71 Comments

1. Howard:

This bill is the ultimate tax on the poor and only the poor. This Kyoto law passed by people none of us elected will add $4,000 to the price of each car. That’s 33% for a $12,000 Toyota and .02% for a $150,000 Mercedes.

It’s a tax all you Hollywood elites constantly shove up our asses deciding what is “good for us.” I say make the elite pay the 33% and the poor the .02%, then maybe I can get behind it.

Sep 25, 2004 - 10:44 am 2. gb_in_ga:

Ok, if y’all want to further cripple your economy and jeopardize public safety with these sorts of stupid enviro-rules, that’s your problem, but for me, it is yet another reason I won’t be moving to the Left Coast any time soon. Like, no way, no how. Like, kicking and screaming. Like, over my dead body.

The scary part is that what goes on there in the People’s Republic of California pertaining to enviro-zanyness eventually trickles down to the rest of the country — to afflict people who want no part of it. The lefty loonies from coast to coast start crying “Me, Too! Me, Too!”, Again, scary.

Ya know, even if the Governator were to get a constitutional ammendment and were then able to run for prez anytime in the future, this sort of reckless activism guarantees that he won’t get my vote. Even if he is serious on the WOT. I won’t stand for needless crippling of the economy. I won’t stand for mandated dangerous vehicles. I’ll stay home.

Sep 25, 2004 - 10:52 am 3. JK Ribera:

Mr. Howard, do not the poor also breath the air? I do not understand your anger.

And to other poster, I do not live in California (although I visit frequently onbusiness and the air is much cleaner because of environmental laws, in my oipinion), but Schwarenegger is undoubtedly an “elected” official and as I understand it very popular.

Sep 25, 2004 - 11:01 am 4. dewaun:

I would tend to think that we could save the whole nation billions of dollars in the long run if we would cut down from several dozen regional auto fuel mixes of auto fuel to about 1. Why one state needs a different fuel to run their Toyota Tercel is pure ludicrousy…to me. Sure it will mean re-tooling the nations fuel plants, but once that’s done, the price would quickly drop again as the cost of a single, unified production process would show it’s worth to the nation. When going to Shell/Texaco is similar to going to Exxon/Mobile or Chevron or whatever… it seems the only important factor is price. Then competition for my business can begin.

…just my 2ÔøΩ worth.

Sep 25, 2004 - 11:08 am 5. richard mcenroe:

Uh, that’s the Governor Arnold who drives the Hummer, right? When I see him driving an Element hybrid, I’ll be impressed…

Sep 25, 2004 - 11:12 am 6. David Thomson:

Question: will these new laws significantly protect the health of the citizens? Or are we talking about a decrease of pollution of less that .0000000000001%? We could also drop the auto vehicle speed limit to five miles per hour on the freeway. But should we?

Sep 25, 2004 - 11:15 am 7. Goof®:

Fiscally conservative?

What a smile.

38 days to go.

Sep 25, 2004 - 11:26 am 8. gb_in_ga:

JK:

Popular, maybe, but where? Elected, maybe, but where? Not here. WE didn’t elect him, and yet his activism affects us nonetheless.

As for cleaner air — what he is doing may actually help IN CALIFORNIA. That does not necessarily hold true elsewhere. In the area I am in, there would be significant atmospheric ozone due to greenhouse gasses during the hot months even if all auto emissions were eliminated. It occurs naturally, as the copious vegetation around here naturally emits those gasses. I mean, the Smokey Mountains are just a stone’s throw from here, and they were smoggy before we ever got here. They have ALWAYS been smoggy, it is naturally occurring. IMHO, the major atmospheric irritant in this area — the Atlanta Metro area, that is — is not so much greenhouse related (although it occurs, much of that is NATURAL), but is due to POLLEN. And no sort of California style enviro-rules can change that. Meaning — if you have any sort of allergy to pollen, as I do, you are going to be miserable here ANYWAY. Even in the months when it is not hot enough for greenhouse reactions.

So, give me a break. It is BAD POLICY, and their precedent will eventually lead to similar BAD POLICY being enacted in places like this. They are hobbling themselves for something that is questionable at best. You, yourself comment on how clean the air is there, so do they really need this latest round of regulations? I say no. In California, they have not owned up to the principle of diminishing returns, as they have already reached that point of diminishing returns, where further effort merely costs and yet has trivial benefit. California has long been the tail that wags the environmental laws dog for the rest of the country.

Sep 25, 2004 - 11:27 am 9. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

It’s a scam that will negatively affect those of us in other states.

From the several (poorly written) articles, it appears that the purpose is to reduce CO2 emissions. All of California getting rid of all of its CO2 emissions would make no difference in global warming (if you believe the highly parameterized, constantly changing climate models).

Nobody likes pollution, nut LA has much better air than when I lived there.

“Greenhouse gases” are different. Their effect is global. The value of reducing them is not well known. The reduction of CO2 has become an environmentalist religious icon. Environmentalist fundies are raising my future car costs and endangering future drivers.

The science is still poorly understood (my climatologist friends believe that the evidence – especially paleoclimatic – is so poor that any statement about anthropogenic global warming is unscientific). About 1/3 of the CO2 entering the atmosphere disappears without a trace – that’s a pretty major discrepancy in an area based on the carbon cycle.

The field is still very active (read: conclusions changing). Solar irradiance has been coupled to strongly to climate. The high temperatures of the last two decades in the US can be completely explained by jet exhaust (the pollutant is water vapor) – this was discovered by making measurements during the no-fly period after 9-11.

In spite of that, I suspect that human CO2 emissions will increase temperatures at some places at some time in the future. When and how much is beyond predictability.

If we are serious about reducing CO2 (which is around .0000035 of the atmosphere), having CA push the auto industry around isn’t going to get us there. There is mammoth growth in CO2 emissions in India and China. In comparison, the California changes are cosmetic.

One reason the Senate overwhelmingly (95-0) rejected Kyoto is the poor quality of the science and the insignificant impact on projected warming (using that poor science) that the very expensive changes would cause.

Environmentalism has politics tied to it in funny ways. For example, Enron was in favor of Kyoto. Environmentalists tend to be Democrats, and tend to get increasingly extreme. Republicans are more skeptical of environmental claims.

In this case, I would say California’s often dictatorial Air Resources Board is causing all of us to make a ritual sacrifice to the gods of environmentalism, and will also cause additional deaths due to the shrinking of cars necessary to achieve this ineffective result.

A major problem with any of these schemes is that they are either cosmetic (this one) or unlikely to survive long enough to have an effect (imagine putting Kyoto in effect in 1904 – then fast forward).

Let’s get serious.

If the climate modelers are right, the world needs a dramatic reduction in CO2 emissions, which with current technology will result in massive and deadly (in the third and fourth world) economic changes. Kyoto was a trojan horse – even its proponents, if pushed, admitted that it only delayed the temperature rise by 6 years over 100, and its purpose was to put international structures in place needed for much more dramatic CO2 reductions, required (by their models) to stabilize the CO2 levels.

If the climate modelers are wrong, we will have expended many tens of trillions of dollars on a snipe hunt, causing wars and famines in parts of the world along the way.

The California rules will have absolutely no measurable effect on world temperature. None. Zero. Zip. Nada. They will, however, cause great satisfaction for people of the environmentmental religion who haven’t looked at the numbers in climate change. They will cause excess traffic deaths (current mileage standards cost over one 9-11 per year in excess deaths). They will cause an increase in the population of older cars on the road, and make it harder for poor people to affort cars.

I would suggest The Satanic Gases for a skeptic’s view full of gases and The Skeptical Environmentalist for a more sociological viewpoint.

Sep 25, 2004 - 11:32 am 10. Terrye:

The California market is too large to ignore so I am sure this will effect the rest of the country.

