You know, if there wasn't much of anything at stake in the CO2 effort I might be inclined to go along, do the experiment and see what happens.
However this is not a trivial thing we are speaking of here. What you are suggesting is nothing other than voluntarily curtailing the total energy output of our civilization. That ain't small potatos.
So at the risk of repeating myself, I have to say that I don't find the existing evidence sufficiently compelling to sell my car and take up walking. Because that is what will have to happen to do as you and the rest of the global warming crowd want. You're going to have to make it "water is wet" convincing, and so far, it isn't.
Clearly the Bush administration agrees, and wants some more convincing stuff on the table before they will even countenance the discussion. That's not short sighted, that's called looking out for America first which is what they are supposed to do. That's their job.
Besides, don't you find it even slightly interesting that only the oil industry is interested in disproving the hypothesis? Physicists have been busting their asses since 1914 trying to prove Einstein wrong, why is Global warming so holy? That's the whole point really, where's the mainstream criticism? There should be a lot more than there is.
My idiot government seems content to sell my country's future for a handful of magic beans, either by honouring the Kyoto Agreement or renegging on it after a suitable pause, therby blowing our credibility. either way my kids future isn't looking bright here in the Great White North.
CDC = Center for Disease Control That's the American government's central clearing house for important public health information. If somebody shows up with the Andromeda Strain, the CDC are the guys who put on their bunny suits and go get the body.
During the Regan, Bush 1 and Clinton Administrations the CDC funded some of the most transparently bogus studies on gun control I've ever seen. As in, independent of what party the President was from, they were bent on making shit up to suit their own agenda. To the point where Congress curtailed their budget. Cut their funding in the mid 1990s. Since then it has been admitted that the whole thing was a pile. I have references if you want.
I've seen the USNAS report. I don't think its believeable, and neither does the Bush administration because they came out after it was released and questioned the findings.
Government orgs are not always truthful, nor always scientific. Sometimes they set out to make a case for things they want. This might well be one of those times.
Discretion is the better part of valor. That's all I'm saying here.
Pretty much boiling the argument down to (C) now, because that's really the crux of the issue. I submit that you will be very hard pressed to find a faculty at a major educational institution who would countenance a study designed to disprove the global warming hypothesis.
As I mentioned in the parent of this thread, take a look at what happened to Bjorn Lomborg over the last couple of years. He writes his book, all the big journals and associations go to extreme lengths to slag him, his own government goes after him, he's a pariah. Now, some years later, all those journals and "respected scientists", all those government officials etc. are eating crow. Lomborg's been vindicated.
Important to note that Lomborg doesn't even disagree with the global warming hypothesis, he just disagrees with the conventional wisdom on what to do about it. Imagine if he tried to disprove it! They'd have nailed his hide to the front gates.
Call me cynical, but this kind of behaviour doesn't fill me with confidence in the science supporting the likes of the Kyoto Accords.
Hence my caution at accepting the business about the hurricanes, particularly as it gets released in October of a US presidential election year. Its all just too convenient.
Or to be blunt, I just don't believe it. I think 20 years from now we will have discovered the whole thing was a crock, the same as the New Ice Age they were all upset about in the 1970's was a crock.
Speaking of crocks, my Canadian government has signed on to Kyoto, much against my personal better judgement. In order to keep the targets Canadian economic activity will have to be reduced to pre 1990s levels. That's because pretty much anything one does in manufacturing, transportation or natural resource production requires energy, which ultimately means either burning something or using nuclear fission.
I don't see any new nuke plants being proposed, and the old Candu ones are getting pretty rickety.
So either we Canadians are going to have the biggest economic depression and general ruination since post World War One Germany, or the government is going to lie.
George Bush seems to take his word a bit more seriously than Jean Chretien does. He didn't sign the accords because he knew damn well the USA wasn't going to keep those targets. Chretien knew it too, but chose to take the short term brownie points and go with the long term lying.
Gotta say, based on that choice to stand up and speak the truth, I have more respect for George.
People want to reduce CO2 emissions, they are going to have to find a better way to do it than trashing modern society. We really aren't going to go back to an 1890's economy. Not going to happen. The Americans will go to war a hell of a lot faster than they'll let that happen, and don't kid yourself, the Europeans will too.
