This study only refers to views on social welfare issues, not what might be ignorantly described as "conservatism" by Salon or their posters.

As such what you could be seeing is a more basic observation of where one places ones trust on an evolutionary level. In such a situation, perhaps women see the societal unit as deserving of trust, where as to the male, it is just another large entity with power to do harm to their family unit.

As an example, based on this, it is entirely possible that men as part of their more conservative nature would reject the wars abroad, the social agendas of the consevative party, and the efforts to empower corporations, as in all these situations you continue to see this big threat spread out over your family, and limited reason to place your trust in them.

It is possible the study could better describe the attitude shift as socialist vs. libertarian, since that seems to be the actual differnce we're describing, but there are very few people who vote for either of those parties in large numbers.

What a childish analysis of an interesting subject.

Did I wander onto broadsheet?

Aside form the fact that this has nothing to do with economics, it's likewise a fairly weak analysis of what conservatism is or how people become more or less "liberal" or "conservative".

You're better than this.

It's the democrats, note the small d.

If you're a totalitarian state you can pretty much do what ever you like, including building huge renewable energy plants.

The long term viability of such plants don't need to be considered. If a powerful enough party member deems it a vaiable option, then so it becomes. facts can be altered later to show what glorious acheivement the plan was.

All that being said good for china.

The U.S. should invest more in Solar, one is surprised that given the ammount of analysis directed at the energy economy the long term intelegence of death valley solar inc, seems self evident.

Actually, the biggest problem facing Solar right now is the rate of improvement in the technology.

No one is going to put up 1000 acres of solar panels in the middle of the dessert onlty to find out as they put in the last cell that new developments in solar tech allow for twice the output at half the cost.

You're going ot have to hit the point of diminishing returns on solar tech before you see major investment in the roll out of the technology. Which of course is understood by every solar company out there, which is what drives the innovation.

Whoever gets to the clearing point first, gets to be edison, and gets to prettymuch dominate the industry for the next century, but getting there is always the problem.

A massive investment in roll out before the tech is secure is just gambling, which if we look at the ammount of U.S. Treasuries China has bought we can guess is something they have no problem doing.

The point my friend is that a 10 year peak forcast is like a 10 year economic forcast, utterly meaningless. Certainly if there is no change is use or production in the next 10 years then their numbers are correct.

The reality is however that both usage and production will change.

Granted it could change in the negative (higher use, less production) but it could just as easily change in the positive (less use and more production). Most likely it will go through several cycles of production and use and competition with other sources and efficiencies.

In ten years time, the use of Mass Transit could quadruple and the number of cars on the roads could be cut in half. Or, in ten years the number of plastics created using recycled or organic hydrocarbons could increase significantly, or some new polymer process could be created that uses less fossil hydrocarbons to produce the same or better products.

The point is, that there are many many factors at play and thinking that any "expert" has definative information or predictions is just fanciful.

I don't doubt that there is cause for concern about peak oil. It's a good thing oil is such a small part of our energy portfolio.

We can very easily switch from oil based liquid fuel to coal based liquid fuel in 10 years time (or even use solid coal in some instances), and that again changes the equation dramaticly. If you aren't considering these things you simply don't have an accurate picture of the energy economy.