I read [somewhere] years ago that California’s pollution laws made it more difficult for the US to meet the standards of Kyoto and lower greenhouse gasses because they made it difficult for certain kind of diesel engines common in Europe to be driven here. In other words the Euros had traded one kind of pollution for another.

This will change that. But I do think it will be hard on people that can least afford it. I also heard $3,000-$4,000 more per car. That seems excessive to me. What about old cars? How long can people drive them?

I also think the federal government may fight this becasue they have long held that certain rules are to be in the hands of the federal and not the state governments.

Sep 25, 2004 - 11:38 am 11. GameKeeper:

gb_in_ga and Roger,

adding on to your comments and taking a step backwards, first you have to consider the argument….what is really causing global warming?

Do any of us really know for sure? The discussions on both sides are interesting. I, for one, am not yet convinced it is mankind. Living in Los Angeles, as I do,

I do not agree with Arnold on this issue, even though I am a great supporter of his politically. Seems to me a great waste of money on an issue that will have little or no impact on Los Angeles much less anywhere else.

Sep 25, 2004 - 11:42 am 12. MDP:

Roger Simon: “Once again California’s governor terminates ideology – the tired and tiresome liberal/conservative dichotomy – and makes the pragmatic choice.” [emph. added]

The choice is “pragmatic” only if the benefits outweigh the costs. Otherwise, it’s merely symbolic and counterproductive.

The benefit: The auto industry says the regs will “reduce by just a fraction of 1 percent the state’s total output of industrial greenhouse gases.” The California Air Resources Board apparently doesn’t dispute this.

The cost: The California Air Resources Board says the regs will add $1000 to the price of each new car. The auto industry says it will be $3000.

Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t see how it’s “pragmatic” to make consumers pay $1000+ more for new cars in order reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an inconsequential amount.

Sep 25, 2004 - 11:45 am 13. GameKeeper:

John,

You said it much better than I did…..thank you!

Sep 25, 2004 - 11:45 am 14. JK Ribera:

But, MDP, isn’t it true that every single time there has been smog legislation the automobile industry has opposed it as too expensive and ineffectual? That is their business position, although it may be short-sighted. Mr. Simon, is that what you are implying by your innovation comment?

Sep 25, 2004 - 11:53 am 15. Emerald:

The joke is on California. No matter what sweeping changes are made to reduce auto emissions which supposedly cause global warming, even if it were to be enforced nation wide, it won’t even put a dent in the amount of greenhouse emissions that are being pumped into the atmosphere. All this is based on is modern liberal feel-good-ism…the effort makes no material difference yet raises the cost of consumer goods. If people wanted to actually do something serious about emissions we’d start using nuclear power and work toward using hydrogen fuel cells. But that can’t happen because environMENTALism has successfully demonized nuclear power.

Sep 25, 2004 - 11:59 am 16. Darleen:

If I may pick a nit, Roger.

I was born in LA 50 years ago, raised in Granada Hills, and remember vividly the bad smog days of late summer. Yes, they have been significantly reduced.

But is it due only to automobiles?

Heavy industry and manufacturing have almost disappeared from the LA Basin.

BF Goodrich near the 5, Kaiser Steel in Fontana, Ford Truck in Pico Rivera (which was Northrop in the early 80’s.. black ops development of the b1 stealth bomber), Hughes Aircraft-5000 employees strong- in Fullerton, General Dynamics in Pomona, and countless funiture manufacturers/refinishers who have moved to Mexico due to Air Quality regulations. Heck, one can’t even get a lacquer finish done to their classic car in LA either. Even the kind of housepaint sold in the area is different than what was accepted 30-40 years ago because even drying paint contributes to air quality.

Sep 25, 2004 - 12:02 pm 17. gb_in_ga:

GameKeeper:

Global Warming: Let us step back one more step and ask ourselves whether or not the so called “Global Warming” effect that has so many in such a panic is in any way out of the ordinary. By that I mean that we have ample historical and paleo climate data that clearly show us that large changes in climate have happened in the past, changes that happened completely outside of the influence of “civilized” man. Since there are no priviledged frames of reference, what has happened in the past will happen in the future as well. Natural climate changes have happened and will continue to happen. So how can we be so sure that the minor observed changes have anything to do with us at all? How much of this is just panicked hype and herd mentality? I, for one, am not at all tempted to panic and throw away our economy, and implement non-market driven mandates pertaining to vehicles, just to placate the panicked activists.

Sep 25, 2004 - 12:04 pm 18. Samuel:

Goof

Fiscally conservative?

Compared to Grey Davis and in the State you reside in, hell yes! But even with that, fiscal conservatism like many other definitions has come to mean different things to different people. To the left it is more tied to being a deficit hawk which quite frankly I take with much cynicism as it is more often used as an excuse to keep taxes high, yet they never seem to want to reduce government. The Republicans suffer from the opposite but equally clear hypocrisy, they want to cut taxes and yet tend to not reduce government as they advertise, so they are both guilty in my eyes.

I will say however that lowering taxes despite rhetoric from the left has proven to be the more important element. Reagan predicted to the scoffing of many, myself included, that we would outgrow deficits if we cut taxes and allowed for a more dynamic and free trading economy. Clinton deserves credit for continuing with a neo-liberal fiscal policy, but make no mistake Clintons tax hike had little or nothing to do with it, growth in a dynamic economy did. Reagan was correct. These days I am a business owner and I understand the dynamics of dept reduction and taking on productive investment based debt. There are times to cut debts and times when giving attention to the underlying dynamics of the economy and public policy is more apropos. Deficit reduction and/or tax-hikes during a recession or a weak economy are the ways of Hebert Hoover.

I’ll let you guys out West fight about whether Arnold is a fiscal conservative or not, but that Grey Davis was a disaster is an irrefutable fact in my book. Also irrefutable to me is I lived in California in the 1980’s, and the smog was absolutely ruthless and debilitating. It is all a balancing act he will answer for, your or my cynicism notwithstanding.

Sep 25, 2004 - 12:10 pm 19. GameKeeper:

gb_in_ga says….

” we have ample historical and paleo climate data that clearly show us that large changes in climate have happened in the past, changes that happened completely outside of the influence of “civilized” man.”

Yes, going that other step backwards…..couldn’t agree with you more. Not only do I not worry about all the hype of the enviromentalists…..and I will probably get flak on this one……but I think man is here for the time being and we have to go on …..I am not willing to placate anyone or sacrifice the quality of my life over unproven nonsense!

Sep 25, 2004 - 12:14 pm 20. MDP:

JK Ribera: “But, MDP, isn’t it true that every single time there has been smog legislation the automobile industry has opposed it as too expensive and ineffectual?”

I am not relying on the auto industry’s assertion that the regulations are “too expensive”. As I pointed out, “the California Air Resources Board [that's the CA government] says the regs will add $1000 to the price of each new car.” I am simply asking, is it “‘pragmatic’ to make consumers pay $1000+ more for new cars in order reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an inconsequential amount”?

In an update, Roger writes that “an argument can be made that some environmental legislation (notice the some, please) is good for the market and actually stimulates business by forcing innovation.” Yes, you can argue that regulation helps the market by “forcing innovation,” but the argument only works if you ignore the regulation’s costs. If there are economists (even liberal ones) who believe that “forcing innovation” in this way stimulates the economy, I haven’t heard of them.

Sep 25, 2004 - 12:15 pm 21. Foobarista:

As a native Californian, I agree with Roger. I grew up in San Jose, in north-central California, and clearly remember in the late 1970s that there were smog alerts almost daily in the summer, and you often couldn’t see the eastern hills that were only a few miles away – much less the coastal mountains to the west. Nowadays, this level of pollution is quite rare – you can see both ranges of mountains almost every day, even in the hottest and smoggiest days in the summer. Also, the population here has gone from about 1M (Santa Clara County in 1980) to about 1.6M now.