We actually know the temperature in Europe has been climbing slowly since the Little Ice Age, when all those canals in Holland used to freeze over. Currently they don't do that.
Problem being for the global warming hypothesis, that trend started long before human industrial activity contributed much in the way of greenhouse gases. I have yet to see an explanation of what started that particular warming trend.
Hence my caution. The bandwagon is not where scientists usually go looking for the truth, its where politicians go to get in on the free drinks.
What, you think the USNAS is "independent"? Let's not be silly. That's like saying the CDC ran "independent" studies on gun control in the 1980's and 1990's.
There's plenty of evidence against the global warming hypothesis, its just that we don't hear much about it. That's what makes me suspicious of it.
In science you try to DISprove the hypothesis, not shore it up. They pillory dissenters in religion, not science.
(A) who says, what did they measure, how did they measure it, and how many people disagree with their findings? How many people have replicated their findings? Is 0.5 really a harbinger of a long term trend, or is it normal variation? Etc.
(B) Yeah, but is that causative or just a correlation? Unless A is know, B is not a given. That's why they call it a hypothesis.
(C) Yeah, but a lot of it isn't, and there's considerable pressure to find in favor of warming. Enough that caution is warranted.
(D) Simulations are no better than the data they run on, and the understanding of the phenomena they simulate. I have yet to see a simulation that can predict last week's weather with any degree of accuracy. If you can't do last week, 50 years from now is a stretch, yes?
Bottom line, there's some cause for concern here that these climate change predictions have more of politics than science about them. They just seem to fall so conveniently on one side of the political spectrum during a US election year, don't you think?
Gee, possibly because if it was all as cut and dried as you say, nobody would be arguing about it. Technical audience here y'know.
Nobody argues about the speed of light, because its been measured. Repeatedly. To a very high degree of accuracy. By lots and lots of people. Not all of whom can be trusted of course, but there are so many that the liars and cheats get snowed under by the honest results.
Nobody (except certain eccentric types) argues about evolution or relativity, because they've both been observed in the lab and in the wild, as it were. Again repeatedly by lots of people for years and years.
So with global warming, we have a hypothesis that has evidence supporting it, AND evidence which does not support it. When its as observed and verified as relativity currently is, then I'll sign on to spending trillions of dollars and billions of man-years of effort to curb it.
Until then, I'm thinking the whole thing is a bit too politicaly popular to be trusted, thanks. In the 1970's we were due for another ice age in 20 years, thirty years later its global warming and the same exact people are doing all the braying?
Gotta say I'm doubting it. Too much like gun control and cold fusion.
The problem is that you're clouding the issue with facts. You just can't let the facts, or God forbid actual reasoning to interfere with a perfectly good anti-USA hate-Bush rant.
Besides which you read the article. That's cheating.
(A) given that it has not yet been established that there actually IS any long term warming due to green house gases or due to anything else for that matter (because nobody has measured it yet),
(B) and given that there's no conclusive evidence (measurements)that human activity is even a significant contribution to this as-yet unmeasured warming, much less causative,
(C) and given the amount of foul play there's been lately in the "scientific" community regarding the subject of warming (google up "Death Valley temperature sensor" for a giggle, or "urban heat island effect" or "hockey stick chart debunked" or "Bjorn Lomborg" maybe),
(D) perhaps the conclusions of aformentioned study may be a trifle premature. Possibly. Maybe.
We could even check the historical record and discover that this year's storms (although bad) were not extrordinary for the region in either number or severity, and that generally there are less such storms during the last 50 years than previously.
Or we could just go with it and scream DEATH TO THE SHRUB!!!
By all means, let us not cloud the issue with facts.
The Sierra Club started the whole anti-SUV campaign currently running in all the media back in the middle 1990's. They picked SUVs for the same reason that Josh Sugarman and the Brady Campaign picked assault weapons back in the 1980's. They are a big, obvious easy target.
That's the Sierra Club's campaign, a bandwagon that's been jumped on by every ecoweenie/progressive organization from Canada to New Zealand. If you aren't buying their crap, good for you. Some rating organizations like Consumer Reports have started skewing their testing to make the SUV's look worse, so I take ratings with a grain o' salt.
