For SUV haters

Little research (Iraq "oil prices") -> over 400k hits
Oil rises after attacks in Iraq
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/06/16/iraq.oil.prices/

There is no shortage but oil companies are getting nervous and greedy.

 

Getting greedy? LOL

 

Yes they can. I distinctly recall the horrible stink in downtown areas of
the U.K. when I visited in the 80s, before they got onto catalytic
converters and emission controls... something I'd never noticed before when
the same stink was everywhere.

The only problem now is that we have some pretty good controls and there's
not much more to be wrung out of auto emissions improvements.
Unfortunately we have a bureaucracy which makes a living dreaming up more
and more oppresive rules which yield near-zero results in real terms.
Somebody needs to attack the monster.

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??

 

'ckin' pinkos!

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??

 

i agree with you here. theyre going after 2strokes now- weed whackers,
gas blowers. its getting kinda crazy. how much smog can a weed whacker make?

 

Probably not very much, but how many leaf blowers & weed whackers are in
use these days?

 

And how many gallons of gas do they consume over a season? I use maybe 5/6
gals/year for snowblower and lawnmower. Being forced, for whatever reason,
to use low emission engine designs - the flathead cannot meet their specs -
is nuts. Honda is doing very well out of the regs BTW, with its OHV small
engine.

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??

 

.... and at the Chicago BOT, the speculators are umm, speculating. I hope
*they* lose their shirts. At least the refiners actually do some useful
science and engineering to produce our favorite brews.

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??

 

I thought we were discussing pollutants, not consumption?

 

theyre related. consume more, pollute more. if everyone was using the
same amount of gas in their weedwhacker as they burn in their car, the
smog would be really bad.

 

During Reagan's funeral week, many of his quotes were reiterated. The
one I liked the best is, "Government's not the answer. Government is
the problem." As you say, it's a monster, and after spending my life
voting for whichever candidate promised "less government," I've come
to realize that this monster arose from Pandora's Box. It cannot be
killed, and it's eating us alive.

Ron

Ron

 

Yes and how much pollutant does burning 5gals of gas per year put out?
Compare with say 3-4bags of charcoal per year for your barbeque and you
might begin to wonder when the rule-makers are going to attack the hibachi
for pollution.:-(

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??

 

If you're worried, cast a glance at Europe - there they have the European
Commision which is just a bunch of pompous, self-regarding *unelected*
"high officials" backed by a huge bureaucracy, including the usual
junk-scientists, making up onerous rules for everyone. It's beginning to
look horribly dangerous - national socialism by committee?

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??

 

The basic problem is overpopulation. As we cram more and more people
into the same space, sources of pollution which used to be trivial
start to add up. Also, the number of people exposed to that pollution
increases. If we are not going to reduce our population then we must
all live cleaner.

I don't know about the CA law, but 2-stroke engines are very dirty.
About 25% of the fuel and oil put in the tank ends up in the air and
(more seriously) water in the case of outboard motors. Charcoal isn't
great but it doesn't add that much hydrocarbon to the air. (Actually
the starter fluid is pretty bad and should be avoided by using
electric starters which work great if you access to electricity.) The
possibility that charcoal might be banned by CA in the future is
probably real. At least they are dealing with these tough problems,
not ignoring them.

It is true that the air is cleaner now than it was in decades past.
(Although some pollutants like benzene have increased dramatically.)
But it is still killing tens of thousands of Americans each year and
the latest studies indicate that there is no safe level. That means
any reduction in pollution will save lives.

http://tinyurl.com/2bxbv
http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Sept98/ecodisease.hrs.html
http://www.sciencenews.org/pages/sn_arc98/5_16_98/fob2.htm
http://tinyurl.com/28gk9

 

True, the Gas Station's owner can use any formula to set the prices for their fuel
once it's sitting in their tank. Since the prices of gas is basically the same for all
the filling stations in the city and surrounding cities, I'd assume that they are all
following the same formula. I'm sure the pumping station's would like to promote as
much instability as possible in order to get maximum value for their fuel (without
reducing on consumer's consumption). The fact that they can do this is somewhat
disconcerting. An interesting situation was last year during the North America black
out. Most of Toronto had gone couple of days without electricity which meant
that the gas stations pumps would not work. When some of the gas stations came back on
line, while the rest of the city was dead, there was report of price gouging (the
media made it a point to report the bad doers). Lucky for us, the government stepped
in and threatened dire consequences (since the city was in a state of emergency) if
Stations did not adhere to normal prices. I was surprised that there was no incident
of riots or major mishaps during that black out.