Sep 25, 2004 - 12:17 pm 22. Emerald:

Foobarista, and because everything is much better than the 70s more government mandates are necessary because?

Sep 25, 2004 - 12:23 pm 23. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

A few comments…

How much localized pollution is expected to be reduced by this measure. That’s all that counts, since the “greenhouse gases” reduction will be trivial.

Hydrogen is a dangerous dream. The primary and energy efficienty way to produce hydrogen is to strip it from hydrocarbons (i.e. oil). Have we gotten anywhere when we do that? Clearly one can convert water to H2 and O2 using hydrolysis – produce hydrogen from water using electricity. I believe that is a lower efficiency process.

Either way, you need nuclear power to produce the CO2 free energy. Lots of nuclear power. But the same environmentalists pushing hydrogen power and emissions reductions are those who engage in never-ending battles to prevent the construction of nuclear plants, with the result that we haven’t built one since the ’70s. France, on the other hand, gets most of its power from nuclear plants.

Alternative sources are just not enough. Wind power may finally be economical (with lower maintence turbines) but I’m not sure. They are certainly ugly, kill lots of birds and are popping up all over the place. Biomass will never do the job – not enough energy available and a high cost – even the energy cost may exceed the energy result. Other approaches – geothermal, various ocean tricks are significantly limited.

Environmentalist fundies are pushing self-defeating solutions

Sep 25, 2004 - 12:24 pm 24. gb_in_ga:

John:

Personally, I have more faith in the eventual viability in methane fuel cells in automobiles, but that is still quite a few years down the road. Even then you have the problem of C02 emmisions — but of course that assumes that CO2 emmision is a REAL problem instead of panicked hype.

In both the long and sort run, I agree with you and other posters about nuclear power. All we have to do is silence the anti-nuke idiots. Easier said than done…

Sep 25, 2004 - 12:33 pm 25. GameKeeper:

John.

You have said the dirty little words “NUCLEAR POWER”, that we all know is the real solution.

Personally, I don’t that is a fight anyone is goung to win in the near future.

Sep 25, 2004 - 12:40 pm 26. chuck:

Where I work we have a guy from Lawence Livermore who moved back here because he wanted a low crime area for his kids. Another fellow left JPL and came out because he wanted to raise his kid in a low pollution environment. I think both would agree that California is a lot of fun, but their kids took precedence. These issues matter to families.

As to the economics, I don’t know, never really looked at the issue. I do rather like the way that the California laws drive the technical development of cars, and LA is a beautiful city when the smog clears off.

Water, where will the water come from. LA and Phoenix are water guzzlers in parched areas. That’s where I see trouble coming.

Sep 25, 2004 - 12:41 pm 27. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

gb_in_ga

Methane fuel is a variant of biomass. It removes the CO2 problem because the carbon it releases is carbon it extracted from the air while being grown.

However, from the numbers I have seen, there isn’t enough farmland to produce the methane, and the costs (including energy cycle costs) are high.\

I have heard smart people discussing distributed solar energy as the basic supply. I haven’t studied it, except the last time I looked the cost/kWh was far too high.

When dealing with transportation there are three issues:

1) Production of energy

2) Delivery of that energy to the mobile device

3) Freedom and cost in mass transit systems.

Nuclear power can produce the energy inexpensively (including the life cycle cost and waste disposal, if the environmental fundies would get out of the way).

Delivery today is best done with hydrocarbons. They work well, and there is a vast sunk-cost production and distribution system. Hydrogen is more problematical, unable to use much of the existing systems, and hard to inexpensively store energy at densities equivalent to gasoline.

Mass transit is a loser viewed from almost any direction. It is terribly expensive and rarely can operate without large government subsidies. It also tends to not reduce driving.

It would be nice if a workable electric car battery would appear. However, vast sums of money all over the world have been spent on battery technology, and yet the battery remains the weak point of electric car technology (otherwise I’d have an electric car – they have very little maintenance requirements and drive well).

Sep 25, 2004 - 12:47 pm 28. Gannymede:

Roger says:

“More importantly, an argument can be made that some environmental legislation…”

Roger please. Hopefully you know that it’s “more important”.

Sep 25, 2004 - 12:57 pm 29. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

More importantly, an argument can be made that some environmental legislation (notice the some, please) is good for the market and actually stimulates business by forcing innovation. None of this is simple, but anyone who has lived in Los Angeles as long as I have knows that this is not the same city as it was in 1970. You can even see the hills now and your eyes don’t tear all summer. Sometimes you can even breath. And the primary reason for this is environmental legislation, much of which, ironically, was initiated by the Nixon administration.

Just because a certain amount of environmental restrictions is good does not mean that more restrictions are better. LA air is demonstrably better.

As far as the economic effect, it is likely to be about the same as if you employed a bunch of engineers, techs and support staff digging holes, filling them in, and repeating.

Innovation is hard to force. For example, electronic engine controls became practical just in time for pollution reduction. This was not driven by the automotive market, but Moore’s Law in the semiconductor and related electronics markets. Hence the pollution requirements didn’t push the most important innovations.

Forcing innovation is like pushing a rope. Some simple changes were indeed driven by the mileage requirements and Japanese competition, but the innovation argument is not in general a serious one. You can expend a lot of effort to not result at the end. Furthermore, there has been a vast amount of work done in this area already. The rules violate the 80/20 rule = 80 percent of the benefit has already been reached (probably quite a bit more than that).

If forcing innovation worked, we would have car batteries that weighed a few hundred pounds, stored enough energy to drive a luxury car for 300 miles, and it would last 100,000 miles. Lots and lots of money has been going into this area since at least Carter. Batteries have gotten better (almost exclusively due to the market for cell phones and laptops) but they are nowhere close to being sufficient for decent cars.

Look at the various schemes for cars out there. Hybrids are popular now. I assume a major reason is that they have a lower battery requirement than the equivalent electric car.

The primary form of innovation is incremental improvement, and that can be pushed – for a ways. But quantum jumps (i.e. new technology approaches) are far less common and predictable.

Sep 25, 2004 - 1:07 pm 30. gb_in_ga:

John:

Methane — Methane may be produced by biomass, but is not limited to biomass. It is also the primary component of natural gas, which is in comparative plentiful supply. There are also vast deposits of methane hydrate under pressure under the sea floor in some areas that have never been exploited. Of course, if it is obtained from natural gas or methane hydrate, you don’t get the “recycle” effect of immediately returning carbon to the atmosphere that was only recently removed into biomass. But I have serious questions about the validity of CO2 concerns, anyway.

Nuclear — we are in agreement.

Solar — Long term. I really think that Solar won’t ever become viable until it is collected outside of the atmosphere and beamed (microwave, laser, or whatever) to receivers here on the planet surface. There are still way too many technical hurdles to overcome before that ever becomes viable. But a hundred or so years down the line I wouldn’t be surprised if that is where the bulk of our energy supply comes from.

You are correct with hydrocarbons. Supply of them is the problem. Many people overlook the volitility of H2 — it is quite hard to store, and is dangerously explosive if released. Of course, Methane is also dangerously explosive if released, but it isn’t as hard to store, and isn’t as volitile. H2 has to be stored under quite high pressure in order to liquidize it, and then you have the problem of tiny molecular size which means that it will “Ooze” out between the molecules of a lot of container materials.