Street experience (actual crashes) indicates that all else being equal, an SUV occupant will -tend- to come through a crash with a car better than the car occupant will. That's simple physics. Slower deccelerations due to larger mass, bigger crush zones, stronger passenger compartment because there's more metal in it, rigid frame construction instead of monocoque etc. Higher ride height means the average impact goes UNDER the SUV occupant from front, back or side resulting in reduced injury.
Four wheel drive on the highway is superior to front or rear wheel only in any reduced traction conditions.
Downside of the truck body on frame construction is a higher center of gravity and a higher roll center. In any truck worth a damn that I've owned or driven the designers took that into account when sorting out the suspension and engine location etc, but they just don't corner like a Ferrarri. Engineering tradeoff.
The Ford Exploder is a POS that will roll under normal braking, and as far as I'm concerned its a death trap. Put a dumb chick that doesn't check her tire pressure in one of those, add some rain, and it'll roll. Honda Element, not so much. Add some creative statistics and voila, instant controversy. All 100% made up.
I'm not fond of Rice Rockets because I'm too tall to fit inside and I don't like front wheel drive at all. The idea of putting a 1600cc motor in a street car and buzzing it up to 8 grand just to get some power out of it offends me. I like torque for the street, top end is just for the drag strip.
Besides which if I want to go FAST on the street I'll ride a motorcycle. Any 750 or bigger bike can eat any street car made on any stretch of pavement, excepting $200,000+ super cars. I had a 500cc Yamaha V4 back in the day, I used to eat Porches for breakfast on the way to work.
I actually own a four banger, its a VW 1600 in my desert race car. Its perfect for a desert car because of air cooling, good torque, wide power band and bulletproof lightweight construction. Fast don't get you home in the desert.
If I wanted to go super fast I'd yank it out and stuff in a 400 hp Subaru. But then there's that getting home factor to consider. Right design for the conditions is important.
I'm all about using the right tool for the job. The right tool for getting my ass through traffic in one piece every day, summer and winter, is a big freakin' truck. When the kiddies get old enough to bitch about sitting in the back, I'll get a crew cab. If I had more than 2 kids it'd be an Expedition or something like that. I have lots of company in that assessment.
To me a WRX Sti is a wonderful toy like my race car. Awesome to play with on the weekend, take to the track and go balls out down the back roads. Not the thing I want to be jousting with 18 wheelers in on the highway every day. You ride bikes for a few years and have some close ones, you value the big iron. You pay for the gas and you laugh.
What you said was A) SUVs roll three times as often as cars, B) SUVs roll because stupid people drive them and C) anti-SUV people really only object to yuppies who don't "need" an SUV.
Trying again, A) I doubt this statistic, because over all far less people die in SUVs than cars, which is why people buy them. B) While there are stupid people who drive SUV's, that isn't a design fault of SUVs. There are equally stupid Geo drivers. C)Why is it that anti-SUV people and greenies generally feel that they can decide what other people need?
I got rear ended by a Toyota one time, does that make all Toyota drivers simpletons? Every time I get cut off in my majestic 4x4 land yacht its some asshole in a blinged out Honda Civic. Are all drivers of four banger rice burners assholes?
So at the risk of repeating myself, making Sierra Club class envy propaganda into a government program is incompatible with a free country.
Besides which, if you took every SUV off the road tomorrow moring and replaced them with the Greenie approved tiny wee cars, you'd notice no major change in the air quality. But accident fatalities would be way up.
The Sierra club doesn't seem to have a problem with that.
Yeah, I would go get it if asked, and I'd take along all the expertise on the subject available. An H-bomb is not the kind of thing one wants to leave lying around, even a mud encrusted antique. If nothing else some Islamonazi could dig it up and make a dirty bomb out of the leftovers.
Who -should- get it is a military recovery team with some experience in the job. They have the best chance of getting the thing out in one piece without making a mess of it. Build a caisson around it, dig it out, cast it in concrete, bury the SOB in the Nevada test range where nobody can mess with it.
Somewhat more practical than your suggestion, eh? Maybe a bit less vindictive peacenik bile too.
