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Your example assumes that the ice is in the water already. Sea ice melting never has been behind concerns of sea levels rising. The concern about sea level rise was from:

1) Ice sheets and glaciers melting (ie, the ice that is on land in Greenland, Antarctica, etc - not ice that is in the water already) - that ice isn’t currently displacing any water, so any portion of it that melts will add to sea levels unless offset by higher precipitation (and retention of said precipitation) elsewhere on land.

2) Thermal expansion. Heat water by 5 degrees celsius and you’ll get about a 0.1% increase in volume. So for a 1 degree celsius change, that’s about 240,000 cubic kilometers of increased volume. Over 360 million square kilometers of ocean, that’s about 0.67 m of additional depth (neglecting the fact that surface area would increase).

Regardless of what you think of the theory of global warming, your example is pretty far off from fact. You don’t need extraterrestrial water sources - heat will in fact expand water, and melting of ice on land will result in higher sea levels.

Late reply, but yes, it does....

My 97 Taurus had a fault in its climate control system once that caused it to go into a safe mode. Turns out that it does a self-calibration, and if it fails during the calibration for any reason, it goes to a safe mode to prevent damage.

I was wondering why it was only blowing hot air, then I found out a simple reboot sequence to send it through the calibration again.... passed with flying colors and never had a problem again.

Funny that NONE of that says that Obama is not a natural born citizen.

Nonsense. Such a restriction has NEVER been part of law.

Really? Can you provide proof?

Alexander Hamilton’s proposal said: “No person shall be eligible to the office of President of the United States unless he be now a Citizen of one of the States, or hereafter be born a Citizen of the United States”

Lynch v. Clarke clearly gives “natural born citizen” status to all people who have citizenship at birth, and that decision has widely been quoted by SCOTUS.

Ok - name ONE spot in the constitution that refutes what I said.

You can’t.

So in your mind the opinion of ONE congressman in 1862 trumps established law that has been upheld by SCOTUS?

Really?

Incorrect.

You get US citizenship at birth if you are born in this country, regardless of where the parents are from.

Please... it shows he was born in Hawaii, which means he IS a natural born citizen. Period. End of the story.

Because he hasn’t spent that much money NOT to show it.

The claims of multiple millions of dollars spent to fight release come from claiming that all the money paid to a legal firm to wrap up activities from the campaign were spent to fight release simply because that was one of the many things they did. That would be akin to claiming that because (hypothetical situation here) Donald Trump has a lawyer on retainer and paid that lawyer to fight a speeding ticket, everything Trump paid that lawyer for all that he did was actually paid to fight the speeding ticket, nevermind all the other activities the lawyer participated in.

So why did he not release it earlier? Personally I think it was a brilliant political move. Rational analysis showed how ludicrous the birther claims were and by dragging things on, he had the ability to make it appear many of his political opponents who opposed his policies, on what were very rational grounds, were actually associated with birthers and therefore off their rockers.

Yes, polls showed that a good % of the population were following birther theories, but that % of the population was viewed as likely to never consider voting for him anyway, and painting his opponents as more extreme helped with the moderates.

And personally, watching all the republican congressmen refuse to refute birther theories, I think that strategy was working for him. I’m not sure why they’re releasing it now... seems like they’d be better off politically just ignoring birthers...

GM’s sales goal for the Volt for 2011 is 10,000 units.

At $7,500 each (max) in subsidy, that’s $75 million at a maximum, assuming that every buyer has $7,500 in taxes they can offset.

Not peanuts, not what I would call a wise expenditure, but a LONG way from $1 billion.

Most vehicles actually would get better mileage at 30 than 60 mph. The problem is that when you’re going 30, you’re almost always in stop-and-go traffic, which is murder on your fuel economy. Get out on the open road and roll along at 30 mph without having to accelerate/decelerate, and you’ll find you easily get better mileage than at 60 mph.

The better part of a decade ago now, Ford and the EPA put a hydraulic hybrid system into an Expedition and managed to get 32 mpg city and 22 mpg highway. With the MUCH more efficient engines and transmissions that they have now than they had in that vehicle combined with improvements in the hydraulic system, I see no reason why 40 mpg city isn’t attainable.

