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Politics : The Exxon Free Environmental Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (1520)	11/12/2007 10:22:37 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 48995

Climate scepticism: The top 10 Unravelling the sceptics What are some of the reasons why "climate sceptics" dispute the evidence that human activities such as industrial emissions of greenhouse gases and deforestation are bringing potentially dangerous changes to the Earth's climate? As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) finalises its landmark report for 2007, we look at 10 of the arguments most often made against the IPCC consensus, and some of the counter-arguments made by scientists who agree with the IPCC. news.bbc.co.uk

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (1520)	11/12/2007 11:03:17 PM
From: Sam	Respond to of 48995

Thanks for the links, I should've done that, just flyin' by. Here is one of the articles, an editorial from Motor Trend that predictably comes out against CAFE standards, but unpredictably (for me, at any rate) comes out in favor increased gas taxes that would force consumers to demand higher mileage cars (which Ford, GM, etc. already know how to make and sell, since they do so in other parts of the world). The Big Picture: Reality Check What's the true cost for a gallon of gas? There's an old saying in the auto business: "The customer is always right." And that explains why America's automotive fleet burns more gas than any other on the planet. When gas prices spiked sharply last year, more than a few mainstream media types began to speculate on the future of the American auto industry. Companies like GM and Ford, they maintained, were in trouble because they continue to build gas-guzzling monsters, mainly trucks and SUVs. The implication was they had lost touch with their customers. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. GM and Ford both know how to build more fuel-efficient vehicles: They make and sell millions of them in Europe and Asia. But American consumers simply aren't interested. We like our big trucks and SUVs, our V-8 musclecars and V-6 Camrys. And despite the devastation wrought by Katrina and the dangerously unstable politics of oil, the reality is we can still afford to fill them with a fresh tank of gas whenever we want to. Back in March 1981, according to U.S. government figures, a gallon of gas cost $1.38 and a production worker earned an average hourly wage of $7.28. It took about 11.4 minutes to earn enough to buy a gallon of gas. At the beginning of this year, the average price of a gallon of gas was $2.35 and a production worker earned an average hourly wage of $16.42, meaning it took about 8.6 minutes' work to pay for a gallon. In real terms, gas today is about 25 percent cheaper than it was 25 years ago. But that doesn't mean the recent shock at the pumps hasn't been real. From its peak in March 1981, the price of gas slowly drifted back down to $1 a gallon over the next five years. It wasn't until February 2000 that gas went past its March 1981 price again; by that time the average hourly wage of a production worker had zoomed to $13.78, which meant it took just over six minutes' work--28-percent-less time than today--to earn enough to buy a gallon. Even so, the price of gas is still a long way from hitting the hip-pocket nerve of American drivers in the same way it does for drivers in most of the rest of the developed world. And automakers in America--including the European and Japanese companies designing, engineering, and building cars, trucks, and SUVs here--continue to sell vehicles that are less fuel-efficient than those they sell in the rest of the world simply because their customers continue to respond rationally to relatively low gas prices. What puzzles me is why, in a country that so loudly prides itself in its belief in market forces, so few politicians and opinion leaders seem prepared to admit this essential truth. It's clearly easier to blame the automakers for a fundamental equation no one in Washington has the guts to seriously address: The cheaper the gas, the more we use. The byzantine Corporate Average Fuel Economy regulations are not, and never will be, the answer. This stupid, bureaucratic waste of money and engineering resources has achieved nothing that couldn't have been achieved with a simple strategy of carefully phased increases in gas prices--by way of taxes--that would, over time, have moved American consumers to demand the more fuel-efficient vehicles automakers already know how to build. We could've avoided the short, sharp shock that now has us wincing every time we fill our tanks. I don't buy the argument that increasing gas prices would've placed an unfair burden on taxpayers or slowed the economy over the past 20 years. Who do you think paid for the development and marketing of those dumb-ass cars built just to meet CAFE regs no one wanted? Who's now funding the government rebates handed out to buyers of alternative-fuel vehicles? And who's underwriting a national debt that's spiraling out of control in part because of our thirst for foreign oil? That's right. You and I. motortrend.com