Thursday, January 29, 2009

Obama Motors!

By Alan Caruba

What legislators at the federal and state level don’t seem to understand is a fundamental law of thermodynamics. You cannot get more mileage out of a gallon of gasoline than it possesses. Every form of energy, oil, coal, natural gas, has a specific amount of energy it can produce when used.

When you add moonshine like ethanol to a gallon of gasoline, you actually reduce the amount of mileage you get for your dollar.

Meanwhile, the producers of the ethanol are lining their pockets with federal subsidies. Without the subsidies—taxpayer dollars—they would not be able to make a profit and since the ethanol fantasy has managed to drive up the cost of corn—normally a food product—some ethanol producers have already gone out of business because they couldn’t afford it!

California, home to more truly bad ideas about the environment than any other State, has enacted a “California Car Standard” to cut tailpipe emissions of “greenhouse gases.”

There is NO global warming and carbon dioxide has NO impact on the Earth’s climate except to show up in slightly higher amounts hundreds of years after a warming cycle has occurred. What Governor Schwarzenegger hasn’t figured out is that the Earth is well into a cooling cycle since 1998.

In California, all vehicles, cars and trucks, sold in the State will have to average 34.5 miles per gallon by 2015. Recent new standards for trucks, most of which would have to be retrofitted, means that fewer and fewer goods will be delivered in and to California because the cost of retrofitting is so high most truckers and fleet owners will simply decide to avoid doing business there.

Meanwhile, with the U.S. government imposing more and more emission demands on the auto manufacturers, they will ultimately have to start making cars out of paper mache in order to lighten the vehicle enough to achieve utterly meaingless mileage standards.

On top of that, the U.S. government is requiring automakers to make cars that very few people can afford or even want. Pretty soon we’ll have a new auto company, Obama Motors!

Isn’t it communism when the central government gets to decide what must be manufactured?

The effect of putting carbon dioxide emission limits in place on American cars ignores the fact that CO2 is being produced daily in China, India, Russia, Europe, and everywhere else in the world. Let’s not forget, too, that every human being on Earth emits about two pounds of the stuff every day.

The California standard has the effect of banning, not just SUVs, but midsize cars like the Honda Accord and the Toyota Camry. Just how dumb is this?

It is interesting to note that Ford Motor Company has refused to line up for a government bailout. Back in the 1930s when the FDR administration passed a law requiring manufacturers to collude to set higher prices, Henry Ford refused to participate. He believed that competition was the best economic policy. People actually went to jail back then for selling a product or service for less than the price set.

Your President, elected by just barely 6% over the Republican candidate and accompanied by a huge Democrat majority in Congress, is pushing this nation into a deeper recession which in time, if nothing is done to reverse the process, will develop into a full blown depression.

You might want to keep this in mind in 2010 when it comes time to vote for members of Congress. Americans put the Republicans in control in 1994 and we can do it again. At this point, I would vote for a chimpanzee if it was a Republican!

The next politician who, like Al Gore, tells you that the Earth is facing a global warming calamity because of greenhouse gas emissions, should be voted out of office and into the nearest soup kitchen line.

11 comments:

said...

Have you read “The Wisdom Of Insecurity” by Alan Watts?

You may get a kick outta it.

BTW: I'm rootin' for GH effect.

Stay on groovin' safari,
Tor

Alan Caruba said...

Nope, have not read Watts' book.

What exactly are you referring to when you write "GH effect"?

Anonymous said...

I think we can say positively that things will get worse before they get better.
It seems to be that the whole planet is on the same collision course to a bad end-game engendered by pseudo-science and ambitious power players in positions to be able to enforce their ideologies and control upon the world. Big money, no, colossal money is at stake in forcing carbon taxes on the world.
Any resistance will have to come from the grass roots level and thereby lies the problem.
Deteriorating education standards are leading to a science-ignorant populace frightened of technicalities and math.
There is a hue-and-cry in the UK at this time because too many people are leaving school without proper foundation in Math, English and science. Even with dumbed-down curriculum, pass marks have to be revised down to get the 'desired' number of passes.
People are left at the absolute mercy of regimes intent on telling them just what they want them to know. This is an ongoing process via government, NGO's and the MSM.
As a case in point just try to find the reality of the so-called Greenhouse Effect (GH).
There is so much baloney on many prestigious websites (gov, institutions and general info sites - HowStuffWorks - for example) how is one to get to the truth? For an excellent paper on the subject read this:
Greenhouse Effect Poppycock
Written by Alan Siddons, edited by Hans Schreuder.
Time will tell but at this juncture things are not looking good, in general terms. If the US keeps on de-industrialising at its present rate it will end up a net exporter of its poorly educated masses just like the Philippines, unable to provide meaningful work for its people. Put the bailout money into education and research and tax cuts - sack the fat cats.

Alan Caruba said...

Clive, you are quite right. We seem to be in a kind of modern Dark Ages in which, despite tons of information, the populace remains as ignorant as illiterate peasants.

I figured out that Tor's "GH effect" means greenhouse effect. Proof that he has not a clue about how the Earth atmosphere really works. If it wasn't there we'd all be fried by the Sun. Anyone with white hair that uses terms like "groovin safari" is likely to be banned from further comments on this blog.