The only question is cost - Eaton has a system they’re using on Peterbuilts right now. It costs $40k, but it also has to be able to move 60,000 pounds. Ann Arbor is using them on garbage trucks, and expects full payback of that $40k in 3 years. That’s a phenomenal rate of return.

The green leaf either designates that the vehicle has an EcoBoost engine (in which case it normally says Ecoboost on the tail) or that it is a flex-fuel vehicle. Most likely you’re seeing a lot of flex-fuel vehicles - you CAN use E85 in those, but you don’t have to. Straight normal everyday gas will work fine.

“What you didn’t hear during the Toyota mess, was that there were just as many reports of American cars with *exactly* the same sort of problem. But they didn’t get the press.”

That isn’t true in the least.

Where are you getting your misinformation?

bull.

Most of Toyota’s fines didn’t even come from unintended acceleration cases. And they all came because Toyota hid defects (and even admitted doing so!)

NPR pulled the from NHTSA’s complaint database all the complaints that were recorded prior to the stories breaking, and there were FAR more than 8 complaints.

No - there were thousands of complaints before the news reports... the rate just skyrocketed even more afterwards as people jumped on the bandwagon.

“So, does Toyota get their fines returned ?”

NO.

Toyota was fined because they failed to report knowledge of defects within the 5 day period required by law. The fines were attached to defects which Toyota did in fact put out recalls for. In the case of the 4Runner, it was a defect that there is evidence Toyota knew of for more than a decade before recalling the vehicles in Japan, then waited another year before recalling them in the US, despite the designs being identical.

There are a lot of people confusing the release of these findings with an exoneration of Toyota. If you read it carefully, it is obvious that what is being stated is that they were unable to find any evidence of a software or electronic problem behind Toyota’s high rate of unintended acceleration complaints (which started back in 2002, YEARS before these stories broke in the press). That does not say there wasn’t a problem - they clearly state that the only problems they have been able to find were the floor mat entrapment and sticky gas pedal issues.

Toyota clearly violated the law in these cases - heck, in one case, they recalled the vehicles in Canada and then waited 6 weeks to notify the US government and start a recall in the US of the identical vehicles.

So again - those fines were not related to simply having an unintended acceleration problem... they were for failure to notify the gov’t and take swift action when there was a known problem.

The 63 mpg claim is what Mini claims on their UK website. That means imperial gallons were used. Believe it or not, the car companies still advertise mpg there.

I must completely disagree - the government is not charging 20+% interest. Marchionne is desperately trying to make people believe this, but it isn’t true.

Read it again - Chrysler was given a total of $12.5 billion in aid. They don’t have a $12.5 billion loan because most of it was converted to equity. Just because a company is not publicly traded does not mean that shares do not exist. The gov’t had preferred stock in GM prior to their IPO, and GM bought it back to cut off those interest payments that they had on that stock. Marchionne is desperately trying to get the public on his side, when in fact he’s paying an effective interest rate of just over 9% on all the government aid extended to them. As I said earlier, Ford had to pay MORE than that. The government may have only had to pay 4% (long term bonds) on the money they borrowed to give to Chrysler, but they, like any other bank, need to have an interest margin to cover their risk.

As for net recovery, you’re fooling yourself if you think that the treasury will ever recover 100% on Chrysler - Marchionne himself has said that in the past. GM? Doubtful, but far more likely. Your estimate of a 40% loss is complete and utter nonsense.

GM received $49.5 billion in government aid. They paid back $9.5 billion of loans and preferred stock, then the government got $13.5 billion in the IPO. The government currently holds 500 million shares of GM stock.

$49.5-$9.5-$13.5 = $26.5 billion outstanding. If the government sold all of those 500 million shares at the current price of $36.59, they would receive $18.3 billion. That would mean a loss of $8.2 billion, or 16.6%... well under your 40% claim. $53 per share would be complete recovery of all bailout funds.

But you’re clearly off your rocker if you believe Chrysler was forced into bankruptcy... they were a zombie car company in 2008 and are lucky to be around today.