Point is, if you can hear me through all the anti-American bile in your brain, that left to their own devices people will chose the biggest, strongest, safest vehicle they can afford. They do not view gas mileage and environmental impact as the most important factors.
Say that again, given free choice many people like big huge vehicles. They will pay extra to get them. Even, I hasten to add, in Europe.
So they don't agree with you.
Nor do they agree with the CAFE standards that have legislated cars down to half their former size and power. What they actually want is a mid-70s size station wagon, but thanks to CAFE there are none. And so they are left buying trucks.
Thus half or more of the new vehicles sold are trucks. Not ideal, but better than the tiny car alternative.
Now, the real issue is why you think your opinion on the issue matters more than theirs. Big head syndome, perhaps?
Incorrectamundo. A common mistake made by people from socialist countries.
You are arguing that the collective society has rights which are more important that those of the individual.
Because you think SUVs harm the environment, you claim the right to tell me what car to drive. You don't have to prove it, just claim it. If enough people agree with you, the collective takes my car away.
That's not a free country. That's a police state.
In a FREE country the collective society has no rights. Only actual people have rights.
In a free country I drive what I want, and if you can prove my SUV harmed you personally, then I have to pay you money. If not, you have no claim.
Of the two systems, emmigration patterns indicate that human beings vastly prefer the free country to the collective society, probably because they hate being told what to drive by the Ministry of Tiny Cars.
No, I don't think so. He's moaning that all his efforts to reduce, reuse, recycle are wasted because of the other guy "wasting" resources, and what's to be done about that.
I just think it would be nice if people paid more attention to their own consumption and less to other people's. Makes life easier for all of us.
I'll grant you that a Ford Explorer might roll, I've driven them a few times and I think its a skittery piece of shit on the highway. Crappy handling, wheelbase is too short, bad brakes, too tall in the center of gravity.
But for the most part, pickups and SUVs are very stable on the road. My Dodge Ram, its beauty on the corners. Not WRX class, but then what is? I can carry half a ton of drywall too. And have done.
You're kidding right? The front clip and trunk on a '74 Olds are both half a block long, all monocoque construction too. Four feet of crumple there.
I had a patient once, lived through being rear ended by a-holes going more than 50 mph, twice. Both times in a mid 1970's Caddy. Two different cars, Daddy had a thing for old Caddys apparently. Noth9ing worse than some medium strength whiplash.
You get a rust-free mid '70s American land yacht, put a decent harness in there, you're bullet proof. Add a roll cage, Oh yeah baby!
And people don't mess with you either, which is an added safety factor. Dickweeds in blinged out Hondas will NOT cut you off. They fear the ancient steel.
We also know, which you don't seem to, that its a crappy storage medium. As in, you can't store it. There's no such thing as a welded joint that hydrogen won't leak through. Leaky joints means your tank of liquid hydrogen will be empty if you let it sit a while. Same for pipe, same for valves, fittings, flexible tube etc.
For hydrogen to work as a storage medium there will have to be a major breakthrough in metalworking technology and metal fabrication techniques. That's a multi-trillion dollar proposition, not billion.
Besides, how much money do you think is tied up in the existing oil/gas storage and transport infrastructure world wide? The number would stun you I'm sure. You wanna just junk all that? We'd be world-wide broke.
Finally, you know where hydrogen actually comes from these days? Coal. And it is one dirty, stinky process with lots of nice toxic leftovers.
Its better to just burn the coal, all things considered.
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You know, if there wasn't much of anything at stake in the CO2 effort I might be inclined to go along, do the experiment and see what happens.
However this is not a trivial thing we are speaking of here. What you are suggesting is nothing other than voluntarily curtailing the total energy output of our civilization. That ain't small potatos.
So at the risk of repeating myself, I have to say that I don't find the existing evidence sufficiently compelling to sell my car and take up walking. Because that is what will have to happen to do as you and the rest of the global warming crowd want. You're going to have to make it "water is wet" convincing, and so far, it isn't.
Clearly the Bush administration agrees, and wants some more convincing stuff on the table before they will even countenance the discussion. That's not short sighted, that's called looking out for America first which is what they are supposed to do. That's their job.
