Columbus, how it grew and the misunderstandings (Cleveland, Euclid: condo, construction)

[1watertiger]

geminigal, yes columbus is easy to get around and you are right about the love affair with cars... but being a "newer" type city, columbus lacks good transit compared to other "newer" cities. charlotte,salt lake,portland to name a few have better transit, no?

[VideoEngineerAJS]

Originally Posted by 1watertiger

geminigal, yes columbus is easy to get around and you are right about the love affair with cars... but being a "newer" type city, columbus lacks good transit compared to other "newer" cities. charlotte,salt lake,portland to name a few have better transit, no?

And for the most part all of those great systems of public transit are the ones that are in need of bailout money right now because nobody in those cities feels the need to take public transit. NYC and perhaps Boston (although that's a stretch because Boston's really not that difficult to maneuver around either) are really the only cities that actually benefit from a train system.

[VideoEngineerAJS]

Actually I'll give the fact that Boston's public transit system is a benefit to the greater Boston area because while Boston itself is not a difficult city to maneuver around, they lack parking big time.

[NorthPoleMarathoner]

Originally Posted by 14thandYou

Because they are a finite resource. If you think unmitigated consumption of fossil fuels is funny--which I take that you do based on your sophomoric comments regarding it--then you'll surely find it to be hilarious when we look back fondly on the days when gasoline was only $4 a gallon.

Just because people say something is finite doesn't make it so. First off, we get most of our energy from the sun. Actually, without the sun we have zero energy. And I doubt it is going anywhere.

Here is a list of some of the times we were going to run out of oil:
1885: US Geological Survey "no chance for oil in California"
1891: Same prediction for Texas
1914: US Bureau of Mines: 10 year supply left for US
1939: Interior Dept: 13 year supply left
1951: Interior Dept: 13 year supply left.

And adjusted for inflation energy is cheaper now than ever before. If it was finite we would be paying more, not less.

Energy costs have declined and will continue to decline for 3 reasons:

1. increased demand due to population growth and rise in income rasies prices and constitutes an opportunity to entrepreneurs and inventors. (notice I didn't say government)
2. the search for new ways of supplying the demand for energy
3. the discovery of methods which leave us better off than if the orginal problem (increased demand) had not occured.

In 1862 a barrel of oil fell from $4 a barrel to 32 cents a barrel becuase companies in Pennsylvania invented drilling. Kerosene dropped from 58cents to 26cents per gallon in the same time period because evil oil man John Rockefeller improved refining and transportation.

In 1940 world oil reserves were believed to be 10 years. In 1990 they were 50 years. Now they are over 200.

In 1830 it took 9 pounds of coal to produce the exact same amount of energy that it took one pound to do in 1890.

In the U.S. the price of oil realtive to wages dropped more than 70% from 1870 to 1970.

How can a resource be considered finite if the price keeps dropping? It can't. And that is not opinion. It is fact.

And it really doesn't matter what people think or want to believe. If the price is coming down it is because of the 3 reasons I stated above.

If energy was finite the price would skyrocket.

The fact that you don't approve of how far people want to live from where they work or shop or how a mall is designed is totally irrelevant. People choose to live and work where they want. If someone wants to live live in Delaware County and drive to Lancaster it is their business. Not yours. Not mine. Not some busybody at city hall. Then Polaris goes out of business. No worries. What about the person that lives in Victorian Village and works in Westerville? Is that ok? If people don't like the hassles of Polaris they won't go there. There are plenty of alternatives.


Fossil fuels and sprawl are of no concern to me becasue the price of energy is dropping when adjusted for inflation. So it is not finite. No matter how many times people say energy is finite it isn't. Saying something doesn't make it true.

And life expectancy is more than 50 years longer since the industrial revolution and fossil fuels and sprawl and oil companies and everything else that goes along with it. If all this stuff polluted so much how can people be living longer? Shouldn't we be dying younger than before when the air was clean?

So if people want to ignore 5000 years of human history and believe sprawl and fossil fuels are bad I guess it is their business. Seems to me we are a lot better off with them than we were before.

