Petty Arguments Cut From Serious Threads

[coleslaw]

I really don't understand the attitude here. Not everybody can conveniently ride their bikes or use mass transit. The seaport used to be one giant parking lot, and now slowly but surely they are all being built on. People still need to park, and this replenishes those lost spaces. Beats the hell out of surface lots too.

An expanded convention center will be an abject failure if people driving in have nowhere to leave their cars. Utopian visions are just that, visions. Reality does not jive with the opinions of many on this board.

You do realize that at some point in the near future oil is going to run out and we will all need to ride bikes and use mass transit right? But wait we cant because we used all our resources building infrastructure for cars. In the MBTA 5 year plan they plan on spending 506,039,925 on rail and bus projects (a big chunk of which is for parking garages) and 6.4 billion on highway projects. That is over 12 times more. the list of highway projects is 83 pages long the rail and bus is less than a page and a half.

Oil is a finite resource we cant plan for it being around forever and keep encouraging its use when it is destroying the planet. You supporting the continuation of this type of short sited stupidity that has got us in this mess in the first place. Cars are not a sustainable phenomenon we have to make the shift to methods of transportation that are. We are not doing this and it is going to bite us in the ass hard in the next 20-30 years if we don't make changes now.

Edit: look for yourself: MBTA 5 year Capital Investment Plan

 

[KentXie]

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

You do realize that at some point in the near future oil is going to run out and we will all need to ride bikes and use mass transit right? But wait we cant because we used all our resources building infrastructure for cars. In the MBTA 5 year plan they plan on spending 506,039,925 on rail and bus projects (a big chunk of which is for parking garages) and 6.4 billion on highway projects. That is over 12 times more. the list of highway projects is 83 pages long the rail and bus is less than a page and a half.

Oil is a finite resource we cant plan for it being around forever and keep encouraging its use when it is destroying the planet. You supporting the continuation of this type of short sited stupidity that has got us in this mess in the first place. Cars are not a sustainable phenomenon we have to make the shift to methods of transportation that are. We are not doing this and it is going to bite us in the ass hard in the next 20-30 years if we don't make changes now.

Edit: look for yourself: MBTA 5 year Capital Investment Plan

You do know that there are alternative energy sources that can be used for cars besides oil, right (i.e. electric, hydrogen cells, etc.)? So yes, cars are a sustainable phenomenon and it's not going to go away. You also have to remember that buses run on the same fuel as cars so if the future of mass transportation is to exist, then cars will too.

 

[coleslaw]

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

You do know that there are alternative energy sources that can be used for cars besides oil, right (i.e. electric, hydrogen cells, etc.)? So yes, cars are a sustainable phenomenon and it's not going to go away. You also have to remember that buses run on the same fuel as cars so if the future of mass transportation is to exist, then cars will too.

Trains run on gas, huh? Interesting the cost and ability of that kind of energy powering cars on the scale that gas can is unlikely, hydrogen is extremely hard and expensive to produce especially at the scale that we use gasoline. And electric cars are essentially powered by coal not a real solution. Mass transit is far more efficient in terms of energy per person than cars so it is far easier to power on limited alternative fuels. We do not have the infrastructure in place to power cars on renewable energy and we will not if we keep acting like cars will last forever. We are investing in all the wrong things.

 

[BarbaricManchurian]

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Cars are never going to disappear. It's undeniably the most effective form of transportation in over 95% of North America. And probably over 75% of Europe.

 

[KentXie]

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Trains run on gas, huh? Interesting the cost and ability of that kind of energy powering cars on the scale that gas can is unlikely, hydrogen is extremely hard and expensive to produce especially at the scale that we use gasoline. And electric cars are essentially powered by coal not a real solution. Mass transit is far more efficient in terms of energy per person than cars so it is far easier to power on limited alternative fuels. We do not have the infrastructure in place to power cars on renewable energy and we will not if we keep acting like cars will last forever. We are investing in all the wrong things.

I guess the part where I said buses run on the same fuel as car went way over your head and unless the MBTA is willing to construct a train station to every single neighborhood in the Greater Boston area, you're going to have to use buses that will run on the same fuel as cars. Furthermore, the whole argument that electric cars are essentially powered by coal is ridiculous. Yes, they use charging stations which may be supplied by a coal powerplant, but they may be very well be supplied by nuclear, solar, wind, and natural gas plants, and the fact that the US have been phasing out coal powerplants and replacing them with cleaner alternative means that as time goes on, the electric car becomes greener. In addition, you say that alternative energy is limited and expensive to produce, but alternative energy is relatively new and inefficient and will only become more efficient and easier to produce in the future. Everything is always expensive the first time you produce it. Why are flatscreen TVs, which used to be very expensive, relatively much cheaper today? Because we can mass produce them more efficiently today than we did 10 years ago and the same will happen to alternative energy. We may not have the infrastructure to power cars today but we do have the capacity to build them. It's not a question of if we can, but when, so again, no, cars are not going away.

