mike1324a

Rofl at environmentalists

http://www.autoblog.com/2006/12/07/v...r-interrupted/

Rootski

iTrader: (1)

I've been rofling at environmentalists for a while, because they're doing all they can to save the environment as long as it doesn't inconvenience themselves.

My favorite is when ELF burns things down. To protest deforestation, they torch housing projects built on old forests... creating a huge smoke cloud, greenhouse gases, and a possible forest fire. Sweet goin' there, vegans.

And they deface Hummers when our 8's probably burn more gas on average.

WhiteDealershipRice

^^^
Ah... but you see... college activists are more about the actual protest, than the cause itself...

Razz1

^^^^^^^^^

ohhh someone who is smart!

mike1324a

The whole saving the environment from the evil car thing makes me laugh. They say hybrid cars are so much better for the environment. Not so! Did you ever think about the fact that hybrids have 2 engines and thus have more parts to build and assemble. This will require more factories and thus more polution then a single engine being produced. Then you say "well thats just when its being made, it makes up for it later". Really? How about when all the batteries are crapped out and it sitting in a junk yard. All the chemicals in all those worn out batteries leaking into the environment.....Yeah the short time it kind of helps the environment is dwarfed by the tons of time it will hurt it.

mike1324a

Oh and global warming is a joke. The temp will raise 1 degree on average in 20 years at this rate. Oh darn. Oh and lets not forget to mention the fact that the world has been heating up since the ice age. Global warming has been happening long before the industrial revolution. Yeah, the media/government doesnt tell you about that stuff now does it.

lone_wolf025

Popular Mechanics had an article in which they mentioned that it costs considerably less energy to build and run a H2 (or was it a 3) for 100k miles than it would to do the same with a Prius. I think the end results (including such things as fuel and oil) wound up being the Prius being something like 2 to 3 times more costly in terms of energy expended from start to finish.

saturn

Do you have a link? Even if this is true I doubt this philosophy works out in the long run. Part of the problem with the Prius is that it has to leverage a lot of new technology that doesn't benefit from mass production. Not really an apples to apples comparison.

mike1324a

Think about the fact that hybrids have 2 engines and thus have more parts to build and assemble. This will require more factories and thus more polution then a single engine being produced. And how about when all the batteries are crapped out and it sitting in a junk yard. All the chemicals leaking into the environment....

Winfree

The global warming thing is a scam - they wanted to sell CO2 like they sell pollution - they work it this way - companies that don't pollute and companies that do are all given pollution points or credits. If you use up your points by polluting then you have to buy more from a company than pollutes less - Then you have to have a middle man to arrange the trades. They really do this in places like San Francisco so big nasty companies can keep doing what they are doing and get around government and environmental standards
I am not sure if it's still there on the net, but back before ENRON melted down it was going to be the big CO2 credit selling middleman
Check out ENRON, Clinton, C02 and Koyoto Accords - the Koyoto treaties would have made CO2 credit trading international with the US having to buy credit from a lot of 3rd world countries...
CO2 is bogus a forest fire, or a volcano can put out more CO2 than most factories or people breathing - remember you breath CO2 and cows produce green house gases so eventually to save the world you will have to reduce yours cow populations and maybe even human populations...

saturn

So if I'm hearing you right you're saying we should eat a lot more beef, tear down all the forests, plug all the volcanoes (playdoh might work), and stop breathing. Done!

I think CFC and NOx emissions are far more detrimental than the supposed effects of CO2 for sure. But we should probably look to cut them all because what can it really hurt?

Nocturn

Double Pwn to Environmentalists....

Toyota Prius factory turns area into arid wasteland

mysql101

In the 70's, they were worried about the coming of a new ice age. They were working on plans on how to heat up the earth. It was the same doom and gloom. How quickly they forget.

This is an excerpt from Time magazine.

j_tso

Yeah pollution's a scam.

birth defects near factories in China? Part of the natural cycle.
fish poisoned by mercury and killing the people eating it? All natural.
Acid rain? Mother Nature, again.

StealthTL

iTrader: (1)

I'm in northern Canada, digging up oil deposits, and it is fairly obvious that at one time, long ago, there were jungles here. Massive ferns, crocodiles and hot oozing swamps.

