Can you fit your Civic in the back of your Civic?

How are you being scamed? For those that can't see the cost of this joke, see the following.
SEC Should Require Companies to Disclose Risk of Global Warming Regulation, Study Says; Companies Risk Earnings While Keeping Shareholders in the Dark, Reports Free Enterprise Education Institute



WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Securities and
Exchange Commission (SEC) should take immediate steps to require
publicly-owned corporations to reveal the potential harm caused by global
warming regulations on earnings and shareholder value, concluded a study
released today by the Free Enterprise Education Institute (FEEI).
The report, "Failure to Disclose: Businesses Lobbying for Global
Warming Regulation Keep Shareholders in the Dark," finds that many
corporations supporting greenhouse gas regulations have failed to warn
shareholders about the harmful consequences these regulations pose to
future earnings.
Surprisingly, only five of the twenty-one members of the U.S. Climate
Action Partnership (USCAP), a lobbying group supporting global warming
regulation and cap-and-trade schemes, have disclosed in their annual SEC
filings that limits on greenhouse gas emissions pose a business risk.
Efforts to limit greenhouse gases at the state and local level already
unequivocally demonstrate these regulations are a legitimate business risk
to USCAP members:
-- General Electric is fighting federal and state legislative efforts to
ban the incandescent light bulbs -- a GE product and invention of
Thomas Edison, the company's founder. Government officials want to
require consumers to purchase only the more energy efficient compact
fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs). Shareholders are also threatened by
efforts to ban coal-fired power plants. GE supplies steam turbines for
these power plants.

-- PepsiCo is facing bans on bottled water. Critics complain the
production and transportation of bottled water wastes energy and
contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. San Francisco city agencies no
longer purchase bottled water because of global warming concerns.
"USCAP members must inform shareholders about legitimate risks to their
business," said Steve Milloy of FEEI. "Failure to disclose exposes these
companies to shareholder lawsuits -- especially since greenhouse gas
regulations are materially impacting these companies," added Milloy.
The study finds USCAP membership is controversial and it has created
conflict between businesses and their customers.
Caterpillar Inc., for example, is dealing with a boycott from a coal
industry customer because of company participation in USCAP. A government
study reported that cap-and-trade regulations would cause a 40 percent
reduction in coal production. According to the Caterpillar CEO, the
decision to join USCAP was not based on an economic assessment of the costs
and benefits of the regulations to the company.
"Shareholders have a right to know that Caterpillar may face a backlash
from other coal companies and energy intensive companies, like the steel
industry, whose businesses will be ruined by cap-and-trade regulations,"
said Tom Borelli of FEEI. "If the boycott picks up momentum, Caterpillar
could easily be facing shareholder lawsuits. Making matters worse, the CEO
did not exercise basic due-diligence in deciding to support regulations --
negligence is a powerful argument for trial lawyers," added Borelli.
The study also finds that non-USCAP members should disclose the impact
of global warming regulations to its shareholders. Wal-Mart, for example,
is the largest private user of electricity and its trucks travel an
estimated 1 billion miles every year.
"High-energy prices -- a direct consequence of global warming
regulations -- would dramatically increase Wal-Mart's operating costs and
hurt consumer spending," said Borelli. "Shareholders should be alerted to
the fact that global warming regulations will potentially devastate
Wal-Mart's future earnings," Borelli added.

Now it is nice and all, how some claim to worry about all of us and our future. But don't act like this will not hurt anybody and there is no scam involved. This "global warming" simply an excuse for grabbing money and power.

No oil company makes as much money off a gallon of gas as our own government. Where do the so called "scientists" get the money? Government grants, but those who disagree are banished as working for oil companies. Who makes out when we have a boogey man to blame new taxes and regulations on?

Right, no one will get hurt by our efforts to "save the planet". Don't worry though, once global warming goes out of style, there will be a new boogey man.

No, but if you can fit my Civic into the back of your pickup truck, you would only have room for whatever you can pack into the Civic, so you might as well drive the Civic. <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Thanks for the cut-n-paste. Didn't read it. For every one article you come up with stating global warming is a scam, I can come up with about 90 that refutes it.

You guys in Florida let the rest of us know how things shape up in the next couple of decades. With a High point of 345' above sea level you'll know somethings wrong way before most of the rest of the country.

I have to agree with Karl in his defense of diesel though. I can't believe VW doesn't promote the TDI more here in the states. It's a legit 50mpg with power and torque.

