The Problem of Low Oil, High Mileage, and Going Green
Economy — By Dustin R. Steeve on November 20, 2008 at 10:26 pmOil prices are dropping. For many, including myself, this comes as a relief. However, there are some for whom dropping oil prices pose a critical problem: American auto makers. A quick case study of Ford Motor Company helps us to see why.
Ford’s best selling product has been their F-Series. In fact, Ford is the most popular truck company in the world if one judges such things by sales figures. In 2004, trucks and SUVs accounted for 70% of Ford’s sales. However, recent dramatic increases in oil prices have altered consumer demand causing the truck and SUV market to decline dramatically. Added to this was pressure from Congress and environmental groups for higher mileage standards on all vehicles. Were these trends to continue, or at least maintain current levels, Ford has an expensive yet simple solution: change their factories to produce smaller, more fuel efficient cars. Ford is currently pursuing this solution and plans to reduce their sales of trucks and SUVs to 34%.
Here’s the problem: what happens when oil prices drop and consumer demand returns to trucks and SUVs?
When oil prices drop and consumer demand returns to trucks and SUVs, Ford will be left with too many factories producing small vehicles
that nobody wants, too few factories producing large vehicles that
everybody wants, and, on top of all of that, millions of dollars in
debt and lost labor hours resulting from the conversion of their truck
plants. Ford faces an additional dilemma. The popularity of the
environmentalist movement and the supposed marketing power of “going
green” means that Ford has to walk a fine line between what popular
culture say consumers want and what consumers are actually buying.
Companies seen as “anti-environmental” are maligned and quickly find
themselves in the midst of a huge public relations battle for survival.
If Ford does not get the fine line between meeting consumer demand and maintaining a positive consumer image, it will lose public favor
and money.
Ford is, first and foremost, a business. Its number one objective is
to make money. If it does not make money, it dies. If it dies, tens of
thousands of people lose their jobs. Fewer vehicles will be produced
and our options will be more limited. Also, the American economy will
take a big hit resulting from the loss of one of its star players. It
is in nobody’s interest to see Ford die, yet what can be done about
Ford’s predicament?
Democrats in Congress claim to sympathize with Ford’s predicament.
They are calling for billions in Government (ie: taxpayer) bailout of
these corporations. Bracket the question of whether or not a bailout
even makes sense (after all, why would the federal government give the
auto makers billions only to turn around and tax them later?) Consider
instead that Democrats are riding high atop the youth and young adult
vote, promoting the “end times”
global warming myth that is bringing along all kinds of new federal regulations and making it difficult for the auto industry
to meet consumer demand. Specifically, Democrats’ call for the rapid
production of high-mileage vehicles means that Ford and other American
auto companies will have to sink millions more into researching,
developing, and implementing new technologies. Al Gore and
President-elect Obama smile as they promise a cleaner tomorrow. Ford,
who has lost $8.6 billion in the first half of this year, is left with
the responsibility and the bill.
I exhort the president elect and his supporters to be aware of Ford
Problem, especially in light of increasing foreign competition. If we
are to re-energize our economy, we will have to do it on more than the
electric idealism of young minds. For starters, we need to move away
from silly ideas like the “cap and trade” carbon system which will hurt
our economy and help foreign economies (while doing nothing to reduce
carbon). We ought to cease silly rhetoric about “tax cuts for the
rich” and embrace large scale tax-cuts for corporations like Ford who
are currently paying among the highest taxes in the world.
Still, at the end of the day, it is up to consumers, via the free
market and not the federal government, to help Ford out of their
crisis. Ford is working hard to comply with government milage standards, but if consumers really want cleaner air, then they must buy the
cleaner air vehicles that Ford and others produce. Furthermore, they
must not malign Ford for not producing cleaner air vehicles when fewer
and fewer people are buying them. Conservatives ought to be about
conservation: conservation of our natural resources, but also
conservation of our economic well being and the well being of those
companies who are powering our economy.
Tags: automaker bailout, Ford crisis
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People from over 130 countries contributed to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report over the previous 6 years. These people included more than 2500 scientific expert reviewers, more than 800 contributing authors, and more than 450 lead authors.
I am not sure why the number of authors makes a paper a more reliable source. Based on my experience it is more likley it would be a muddled mish-mash of “splitting the difference” in a desparate attempt to manufacture a “consensus club” with which to beat dissenters. In fact, here is a quote from an International Herald Tribune on the final days of the report’s preparation that tends to support that position:
“With the clock ticking down and translators juggling six official languages, and government representatives trying to insure that findings do not clash with national interests, tussles have intensified between climate experts and political appointees from participating governments.”
Since in 46 you claimed you can cite an equal number of scientists with the opposite POV I ask you to do so now.