Ten thousand or so years ago the ice where I stand was a thousand feet thick - what melted it? It wasn't Fred Flintstones car.....

It is a natural cycle, and trying to stop or reverse it will be about as succesful as forbidding the tide from coming in.

S

mike1324a

He didnt say polution was a scam. He said global warming is a scam and he is right.

saturn

FYI, Winfree is a she.

PoorCollegeKid

From what I understand, particulate emissions were the dominant form of pollution in the early 1970s. Then, with the advent of the various filters, catalysts, and other particulate emissions control devices around this same time, this form of pollution was greatly reduced and greenhouse gas emissions became the more noticeable of the two.

I think that it's interesting to note that scientific, peer-reviewed literature from the time doesn't state unequivocally that global cooling will occur and kill us all (at least, the stuff that I've read). That sort of statement came more from people who didn't quite understand the mechanisms behind climate change. What scientific papers do say is that, given the current (at the time) growth rate of particulate pollution, there is a good chance that the increasingly dense smog will lower the temperature of the Earth, just as many papers today state that, given the growth rate of greenhouse gas emissions, there's a good chance that the increasing concentration of these gases will raise the temperature of the Earth. It is my understanding that they were "wrong" back in the 1970s because of new emissions control technology that came along and made their pollution projections irrelevant, not because there was anything fundamentally wrong with their theories. To say "Well, they were wrong back then so they must be wrong now," seems fairly foolish, especially since most people here (myself included) don't know enough about this subject to intelligently argue with the climatologists and scientists who put out the different theories on global climate change. If you really want to know the "truth," whatever that may be, try digging up any peer-reviewed papers or watching scientific debates on the issue that you can find. Stories from the media and government press releases just aren't detailed enough to draw any real conclusions from.

mike1324a

Oops! Sorry!

terrypk1

i don't know. i do feel that the global warming seen today is a result of both human activity and natural cycle. we sort of speed up the process.
but there is no way that we can stop it. Petroleum is still big and it will continue to be like so. and i totally don't see electricity becoming the dominant power source in the future.
but he is right in his speech. we do need energy diversity. Yet, electricity won't cut it.

rotarygod

It's really hard to find a way to not pollute. Expecially when the population of the Earth is growing so fast. We are on the upside of an exponential curve when it comes to population growth. All we can do is find ways to be more efficient in all that we do. The sheer numbers of additional people over the years are still going to offset this though as everyone still pollutes in some way. There is no way to stop this.

As far as cars go, we may find alternatives to foreign oil but we will never find a way to not pollute. When you build cleaner cars, there is a tradeoff. Somewhere along the line pollution was added. The hybrids such as the Prius do more longterm damage to the environment than conventional cars. This is because there are far more materials used in them such as their batteries that do not break down after their lives are over. They just don't biodegrade. That was the point of the Popular Mechanics article. If we switched completely over to electric cars the powerplants would need to make more power to sustain charging them. They need to make power from something and this will increase pollution on their part offsetting somewhat the gains from cleaner cars. If they can get their power from the wind that means we need to pollute more to get materials to build the windfarms. If they get power from water we need to affect the environment by damming a river not to mention the pollution caused by creating the materials for them.

It's not to say that there would not be an ultimate reduction in pollution over time from these strategies. Many people just don't focus on the big picture to see how one action affects others. Pollution only goes down if your consumption does not go up. As we get more and more people and cars, we need to decrease our emissions per person just to stay even. Environmentalists don't really grasp this concept very well which is why they'll never understand why pollution levels will never go down.

Just remember, pollution doesn't kill the planet. It kills what lives on the planet. Once everything here dies, the planet will clean up and start over. It's happened before.

lone_wolf025

Well said RG...well said

j_tso

my bad.

Rhawb

Expecially? C'mon RG, you're better than that.

RX8Maine

I remember being in high school and learning that at the then-current rate of consumption, all of the world's oil would be used up within 20 years. Having graduated in 1992, I am guessing that we have, at best, a 4 year supply left. Better get on those alternatives!

In the end, a lot of this stuff is highly influenced by economics, politics, and egos. Finding the truth in all of the spin is not easy, so I am not going to bother.

LETS JUST ALL GO FOR A DRIVE AND FEEL REALLY GOOD ABOUT IT!!