Mass Transit — Mass transit can only work when dealing with sufficient population densities that are appropriately distributed. For commuter mass transit to work, the bulk of a population must live in relatively restricted, densly populated locations, and the employment areas must be similarly localized. Then mass transit lines may be laid to link those areas. While that may work in places like NYC, it will never work in places like Atlanta (where I am now) where the existing system is inadequate, similar to what you describe, and Houston, which is where I grew up and call home. Those cities are just not “laid out” with mass transit in mind. The people are spread out all around the cities in widespread suburbs, and the places of employment are not nearly as centralized as cities like NYC. Places like these need to think about further de-centralizing the employment centers and moving them out to the suburbs, shortening the commutes on the existing surface road systems. To a certain extent this is already happening.

Car Batteries — You have a point here. Battery technology needs to be improved to make this viable. But for a sizeable portion of the population, electric vehicles are just not practical, at least for those who would own only a single vehicle. Electric vehicles would be ideal for those who limit their driving entirely to commutes and around town trips. But until battery technology improves to where 500 mile one way trips at interstate speeds in a mid-sized vehicle — not a “roller skate”, but one with enough room to take along a couple, 3 kids and a trunk load of luggage — then it will only be a niche, as people won’t buy it as their primary passenger vehicle.

Sep 25, 2004 - 1:34 pm 31. Keith:

Well good luck with all that.

I certainly hope that it does not force business, work force and taxes to leave the state. If it does it will probably only make it better for other folks in other states. So in that respect it might be a good. I am sure their are a few people here in the Mid-West who will take the jobs. I am also sure their are a few states who will be glad to have the taxes.

You know what? This would certainly be a good thing. Reducing the over population of certain areas of the state by shifting these populations to other states. This would reduce polution in those areas while improving the tax base in other states.

I like it!

You guys go ahead and regulate your asses off there. I know my state would welcome with open arms the businesses, jobs and taxes this will create.

I suggest more regulation in California. More I say!

Sep 25, 2004 - 1:40 pm 32. Jamie Irons:

Steven Den Beste (whatever happened to him?) has posted a few excellent essays, which can be found in his archives ( for example, here and here) , on energy issues like those John Moore is discussing.

I love northern California! (apropos of nothing)

Jamie Irons

Sep 25, 2004 - 1:59 pm 33. chuck:

John Moore:

If forcing innovation worked, we would have car batteries that weighed a few hundred pounds, stored enough energy to drive a luxury car for 300 miles, and it would last 100,000 miles.

Why not include FTL and antigravity while you are at it? Some things are hard on account of fundamental physical laws and the limitations of chemistry. Some, like nuclear weapons, are feasible but expensive and there would be little incentive to develope them in peaceful times. Nuclear power suffers from politics and (misguided) public perception. Not all limitations are of the same quality.

DARPA pushes innovation by funding, generating a government market for new technologies. The moon program did the same. I do agree that it is a bad idea to force large capital investments in immature technologies that might soon be obsolete/cheaper, but I don’t think it is fair to say that innovation can’t be pushed.

Automobiles are a high turnover item, like insects, and a little evolutionary pressure might have significant impact. I have a car powered by a 180 HP V6 and average about 28 mpg. This is an improvement IMHO.

I think global warming is a bit of a red herring in this debate. The causes of the warming are still not established to my satisfaction, and whether or not it is a bad thing is open to argument. A conservative approach, if it is the case that it is caused by human activity, might be to avoid it, as no one really knows what the long term consequences will be.

Sep 25, 2004 - 2:06 pm 34. Goof®:

Samuel

I lost a long reply and it’s not worth retyping.

Ronald Reagan was a fiscal conservative before he embraced supply-side theory. His embrace and subsequent victory moved his party to a position even more fiscally irresponsible than that of the Democrats. Clinton had to try to be fiscally responsible because Perot got 19% of the vote in 1992 and Perot’s issue was fiscal irresponsibility.

When the politicians are fiscally irresponsible, the responsibility for keeping the economy healthy (or for doing what can be done) falls even more heavily on those who control monetary policy.

It is only just that the Fed is raising rates in the midst of this campaign.

Best.

Sep 25, 2004 - 2:07 pm 35. richard mcenroe:

Attack of the Granola Conservatives!

Sep 25, 2004 - 2:15 pm 36. richard mcenroe:

Chuck ó A datum point. Temperature increases have also been noted in the atmospheres of Venus and Mars. Unless those rovers are pollutin’ fools, much of our environmental excitement lately is coming from increased output from the sun.

Sep 25, 2004 - 2:18 pm 37. Foobarista:

To me, the most interesting aspect of Arnold’s decision is the politics behind it. One thing that impresses me about Arnold is his knowledge about what hill to fight for, and which ones to ignore. In CA, as you can probably tell, even many “conservatives” wouldn’t do well in think-tank ratings of conservative political correctness in terms of environmental issues.

As far as Arnold is concerned, the hills to fight for include things like:

1. Workman’s comp reform.

2. Defeat the silly “Prop 72″ health-insurance mandate, which _is_ a real job-crusher.

3. Get the legislature to meet less often (this would be insanely useful).

4. Cleaning out the zillions of silly commissions and other useless parking places for retired politicos.

As for environmental issues, they are generally popular, and particularly if you live in smoggy SoCal, they may be necessary. So Arnold won’t spend political capital fighting for this particular hill unless the environmental issue in question is really stupid (ie, MTBE).

Sep 25, 2004 - 2:37 pm 38. Emerald Elixir:

John Moore, you make a great point. My rhetorical question is what’s the opportunity lost by having “a bunch of engineers, techs and support staff digging holes, filling them in, and repeating.” That’s the problem with government mandates based on feel-good-ism rather than material benefit.

Roger stated that it was ironic that back in the early 70s the Nixon Administration instituted many of the environmental regulation needed to clean the environment. I don’t think it was ironic at all. The pollution back then was easily visible to the eye. As noted by Roger and Foobarista, the environment in Los Angeles was visibly filthy. It was like that in many parts of the nation. The factories in the Mid-West covered everyone cars with soot. I remember, while visiting my grandmother in FL, seeing toilet paper floating in the St. John’s River. The point is, everyone back then could see it. That made it reasonable for government intervention…even reasonable for a Republican.

Sep 25, 2004 - 2:41 pm 39. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

Emerald Elixer

You are right that I left out the economy cost of tying up all those people digging and filling holes.

Chuck

I considered the space program (forgot DARPA) when I made my statement. My father and uncle were both active in the Apollo program and there was lots of good work that came out of it – at a high cost. The space program achieved many innovations, but it was largely because they were looking for solutions to problems not previously addressed.

How do you deal with zero gravity? Velco!

How do you improve the odds that your project succeeds: spend so much money that you can have several independent competing teams.

The problem with automobiles is that there are no unique problems. Everything has been attacked by legions of smart people. True, there might be a niche that was missed, but it’s unlikely. Hence one can predict the outcome of a technology effort easily. Want to improve X, make Y worse. Maybe a little inovation makes Y not that bad. But we are talking tinkering with one of the most highly engineered systems man has ever built, and expecting to force innovation? It is very unlikely.

I mentioned car batteries before. If we could produce a battery with the right specifications, we could solve a host of automotive related problems. We would merely have to come up with a lot of electricity – which can be done with nuclear (which probably means more nuclear plants in Arizona for the NIMBYs in California). Unfortunately, lots of people have been working on this problem. The best they can come up with is a fuel cell plus a tank of reactant (which has to be produced) – which is a very expensive and tricky battery (and yes, the fuel cell came from the space program).

Right now, if I could vote and cause a technological innovation to appear, I think it would be a battery suitable for electric cars, and electric SUVs, and electric Semis.