Ex-preacher didn’t cite 3,750 scientists; he cited 5. Do you really want me to cite one more scientist to match his 5?
Getting back to the original topic, there is an interesting article in that bastion of “right wing gasbaggery”, The Washington Post. Here is a quote:
But the car company Schumer and other lawmakers envision for the future could turn out to be a money-losing operation, not part of a “sustainable U.S. auto industry” that President-elect Barack Obama and most members of Congress say they want to create.
That’s because car manufacturers still haven’t figured out how to produce hybrid and plug-in vehicles cheaply enough to make money on them. After a decade of relative success with its hybrid Prius, Toyota has sold about a million of the cars and is still widely believed by analysts to be losing money on each one sold. General Motors has touted plans for a plug-in hybrid vehicle called the Volt, but the costly battery will prevent it from turning a profit on the vehicle for several years, at least.”
Sounds like that old axiom of engineering is rearing its ugly head, “cost, performance, or schedule, pick two”. A bailout with the conditions Congress wants to attach would be worse for the Big 3 than simply declaring bankruptcy and attempting to restructure.
One more thing on the IPCC report, here is an editorial in the BBC from one of the reports lead authors. Some quotes:
“At an IPCC Lead Authors’ meeting in New Zealand, I well remember a conversation over lunch with three Europeans, unknown to me but who served as authors on other chapters. I sat at their table because it was convenient.
After introducing myself, I sat in silence as their discussion continued, which boiled down to this: “We must write this report so strongly that it will convince the US to sign the Kyoto Protocol.”
and
The signature statement of the 2007 IPCC report may be paraphrased as this: “We are 90% confident that most of the warming in the past 50 years is due to humans.”
We are not told here that this assertion is based on computer model output, not direct observation. The simple fact is we don’t have thermometers marked with “this much is human-caused” and “this much is natural”.
So, I would have written this conclusion as “Our climate models are incapable of reproducing the last 50 years of surface temperatures without a push from how we think greenhouse gases influence the climate. Other processes may also account for much of this change.”
and
“Atmospheric carbon dioxide continues to increase due to the undisputed benefits that carbon-based energy brings to humanity. This increase will have some climate impact through CO2′s radiation properties.
However, fundamental knowledge is meagre here, and our own research indicates that alarming changes in the key observations are not occurring.
So, I ask again, why should I take as fact that the IPCC report is the best source for consensus on climate change?
I am not sure why the number of authors makes a paper a more reliable source.
Goal post moving there. The point of having so many authors wasn’t to produce the next piece of great literature but to have the most comprehensive review possible of all the scientific evidence.
Ex-preacher didn’t cite 3,750 scientists; he cited 5. Do you really want me to cite one more scientist to match his 5?
No I’d like you to cite 3,750 scientists who’ve contributed to a similiar review of the evidence and have come to a conclusion along the lines of your position. There’s no need to actually list all their names here, just show me that such an endeavor was undertaken or at least the closest thing you have to it. Perhaps a 50 person review/study?
In fact, here is a quote from an International Herald Tribune on the final days of the report’s preparation that tends to support that position:
Two things, yes it’s nice to be a big fish in a small puddle. A single author or two authors can write pretty much whatever they want. Such massive reviews benefit by bringing in so many eyes on the data. You’ve identified some possible sources of bias but provided no reason to believe that they are greater than the massive amounts of bias individuals are subject too. You need both in science (and on global warming we got it in spades), don’t get me wrong, but if such a study is powerful as a representation of consensus in a subject that is simply too large for any single person to be an expert in all the relevant information.
Second, you miss what is important about your weak attempt to bash the report. To the degree a clash with national interests biased the reports it is overwhelmingly in most nations interests for global warming to NOT be a problem. China, India and the developing world want cheap energy. The Middle East’s wealth depends on oil, even Europe which is an advocate for being more aggressive on global warming is still heavily carbon based. On the ‘pro’ side of national interests you maybe have Iceland.
Your bias is more likely to cut towards undercutting global warming’s true risk. This is also true of human nature. We tend to assume continuity and linear change is the norm when it isn’t. (A nice illustration of this is the YouTube clips of Peter Schiff being mocked by financial commentators for saying before the crash that the banks and financial firms were on the edge of a diaster and people should run away from them as fast as they could). That’s not saying catastrophic consquences are guranteed or even likely only that human nature is to assign a 2% chance to a ‘Day after Tomorrow’ scenaro when it’s objective chance might be more like 15%.
A bailout with the conditions Congress wants to attach would be worse for the Big 3 than simply declaring bankruptcy and attempting to restructure.
I’ll refer back to comment #3 for what I think are the only two possible justifications for a bailout. Of them the timing issues is probably the best one. (Also a few details, Ford is suffering but is in much better shape than GM. Chrysler is privately owned so their condition is guesswork, GM is the one that is truely on the skids and headed for a huge crash….if a bailout happens all three will get something but this is really a GM bailout).