The most efficient, electronically controlled, turbo charged diesel is about 37% efficient. That means that 37% of the power held in the fuel gets to the rear wheels. The most efficient gasoline vheicle is around 8% efficient.

Add a little biodiesel to your truck Karl, maybe 10% and it will lube the top end and you'll get that 2 mpg back and then some. It's about $.25 cheaper than diesel per gallon in Amarillo right now. Fewer hydrocarbon emissions, a little more nox. Don't go more than 10% when it's cold.

Still not convinced of the "scam".

Check out Honda's new diesel lineup..Accord, Ridgeline and I think a civic as well. I think they are coming out in 09 or 10.

Look.

<**** !

8% efficiency is the level early 19th century steam engines operated at.

Wouter

Minnesota has a minimum 2% bio-diesel right now. There were problems initially with quality, (Plugged fuel filters and the like), but I think it has gotten much better. I almost bought a setup to distill my own but there is no way I could've produced enough fuel to make it work for me. The time I spent chasing down used cooking oil, I can get more done at work and come out ahead. You can't stock up on B100 either. Bacteria build up and eventually destroy it. The cost, not figuring the equipment to make it or the fuel/time to get waste cooking oil, is about $.50 a gallon last time I checked, but it has been a few years since I looked into it.

I've got a Dodge Dakota for a run around beater that actually gets worse mileage than my 3/4 ton. Pulling the FXone it gets horrible mileage

<**** !

8% efficiency is the level early 19th century steam engines operated at.

Wouter

********'! Forgot the '1'.

18% for gasoline
37% for Diesel

Still either one is pretty bad when considering efficiency.

Still my point is that Diesel is more efficient than Gasoline.

See, I knew you were one of those communist, environmentalists. Do you have a bus that you drive around with a bunch of other hippies touting the benefits of biodiesel? Woody Harrelson runs his off of hemp seed oil<img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

But this inequality is taken out when comparing efficiencies. Afterall, is defined as the ratio between net extracted energy on the drive shaft devided by the total amount of energy that is released by burning the fuel. Ergo, if diesel has a higher energy content per liter then say gasoline that still doesn't mean that a diesel engine is more efficient in extracting this energy then a gasoline engine.

Supercharging an engine (of which a turbo charger is one implementation) only allows a smaller engine to be used to generate the same amount of power. In general, it does not have a large impact on efficiency if the supercharging is done efficiently. Again, the cylinder volume of the engine is not a factor in energetic efficiency of the motor. Again, the equation is very simple. How much fuel in energetic units (not liters !) is burned per second to acquire a given power output at the driving shaft. Whether the engine is big or small (cylinder volume) or super charged or not is not a direct consideration.

You are confusing yourself with what are mainly sound bites from automobile advertisements.




This can never be the energetic efficiency of the motor. The fundamental upper limit of real life expansion cycle engines is limited to about 50-60 % as proven by the idealized Carnot process. (Look it up). This idealized proces does not include any parasitic loses that any real life implementation will have. Ship diesels and powerplant regenerative gas turbines typically operate at 45% to 55% efficiency and that is as high as you can get. To a large extent this is possible to the huge scale of these engines. The smaller the engine to larger the relative loses of the parasitic losses. Typical car engines max out at 30% energy conversion efficiency.

Your 80% quote is something completely different. Probably some power output to cylinder volume output when compared to some arbitrary reference. If you think sport bikes are impressive then try to find the numbers for this ratio for a gas turbine. Those things pump several thousand HP out of a 2 feet by 4 feet round tube.




You must explain to me how you ever believe that this 110% number can relate to energy conversion efficiency ? Basically it says you can get more energy on the drive shaft then you into the engine as fuel. I would start requesting patents on that engine right now !

Wouter

Wouter, I'm talking efficiency of moving air. If you have 40% stale air sitting in the cylinder that has no oxygen it can't be burned. That is what I'm talking about which has a direct impact on fuel economy. Its called volumetric effiecency. If you have a cylinder that is 1 liter and you only move 60% of the spent air out of the cylinder on each exhaust stroke you're essentially wasting that displacement on the engine. The reference to 110% volumetric efficiancy means that a 1 liter cylinder ends up moving 1.1 litres of air on each intake/exhaust stroke. They do this by holding the intake and the exhaust valves open at the same time for a short period to totally wipe all the used air out of the cylinders. This is how train engines work. They use a supercharger, and a turbo charger on a two-stroke diesel with valves.