[jmargaret]

Interesting energy stats. I never really thought about it that way before. Although I noticed that the stats are comparing today to the 1800's? There might still be some relevant info. there, though. I work in the field of genetics and I can assure you that people are living longer today because of advances in medical technology, and in ways that we can pinpoint and treat/prevent diseases. There are moral debates as to how long we should be prolonging life, etc. that are not suitable for this forum. There are also more influencing factors in human longevitiy than just breathing clean air. But back to the main topic--what was it--conserving resources and sprawl, etc.?

[14thandYou]

Do you have a credible source for any of that information? Because the overwhelming number of scientists--that is, the people who study and do this type of thing for a living--do not hold similar views. Study after study after study has demonstrated that fossil fuels are both a finite commodity and are likely to be at or near exhaustion within some point during the next century. I also noticed that the list of articles strangely stops at a point nearly 60 years ago, where research techniques and knowledge were far less advanced than what we have today. And as I mentioned, I'm not even getting into the vast environmental concerns associated with fossil fuel consumption.

Back to the matter at hand, for a close examination of the toll of unmitigated sprawl (as well as pure speculation-fueld growth), I'd recommend George Packer's recent piece on Florida, found here (subscription required to view the full article): A Reporter at Large: The Ponzi State: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker

[14thandYou]

Originally Posted by floridaorbust

Sorry if I offended. Not my intention.

Certainly no offense taken on my part, I happen to have quite a bit of respect for Gore's work. I simply didn't see where he was in any way germane to the discussion.

[14thandYou]

Originally Posted by VideoEngineerAJS

And for the most part all of those great systems of public transit are the ones that are in need of bailout money right now because nobody in those cities feels the need to take public transit. NYC and perhaps Boston (although that's a stretch because Boston's really not that difficult to maneuver around either) are really the only cities that actually benefit from a train system.

Firstly you've clearly never been to Washington, DC, Philadelphia or Chicago, all of which have very high ridership on their mass transit systems and all of whom benefit immensely from its existence. DC's in fact, is second behind New York in overall daily ridership.

Secondly, mass transit systems are NEVER solely dependent upon ridership in order to finance their operating costs; doing so would make such systems completely cost-ineffective for riders. And I would hardly hold out rail systems as an example of stimulus waste when you consider the hundreds of billions of dollars poured into highway projects by the government every year. They are of course largely necessary, but the paltry amount of money spent on transit systems in this country compared with highway systems is barely measureable.

[Tenzo]

Or Frisco, or Europe or Asia

[NorthPoleMarathoner]

Originally Posted by 14thandYou

Do you have a credible source for any of that information? Because the overwhelming number of scientists--that is, the people who study and do this type of thing for a living--do not hold similar views. Study after study after study has demonstrated that fossil fuels are both a finite commodity and are likely to be at or near exhaustion within some point during the next century. I also noticed that the list of articles strangely stops at a point nearly 60 years ago, where research techniques and knowledge were far less advanced than what we have today. And as I mentioned, I'm not even getting into the vast environmental concerns associated with fossil fuel consumption.

I cited my sources. Most of them were from the United States Government. For example, when I wrote U.S. Bureau of Mines you can safely assume that the source was the U.S. Bureau of Mines.

Scientists say one thing: things are better.
Politicians and environmentalists tell us another: things are worse.
Why believe the evidence when you can live in make believe.

Do you have any sources for your generalizations? Who are these scientists you speak of?

I saw something on the tv the other day that a scientist said the earth has been getting cooler since 1998. Can't remember his name though. I'm guessing that people no longer are buying into the warming thing so it is going to switch back to cooling over the next 10-15 years. Got to make money somehow, right?

And read the Population Bomb by Paul Erlich. It was written in the 1960s. All of his claims never came true. About mass starvations, wars, water and food shortages, etc. All you have to do is change the words population growth for fossil fuels/global warming and you can see that global warming people are liars and where they "formulated" what is going to happen.

Interesting. Every new environmental claim is always going to end up in the same calamaities, yet they never do. People have been making the same environemtal prediction consequences for 5000 years. They just change the cause when it no longer works. i.e. population growth, acid rain, new ice age, ozone layer.

The same people that were claiming all that other stuff was gong to kill us are now telling us that fossil fuels are bad? Give me a break.

Maybe they should get out of the prediction business. They ain't very good at it.