To the degree a clash with national interests biased the reports it is overwhelmingly in most nations interests for global warming to NOT be a problem.
Assumes facts not in evidence.
Your bias is more likely to cut towards undercutting global warming’s true risk.
Tell me then, what is global warming’s true risk? What is the cost of realizing that risk vs. the cost of mitigating it? Bottom line is, you have no clue. I will leave this with one more quote from the BBC article:
The best advice regarding scientific knowledge, which certainly applies to climate, came to me from Mr Mallory, my high school physics teacher.
He proposed that we should always begin our scientific pronouncements with this statement: “At our present level of ignorance, we think we know…”
This would especially apply to you and ex.
So, I ask again, why should I take as fact that the IPCC report is the best source for consensus on climate change?
Ucfengr’s question is both honest and shifty at the same time. Why is the report the best source for consensus? For the reasons ex gave. It is a product of a massive effort by thousands of experts from numerous fields. Ex has provided other sources as well, individual scientists, commentators and others and wiki and google will provide numerous other examples.
Why shifty? Because ucfengr isn’t really asking he is just trolling. Cite individual scientists and ucfengr will nitpick with individuals of his own (it is not practical to try to google each and every climate scientist to assemble a running cout of pro versus anti global warmers). Cite a massive consensus effort like the above report and ucfengr will nitpick again on individual disputes within the consensus or one-off criticisms of it. In demanding proof of a consensus, ucfengr should give us a clear picture of just what he thinks a scientific consensus looks like.
Tell me then, what is global warming’s true risk? What is the cost of realizing that risk vs. the cost of mitigating it? Bottom line is, you have no clue.
A true risk would be a comprehensive, unbiased assessment of the available evidence. That is not the same thing as knowing with certainity what will happen. If you ever took statistics you know with a proper sampling you can get a population’s average with a range of confidence of 90%, 95%, or whatnot. That is a ‘true risk’ in the sense that you are correctly calculating the odds of being within the range of the true population statistic….you could very well be wrong (95% confidence implies out of 100 properly done studies 5 will not be the correct population figure).
This is an ideal, of course, and I don’t pretend that the report is perfect or ideal. What it is, though, is our the best assessment of the scientific consensus on global warming which is that it is real and it’s net harm (harm minus benefits) is greater than zero.
Assumes facts not in evidence.
You supplied the evidence that ‘national interests’ clashed with climate experts. Do you have a plausible argument for why on average ‘national interests’ wouldn’t cut against global warming?
Cite a massive consensus effort like the above report and ucfengr will nitpick again on individual disputes within the consensus or one-off criticisms of it. In demanding proof of a consensus, ucfengr should give us a clear picture of just what he thinks a scientific consensus looks like.
If you really want consensus, over 31,000 US scientists, including such notables as Edward Teller and Frederick Seitz, signed the following petition:
“We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.
There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”
I personally am not impressed by large numbers, but since you appear to be…
Cite individual scientists and ucfengr will nitpick with individuals of his own
This is kind of silly. You keep citing this mythical consensus as if it is important, but when I show that the there are many who disagree, it’s all “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” or “these aren’t the droids you are looking for”.
This is an ideal, of course, and I don’t pretend that the report is perfect or ideal. What it is, though, is our the best assessment of the scientific consensus on global warming which is that it is real and it’s net harm (harm minus benefits) is greater than zero.
Essentially you are arguing that it is the best assessment because the people who wrote it say it is.
So ucfengr’s petition is nearly 10 years old (addressing the Kyoto treaty of 1997) and signed by 31K people. The site claims about 9K of those people ‘have Phds’. Not that you need to be a Phd to be a scientist but it makes one wonder when 2/3 do not. Looking at the site, 9K of those scientists are in the engineering field which makes one wonder if these are experts in the field….there are around 3K (10%) in atmospheric/earth/environment sciences equalled by about 3K in medicial fields. I wonder, if ucfengr is diagnosed with cancer will he give the local college’s climatologist equal time with his oncologist for advice on what to do?
It is also interesting to contrast this type of ‘consensus’ with what’s been presented by the sane elements here. The report involved numerous scientists who came to the project with their knowledge, engaged in give and take and had their positions discussed, challenged, refined and confirmed. The petition involves simply signing a card, checking off your degree and hand writing in what field it is in. Did anyone check these degrees? Any back and forth? Did those with special expertise get more time focused on their positions or ideas? Is this group an attempt to assemble knowledgeable experts or is it an attempt to amass people with like minds? Notice how scientists who DIDN’T agree weren’t asked to sign an opposite petition and aren’t tallied in the 33K claim.
Essentially you are arguing that it is the best assessment because the people who wrote it say it is.
