Ted Turner Says He Saw Auto Industry "Crash" Coming - Video 11/30/08

Freedom's Lighthouse ^ | November 30, 2008 | BrianinMO

[Federalist Patriot]

Here is video of bizarre CNN Founder Ted Turner appearing on Meet the Press where he told Tom Brokaw he saw the "crash" of the automotive industry coming years ago and declared that the "days of big automobiles" and "fossil fuels are over."

Ted Turner has a history of saying outrageous things. The day may come when there will be viable alternatives to "fossil fuels," but their day is far from over. . . . . (Watch Video)

[Dinsdale]

Too bad he didn’t see the AOL/.com crash coming.

Might have saved himself a billion or two.

[FormerACLUmember]

Clically mentally ill Bipolar Ted is off his medication again.

[television is just wrong]

guess he’s just been with Jane Fonda too long.

[Ken522]

Ted is talking out of his behind again, claiming knowledge of things outside his understanding when all he has is prejudice.

[baiamonte]

Well why in the hell didn’t you say something Ted?

[max americana]

He didn’t see FNC beating the daylights out of CNN either.

[Dinsdale]

CNN was small change next to the beating Time Warner's stockholders took at the hands of AOL's stockholders.

I was laughing at him at the time.

Trading half of Time Warner for half of AOL. World class idiots.

[Longtom]

Ted Turner, modern day Nostradamus.

[NeoConfederate]

If it’s really the end of the automobile, how will ACORN transport people to the polls in the future?

[SJSAMPLE]

And George Cloony “knew” that there were no WMD’s in Iraq.

Go figure.

[boxer21]

This is the billionaire who by his own admission, once stooped over to pick up a dime from the floor while going through a revolving door. Someone gave the door a push and as a result, Ted injured his back but came out with a dime in hand.

Who else would be so stupid?

[abb]

[RightWhale]

Did anybody not see this coming at least a few years ago?

[SIDENET]

Well why in the hell didn’t you say something Ted?

He was too busy talking about how Global Warming^TM would lead to cannibalism.

[LiberConservative]

Yea, right. And I’m a jelly donut.

[outofstyle]

He didn't’t see FNC beating the daylights out of CNN either.

He claims that he did. He said that he had a plan to convert "headline news" into a "right wing" CNN show in order to preempt FOX, but that he did not believe in the right wing agenda.

I agree that he is demented.

[HawaiianGecko]

  He's still wrong. I predicted the end of Detroit in the late '70s and it took 30 years for that to happen, so I believe my prediction is closer than his.  Big cars will still be made and fossil fuels will still be used long into the future.  The cost of one joule of energy from gasoline will still be cheaper than anything else for a very long time coming, and likewise the joules from coal will still be the most efficient way of generating electricity.  Heck, my idiot senator (as opposed to my non-idiot senator) the Honorable, Vastly Liberal, Dumb as a Blonde Claire McCaskill proudly announced this morning on Fox News Sunday that she just bought a Chevy Tahoe this last week. I guess she doesn't believe in leading by example.

The whole debate over electric cars is really dishonest at it's core.  No matter what one thinks, it take a finite amount of energy to haul my butt from point A to point B.  The exact same amount of energy whether it comes from a petroleum explosion inside an internal combustion engine, electricity from a battery or a coolie dragging me around in a rickshaw.
 
Toyota claims that the nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) battery packs used in all Prius models are expected to last the life of the car. For those of us who have cell phones and other devices with NiMH batteries, that claim may sound a bit dubious.  Regardless Toyota says they will gladly replace them for $3,500.00 when the need arises. I'll just have to hope I put less miles on my Prius than my youngest daughter does on her cell phone and Ipod.  I've noticed my kids & grandkids show up when their batteries run out.  I go through more bags of batteries than potato chips, so I guess there's some sort of silver lining in that particular cloud as they're all skinny & it keeps them close.  My biggest fear of course is that some brilliant engineer will extend battery life by a factor of ten. I'll die in my sleep and no one will find me for six months.
 
There is also an amount of energy expended finding, developing, packaging and getting that energy to my vehicles.  The petroleum industry has refined this over the last 150 years and they are damned efficient at it.  Unless I'm in a national park (ANWR excluded hopefully), I can't drive two blocks without running over a gas station. Electrical distribution also has about a 150 year history of refining their delivery package. Of course about 70% of electricity in America is generated from oil or coal fired power plants, so I'm not sure how putting more demand on these plants charging a Prius reduces oil imports but like most people, I prefer to believe what makes me feel good rather than believe reality.

For unknown logical reasons, people are opposed to using 1,000 acres in ANWR for oil extraction. An area actually seen by perhaps 117 people in the last 100 years, but they have no problem using 15,000 acres of land in the lower 48 states to put in a 1 Gigawatt wind farm along an interstate highway where thousands of people pass every single day.  Scott Palin and his buddies run snowmobiles thousands of miles across Alaska and even they haven't found ANWR. The caribou and moose probably haven't been there either, and for good reason.  It's a very inhospitable place and according to PETA these animals aren't stupid.  It might be a tropical paradise to a polar bear who prefers a block of ice to live on.  Yet, according to the global warming people, polar bears will be extinct by Easter anyway, so we shouldn't include them in our decision tree.

My solar panels were very efficient until God discovered what I had done and started throwing hail stones at them.  One doesn't realize how much bird do-do is in their yard until they place an acre of very shiny panels on 4 foot pedestals in their yard and position them to cast the most attractive lighting on them.  They're also a rock magnet for all the 4 year old juvenile delinquents running around my neighborhood.  (Full disclosure; a couple of my buddies have thrown empty beer bottles at them too. They really are a mouth watering target.)

Ethanol is a good deal if you are oblivious to accounting.  The government subsidizes about half the price of a gallon of ethanol so a $7 gallon of the stuff only costs you $3.50.  That's a good deal since subsidies from the government are really free money picked from the money trees hidden on The Farm in Virginia. Reality of course is much different.  You pay the other half of that gallon on April 15th every year. Not to even mention that roasted ears of gold on the BBQ are now cheaper than roasted ears of corn.  Twenty years from now kids singing America the Beautiful will have no clue what 'amber waves of grain' mean, as farmers are plowing under their wheat and replacing it with the 'jaded surge of maize.'

The argument I hear that it will take 10 years to deliver oil from off shore deposits in the Gulf and off the coast of California seems sensible until the guys that have actually been poking holes in the Earth and extracting this black gold very efficiently for the last 150 years tell me they can deliver oil from the Destin Dome region within 18 months.  It makes me scratch me head.  Now, my children and grand children tell me that I'm old and times have changed and that many things I learned in college 40 years ago aren't true today.  Hmmph!  Maybe so, but when did 18 months become the same thing as 10 years.  Yeah it's true that I learned how to jerk my rabbit ears around on my Zenith to get the news from Huntley-Brinkley at 6 o'clock every day while they get theirs from Jon Stewart's podcast, but the two aren't as far apart as 102 months. I'll trust the engineers with their slide rules & Gant charts before I trust the politicians with bumper sticker slogans.

BTW: You know you're getting old when MS-Word puts a squiggly red line under 'slide rule' when you type it.

[TigersEye]

Ted Turner has a history of saying outrageous moronic things.

[SeaWolf]

It is not the end of fossil fuel, unless we all want to go back to the mule drawn form of heavy transport.