Besides, don't you find it even slightly interesting that only the oil industry is interested in disproving the hypothesis? Physicists have been busting their asses since 1914 trying to prove Einstein wrong, why is Global warming so holy? That's the whole point really, where's the mainstream criticism? There should be a lot more than there is.
My idiot government seems content to sell my country's future for a handful of magic beans, either by honouring the Kyoto Agreement or renegging on it after a suitable pause, therby blowing our credibility. either way my kids future isn't looking bright here in the Great White North.
The "N" word's been used already. This conversation's over. All we have now is name calling and spitball throwing.
But hey, this is Slashdot. Flame on if y'want.
CDC = Center for Disease Control That's the American government's central clearing house for important public health information. If somebody shows up with the Andromeda Strain, the CDC are the guys who put on their bunny suits and go get the body.
During the Regan, Bush 1 and Clinton Administrations the CDC funded some of the most transparently bogus studies on gun control I've ever seen. As in, independent of what party the President was from, they were bent on making shit up to suit their own agenda. To the point where Congress curtailed their budget. Cut their funding in the mid 1990s. Since then it has been admitted that the whole thing was a pile. I have references if you want.
I've seen the USNAS report. I don't think its believeable, and neither does the Bush administration because they came out after it was released and questioned the findings.
Government orgs are not always truthful, nor always scientific. Sometimes they set out to make a case for things they want. This might well be one of those times.
Discretion is the better part of valor. That's all I'm saying here.
Pretty much boiling the argument down to (C) now, because that's really the crux of the issue. I submit that you will be very hard pressed to find a faculty at a major educational institution who would countenance a study designed to disprove the global warming hypothesis.
As I mentioned in the parent of this thread, take a look at what happened to Bjorn Lomborg over the last couple of years. He writes his book, all the big journals and associations go to extreme lengths to slag him, his own government goes after him, he's a pariah. Now, some years later, all those journals and "respected scientists", all those government officials etc. are eating crow. Lomborg's been vindicated.
Important to note that Lomborg doesn't even disagree with the global warming hypothesis, he just disagrees with the conventional wisdom on what to do about it. Imagine if he tried to disprove it! They'd have nailed his hide to the front gates.
Call me cynical, but this kind of behaviour doesn't fill me with confidence in the science supporting the likes of the Kyoto Accords.
Hence my caution at accepting the business about the hurricanes, particularly as it gets released in October of a US presidential election year. Its all just too convenient.
Or to be blunt, I just don't believe it. I think 20 years from now we will have discovered the whole thing was a crock, the same as the New Ice Age they were all upset about in the 1970's was a crock.
Speaking of crocks, my Canadian government has signed on to Kyoto, much against my personal better judgement. In order to keep the targets Canadian economic activity will have to be reduced to pre 1990s levels. That's because pretty much anything one does in manufacturing, transportation or natural resource production requires energy, which ultimately means either burning something or using nuclear fission.
I don't see any new nuke plants being proposed, and the old Candu ones are getting pretty rickety.
So either we Canadians are going to have the biggest economic depression and general ruination since post World War One Germany, or the government is going to lie.
George Bush seems to take his word a bit more seriously than Jean Chretien does. He didn't sign the accords because he knew damn well the USA wasn't going to keep those targets. Chretien knew it too, but chose to take the short term brownie points and go with the long term lying.
Gotta say, based on that choice to stand up and speak the truth, I have more respect for George.
People want to reduce CO2 emissions, they are going to have to find a better way to do it than trashing modern society. We really aren't going to go back to an 1890's economy. Not going to happen. The Americans will go to war a hell of a lot faster than they'll let that happen, and don't kid yourself, the Europeans will too.
Indeed.
We actually know the temperature in Europe has been climbing slowly since the Little Ice Age, when all those canals in Holland used to freeze over. Currently they don't do that.
Problem being for the global warming hypothesis, that trend started long before human industrial activity contributed much in the way of greenhouse gases. I have yet to see an explanation of what started that particular warming trend.
Hence my caution. The bandwagon is not where scientists usually go looking for the truth, its where politicians go to get in on the free drinks.
What, you think the USNAS is "independent"? Let's not be silly. That's like saying the CDC ran "independent" studies on gun control in the 1980's and 1990's.