Actually no, I’m saying it’s the best assessment yet presented because of its nature. Are you seriously claiming your decade old petition should be given equal weight? Why?
I suggest some here read up on Frederick Seitz, the petition author that ucfengr is touting. Seitz’s expertise was in molecular biology, cell biology and neuroscience. He launched research programs at Rockefeller University, Cornell and then worked as a consultant for RJ Reynolds.
The petition was pushed by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. What does the OISM do? According to our friend wikipedia:
“It describes itself as “a small research institute” that studies “biochemistry, diagnostic medicine, nutrition, preventive medicine and the molecular biology of aging.”‘
The petition itself seems to be playing some games with us. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Petition the petition’s supporters like to claim the signers are supporting the assertion that global warming is a lie but the text of what people actually signed says only disagrees with the assertion that greenhouse gasses will “cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate”. Furthermore the petition was circulated with a 12 page article that was formatted in the style of a reprint from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, allowing those who did not examine it very carefully to be under the impression that it had passed peer review and been published, which it never did.
So this is ucfengr’s idea of trying to find out what expert knowledge is. Ask maverick experts in unrelated fields, use cheap rhetorical tricks (ohhh 30,000 scientists wow!). Remember how ucfengr was griping about biases in the report? Well here we have a flawed petition circulated with a fake article organized by what appears to be a tobacco company shill. Ucfengr is a man who despises the truth so much that he doesn’t even know what it is. He respects truth about as much as used toilet paper and this is the intellectual trainwreck that results.
There you go, everyone have a great Thanksgiving :)
Sigh, this is getting rather tedious. Rather than address the criticisms of the scientists that question the “global warming consensus”, Boonton, et. al. merely dismisses them as “mavericks”. Their behavior supports the hypothesis that “global warming” is less a scientific hypothesis, than a religious belief. Obi Boon Kenobi feels a disturbance in the consensus, so he must rush off to defend it from the evil machinations of Emperor BPalpatine and his evil minion Darth ucfengr.
Ucfengr is a man who despises the truth so much that he doesn’t even know what it is.
Ahh, the classic fascist; there is no room for honest disagreement. People who disagree with the fascist are evil people who “despise the truth”.
Unfortunately I have a post trapped in the spam filter about the 30K signers. I’ll give it another day before I recreate it.
OK rather than wait or annoy Dustin to disrupt his holiday let me just put up a quickie summary of the post that is held up in the filter:
Problems with the petition:
1. Over ten years old. No update for new information, no provision for such.
2. Unlike the report, no back and forth. It is signed by a person or it isn’t but there is no collaboration, no discussion…none of the things you get in either peer reviewed or collaborative work.
2. a. Unlike the report, the petition has no option for those who do think global warming is a serious problem. Imagine for the moment the petition had two signature lines; one for agreement and one for disagreement, and the organizers were honest about reporting. If the results of such a petition were 100K disagreeing and 30K agreeing would ucfengr feel so confident? Probably not but we don’t really know because that’s the purpose of a petition is not to generate a consensus or evaluate the current knowledge in a field.
3. The site toutes that 9K of the 30K have Phd’s. OK you don’t necessarily need a PhD to be a scientist but it is kind of odd that ucfengr’s attempt to show a consensus (or lack of one) among scientists involves an opinion base of 66% non-Phd holders.
4. This petition involves signing a card, checking off your degree and hand writing your speciality. No provision for checking signers credentials, no provision for weighing those who specialize in climate studies versus those who don’t.
5. Of the fields of study, nearly 10K are engineers. 3K are medical and 3k are atmospheric sciences. If ucfengr discovered a tumor in his body would he ask a refridgeration engineer for an opinion? A TV weatherman? If this petition is to be taken seriously why would doctors have equal weight as climate scientists? Why are engineers who so wildly outweigh other fields for whom this issue would be the prime topic? In keeping with the cancer analogy, if you showed me a petition signed by 30,000 claiming that chemotherapy has no value in treating cancer and the actual cure to cancer is being kept hidden by a vast conspiracy….I wouldn’t consider it a mark of credibility that oncologists made up a small minority of signers.
Needless to say, ucfengr can try his hand waving to dismiss the problems with the petition’s supporter and its host organization. No expertise or work done in climate science; only microbiology. More seriously the spoofing of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in its supporting article tells us that the science here is being used the way those informercials use science for their herbal ‘natural male enhancement’ pills.
Ahh, the classic fascist; there is no room for honest disagreement. People who disagree with the fascist are evil people who “despise the truth”.
Ahhh yes, love that victimization card don’t you? There’s plenty of room for honest disagreement. Why should anyone make room for your clearly dishonest disagreement? If you can seriously present the crap you shoveled here as honest disagreement then go ahead and try.