Sep 25, 2004 - 3:14 pm 40. gb_in_ga:

Foobarista:

While you certainly do have points, in that what Arnold is doing is politically expedient when taken from the context of occurring on the Left Coast, he still fails to recognize that what he does there in the environmental arena affects much more than just those in Cali. It would be ideal if what was enacted in Cali would just stay in Cali, but that isn’t the case. He is acting locally, but the effects are national in scope over time. And he hasn’t chosen to take that into account. And that is NOT a pragmatic decision. While he may be scoring local political points on this one, it is costing him and the rest of the Cali political class considerable poliltical capital from the Conservatives and other Environmental Skeptics across the rest of the nation. And this is going to come back an bite him.

Sep 25, 2004 - 3:18 pm 41. WichitaBoy:

OT – Goof,

When the politicians are fiscally irresponsible, the responsibility for keeping the economy healthy (or for doing what can be done) falls even more heavily on those who control monetary policy.

It’s easy to blame the politicians and everyone loves to do it. Easy and wrong. We have the government spending we have because it is what the voters want. Look in the mirror to find the guilty party.

We went over and over and over this in the Eighties. What it always came down to was that quote from the Onion “96% of the American public agrees that other people should use public transportation.” Everyone agrees that the government should match its spending to its income and everyone agrees that the other guy should have his spending cut and taxes raised.

Samuel is absolutely spot on in saying that the Democrats are dishonest about taxes and the Republicans are dishonest about spending. He is also correct that at the end of a massive crash like we just experienced it would have been incredibly irresponsible for the government not to have gone into deficit.

Contrary to what is widely believed, there isn’t all that much difference between the Republicans and Democrats in practice on this issue. This is because democracy generally works and people generally get what they really want, lots of spending and few taxes. Both parties are happy to accomodate. So would any third party for those of you still dreaming.

Compounding the problem of economic dishonesty among the citizenry is the problem of economic ignorance. As I remarked before, most denizens of Europe probably believe that they really are getting health care for free and it isn’t costing them a thing. Most people are completely ignorant of the concept of opportunity cost.

Until people who complain about the deficit are willing to give a detailed list of what sacrifices they are willing and able to make I will not be able to take their remarks seriously.

Sep 25, 2004 - 4:53 pm 42. richard mcenroe:

“More importantly, an argument can be made that some environmental legislation (notice the some, please) is good for the market and actually stimulates business by forcing innovation. ” ó I would suggest that NO piece of environmental legislation has EVER been proposed or enacted with a view towards benefiting the market… the people who support such legislation are either actively hostile to such a notion or simply never considered it.

Does environment legislation have cost? Of course. Is that cost material? Absolutely, and not merely monetary. As an opponent of nuclear power how many guaranteed coal miner’s deaths from black lung each year is an acceptable trade-off. But there seems to be a stigma attached, on the one side, to pointing out that these costs exist, and on the other side, to observing that a responsible member of the community might feel a civic, indeed, even a moral obligation, to assume that cost.

Sep 25, 2004 - 5:01 pm 43. chuck:

John Moore,

Yes, automobiles are an amazingly mature technology, but there is still some room for improvement. Some ideas are well known, running the moter at a constant rpm, for instance, leading to the hybrids coming on the market. Combustion can be improved; I saw a study where a genetic algorithm was used to optimize the injection of fuel into a diesel, with a (computed) improvement of some 30%. But no, I expect no miracles there.

If someone comes up with the magic battery, that will be a miracle, and I will offer a prayer everyday in his/her honor. Batteries are *hard*. The military wants them real bad too, so there is money out there driving research.

I sometimes like to speculate as to what the world would be like with no WWI, WWII, or Cold War. What would be the state of aviation, space exploration, radar, computing, electronics, communications, physics, and mathematics without the enormous kick given to R&D by government spending and military competition. My guess is that any citizen from that peaceful strand of history would be astounded if magically transported into our current times.

Sep 25, 2004 - 5:29 pm 44. Charlie (Colorado):

The worst part about environmental issues is the amount of heat they produce.

Sep 25, 2004 - 5:49 pm 45. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

Chuck,

It seems to me that sometime back we wandered into this area and someone who knew hybrids said that they did not run at a constant speed. Furthermore, on the highway you need lots of power so you run the internal combustion engine at high speed and thus don’t get any fuel economy benefit except in town. Here’s a reference to hybrid designs.

Today, I’m pretty sure that the auto makers have finite element models optimizing the heck out of combustion. I hear there’s a new car out with controlled valve timing (solenoid per valve?) which probably is an incremental improvement.

Another approach is smart cars on smart highways. Then the cars, driving themselves, could increase traffic density and reduce speed changes by platooning. I want a car to drive itself anyway, so I can focus on what’s important, like tuning the radio, making a cell call, or looking at weather radar.

I suspect there may be hard limits on battery energy density. I don’t know what they are, but we might be close. On the other hand, using nanotechnology to fabricate electrodes might make a major improvement in batteries. But I’m just guessing.

Sep 25, 2004 - 6:03 pm 46. TmjUtah:

I am bang on board with John Moore, and for all the same reasons. This is window dressing and good intentions but it fails the engineering test. It is also a huge tax that must necessarily hammer the poor. I agree with Howard on that end (no pun), without the profanity that is so atypical of our normal discourse. Winknudge…

I also offer the same caveat mentioned by JK Ribera – actual costs will fall somewhere between the two extremes put forth by the politicians and the people who actually build automobiles.

Emerald makes a huge point – the outmigration of smokestack industry has had a greater effect on air on air quality in California than all the auto emissions standards ever implemented. I live in Utah Valley, a sliver of urban corridor that runs north and south along the face of the Wasatch mountains to the east. We have a huge copper foundry in Salt Lake, and had a steel mill in operation about 7 miles away from where I type this. MagCorp and Geneva Steel are both equipped with the absolute latest technology for scrubbing their emissions. We don’t have traffic density like LA, but we do have hundreds of thousands of vehicles on every daily commute. Since we moved here in ‘92 we became accustomed to winter inversions that exceeded ‘red alert’ health warning levels every year.

That was until 2002. Geneva finally folded its tent. I can’t swear to it, but I cannot remember a single ‘red’ day since the plant closed down. I know for a fact that our mountains are much easier to see during the winter than they have ever been before.

I think the move to increase emissions restrictions was driven by feel-good politics. Maybe the state is trying to do some horse trading for when they attempt to inaugerate their highspeed rail corridor between SF-LA-SD. I just don’t know. I think it’s a wasted effort if thats what they thought. That’s not how greens work.

There are other options, of course. GM/Ford/DaimlerChrysler/Toyota/Honda et al could just say “no”. It’s a huge market, but so what? How many of those cars (speaking to the Californians here) that you drive next to every day are really insured now? I know it cost me over a thousand dollars a year to run liability on two dixie cup cars in the late eighties and I didn’t have tickets, accidents, or kids. We left because of cost of living and family values issues; where are the middleclass families going to find another 2-3K for vehicles when the cost of housing prohibits anyone making less than 70K a year from owning one?

I think there are serious considerations to be taken into account by the auto manufacturers here. They sell huge numbers of cars every year in California. They would be required to retool entire lines to manufacture “California Cars” that cost thousands of dollars more than their other models. Do you make the same amount of cars you made last year…or do you make a guess at what the increased price will do to your sales and send fewer vehicles? What if they don’t sell in California? Right across the state lines, people are buying the same models for thousands less. You won’t get your money there. Do you offer your entire line for sale in California?

The thought just occured to me that this could kill off one of the big three domestic automakers. I bet that would cheer up a few greens, too.

California is on a bubble. Yes, that seems to be the traditional situation, but there’s not a lot of high-value industry left to chase out of the state. The internet has made IT a virtual plant industry. Why deal with a two-hour coummute in a car you can’t afford from an apartment or rental to a job that has become accepted to suffer cyclical layoffs every two to five years when you can step across the hall of your Arizona/Utah/Idaho 4500 square foot home (on a half acre or larger) and do the same work?