There's plenty of evidence against the global warming hypothesis, its just that we don't hear much about it. That's what makes me suspicious of it.
In science you try to DISprove the hypothesis, not shore it up. They pillory dissenters in religion, not science.
(A) who says, what did they measure, how did they measure it, and how many people disagree with their findings? How many people have replicated their findings? Is 0.5 really a harbinger of a long term trend, or is it normal variation? Etc.
(B) Yeah, but is that causative or just a correlation? Unless A is know, B is not a given. That's why they call it a hypothesis.
(C) Yeah, but a lot of it isn't, and there's considerable pressure to find in favor of warming. Enough that caution is warranted.
(D) Simulations are no better than the data they run on, and the understanding of the phenomena they simulate. I have yet to see a simulation that can predict last week's weather with any degree of accuracy. If you can't do last week, 50 years from now is a stretch, yes?
Bottom line, there's some cause for concern here that these climate change predictions have more of politics than science about them. They just seem to fall so conveniently on one side of the political spectrum during a US election year, don't you think?
Gee, possibly because if it was all as cut and dried as you say, nobody would be arguing about it. Technical audience here y'know.
Nobody argues about the speed of light, because its been measured. Repeatedly. To a very high degree of accuracy. By lots and lots of people. Not all of whom can be trusted of course, but there are so many that the liars and cheats get snowed under by the honest results.
Nobody (except certain eccentric types) argues about evolution or relativity, because they've both been observed in the lab and in the wild, as it were. Again repeatedly by lots of people for years and years.
So with global warming, we have a hypothesis that has evidence supporting it, AND evidence which does not support it. When its as observed and verified as relativity currently is, then I'll sign on to spending trillions of dollars and billions of man-years of effort to curb it.
Until then, I'm thinking the whole thing is a bit too politicaly popular to be trusted, thanks. In the 1970's we were due for another ice age in 20 years, thirty years later its global warming and the same exact people are doing all the braying?
Gotta say I'm doubting it. Too much like gun control and cold fusion.
You know, there's somebody else famous who said more recently that as soon as a thread contains a reference to the Nazis, the discussion is over.
Jumping the gun a bit here, aren't you? You should have given me at least one go 'round before dusting off Goebbels.
The problem is that you're clouding the issue with facts. You just can't let the facts, or God forbid actual reasoning to interfere with a perfectly good anti-USA hate-Bush rant.
Besides which you read the article. That's cheating.
... but
(A) given that it has not yet been established that there actually IS any long term warming due to green house gases or due to anything else for that matter (because nobody has measured it yet),
(B) and given that there's no conclusive evidence (measurements)that human activity is even a significant contribution to this as-yet unmeasured warming, much less causative,
(C) and given the amount of foul play there's been lately in the "scientific" community regarding the subject of warming (google up "Death Valley temperature sensor" for a giggle, or "urban heat island effect" or "hockey stick chart debunked" or "Bjorn Lomborg" maybe),
(D) perhaps the conclusions of aformentioned study may be a trifle premature. Possibly. Maybe.
We could even check the historical record and discover that this year's storms (although bad) were not extrordinary for the region in either number or severity, and that generally there are less such storms during the last 50 years than previously.
Or we could just go with it and scream DEATH TO THE SHRUB!!!
By all means, let us not cloud the issue with facts.
You're thrashing now.
The Sierra Club started the whole anti-SUV campaign currently running in all the media back in the middle 1990's. They picked SUVs for the same reason that Josh Sugarman and the Brady Campaign picked assault weapons back in the 1980's. They are a big, obvious easy target.
That's the Sierra Club's campaign, a bandwagon that's been jumped on by every ecoweenie/progressive organization from Canada to New Zealand. If you aren't buying their crap, good for you. Some rating organizations like Consumer Reports have started skewing their testing to make the SUV's look worse, so I take ratings with a grain o' salt.
Street experience (actual crashes) indicates that all else being equal, an SUV occupant will -tend- to come through a crash with a car better than the car occupant will. That's simple physics. Slower deccelerations due to larger mass, bigger crush zones, stronger passenger compartment because there's more metal in it, rigid frame construction instead of monocoque etc. Higher ride height means the average impact goes UNDER the SUV occupant from front, back or side resulting in reduced injury.