Anonymous said...

While true that a gallon of gasoline contains a given amount of energy and that ethanol decreases the mileage that can be wrung from it, it is also true that greater or lesser MPG can be gotten from that gallon.

The energy can be used more or less efficiently and the mechanics of the auto can be tweaked for greater mileage.

Alan Caruba said...

Well, we're back to my comment about making cars out of paper mache. It depends on how you define efficiently.

Nuke Nemesis said...

I recently read "Atlas Shrugged". It's hard to believe that was written over 50 years ago and not just last year.

In "Atlas Shrugged", the government starts to take control of all aspects of the economy, production, wages, employment, etc. No matter what they do, things get worse. The government answer -- do more!

High achieving people finally got tired of having their ideas, work and money appropriated from them and start to disappear to parts unknown. Soon, the country grinds to a halt.

Highly recommended.

Guy said...

Jeffrey .... Atlas Shrugged has been my second bible for many years. When I was in my senior year of college, a TA from a local college recommended the book to me. I'm not exactly sure why. Perhaps it was because she saw something in me that told her I'd appreciate the book, or perhaps it was because the book was so important to her. Regardless, read it I did, and it had a profound impact on me, shaping my philosophies for years to come. I HIGHLY recommed it to anyone, especially liberals, who hasn't read it. Ayn Rand was a prophet .... and guess where she was born? St.Petersburg, Russia

Guy said...

Oh, and in response to Helen's comment ...

The "mechanics" of modern automobiles have been "tweaked" by some of the best engineers around the world, and it still comes down to one simple fact. There is a limited amount of energy that can be obtained from BURNING a gallon of gasoline, and how far a vehicle can go on that amount of energy has a FINITE limit, based on the mass you are moving, the wind resistance, the rolling resistance, and the grade, or incline on which you are moving that mass. Rolling resistance is affected by many factors, not the least of which are the number and type of tires in contact with the road, and the number and type of friction points in the drive train. All of these things have been thoroughly analyzed, and most modern vehicles are a beautiful blend of the best technologies modern engineering has to offer.

We have reached the point where, unless we are willing to ride on two wheels, drive MUCH smaller, lighter vehicles, or switch to fusion technology, we aren't likely to get much more mileage out of a gallon of gas. Yes, there are people that report extremely high mileage figures using extreme driving techniques, like ultra slow acceleration, coasting and inflating their tires to excessive pressures, but each of these techniques presents it's own unique dangers and limitations and these techniques simply aren't compatible with our typical driving requirements.

Have you ever followed a "hyper-mile-er" on the freeway? If not, then you're in for a treat, and will certainly find yourself blowing your horn and screaming at them.

That is why automotive manufacturers have moved toward hybrid vehicles. We've reached the mileage limits of internal combustion powered vehicles, and adding the additional energy of electricity to the equation is the only way to stretch the mileage out. Of course, the additional electrical energy has to come from somewhere too. In a few years, people will be whining about the additional electrical load placed on our power grid, and the resultant increase in CO2 emmissions, caused by the charging circuits in these hybrid vehicles.

So, despite what you've heard on NPR or CNN, or whatever biased news outlet you may be listening to, there will never be a practical gasoline powered car that can get 80 or 100 miles out of a gallon of gas, and safely share the road with the trucks, buses, taxis, and all the other larger, faster, heavier vehicles that will always be on our roads.

Yes, there's always room for improvement, but when the cost of the improvement or the reduction in safety outweighs the benefit gained, it just doesn't make sense to implement it. There will never be a shortage of people making false promises and outrageous claims in order to promote their radical agendas. We have to stay focused here, and try to remain rooted in REALITY, which it seems is a difficult thing for people to do today .... personally, I choose to study the FACTS and do the best I can with what I have to work with.

Guy said...

OH, and one more thing (this post was great Alan ...)

GO FORD!!!!

I hadn't made up my mind until recently, but I'm going to go buy a new truck!!!!

Rich Kozlovich said...

Helen,

I would like to see any comment you may have as to how "The energy can be used more or less efficiently and the mechanics of the auto can be tweaked for greater mileage" better than we already have been able to accomplish.

If this is possible then no one seems to be able to make it profitable or doable without tax breaks or government subsidies. I liked Guy's comments regarding the limits of energy use and the current limits as to how our technology can utilize that energy; that is reality.

No matter what is said we still have to see this in this light. The world is not really running out of oil and burning “fossil” fuel isn’t causing Anthropogenic Climate Change because of CO2.

I subscribe to the Russian/Ukrainian abyssal abiotic theory of petroleum, which states that oil didn’t come into being as a result of a bunch of dead dinosaurs, (the only bodies that I ever saw rotted and stuck…somehow they never made in hundreds of feet down into the Earth’s crust and became oil) but is in fact naturally occurring in the Earth’s crust. If that is true, and CO2 isn’t a pollutant, who cares or needs all of this “tweaking”. We just need to drill.

We need to keep in mind who is behind all of this claptrap....the greenies. To be green is to be irrational and misanthropic and everything they stand for and everything they stand against clearly demonstrates that fact. I don't care what they say; I only care what they do. Everywhere in the world where their policies are embraced dystopia follows.

Rich