Oh and if you are going to say electric cars run on coal, then where do you think the electricity that powers trains come from? Where do you think all the future buses will get their energies from? And how will we be able to power electric buses if, as you say, alternative energy will not be able to power electric cars.

 

[coleslaw]

Cars are never going to disappear. It's undeniably the most effective form of transportation in over 95% of North America. And probably over 75% of Europe.

it is that way because we made it that way. LA used to have the largest electric railway system in the world but they funded highways instead of keeping that. Trains can go everywhere we just have to put money into the right thing. You assert cars can't disappear because that is the easiest way to get around right now. That is a status quo bias and you do not actually address that without oil cars do not make sense and are no longer the most effective method of transportation.

 

[underground]

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Cars are never going to disappear. It's undeniably the most effective form of transportation in over 95% of North America. And probably over 75% of Europe.

Your stats seem off, seeing as it's scientifically proven that 68% of things worth traveling to are in Boston, New York, London, Paris, Hong Kong, and Tokyo.

 

[coleslaw]

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

I guess the part where I said buses run on the same fuel as car went way over your head and unless the MBTA is willing to construct a train station to every single neighborhood in the Greater Boston area, you're going to have to use buses that will run on the same fuel as cars. Furthermore, the whole argument that electric cars are essentially powered by coal is ridiculous. Yes, they use charging stations which may be supplied by a coal powerplant, but they may be very well be supplied by nuclear, solar, wind, and natural gas plants, and the fact that the US have been phasing out coal powerplants and replacing them with cleaner alternative means that as time goes on, the electric car becomes greener. In addition, you say that alternative energy is limited and expensive to produce, but alternative energy is relatively new and inefficient and will only become more efficient and easier to produce in the future. Everything is always expensive the first time you produce it. Why are flatscreen TVs, which used to be very expensive, relatively much cheaper today? Because we can mass produce them more efficiently today than we did 10 years ago and the same will happen to alternative energy. We may not have the infrastructure to power cars today but we do have the capacity to build them. It's not a question of if we can, but when, so again, no, cars are not going away.

yes busses do (except for trackless trolleys) run on the same fuel as cars but thats kind of a red herring. And it is true that some of the electricity used to power electric cars comes from solar and nuclear. Once that is the entirety of our power that will be a great alternative but in the mean time 58 percent of NE electricity is from natural gas, oil, and coal.

You rely on the assertion that the market will just figure it out, this is simply untrue. We are still investing far too much in conventional technology (far more than in renewable green tech) and the crisis is not too far away. unless we radically shift away from cars in the short term we will not have the infrastructure to support ourselves when we run out of oil. Yes eventually the personalized vehicle will come back when it is cheep enough to make sense. but there needs to be something in-between for us to quickly stop using fossil fuels and that needs to be public transportation.

Right now if we run out of oil the entire system will crumble. We rely on it to ship our food (even to grow our food, most fertilizer is made from oil), Transport ourselves, and our goods. When this dries up we will not be ready to replace this with these other methods of private transportation. It simply is not feasible that we can be ready that quickly. The market moves too slowly for that. Public transport specifically trains(way more efficient) is just about the only way to do this in any quick way.

 

[coleslaw]

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Fracking and hybrid cars undermine the oil argument and also the rising cost of gasoline.

How? Fracking does not make oil last forever maybe it will perpetuate the system a little longer but no. also the prices of oil will rise and fall for a while as the supplies of it dry up because there will be varying demand as the market crashes and recovers (another recession should be coming soon) so that will perpetuate the system and make businesses and people able to afford it a little longer. Also when it is getting cheeper in the crashes people are less likely to invest in things like hydrogen, solar, wind, geothermal, hydro that are our ways out.

Hybrids also do not undermine this argument as they rely on oil also. they use less but still use it so they contribute to its drying up and when it runs out they will also be unworkable.

The only system that can be sustained is a sustainable system. This may sound obvious but your point indicates that you do not grasp this. oil is not sustainable. It will run out and when it does the system built around it will crumble.

 

[DZH22]

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

We are investing in all the wrong things.

