I also think there are issues to look at with crashworthiness.

You wrote:

I’d rather not improve my own chances of surviving a crash by delivering a bigger blow to my fellow driver.

Fair enough, but I wouldn’t feel the same way about any passengers.

Economically, the price at the pump is supposed the be where supply and demand meet, and is supposed to be the point where conservation and reasonable use come to their closest possible agreement.

Lighter cars are not *necessarily* “more flimsy”. The main advantage of heavier vehicles in a two vehicle crash is the disparity in energy transfer between vehicles of differing weight. The heavier vehicles also often have higher bumpers, thus delivering a deadlier blow. Personally, I’d rather not improve my own chances of surviving a crash by delivering a bigger blow to my fellow driver. If you’re extremely interested in the topic, The Journal of Crashworthiness is worth a look.

Thomas Sowell in the excerpt wrote:
Many of the same people who cry “No blood for oil!” also want higher gas mileage standards for cars. But higher mileage standards have meant lighter and more flimsy cars, leading to more injuries and deaths in accidents — in other words, trading blood for oil.

Martha, the last passenger pigeon, died in this metro area at the Cincinnati Zoo:

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/pet/martha.html

Yes, it was a sad day. But, the ecosystem didn’t collapse.

You won’t like this either: that’s exactly what happened to the passenger pigeon population.

The Hubbert peak theory, also known as peak oil, is an influential theory concerning the long-term rate of conventional oil and other fossil fuels production and depletion. It predicts that future world oil production will soon reach a peak and then rapidly decline. The actual peak year will only be known after it has passed. Based on available production data, proponents have predicted the peak years to be 1989, 1995, 1995-2000, or, according to one influential group, 2007 for oil and somewhat …. (Google definition ends)

You say “long decline of approx 2%-5% per year.” The accepted definition says “soon reach a peak and rapidly decline.” Big difference.

As Peak Oil is defined in Google extracted from Wiki, my definition, presented facetiously, is closer than yours. The market can and will successfully adapt to your (inaccurate) definition. The accepted Wiki definition is in my opinion not a credible prediction of future events–hence my ridicule of it.

By not even accurately defining the term, you have literally shown that you don’t know what you’re talking about.

That is not peak oil; that sounds like your own projected idea of what environmentalists worry about / wish for.

T.Boone Pickens, Texas Awl man “believes” in peak oil, and he contributed to George Bush. Matt Simmons was on the Cheney energy task force and he “believes” in peak oil.

Here is an accurate definition.
Peak Oil is the point at which oil production maxes out, and then begins a long decline of approx 2-5% a year.

Every individual oil field can be observed to follow this pattern, thus the extrapolation to ALL the oil fields.

- Though I wasn’t there to watch, The Freak probably did his thing in the wee hours of Sunday morning and reviewed it later Sunday morning before letting it go. He could even have begun late Sat. Evening. The NYT Sunday Mag is released on Saturday. In fact, the 8/28 mag is available now, and was as of 9:55 or earlier:
http://nytimes.com/pages/magazine/index.html

So…it would appear that he could have had 12-14 hours of intellectual deliberation, including time to sleep on it. That would appear to suffice in the circumstances.

- But as to substance, the points he makes are points that are made in Econ 101, which as a Univ. of Chicago Econ professor he has at least some familiarity with, like probably 20 years or so. In fact, he probably knows the subject so well he could have done the post in his sleep.

- You’re not going to like this, but those of us who trust in markets have faith that human ingenuity will enable us to adapt to non-catastrophic circumstances. The depletion of the world’s in the ground oil supply is a developing problem and not catastrophic. Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people at energy companies are dealing with this stuff every day, and I trust them as rational people not to use up the last drop and say “oops, it’s all gone.” And BTW, even then it’s not really all gone, because there are other ways to get and make oil. I haven’t seen any reason to distrust the industry or to think it will collectively miscalculate on such a grand scale. If or when I do I’ll say so.

- So the point of my post is that I’m damn tired of seeing ONLY the news about oil supply and prices and ONLY the news about the possible housing bubble break out of the business pages into front-page news and feature articles like the NYT mag piece, especially when the news about “peak oil” appears largely contrived (I’m still working on the housing bubble). With the good and underplayed news ID’d at two of my other linked posts, I think I have a point that builds on what The Freak says. The “shark attacks” crowd out other economic news, and IMO it’s deliberate in the sense that the MSM is conditioned to believe that a Republican economy can’t possibly be doing well without something else getting screwed up in the process.

- Sowell, by the way, is the one I gave credit to for prolific output (Williams too, but to a lesser degree). I could have added that I consider them two of the smartest guys in America, irrespective of profession, but the post is already pretty long.

Why have such high opinion for these people with “prolific” output and knee-jerk reactions?

Oh well, thanks for the Sowell link.