And $20,000 for a tomato can to drive around in! 
Posted on 08/07/2005 8:57:14 AM PDT by SmithL
I HAVE a dream: President Bush pushes through a grand compromise -- he bucks Big Oil and Detroit by raising automobile fuel-efficiency standards, while enviros grind their teeth and support oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
That dream was interrupted Thursday by U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, who was in San Francisco to speak at the Commonwealth Club. He arrived here just as Congress passed a 1,745-page energy bill that doesn't do much to improve fuel efficiency but has billions of dollars in tax breaks for energy companies.
I've clung to this dream because raising fuel efficiency would reduce American demand for oil, while opening up ANWR would increase oil supply. Both measures would make America, which imports 58 percent of its oil, more energy independent.
Bodman, however, wasn't too interested in pushing hard for four-wheel fuel efficiency. The administration is concerned, he told me in an interview, about "the unintended consequences of increasing the CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards on light vehicles" -- to wit: that higher CAFE standards could cause manufacturers to make lighter, and hence less safe, vehicles.
To my CAFE/ANWR proposal specifically, Bodman responded, "Your trade-off -- Does it make sense? Sure, you get A, and you give up B, and does that sort of thing make sense? Well, if you were going to make the change that you suggest, first of all you'd have to add an additional feature if you're producing vehicles that are just as safe or safer." (In other words, first you've got to call for measures that can impede fuel efficiency.)
The mechanics of legislation also get in the way. Congress had a chance to call for oil-conserving CAFE standards but failed. Don't think it is because Democrats didn't get what they wanted: Labor-loving Dems don't want
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Aluminum production and other industry such as copper production takes about 30% of our power generation in the northwest. There is some recovery of the metals in cars, but new metal production is needed anyway because there are more and more vehicles. There are about 220 million in the fleet and the number is still increasing.
To continue along the lines of anticipating future numbers, the 84 Mb/d may be very difficult to increase. Consumption would, of course, not exceed production.
And $20,000 for a tomato can to drive around in!
Had you bought a hybrid in '82, you would have replaced the $4,000 battery 2 or 3 times?
As it is we have to plug in engine heaters at night (and during the day, some days) during the winter to keep from damaging engines due to the cold. I doubt that I would only have had to replace the batteries 2 or 3 times since '82.
My daily driver/work vehicle is a '75 van with 282,000 miles on it.
My wife will part with her '78 Lincoln when they pry it from her cold, dead fingers.
CAFE standards have caused more fuel to be used than if they had never been enacted.
That's counter-intuitive. Would you care to explain that?
They caused the end of the full-size station wagon, and more-or-less, the full-size sedan. People wanted large cars, so they began buying trucks, which later became SUVs, once the manufacturers caught on. The end result was more, not less, fuel used.
Thanks
I did some consulting in northern Canada. They told me it would be -40. I asked F or C? Doesn't make any diff they said, the two scales cross there!
It was -40!
On the one job an elderly lady 4 miles away reported an unofficial static air temp of -60F, and we had a 40 mph wind. THAT was cold. (-146 wind chill, from a US Army chart.) Thank God an Indian friend had given me an old Air Force parka, it saved my bacon...
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