Another $200+ million being sent away to "rebuild" Gaza. Of course we know where that money is really going. Then we are going to have to send 10 times that much so Israel can protect itself from the missiles we just bought for the Palestinians.

This comment is right, but I would rather invest in the "wrong" things HERE than keep sending money to all these foreign countries, especially the ones that hate us. Just think, instead of buying Hamas more missiles, we could be fixing our bridges, investing in cleaner technologies, improving our schools. We should start by keeping American taxpayer money in America. In 2012 alone we sent over $37 billion out of this country. Just think what we could have done with that money.

 

[coleslaw]

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Another $200+ million being sent away to "rebuild" Gaza. Of course we know where that money is really going. Then we are going to have to send 10 times that much so Israel can protect itself from the missiles we just bought for the Palestinians.

This comment is right, but I would rather invest in the "wrong" things HERE than keep sending money to all these foreign countries, especially the ones that hate us. Just think, instead of buying Hamas more missiles, we could be fixing our bridges, investing in cleaner technologies, improving our schools. We should start by keeping American taxpayer money in America. In 2012 alone we sent over $37 billion out of this country. Just think what we could have done with that money.

I have never had someone agree with me in a way I disagree with so much. Im not going to go into Israel/Palestine as that will derail this completely. But our bombs were used to destroy and oppress palestine we rebuilt Germany and Japan after WWII and that worked the problem isn't that we rebuild it is that we try to do it on the cheep to actually do it right, see the benefits, and not have to keep going back (like Iraq) we need to actually do it the way we did after WWII.

Also our corporations along with our military have oppressed countless nations around the world. we have overthrown leaders in almost every nation in latin america, many in Africa, many in Southeast Asia, and taken over much of the pacific in the name of american economic interests. in chile we over threw a democratically elected government bombed their presidential palace (their white house) and installed one of the most brutal dictators in history as an economic experiment for the Chicago school. Going through all of them will take too long but American economic imperialism is very real and is a deep stain on our history.

We ruined many countries it is only fair that we send money to rebuild them.

 

[fattony]

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

How? Fracking does not make oil last forever maybe it will perpetuate the system a little longer but no. also the prices of oil will rise and fall for a while as the supplies of it dry up because there will be varying demand as the market crashes and recovers (another recession should be coming soon) so that will perpetuate the system and make businesses and people able to afford it a little longer. Also when it is getting cheeper in the crashes people are less likely to invest in things like hydrogen, solar, wind, geothermal, hydro that are our ways out.

Hybrids also do not undermine this argument as they rely on oil also. they use less but still use it so they contribute to its drying up and when it runs out they will also be unworkable.

The only system that can be sustained is a sustainable system. This may sound obvious but your point indicates that you do not grasp this. oil is not sustainable. It will run out and when it does the system built around it will crumble.

I certainly hear and understand the case you are making and while it will come to pass, I don't think it will happen in your lifetime. There are many reasons to quit burning oil in general and in cars specifically, but it is not because we are running out of oil any time soon. Production is up, price of oil is down, and no one is even bothering to slow down the wells. We are headed into a cutthroat era of big oil countries trying to bankrupt each other by overproducing underpriced oil in the hopes of being the last man standing. Meanwhile US production has never been higher, new technology is constantly adding to proven reserves, and we've never been less dependent on OPEC. When they are done bleeding each other to death, we'll be better insulated than ever against the rebound in price.

Oil is going to run out, but you'll never see it. We need to use less, we need to use what we have carefully and efficiently, and we need policies that encourage better behaviors. However, the raw economics of oil production are several decades away from being the limiting factor on our consumption.

 

[JumboBuc]

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Wow, I'm not sure that I've ever seen an archBOSTON thread get so off topic so quickly...

Did anybody honestly think that there would never be a new parking garage built for the BCEC and the Seaport, especially considering all of the former parking lots that are being re-developed? Seriously?

Oil is never going to go run out. Cheap oil will run out, but not any time soon. Sure, cars aren't ideal, and maybe the BCEC isn't ideal, but they are both here to stay for at least the coming decades, and so they both must be accommodated. Here's to hoping the garage design is a good one...

 

[coleslaw]

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

I certainly hear and understand the case you are making and while it will come to pass, I don't think it will happen in your lifetime. There are many reasons to quit burning oil in general and in cars specifically, but it is not because we are running out of oil any time soon. Production is up, price of oil is down, and no one is even bothering to slow down the wells. We are headed into a cutthroat era of big oil countries trying to bankrupt each other by overproducing underpriced oil in the hopes of being the last man standing. Meanwhile US production has never been higher, new technology is constantly adding to proven reserves, and we've never been less dependent on OPEC. When they are done bleeding each other to death, we'll be better insulated than ever against the rebound in price.