Pars

 

While over-population *is* a problem on a global scale, which nobody seems
to want to tackle head-on, the local effects are nothing new - we've had
high population densities for hundreds of years. In fact within those
major conurbations, the air is cleaner now than at any point in their
existence... despite the increase in the use of fossil fuels and energy in
general.

2-stroke was not part of the discussion - I was talking about lawnmowers
and snowblowers. IMO, the possibility that CA might (probably ?) ban
charcoal only illustrates the madness of the whole regulatory mess. It is
*not* a *tough* problem. Burning charcoal does not produce much HC --
quite a bit of CO -- *BUT* cooking meat, especially greasy hamburger meat,
over charcoal or even a gas grill *does* produce the dreaded
micro-particles of HC complex. Looks like we'll all have to go vegan
now?

Benzene has increased dramatically? Where do you get this from? Increased
compared with when? When did it start getting measured and where? Where
does it come from? Do you want to ban benzene? How?

Some years ago, I used to work in an industry which used benzene heavily -
I handled it on a daily basis and I can assure that that it is now highly
contained compared with back then. It is used to produce all kinds of
useful everyday products which you and everybody else is going to have to
do without if you want to ban it. Even then there are natural sources of
it which are going to be a "tough problem" for a ban.

I'm not up on all the details but AFAIK benzene has been eliminated from
Cali. gasoline and reduced to trace levels everywhere else... *and*
automobile fuel systems are now so sealed from its escape, as a very minor
component, that it is so insignificant that I'd really like to know where
the justification comes from that it has "increased dramatically"!!

The use of the word "killing" is really inappropriate here, though a
favorite of the hand-wringers and finger-waggers. We're all going to die
from something - the fact that someone's life was cut slightly short by a
few months or a couple of years because of the environment they live in,
man-made or not, does not mean that it "killed" them. This is emotional
blackmail.

One *must* also balance such "pollution caused" deaths (killings ?) against
the chance of survival of those frail individuals in a world without the
benefits of convenient heat, refrigeration, air-conditioning,
disinfectants, medications, personal transportation and the production and
transportation of fresh foods, etc. etc. In short, do you prefer to have a
few peoples' lives cut short by a few years due to our developed
infrastructure or would you rather we *all* freeze, stew, starve to death
or die of a simple bacterial infection? If you want to "undevelop" the
developed world, I suggest you look at the less developed world to see
where it leads.

Not that we should not try to improve the system we have and tune it to
mitigate risks. To come back to the original point, we should balance the
benefits and costs of new rules & regulations against the risks of doing
nothing. As already noted, auto-emissions have been wrung out and
significant incremental improvements are just not possible without an
abandonment of the IC engine. There may be a few localities where grass
grows so fast and emissions could be improved by controls but that is a
*local* problem. For the rest of us, a few gallons of gas burnt per year
with a slightly higher pollution result than an automobile is
insignificant.

Epidemiology-speak! I'm tired of hearing and reading this crap: "it is
estimated that [...] may be attributable to"... "evidence to suggest"...
"pay attention to this". Stereotypical talk of the academic panhandler,
the career path of the modern-day secular philistine. I was sure I'd see
mention of the World Hysteria Organization (WHO) some place there.

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??

 

Benzene is on a list of chemical substances designated by the EPA as
being BOTH "ubiquitous" and dangerous.In other words,
it has shown up in trace amounts in human tissue and/or breast milk of
human beings on a global scale and which the EPA can do little to
control and must be tackled universally and internationally (if it is
ever going to that is).I do not know the extent of the full list,but
other chemicals and known carcinogens that fit this description are
PCB's,industry flame retardant chemicals,mercury and chromium
compounds,DDT,dioxins and others.I think there are 100+ chemicals on the
list.I am not going to rattle them off here as the chemical formula
names are too long to type them all out.

 

AFAIK, china is the largest polluter in the world. however, this is normal
given
their state of development and the size of their population(they are
actually less
polluting per person than the US was at its peak). the problem is as they
adopt
more effecient technologies, the world, lead by the US, is putting a
stangle-hold
on them...whether it be nuclear technology or economic success.

me??

 

On Sun, 27 Jun 2004 08:38:10 -0700, (SAC 441) wrote:

I've no idea who nor what you're replying to here - no quoting doesn't
help. Learn to use your bloody newsreader.

Yeah, yeah - so what? Rhyming off dangerous industrial substances means
nothing. Where is the evidence that any of those, and benzene in
particular, have "increased dramatically" and over what period of time?
When did anybody start measuring their environmental presence anyway?

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??

 

ive never heard of canadians rioting. if they do, theyre probably really
polite aboot it, eh?