What will the quality of life be in California when all that is left is Hollywood, lawyers, banks, illegal aliens fighting over light manufacturing jobs, and farmworkers?

Sep 25, 2004 - 6:05 pm 47. chuck:

TmjUtah,

Well, Geneva steel was definitely a big contributer. Sometimes it was hard to see the roads. If I recall, the government put it there in WWII to avoid enemy attack, so you can blame the government. Take a look at old photos of downtowm Pittsburgh at noon and tell me you could tell it was daytime. So sure, old smokestack industries were a major contributor. And still are: look down as you fly east over the Mississippi and note the grundge. On the other hand, Nucor doesn’t seem to be so bad.

There are bad winter inversions in Logan, too. I think most of the smog comes from heating and automobiles. I also lived in NY City when the taxis went on strike. Cleared right up. Bet the same would happen in LA if everyone stayed home for a day or two.

Sep 25, 2004 - 6:46 pm 48. Goof®:

On Topic…

TmjUtah

Why deal with a two-hour coummute in a car you can’t afford from an apartment or rental to a job that has become accepted to suffer cyclical layoffs every two to five years when you can step across the hall of your Arizona/Utah/Idaho 4500 square foot home (on a half acre or larger) and do the same work?

Because it’s California, man.

Off Topic…

Wichita Boy

Duh.

I did like “at the end of a massive crash like we just experienced it would have been incredibly irresponsible for the government not to have gone into deficit.”

You’ll never be mistaken for a “fiscal conservative.”

Best.

Sep 25, 2004 - 7:16 pm 49. John Lynch:

It is rare I find myself in agreement with goofA and in opposition with John Moore, but such is the life of a Rebup these days.

The politics of this are astute. The need for progress on this subject is real. The need for a big market to push the boundaries a bit is fundamental to progress.

The CA market is big enough to influence the economics of the automobile industry. The people in CA are willing to experience some pain in the discovery process of new solutions. The Repub party needs some evidence of sincerity on this subject.

I personally do not believe the solution is complete or adequate, but I also do not believe that there is a magic bullet right now to this problem, and that this is going to require multiple real trials to discover things like price sensitivity, cost elasticity, market acceptance, and measured improvements based on real trials.

Yeah for CA!

Sep 25, 2004 - 7:37 pm 50. Emerald Elixir:

There’s nothing fiscally conservative by allowing the economy to fall into a deep depression. Contrary to what people thought back in 1997/98 the business cycle was alive and well. We just couldn’t see that with all the tech/dotcom hype that inflated an economic bubble the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the late 1920s.

If the government, through fiscal policy, didn’t jump in and try to stimulate the economy we could have seen a downturn that may have lasted more than a decade. Monetary policy didn’t work…the FED basically shot all of its bullets helping drive interest rates to lows not seen for decades. Tax cuts and additional spending were the necessary ingredients to bring about the growth we’ve seen over the last year or more. Unemployment is at 5.4% with practically no inflation–a great feat considering not even a decade ago 6% was considered inflationary. An even greater feat knowing that many of the jobs lost due to the busted bubble were bubble jobs created for by vapor economy.

I consider myself a fiscal conservative yet I realize the necessary prescription for our contracting economy required more deficits in order to bring about this expansion. Hopefully as the economy grows the deficits will quickly come down. I’m all for reducing the size of government to bring down the deficit though.

Sep 25, 2004 - 8:52 pm 51. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

John Lynch

Just what part of this are you in favor of.

The CO2 reductions?

If not, what?

If so, why?

Sep 25, 2004 - 8:54 pm 52. Emerald Elixir:

The above reply was for GoofA. And I’m sorry for not noting it was off topic.

Sep 25, 2004 - 8:54 pm 53. TmjUtah:

I miss fishing from the pier off Mission Beach. I also miss boogieboarding. I liked camping in the Mojave, too, but that ended (where I liked it) with Feinstein’s Folly. They ran us off and threatened to ticket us.

I don’t miss leaving the windows in my little Ford Ranger open with a sticker on my Kraco stereo saying “LEAVE ME ALONE! I’M CHEAP!” while I fished. I always had the coil wire in my tackle box, too.

We didn’t leave until we found ourselves checking out a condo purchase in Santee. Two years of saving to afford an APARTMENT? 22 miles from my job. 35 for the wife. And no beach. The serial killer in our Clairemont Apartment complex had something to do with it, too. Especially after I found out I’d loaned him my toolbox in order to get his dead car out of my parking spot. This was in a 2500 unit apartment complex on Clairemont Blvd. That was between victims 4 (first four all in our complex) and then 5 and 6 (University City), a two-fer, mom and daughter. My wife had been carrying a revolver (illegally) for weeks by then. We had a decorative “Home Sweet Home” panel hanging on the inside of our entry door. The pistolized pump 12 guage lived under that. In our home.

Cleophus Prince. You can look him up. Those Canadians; they crack me up sometimes.

It was more a ‘last straw’ moment than anything else. Good luck, Golden State!

Sep 25, 2004 - 9:40 pm 54. Goof®:

Emerald Elixir

And here is an off-topic response to you…

At the start of 2001 the Fed Funds Rate was 6.5%. On December 11th the Fed cut the rate for the 11th time in that year. The Fed Funds Rate then stood at 1.75%. The tax cuts were enacted in the same year. Here is a link to the Democratic Senatorial response to the Bush proposal. Much that is in it was incorporated into the package that was enacted.

http://democrats.senate.gov/~dpc/pubs/107-1-122.html

Here are the President’s comments when the bill was signed.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/06/20010607.html

Not much regarding the “massive crash” or the threat of a “deep depression” there.

The recession lasted from March 2001 until November 2001.

Btw, the bubble burst on January 1, 2000 when Y2K came and went and nothing terrible happened. It took awhile for people to start to notice.

Call yourself whatever you like. Fiscal irresponsibility is neither liberal or conservative.

Btw, you have noticed that tax cuts are being extended and spending is being increased in this era of growth without inflation, haven’t you? Who’s in the majority?

On topic…

TmjUtah

Then you know what I mean.

Sep 25, 2004 - 10:38 pm 55. John Pearley Huffman:

Roger,

I’m just going to ramble here…

Don’t count on these new regulations ever going into effect.

To strip the issue down to its bare bones, these aren’t traditional emissions regulations but disguised fuel economy regulations. C02 isn’t a “pollutant” in the traditional sense of the term, but a product of perfect combustion and ultimately the only way to reduce it’s production is to reduce the amount of fuel burned. And right now that’s already regulated by the federal government and its Corporated Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) regulations.

When the automakers argue in court that California can’t supersede federal regulations on this, they’ve got a pretty good case.

Beyond that, cars are first and foremost consumer products. And consumer products have to be attractive and affordable so that consumers will buy them. Meeting these new regulations (should they survive judicial review) will mean building cars and trucks MUCH smaller than are currently considered mainstream. Want a truck to tow your boat? Sorry, but full-size pickups (even those with hybrid drivetrains) will simply cease to exist in California’s new vehicle market. And even small pickups will likely have to shrink in size and ability. And they’ll be much more expensive.

When people find what’s offered unattractive they simply won’t buy it. When that happened with the imposition of CAFE standards and cars became less capable and attractive, buyers moved into trucks and SUVs. This workaround was, to many minds, worse than the situation that existed previously. Imagine what workarounds these new regulations could result in — when everyone who owns a boat has to buy a Peterbilt to tow it to the lake.

In 1990 CARB required automakers to produce “zero emission” vehicles and for 10-percent of the sales of vehicles in California to be such by 2003. Well, it turns out that the only zero emission vehicles are battery powered electric cars and, to be kind, they’re terrible (and I’ve driven the best of them). Imagine a car that can store only about the equivalent power of a quart of gasoline on-board and that when that quart is gone takes eight hours to refill. That’s about the state of electric car technology and unless there’s an enormous (and completely unexpected) breakthrough in battery performance, that state isn’t likely to progress much in the forseeable future.