Four wheel drive on the highway is superior to front or rear wheel only in any reduced traction conditions.
Downside of the truck body on frame construction is a higher center of gravity and a higher roll center. In any truck worth a damn that I've owned or driven the designers took that into account when sorting out the suspension and engine location etc, but they just don't corner like a Ferrarri. Engineering tradeoff.
The Ford Exploder is a POS that will roll under normal braking, and as far as I'm concerned its a death trap. Put a dumb chick that doesn't check her tire pressure in one of those, add some rain, and it'll roll. Honda Element, not so much. Add some creative statistics and voila, instant controversy. All 100% made up.
I'm not fond of Rice Rockets because I'm too tall to fit inside and I don't like front wheel drive at all. The idea of putting a 1600cc motor in a street car and buzzing it up to 8 grand just to get some power out of it offends me. I like torque for the street, top end is just for the drag strip.
Besides which if I want to go FAST on the street I'll ride a motorcycle. Any 750 or bigger bike can eat any street car made on any stretch of pavement, excepting $200,000+ super cars. I had a 500cc Yamaha V4 back in the day, I used to eat Porches for breakfast on the way to work.
I actually own a four banger, its a VW 1600 in my desert race car. Its perfect for a desert car because of air cooling, good torque, wide power band and bulletproof lightweight construction. Fast don't get you home in the desert.
If I wanted to go super fast I'd yank it out and stuff in a 400 hp Subaru. But then there's that getting home factor to consider. Right design for the conditions is important.
I'm all about using the right tool for the job. The right tool for getting my ass through traffic in one piece every day, summer and winter, is a big freakin' truck. When the kiddies get old enough to bitch about sitting in the back, I'll get a crew cab. If I had more than 2 kids it'd be an Expedition or something like that. I have lots of company in that assessment.
To me a WRX Sti is a wonderful toy like my race car. Awesome to play with on the weekend, take to the track and go balls out down the back roads. Not the thing I want to be jousting with 18 wheelers in on the highway every day. You ride bikes for a few years and have some close ones, you value the big iron. You pay for the gas and you laugh.
What you said was
A) SUVs roll three times as often as cars,
B) SUVs roll because stupid people drive them and
C) anti-SUV people really only object to yuppies who don't "need" an SUV.
Trying again,
A) I doubt this statistic, because over all far less people die in SUVs than cars, which is why people buy them.
B) While there are stupid people who drive SUV's, that isn't a design fault of SUVs. There are equally stupid Geo drivers.
C)Why is it that anti-SUV people and greenies generally feel that they can decide what other people need?
I got rear ended by a Toyota one time, does that make all Toyota drivers simpletons? Every time I get cut off in my majestic 4x4 land yacht its some asshole in a blinged out Honda Civic. Are all drivers of four banger rice burners assholes?
So at the risk of repeating myself, making Sierra Club class envy propaganda into a government program is incompatible with a free country.
Besides which, if you took every SUV off the road tomorrow moring and replaced them with the Greenie approved tiny wee cars, you'd notice no major change in the air quality. But accident fatalities would be way up.
The Sierra club doesn't seem to have a problem with that.
A rolling stone gathers no moss.
How tender hearted you are. Did you forget the Rape of Nanking by any chance? Japanese prison camps? Pearl Harbor?
How about the fact that those two nukes ended the war in a couple of days, vs. the several years and millions of lives it would have cost otherwise?
How about the incendiary attack on Tokyo? That was a beauty, made Hiroshima look like a weenie roast.
I've gotta add you're pretty cavalier with those soldiers too.
Yeah, I would go get it if asked, and I'd take along all the expertise on the subject available. An H-bomb is not the kind of thing one wants to leave lying around, even a mud encrusted antique. If nothing else some Islamonazi could dig it up and make a dirty bomb out of the leftovers.
Who -should- get it is a military recovery team with some experience in the job. They have the best chance of getting the thing out in one piece without making a mess of it. Build a caisson around it, dig it out, cast it in concrete, bury the SOB in the Nevada test range where nobody can mess with it.
Somewhat more practical than your suggestion, eh? Maybe a bit less vindictive peacenik bile too.