Gas engines rely on an ignition source to ingite fuel. Diesel's use pressure and heat to get combustion rolling. That's how you "knock" the energy out of diesel. That is also why turbos work so well on diesel. Take an engine that already has a compression ratio of 27:1, (vs the avg gas at 8:1), now pack a ton more air into the cyliders and it can get as high as 50:1

While I agree that diesel engines are more efficient in energy conversion then gasoline engines I dispute the statement that difference is like 37% to 18%.

I can't find a quick source of data here but I seem to remember that when I was going through the internal combustion part of my mechanical engineering courses I learned that gasoline engines were 20-25% efficient in non stationary operation and about 30-35% when operated stationary. Stationary here means operating at a constant power output level and rotation speed.

Diesels were typically 5-10% more efficient in the same roles.

Often marketeers will add efficiency points due to the fact that a liter of diesel contains more energy then a liter of gasoline. They do this as most people are only interested in the fuel costs (per liter of gallon) of a given fuel. However these imaginairy efficiency %'s are not scientific and are indeed very misleading. They have no meaning whatsoever outside of fuel cost calculations.


Wouter

Either way it is NOT energy conversion efficiency.

Also I think it to be unfair to compare supercharged and injection diesels and sport engines with plain family car engines without these gadgets and still using carbirators.

The "stale air" problem just as much impacts on non supercharged diesels as it does with non-supercharged gasoline engines. And ofcourse the same solution can be had with gasoline engines.

Point in case the superbike engines, not many are used diesel engines right ?

Basically what you doing here is confusing a whole lot of people with basically junk science.

This may well be unintentional but ....

Wouter

Then explain to me why my brother's gas pickup, which weighs about the same, has similar dimensions, less power, and less fuel economy?

I know you can turbo/supercharge a gas motor, I'm pushing the Turbo diesel. Which a turbo is pretty much a requirement if you want it to run efficiantly. Look at all the older diesel vehicles, (at least in the U.S.), I wouldn't want to drive one either. Audi has been pounding the 24 hr Le Mans the last few years with a diesel engine mainly on not having to stop for fuel as frequently.

I'm just a regular guy but when some rich guy spouts how I have to cut my consumption of fossil fuels because I'm killing the environment while he jets around the world in his private jet... if it smells like...???

BUT, they'll sell you some carbon credits if you have enough money and you can burn as much as you want. If that doesn't have scam written all over it, some people are dumber than me.

You'll get a debate about if it is/isn't until all the polar caps melt. If the scientists can't agree what makes you think us sailors know better. (granted some are scientists). I read one piece that carbon credits do exactly zip... excuse me while I don't go find that piece, its probably a moot point as someone will say its wrong. Which is my point exactly. We're debating a point that NO ONE WILL EVER AGREE ON!!

Peace,

Clayton

Unfortunately Clayton, we will all agree on it someday. When the factors become so evident that they affect our everyday lives, we will have to agree. We will definitely see more acute weather in our lifetimes, it's interesting to look at the storm data for the past 100 years.

Changes in data are pretty fine right now and it takes some knowledge of science to understand them. CO2 ppm in the atmosphere is definitely up (no refuting that), which is most definitely caused by humans (again , no argument), which in turn is responsible for the climatic changes (there's where people have a hard time).

In the myopic world of our everyday lives we can see very little change right now, which is why it's a difficult for non-scientists to 'believe'.

It's the same reason that people refused to believe the Earth is round. "It doesn't look round from where I stand".

It's definitely going to be interesting to see what happens.

BTW Australia just committed to sign the Kyoto Protocol leaving the U.S. the last industrialized hold out. Is it that we are smarter than everybody? I'm not so sure.

As the tide goes out so quickly on the US economy I would have thought I would hear less arrogance but I guess I will have to wait for the sirens to start wailing before the writing on the wall is legible. Clearly Brittany's underpants and OJ are much more newsworthy thanyet another round of forclosures and bad debters in the housing market.
The giant, red and black V8 utes have already starting hitting the auctions here and I laugh....only egomanics wanted them in the first place so now they are costing $180 to fill, they are just looking like space wasters.

Something about the planet. The planet does not need saving from us. We need saving from ouselves.
The planet will be just fine, so will nature. The tigers and maybe most of us will die out and something tougher but maybe not as pretty will survive.
If we want to be cleaver we will concentrait on tougher, cleaverer houses and infrastructure in safer places to cope with the weather that is undoubtedly coming our way because pulling these horses to a halt with electric cars is a joke. The cows over here in NZ create more carbon emissions than all of the cars in Australia.


So I am going back out on the water where it is me, my boat and the ocean....sailfast Compadres, the dark one follows, looking for the slow, the weak and the stupid.