So, despite significant investments from manufacturers (I’ve driven all-electric vehicles from GM, Ford, Chrysler, Honda and Toyota) the market for them never developed. And the regulation died from many slings and arrows.

I’ve actually driven the new Lexus RX400h hybrid SUV and the Honda Accord hybrid and they’re both amazing pieces of technology. They’re powerful, operate seamlessly, and deliver significantly better fuel economy. But they’re also both going to be dang expensive. The Accord, for instance, should cost just about $4,000 more than the EX V-6 sedan upon which it’s based and even with fuel at $2.50 a gallon that’s a price difference that will be hard to make up.

It will even be hard to justify with gas at $5.00 a gallon.

Honda predicts the Accord Hybrid will carry EPA ratings of 30 city and 37 on the highway. Meanwhile they rate the regular Accord EX V-6 at 21/30 on the same tests. Discounting the fact that hybrids never come close to delivering the mileage in EPA tests (regular cars don’t either, but they’re closer), let’s do a comparison.

Say someone choosing between them drove 12,000 miles a year equally divided between city and highway mileage. In the regular EX V-6 they’d burn 485.71 gallons of fuel in a year. In the Hybrid they’d burn 362.16 gallons. That’s a difference of 123.55 gallons which at $2 a gallon is $247.10 per year — the Hybrid buyer breaks even on the price difference after 16.18 years. At $2.50 a gallon, the difference is $308.88 and the break even drops to 12.95 years. That of course halves to 6.48 years at $5 a gallon.

Most buyers don’t keep their new cars 6.48 years much less 12.95 or 16.18 (and the Hybrid would have 194,160 miles on its odometer at that point — and being more complex will likely have had higher maintenance costs beyond the fact that the very expensive batteries will need to be replaced at least once), so even now the hybrids have to be bought for other-than-economic reasons. And that limits their popularity to people who can indulge their environmental passion. As the success of the Toyota Prius has proved, that’s not a completely negligible group, but I doubt it’s one that can sustain an ever expanding supply at current price differentials.

But with these new regulations it’s tough to imagine that even the RX400h or Accord Hybrid would be sufficiently fuel miserly to satisfy them. And while the RX400h and Accord Hybrid are still comfortable machines, it’s going to be tough to convince people that they’re better off in smaller-than-Prius machines.

CARB can throw all the regulations they want out there, but ultimately technological progress and the consumer market will determine how the vehicle fleet changes in the future. If we really want to save fuel (and reduce emissions) the big change we should be looking at is encouraging changes in human behavior.

Let’s start with work. In Southern California we literally have hundreds of thousands of people who leave a perfectly good computer and telephone at home to drive to another computer and telephone at their office to do their work. Let’s eliminate their commutes (or at least minimize them) by encouraging the already growing trend of telecommuting.

We could reduce the number of trips people make to, say grocery stores, by encouraging increased use of online ordering and delivery by high capacity vans running efficient routes.

The movie studios may go into copyright protection apoplexy, but it’s a lot more fuel efficient to deliver movies through broadband connections than having people drive to Blockbuster.

It’s two o’clock in the morning and I’m hazing away… but there are innumerable ways the government could encourage people to make fewer trips in their cars. And there are technologies appearing that will reduce the necessity of using a car to do simple tasks.

My guess is that these new CARB regulations are doomed even before they’ve been enacted.

Keep all this mind before you even start talking about whether global warming is a real problem and, if so, one that’s containable in any significant sense.

Sep 26, 2004 - 2:22 am 56. John Lynch:

John Moore

The basis of the gas / oil usage in this country is in large part the automobile.

Uses for gas turbine electricity production is largely LPG.

Finding new ways for the auto to be based on alternative fuels, hopefully renewable fuels, is a part of any long-term solution.

Oil consumtion in the U.S.

The Co2 reduction is useful, but the real goal is the oil dependency.

Changing the automobile industry is going to be hard. Price sensitivity, cost elasticity, production cost curves of hybrid technologies, fuel distribution infrastructures: each of these need to be understood sometime in the next decade.

This particular action will not produce clear solutions, but it will provide data in each of the above that are needed for “the rest of the story.”

Sep 26, 2004 - 7:48 am 57. M. Simon:

B. Lumborg say that with the current rate of technological evolution we will not be using gasoline (oil) for auto fuels by 2065 and no later than 2100.

Mandating a faster pace is going to cost a lot. All crash programs do. And the poor will be disproportionately hurt. They are on the tail end of the whip. They will get snapped the hardest.

If the air quality in LA is acceptable (barely) why not let technological evolution solve the problem?

BTW nuke plants are not viable sources of electricity for the future. Here is why.

You know I really hate to say this but Californians are some of the most ignorant people technology wise any where in America.

Just because you can make it look good on film does not mean you can make it work in real life.

Course if you want to tell me how products ought to be designed perhaps I could get some input into your scripts. And the amount of energy permissible in movie production. That will make things better won’t it? Neither the scripts nor the cars will have any market. But that is the point isn’t it?

Sep 26, 2004 - 12:19 pm 58. Charlie (Colorado):

Picky quibble:

Uses for gas turbine electricity production is largely LPG.

You mean “LNG” — liquefied natural gas, methane, CH4.

LPG is “liquefied petroleum gas” — propane and butane, C3H8 and C4H10. They’re both primarily side effects of petroleum refining.

But your poiint is correct.

Also, electric power production with gas gives complete combustion, so there aren’t as many side pollutants, like NOx.

Sep 26, 2004 - 12:29 pm 59. M. Simon:

I have done the numbers.

If your conversion from electricity was 100% efficient it takes about 15 watt hours to get a 3000 lb. car from 0 to 60. Surprisigly enough the energy is the same (not counting losses) if you do 0 to 60 in 3 seconds or 30.

Acceleration requires high power but not a lot of energy. If you could store the energy a surprisigly small engine could be used to maintain speed and rechare the the storage system. Even for a large car.

As long as no towing (or minimal) is required.

Sep 26, 2004 - 12:35 pm 60. M. Simon:

Chuck,

To get technical: a hybrid with a constant speed engine would be a series hybrid.

Most hybrid vehicles at this time are parallel hybrids for reasons of efficiency.

Lots of people who don’t have any idea what they are talking about (let alone an ability to run the numbers) are mandating things they do not know that they do not know. i.e. Ignorance parading as knowledge.

A recipe for disaster.

Sep 26, 2004 - 1:11 pm 61. photoncourier.blogspot.com:

test message…having problems with comments.

Sep 26, 2004 - 3:14 pm 62. photoncourier.blogspot.com:

John Huffman..thanks for a thoughtful post. Questions:

1)To what extent to you think that the elements of hybrid technology are subject to economies of scale…ie, if millions of these vehicles were being sold every year, what happens to the cost premium? Off the bat, I wouldn’t expect much improvement in the cost of the electric motors and generator, since these things have been manufactured in high volume for over a century…but maybe the batteries and control systems?

2)What do you see as the significant of the variable-valve technology, which eliminates throttling losses and seems to improve overall mileage by about 5-10%? (Being sold by BMW under the name “Valvetronic”(tm)). I don’t understand why there aren’t more auto manufacturers getting on board with this.

3)Ditto for the sequential automatic transmissions (basically, computer-controlled manuals), which could shave off another 5-10%.

Sep 26, 2004 - 3:15 pm 63. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

John Lynch

Alternate fuels will be necessary for automobiles if CO2 emission is a real problem (and in spite of the poor state of anthropogenic global warming science, I suspect it may be). Otherwise, it may be practical to reform other hydrocarbons into gasoline (or kerosene or other hydrocarbon high energy density fuels).