You don't think my friend, you just feel. Probably rage and hate mostly.
Try not to get any of that shit on the furniture, eh?
Nice attitude.
Point is, if you can hear me through all the anti-American bile in your brain, that left to their own devices people will chose the biggest, strongest, safest vehicle they can afford. They do not view gas mileage and environmental impact as the most important factors.
Say that again, given free choice many people like big huge vehicles. They will pay extra to get them. Even, I hasten to add, in Europe.
So they don't agree with you.
Nor do they agree with the CAFE standards that have legislated cars down to half their former size and power. What they actually want is a mid-70s size station wagon, but thanks to CAFE there are none. And so they are left buying trucks.
Thus half or more of the new vehicles sold are trucks. Not ideal, but better than the tiny car alternative.
Now, the real issue is why you think your opinion on the issue matters more than theirs. Big head syndome, perhaps?
So, its a class envy thing then eh? "Rich bastards, the nerve of them having a bigger car than me! There oughta be a law!" That sounds about right.
Yuppies live in a free country too. If you can show some damage you've personally suffered from some individual Yuppie in an SUV, press your case.
Otherwise...
Incorrectamundo. A common mistake made by people from socialist countries.
You are arguing that the collective society has rights which are more important that those of the individual.
Because you think SUVs harm the environment, you claim the right to tell me what car to drive. You don't have to prove it, just claim it. If enough people agree with you, the collective takes my car away.
That's not a free country. That's a police state.
In a FREE country the collective society has no rights. Only actual people have rights.
In a free country I drive what I want, and if you can prove my SUV harmed you personally, then I have to pay you money. If not, you have no claim.
Of the two systems, emmigration patterns indicate that human beings vastly prefer the free country to the collective society, probably because they hate being told what to drive by the Ministry of Tiny Cars.
No, I don't think so. He's moaning that all his efforts to reduce, reuse, recycle are wasted because of the other guy "wasting" resources, and what's to be done about that.
I just think it would be nice if people paid more attention to their own consumption and less to other people's. Makes life easier for all of us.
More hype.
I'll grant you that a Ford Explorer might roll, I've driven them a few times and I think its a skittery piece of shit on the highway. Crappy handling, wheelbase is too short, bad brakes, too tall in the center of gravity.
But for the most part, pickups and SUVs are very stable on the road. My Dodge Ram, its beauty on the corners. Not WRX class, but then what is? I can carry half a ton of drywall too. And have done.
Isn't it awsome the way all the road scum avoid you in a big ol' beater?
I drove in New York City a couple times in a newer car, the cabs used to come within 3 inches of hitting me. It was like dodge 'em cars.
Drove downdown in a clapped out pickup truck one time, nobody came within a car length of me.
Awesome! ~:D
You're kidding right? The front clip and trunk on a '74 Olds are both half a block long, all monocoque construction too. Four feet of crumple there.
I had a patient once, lived through being rear ended by a-holes going more than 50 mph, twice. Both times in a mid 1970's Caddy. Two different cars, Daddy had a thing for old Caddys apparently. Noth9ing worse than some medium strength whiplash.
You get a rust-free mid '70s American land yacht, put a decent harness in there, you're bullet proof. Add a roll cage, Oh yeah baby!
And people don't mess with you either, which is an added safety factor. Dickweeds in blinged out Hondas will NOT cut you off. They fear the ancient steel.
We know its a storage medium. We got that.
We also know, which you don't seem to, that its a crappy storage medium. As in, you can't store it. There's no such thing as a welded joint that hydrogen won't leak through. Leaky joints means your tank of liquid hydrogen will be empty if you let it sit a while. Same for pipe, same for valves, fittings, flexible tube etc.
For hydrogen to work as a storage medium there will have to be a major breakthrough in metalworking technology and metal fabrication techniques. That's a multi-trillion dollar proposition, not billion.
Besides, how much money do you think is tied up in the existing oil/gas storage and transport infrastructure world wide? The number would stun you I'm sure. You wanna just junk all that? We'd be world-wide broke.
Finally, you know where hydrogen actually comes from these days? Coal. And it is one dirty, stinky process with lots of nice toxic leftovers.
Its better to just burn the coal, all things considered.