RichardGibbons

It will be interesting to see what happens here--if Horgan was going to back off, he probably shouldn't have raised the issue in the first place (unless he genuinely believes he'll win in court.) By acting as he did, he's raised the profile of this again and added gasoline to the environmentalists' fire, increasing the chance of civil disobedience. It seems like a bad strategy for a government to increase the chance that people don't obey the government. That said, it would be pretty interesting if Notley did restrict BC-produced gas. That'd totally play into the environmentalists' hands and make it far less likely for the pipeline to go through as Notley cut the legs out of the pipeline's supporters in BC.

You're awesome, Cardboard. Because of flak you got on other threads for ad hominem attacks on other people, you were trying really hard not to insult people here. But in the end, you couldn't resist. It reminds me of a 4 year old doing the marshmallow test. (I'll remind you if you don't want me to respond to political threads, just leave political threads in the politics section. But I know that's just another marshmallow to you. :) )

Fair point, Stubble. I don't totally agree, but I think what you say is likely far more true than not true.

In that case, you should know that this pipeline is a pretty big deal to people in BC. A recent survey indicates that 23% say that they are willing to perform acts of civil disobedience to stop the pipeline. Most of the 23% are lying, but if only 5% of them are serious you still have 1% of the population of Greater Vancouver willing to commit acts of civil disobedience to mess with this pipeline. And a small minority of those could be total psycho extremists, willing to do things like violence or sabotage. I think the housing crisis in Vancouver also magnifies the potential for extreme behavior as the millenials realize just how badly the government has screwed them, and a lot of that anger will (irrationally) spill over to the pipeline. Gross inequality creates instability. In sum, I think it means that there's likely to be a lot of grief building this pipeline, and it still isn't clear it will happen. (My bet is that it will, so I think it's over 50% likely, but I don't think it's over 80% likely.) So, if you're trying to analyse investment based on this pipeline, these possibilities are worth throwing into your analysis.

LOL, no it isn't. Other than the link, this is the entirety of what you said in the initial post on this the thread. I mean, I get that you want to lie about why you're posting something, but if you really want to pretend a thread isn't isn't political, you should at least delete the really politicial initial post so that your story is at least a bit plausible.

This is largely misunderstanding the issue. From what I read, the indigenous people are mostly the ones concerned with a pipeline leak. The issue almost everyone else seems to be more concerned about is a dilbit tanker leak because it's unclear how to clean it up--there's even debate on whether or not dilbit sinks, which to me seems like a pretty basic attribute. It might be Horgan just looking for excuses to say "No" when he says we ought to understand how to clean up dilbit before increasing dilbit shipments, but it actually is a real argument. Dumping 100K tonnes of a slow-degrading carcinogen in Vancouver harbor or the Georgia Strait seems likely to me to have a negative impact. That said, Stubble's post about the NEB taking responsibility for pipeline spills is reassuring (since I assume it would also apply to tanker spills). I'm not keen on the government paying private expenses, but it's certainly better than nobody paying for it.

My best guess is that there is no audience for Cardboard in the politics section, so he needs to post here.

I didn't realize this had happened. Is this what you were talking about? I'm guessing not, because it isn't what you described. If you have a link to where they signed such a contract, then that certainly changes my view. (I mean, I still don't think that the government should be subsidizing businesses, but taking care of the monetary environmental costs is a big deal.)

This is an issue that I actually changed my mind on--two years ago, I was pro-pipeline, now I'm not. The real issue is the negative externalities. I can totally see why many Albertans would support these pipelines--they bear few of the negative externalities of pipelines and receive the vast majority of the benefits. In contrast, British Columbians get a huge number of negative externalities, and a tiny portion of the benefits. Why the heck would anyone in BC want to sign up for that deal? The simple solution is to have the pipeline owners pay for the negative externalities. Estimates are that the Valdez would've cost about $13B to clean up today. So have Kinder put $13B into escrow to deal with spills (and they can get the money and the interest returned after the pipeline is decommissioned.) Until businesses start paying the cost of negative externalities, they'll deal with this environmental fight on every project that has huge negative externalities. That said, I can understand why businesses are displeased that they now have to pay a major cost of their project that they historically dumped on the government.