Oil is going to run out, but you'll never see it. We need to use less, we need to use what we have carefully and efficiently, and we need policies that encourage better behaviors. However, the raw economics of oil production are several decades away from being the limiting factor on our consumption.

I am 18 years old. Oil (in conservative estimates) is predicted to last 40 years at the longest and this assumes that in 25 years we will have to be using about 20% of what we use now but the rates of use are increasing every year. This will get even worse as china and india (among other nations) middle class continues to grow. 40 years is easily in my lifetime and this assumption of less usage seems faulty so it will likely be far sooner than that.

You are completely right about rich nations and companies exploiting each other for what little oil remains. Michael T Klare documents this brilliantly in "The Race for What's Left." A small section of our population will benefit greatly from this but the vast majority will lose.

 

[timsox6]

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Feel like we're in the comments section for the Globe or Youtube... any renders of what's proposed? I'm not even precisely sure where this thing is going.

 

[DZH22]

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

But our bombs were used to destroy and oppress palestine we rebuilt Germany and Japan after WWII and that worked the problem isn't that we rebuild it is that we try to do it on the cheep to actually do it right, see the benefits, and not have to keep going back (like Iraq) we need to actually do it the way we did after WWII.

Germany and Japan were 1st world countries. Why would we "rebuild" a 3rd world country into something better than it was? Not to mention, those 2 actually used the money for rebuilding purposes. Palestine uses it to arm themselves again, and repeat the never-ending cycle. I'd rather let them rot than have our bridges falling down and our country turn into an unsaveable cesspool. The money needs to stay here.

Most of what you cited also took place 30, 40, 50+ years ago. Terrible, horrible things, but not the kinds of things we should still be throwing money at in 2014. As long as this country has debt, unemployment, homelessness, decaying infrastructure, etc, we need to keep the focus at home. You'll never get your sustainable energy if all the money for it is squandered outside our borders.

 

[DZH22]

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

I am 18 years old.

Whoops! Forget everything I just wrote! I'm not debating with an 18 year old, sorry. It must be wonderful to still be of an age where you can believe in your pie-in-the-sky fantasies, but that will be knocked out of you in time. I was a bleeding heart liberal myself until around 2-3 years ago.

 

[DZH22]

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Lessons learned from Harbor Garage?

That's like comparing apples with the Death Star. The locations are too dissimilar.

 

[coleslaw]

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Germany and Japan were 1st world countries. Why would we "rebuild" a 3rd world country into something better than it was? Not to mention, those 2 actually used the money for rebuilding purposes. Palestine uses it to arm themselves again, and repeat the never-ending cycle. I'd rather let them rot than have our bridges falling down and our country turn into an unsaveable cesspool. The money needs to stay here.

Most of what you cited also took place 30, 40, 50+ years ago. Terrible, horrible things, but not the kinds of things we should still be throwing money at in 2014. As long as this country has debt, unemployment, homelessness, decaying infrastructure, etc, we need to keep the focus at home. You'll never get your sustainable energy if all the money for it is squandered outside our borders.

Whoops! Forget everything I just wrote! I'm not debating with an 18 year old, sorry. It must be wonderful to still be of an age where you can believe in your pie-in-the-sky fantasies, but that will be knocked out of you in time. I was a bleeding heart liberal myself until around 2-3 years ago.

First of all intelligence has nothing to do with age. You're a dick for ignoring my points because am younger than you. I am an adult. These issues actually matter me more than you because I will live long enough for them to affect me.

The Iraq war was a war of American imperialism it is not over. Our "free trade" with duties for our boarders is a form of imperialism. We force other nations to open up to our products but we do not open up to theirs. This is imperialism. You are a selfish entitled asshole, Gaza is the mess that it is because of Israeli/ American persecution not because they are and always will be a third world nation. We (global north nations) are not somehow intrinsically better than the global south, they haven't developed because we exploited them for our growth.

 

[coleslaw]

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Oil is never going to go run out. Cheap oil will run out, but not any time soon. Sure, cars aren't ideal, and maybe the BCEC isn't ideal, but they are both here to stay for at least the coming decades, and so they both must be accommodated. Here's to hoping the garage design is a good one...

no oil is not limitless it will run out and also having it be prohibitively expensive is essentially the same thing, really not a distinction worth making.