven to be effective. I think there is a flaw in the reasoning of pro-environmental folks. The flaw is ignoring practical concerns like time. Most people won't use public transit because automobiles save time - seems pretty obvious to me. So rather than spending money building highway lanes which will relieve trafffic - which will allow automobiles to save gas - we continue to invest heavily in mass transit.— December 5, 2012 9:09 p.m.
San Diego big business and the city whistle past the greenhouse-gas graveyard
Oh and here's my big environmental suggestion to the US government which I haven't seen made before - but that I think is a big root cause of high energy use in the USA. QUIT ENCOURAGING PEOPLE TO BUY BIG HOUSES. End the mortgage interest deduction. End (or greatly scale back) Fannie Mae, Freddie MAC, FHA, CRA. We have relatively huge houses in the US - at relatively far distances from our jobs. This means more energy use for heating, cooling, and transportation. Many people would say more government is the solution - urban revitalization programs, etc. I would say less goverment is the solution - roll back all the government programs that encourage people to buy big houses.— December 3, 2012 9:26 p.m.
San Diego big business and the city whistle past the greenhouse-gas graveyard
I think this is one issue for which most of the public dialogue is dominated by far extremists on both sides of the issue - and that is preventing solutions. On the right you have guys that deny that there is any evidence of global climate change - despite clear CO2 increases. On the left you have people who continue to push hard (and get) expensive programs that sound enviromentally nice but don't work in practice (e.g. insisting car-pool lanes must be put everywhere at all times regardless of effectiveness, see http://paleale.eecs.berkeley.edu/~varaiya/papers_… ). Realistically there is a tradeoff between long-term effects of climate change, which could potentially be devastating vs. the economic costs and effectiveness of various environmental programs. I would like to see more pragmatic compromises between economic and enviromental sides of the equation. I don't think these tradeoffs are acknowledged and analyzed properly - instead everyone wants to sell things with the usual "win-win" Bullsh. I can't believe, for example, that the $68B+ CA high-speed rail would possibly be considered a good tradeoff - it's FAR too expensive for the benefit it might provide. In contrast, pushing for more environmental building standards, tighter CAFE fuel standards, those squigly light bulbs, LEDs, alternative electricity sources - these all seem like good ideas that have worked. But I don't really see much cost-effectiveness dialogue in the public discussion because you can't get much compromise between extremists.— December 3, 2012 9:19 p.m.
Hispanic vote calls shots in San Diego
Your argument above seems to be a guilt by association argument, e.g. if Hitler's favorite color was red then anyone who likes red is a Nazi. Comparisons to Nazis really aren't going to work to try to diffuse disagreements. Take your point about global climate change. So most of the GOP wants to deny evidence of GCC. Would it be better to label them as evil people who want to destroy the world? Or better to keep repeating facts that show levels of CO2 are changing, ice-caps are melting, etc. Name-calling just makes people mad. Facts, eventually, will win out.— November 27, 2012 8:49 p.m.
Hispanic vote calls shots in San Diego
Dear Mr. Pot: I think that complaining about a "rhetoric of hate and fear" in one paragraph and then comparing Republicans to Nazis in the next paragraph is more than a bit hypocritical. Love, Mr. Kettle— November 26, 2012 9:39 p.m.
Romney gossip
A map, if it could talk, would disagree with calling anything East of I-5 "Del Mar". Of course many businesses don't really mind stretching the truth when it comes to their location.— November 24, 2012 7:27 a.m.