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Automotive News & Views Are automobiles a major cause of global warming?
7021 messages, Last post on Dec 09, 2009 at 8:21 AM
You are in the Automotive News & Views Forum. Your Hosts are steve_ & claires
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The House is set to vote on this today. If this becomes law it will probably end the diesel/hybrid debate as it will force us all to eventually drive all electric cars. Also if it passes expect your electric bill to increase by at least 50% as utilities pass on the extra cost to their customers. It will drive all the coal fired generators out of business in a short while so we will all enjoy clean power. The only trouble is that no one will be able to afford it. It is expected to pass the House today. Let's just hope the senate won't be so easily duped. It is a 1500 page bill (300 pages added this week) so no one has had a chance to actually read the details and there is no telling what else has been slipped in. Al Gore is personally lobbying to pass this bill as he stands to make billions if it becomes law. Time to look for one of those small islands.
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Replying to: houdini1 (Jun 26, 2009 5:25 am) Despite House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman's many payoffs to Members, rural and Blue Dog Democrats remain wary of voting for a bill that will impose crushing costs on their home-district businesses and consumers. The leadership's solution to this problem is to simply claim the bill defies the laws of economics. Their gambit got a boost this week, when the Congressional Budget Office did an analysis of what has come to be known as the Waxman-Markey bill. According to the CBO, the climate legislation would cost the average household only $175 a year by 2020. Edward Markey, Mr. Waxman's co-author, instantly set to crowing that the cost of upending the entire energy economy would be no more than a postage stamp a day for the average household. Amazing. A closer look at the CBO analysis finds that it contains so many caveats as to render it useless. To get support for his bill, Mr. Waxman was forced to water down the cap in early years to please rural Democrats, and then severely ratchet it up in later years to please liberal Democrats. The CBO's analysis looks solely at the year 2020, before most of the tough restrictions kick in. As the cap is tightened and companies are stripped of initial opportunities to "offset" their emissions, the price of permits will skyrocket beyond the CBO estimate of $28 per ton of carbon. The corporate costs of buying these expensive permits will be passed to consumers. The biggest doozy in the CBO analysis was its extraordinary decision to look only at the day-to-day costs of operating a trading program, rather than the wider consequences energy restriction would have on the economy. The CBO acknowledges this in a footnote: "The resource cost does not indicate the potential decrease in gross domestic product (GDP) that could result from the cap." The hit to GDP is the real threat in this bill. The whole point of cap and trade is to hike the price of electricity and gas so that Americans will use less. These higher prices will show up not just in electricity bills or at the gas station but in every manufactured good, from food to cars. Consumers will cut back on spending, which in turn will cut back on production, which results in fewer jobs created or higher unemployment. Some companies will instead move their operations overseas, with the same result. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124588837560750781.html
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More from the WSJ article. Even as Democrats have promised that this cap-and-trade legislation won't pinch wallets, behind the scenes they've acknowledged the energy price tsunami that is coming. During the brief few days in which the bill was debated in the House Energy Committee, Republicans offered three amendments: one to suspend the program if gas hit $5 a gallon; one to suspend the program if electricity prices rose 10% over 2009; and one to suspend the program if unemployment rates hit 15%. Democrats defeated all of them. The reality is that cost estimates for climate legislation are as unreliable as the models predicting climate change. What comes out of the computer is a function of what politicians type in. A better indicator might be what other countries are already experiencing. Britain's Taxpayer Alliance estimates the average family there is paying nearly $1,300 a year in green taxes for carbon-cutting programs in effect only a few years. Americans should know that those Members who vote for this climate bill are voting for what is likely to be the biggest tax in American history. Even Democrats can't repeal that reality. |
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Replying to: gagrice (Jun 26, 2009 5:39 am) What I like most is that our less developed trading partners who we are racing to the bottom to compete with won't have to wear these cement boots. Seems like another good scheme to submit the first world to the globalization conquest.
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Replying to: fintail (Jun 26, 2009 6:28 am) I read the proposal for cap and trade. It appears as though cap and trade is a cover for more wealth redistribution. People with an income under $40,000 get a $400 check in the mail to pay for their higher electric bills whether or not they live in coal burning states. My contribution to conserving fuel: My '01 full size 4x4 sits in the garage with 23k miles on it in 8 years of use. My wife stays home to eliminate all her commute miles. My sons didn't get summer jobs to severely reduce their driving. Spent well over $200k to buy a new house 32 miles closer to my job, each way. maintain all my vehicles to get from 10-20% higher than EPA mpg from them with one exception out of 5. Haven't yet fixed the a/c in one vehicle even though it is 94 outside this week. kept the heat on 67 all winter in the new house. consolidate errand trips whenever possible. no summer vacation in previous 2 years. In response, India and china added 10's of millions of vehicles to their highways, billions were spent by foreign manufacturers to advertise their fuel efficient cars in the US, and gas producers reduced refining capacity to compensate for lower US gas demand and keep prices propped up. China opens a new coal fired elec plant each DAY. OPEC can't support their extravagant lifestyle on less than $75 a barrel, regardless of what it is actually worth, and will continually cut production to keep the price there. Some moron in congress argues that under cap and trade, reduced consumption coupled with higher fuel prices will increase MY buying power from my current income? How? What if I want to buy fuel? I know I need to stop being logical. Anything the dems do has income redistribution as the ulterior motive.
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Replying to: dave8697 (Jun 26, 2009 8:43 am) As I said the other day in 1 of these forums, the government's programs are pushing me closer and closer to dropping out of the workforce as an engineer, as I can probably live just as well in a low-income bracket, where I can get these subsidies, instead of paying them!  Anyway here in New England we had about 2-3 days above 80F as highs, and we're headed back down into the 60's by Mon. This cool weather is keeping people from producing CO2 as it's too cold to head to the lakes or beach, and that water is still mighty cold, as we've had little sunshine. I sure hope Tata and Chery get more SUV's on the road, and they get 2 coal-plants/day fired up. 
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Replying to: kernick (Jun 26, 2009 9:34 am)
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Replying to: kernick (Jun 26, 2009 9:34 am) No one saw that Darryl Hannah and *surprise* James Hansen got arrested? Hansen of NASA Arrested in Coal Country (NY Times) Oh, Hansen doesn't favor cap-and-trade either and opposes the bill the House just passed. |
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Replying to: dave8697 (Jun 26, 2009 11:02 am) Manchester is served by Southwest and is really a great little airport. Most of the hotels have indoor pools though, so that tells you a lot about global-warming not being an issue. I would never invest in an outdoor pool around here. |
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Replying to: steve_ (Jun 26, 2009 12:38 pm)  ) realize that high CO2 levels are great for the rain-forests? She was on the wrong side of the protest!
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