That article was total drivel. Moat doesn't equal monopoly. Free competition doesn't mean no competitive advantages, it means trying to gain competitive advantages and overcome others' competitive advantages. What does the guy envision, a USA where every product has completely generic packaging, no brand name, and the exact same ingredients and recipe as every other item? The innovation he wants comes about because people are striving to gain competitive advantages. If you make competitive advantages illegal, you'll also eliminate most of the innovation. I don't think I've ever seen an investment-related article that's so wrong in so many ways.

This is by far your best post on this topic. Thanks for that. That cars vs trucks chart is particularly insightful--I never would have guessed that. I think maybe you still don't understand the concept of a tipping point not because of a lack of intelligence, but rather because of the arguments you're making. For instance, you seem to believe that only rich people will go for EV, whereas I think the tipping point will come when the cost of EV is lower than ICE. It could be that EV will have a problem in some areas where being environmentally unfriendly is a point of pride, but I feel like when the economies of scale kick in so EV becomes the obviously cheaper option, the world will change pretty fast. USA might be one of the last converts because gas is relatively cheap, but I think it will tip when the economics make sense. Based on your numbers, to get a 5% drop in gasoline use from transportation in 2 years, you need about 3/4 of people in a given year to go EV--not an unrealistic ask if the economics hits a tipping point, particularly since dual car families with ICE and EV will likely favor EV for most trips because of the lower operating cost. (And remember, I'm not hypothesizing that the entire drop in energy usage will come from EV, but rather the focus on anti-carbon technology solutions. That the math seems to imply that when we hit the EV tipping point in the USA, a 5% reduction in oil usage in two years could come just from EV is pretty surprising to me. ) That said, maybe you're right and the economies of scale for EV are still years away. I'm not sure--it's really hard to distinguish between hype and realism, and everyone seems to have an agenda.

Hmm, this is a really good point, DTEJD1997. It makes sense to me that autonomous driving may be a 90/10 thing like so many things in software engineering. Thanks for this--it's certainly changed my mental model of how this change will occur.

The main reason I don't spend a year researching a topic before posting an open-ended question to a message board is because it's a terrible use of my time. I thought the point of the General Discussions message board was to discuss things and try to learn from others' opinions. I imagine that you'll probably have to scold me soundly for my curiosity in the future as well, since I'm much more interested in learning from random people on the internet about things I'm not an expert in, than the things I am.

I agree with you, DTEJD1997, that we aren't at the tipping point yet when it come to electric and autonomous vehicles, but I'm also not sure that I'll be able to identify that tipping point accurately when it arrives. That make me reluctant to invest in energy--it feels akin to pennies in front of steamrollers. Plus, I'm concerned that, if I actually had a major position in energy, it would impact my thinking about the transformation, always thinking that I had one more year in these cheap stocks before everything falls apart. One factor that seems to be overlooked is autonomous vehicles, and I feel like that transformation will be mostly complete in 10 or 15 years. With my car, there's about a 15% difference in energy usage between my wife's driving and mine. I'd guess that this sort of spread isn't unusual and that most people aren't driving in energy-efficient ways, while autonomous vehicles will. If you assume that autonomous vehicles gain an average of 10% fuel efficiency over human drivers, then--with about half of oil used to power vehicles--you've got a 5% drop in oil usage there alone. (And really, autonomous vehicles can make energy-saving decisions that human drivers can never make (e.g. coast well below the speed limit for a few blocks because there's no value in arriving at the traffic light before it's green). I wouldn't surprise me if, over the long term, autonomous vehicles are far, far more efficient than human drivers.)

Come on, you and I both know that nothing I write will ever get a kinder response from you. In 2008, oil demand in the USA alone fell by 1.1M barrels in a single year without the tailwinds of rising environmentalism and the compelling economics of renewables. 5M is unlikely but plausible, particularly considering that pretty well everywhere but USA cares about climate change. (Plus, I think you don't really understand the concept of tipping points, but whatever.) That said, I understand your reaction. If a hypothetical scenario would completely annihilate your portfolio, it's more comfortable closing your eyes and attacking the hypothetical than seriously thinking about the question. (The irony is, I think I'm probably doing you a disservice on this thread. By raising these questions, I'm making you entrench yourself into position which will make you slower to change your opinion when scary stuff starts to happen. Sorry for that.)

I agree with that--barring a significant breakthrough like cold-fusion, I don't think we get rid of all combustion-based generation. But if we are able to get rid of half, I would still think that would have a huge impact on the use of oil and gas. I really like the theoretical idea of using electric vehicle batteries to address variance in demands for electricity, even if there are huge practical issues with that strategy.

Yeah, that's what I've done, and what's inspired my comment. The interesting thing is that, if I listen to liberals as you think I am, my conclusion would be that nothing is being done to target CO2. It's mainly the non-liberal point of views that are leading me in the direction of: "change is coming". Of course, I suppose that your way of communicating is to constantly use ad hominem attacks before substance, so I'm not really surprised that you responded to my honest question in this way. It's a pity though, because I feel like you could actually contribute a lot of value if you weren't so angry.

I wonder about whether the energy stocks are buggy-whip companies. It feels like we're on the edge of a pretty fast transformation to environmentally-friendly energy sources (e.g. the economics of solar and wind, the move to electric vehicles, the move to autonomous vehicles). I wonder what will happen if, for instance, demand falls by 5M barrels over the course of a couple of years and then keeps declining. With a commodity like oil, I feel a 5% drop in demand could nuke prices. Thus, it seems to me that energy doesn't have much margin of safety when the demand is uncertain. I'm curious what perspectives other people have on this.

Interesting. Thanks for your perspective and honesty, Grant. It sounds like you've done a fair amount of research on the topic--and I'm clueless when it comes to engineering--so it's interesting to hear your impressions. It's pretty rare to read such an honest analysis of where you think you could be wrong and how you'd handle it if you were, so I really appreciate that. I really respect that degree of intellectual honesty.

You sound pretty logical and pretty convinced of your view, Grant, so I'm curious how you will respond if you're proven false. (I know that you don't view it as possible, but I'm curious about the hypothetical scenario, even if it could never come to pass.) So, if hypothetically, he does succeed in one of these impossible projects, would you conclude that you just aren't that good an engineer? Or maybe you just aren't good at judging other people's work? Or would it be more like you just didn't see the thing that made the project possible, and so you're a good engineer, but just missed something? Something else? The reason I'm asking is because I find resolving cognitive dissonance fascinating. You're logical and have made a huge statement that stakes your view of yourself on Musk's inability to achieve his goals. Since you seem to value intellectual honesty highly, I'm really curious how you'd resolve the cognitive dissonance in a scenario where you proved to be wrong. (And also, since you value intellectual honesty, I suspect you might be able to answer this hypothetical question honestly, which is why I'm asking it now.)

Don't worry about it, Cardboard. I'm pretty sure that everyone who's read your messages understands what's going on here.

I agree completely. That's why it's entertainment, not an attempt to get rich. It literally isn't worth my time to mine, and it also isn't worth my time to take the money I've put into mining and invest it elsewhere because the amounts we're discussing are negligible. It's only worthwhile doing because I get entertainment from it. When I stop getting entertained by it, I'll stop. The electricity cost is interesting in that my electricity usage has gone down year over year since I started doing this. My only hypothesis for why that would happen is because I replaced my PC and monitor, and current technology is significantly more efficient than the old.

Hmm, I guess the other factor is the residual value of the card. Right now, there's bids of $530 for it on eBay, so that closes the gap even more. If I sell the card and get something $300 cheaper (to completely reverse the cryptocurrency part of the purchase), then by your math, I've actually come out ahead compared to buying bitcoin. That's surprising to me. Like you, I would have thought that, over this period of time with the big bitcoin appreciation, bitcoin would've been way ahead of my mining. I don't think it makes the decision good or bad, but it is interesting.

No, I didn't see that, or at least I didn't remember it. That's totally not cool, I think.

Putting aside the entertainment from mining and the (non-mining) utility of a good graphics card, this still isn't the sort of reasoning I use because it's difficult to predict what will happen with security prices in the short term. For instance, based on this reasoning, it doesn't make any sense to have bought Bitcoin in September because you could have just bought Ripple in September at $0.171, and it's currently at $1.185. So, for every $300 of bitcoin you've held since then, you've lost $1,228. And you'd have done even better if you'd just bet it all on black 11 on the roulette wheel just before it came up. Deciding whether a short-term bet on volatile securities was a good decision based on the outcome is usually a mistake, I think. Particularly if you allow the outcome to influence your emotions or future decision-making. (Like, what are you going to do today with the information that Ripple greatly outperformed Bitcoin over the last 3 months? Based on your "you shouldn't have bought a card, you should have bought bitcoin" reasoning, you're probably now required to sell all your bitcoins to buy ripple. :) )