None of this logic justifies the CARB’s decision to reduce CO2 emissions. It does affect local pollution in any way. The sensitivity of the world climate system to California’s CO2 emissions is almost certainly microscopic. As someone pointed out, the regulation is actually a disguised CAFE regulation, probably with the hope that some useful technology will come out of it. It is California enviroweenies deciding (through market power) what is best for all of us – in an area rampant with pseudoscience, and in a manner that any engineer would consider absurd (as I do). Oh well, it’ll just outsource a bunch of jobs. A bunch of leftist enviroweenies will leave CA and move here to AZ, bringing their silly ideas with them. Or maybe the jobs will vanish, as the Japanese, who already have a market that likes small cars, increase their market share.

M Simon

I don’t accept your reasoning on why commercial nuclear power won’t work. First, ask France about it – it works there. Then, consider doing it right instead of the silly way it was done in the US. Use inherently safe designs, such as pebble beds. Put lots of plants in a fortresses… if Pantex can guard its plutonium, it should be possible to design nuclear facilities with security in mind from the start.

Insure radiation responsibly. There has never been a significant or hazardous radiation release in the US from a commercial reactor, and that’s with poorly designed control systems (partly due to overly long NRC design review cycles) and operators that screwed up royally.

Too many behave as if any radiation is dangerous (and then they smoke a cigarette – Polonium – or go skiing – UV and dramatically increased cosmic radiation – or get on an airplane – like skiing, but no UV and a lot more cosmic radiation). I once took my geiger counter (digital) on a Southwest Flight. The thing was literally off the scale at cruise altitude.

Rods are in cooling ponds because political factors (ironically, from environmentalists)which are keeping them from being either reprocessed (for a Pu cycle) or buried in Yucca mountain. BTW, I believe it is possible to poison reactor fuel to make weapons grade Pu extraction much harder – there are several Pu isotopes and they are not all suitable, so you drive weapons makers into isotopic separation which is the same problem as using Uranium.

If you think the 10,000 year requirement for nuclear burial is reasonable, you are more pessimistic than I am. Who are we protecting in 10000 years – remnant hunter-gatherers? The 10,000 year rule is silly.

In other words, if one approaches the problem with an intent to make it work, a willingness to use some modern thinking on the problem, and a skepticism of some of the alleged problem, it gets a lot easier to make power producing fission reactors.

Finally, recognize that the biggest problem for the nuclear industry is the vast government regulation, much of it unnecessary, resulting from environmental activists, and resulting enormous costs and delays.

I’m an engineer. I don’t have a lot of respect for governmental and pressure groups that incidently do engineering as part of their activities. That is what CARB is doing.

Sep 26, 2004 - 3:40 pm 64. richard mcenroe:

John Moore ó Nice to see a mention of pebble bed reactors. I’m a supporter of nuclear power in general, but I’m dubious about them in LA solely on the basis of the seismic issue.

Sep 26, 2004 - 6:10 pm 65. John Pearley Huffman:

Photoncourier,

I don’t know what the economies of scale are. Obviously the algorithms that determine what the various computers involved do have development costs and those will be spread out somewhat as hybrid technology expands. But it’s also true that the software will have to be modified for each new car and application since no two car models are identical and every variation in significant equipment (manual or automatic transmission or, say, the additional weight of a sunroof if it bumps the car to a new weight class) could entail re-tailoring the software.

I don’t think the great expense in hybrids right now comes in the electric motors either, but agree that it’s likely in the batteries. I don’t know this for sure however, but it seems that’s what the engineers hint at (every company wants to keep their costs secret naturally). I guess this is a time-will-tell item.

Variable valve timing will eventually (but soon) be on every new internal combustion engine in some form, I think. Toyota is proud of the fact that in 2005 it’s used on every engine they sell here (it’s new on the Tundra’s V8) and Honda’s been selling nothing but VTEC-equipped vehicles for a few years now. The effectiveness of variable valve timing is such that it will be universally adopted and that about says it all.

In fact I can’t think of a single manufacturer that doesn’t have a variable valve timing system of some sort on at least one model. Maybe KIA? I haven’t looked lately.

Transmission technology has developed nearly as quickly as engine controls have lately. There are automatic manual transmissions, manually shiftable automatics, sequential manuals, continuously variable (CVT) automatics… My belief is that they’ll all have a place on vehicles in the immediate future as they’re applied in the appropriate places. Low torque loads and lower-power hybrid drivetrains seem to work well with CVTs for instance as in the Honda Civic hybrid. Meanwhile BMW has adopted a seven-speed sequential gearbox for the new 500-horsepower M5. Ultimately there’s no one true transmission for every application.

Sep 26, 2004 - 6:10 pm 66. Roberts:

Goof, I don’t think you have any idea of the effect Y2K had on the US economy. The reality is that while the Y2K date itself arrived with little actual infrastructure difficulties, the US economy had made enormous capital expenditures upgrading computer hardware and software. It was those huge capital expenditures in 1998 and 1999 that pulled capital spending down in the year 2000 and made the 2001 recession inevitable.

Sep 26, 2004 - 8:47 pm 67. M. Simon:

JM,

As you know I’m an ex-Naval RO. I know nukes. I’m also familiar with pebble beds and the French system.

1. The 10,000 year rule for me is not about radiation – that, as you point out, is stupid. I’m talking strictly bomb grade Plutonium. Plutonium has a 1/2 life of 24,000 years. So my 10,000 year watch is probably short by a million years or two.

2. Economics – look at the cost curve for wind. Every doubling of turbine size lowers the electrical cost by 1/3. In 15 years new nuke and coal plants will be non-competitive at their inceptiion. In other words as we get the nuclear technical factors under control economics is coming along to kill thte industry. The big electrical power generators in America are buying wind. The market for nukes is not there. BTW you haven’t answered the insurance question.

photon c,

You can’t do variable valves with out an integrated starter/generator capable of about 5KW output. Electrically operated valves are very power hungry. In other words it can’t just be slapped on an engine. A whole lot of things need to chane to make it possible.

Such change takes time.

Most of the belt driven accessories in the engine compartment will be replaced with elctric motors. It is going to take time. The engine compartment of an auto is a very difficult design environment. First you have the temperature extremes. Then shock and vibration.

99.9% of the people have no idea how hard it is to design for this environment. The .1% who do understand have disagreement about what to do and when. Well at least the .1% can be swayed by numbers and economics.

The technology missing to make batteries possible is economical large super capacitors. I have some ideas on how to make this happen. Contact me if you have $200k to spend and want to start a car company.

When people say we have been doing storage batteries for cars for 20 or 50 years they are totally wrong. It is actually around 100 years of work. The cheapest technology is still lead/acid. With NiCd catching up. The chemistry limitations are daunting. And the high energy/light weight chemistries (Lithium) are very dangerous in an accident. Batteries as an auxiliary power source (burst energy) is somewhat workable in conjunction with super capacitors. It is unlikely they will ever be viable as an automotive energy storage medium (the 300 mile – 5 minute recharge battery).

It all comes down to this: every one wants to be an engineer. Very few want to study engineering. Ambition all out of proportion to expertise.

What part of hybrid technology are vulnerable to seriouscost reductions as volumes go up? The power control modules. The stuff that handles the KWs. Other wise most of the technology (including the computer controls) is pretty mature.

Once volumes get above 10K units per year cost reductions are quite difficult. They will happen. It will be a long slow painful process. Part of it is that power electronics are still on a steep learning curve. With the advent of silicon carbide and diamond based transistors things should get much better in terms of weight and volume – but today those are exotic technologies and will not be mass market commercially viable for 10 to 30 years.

If you have $200K to spare I have a few (very profitable – $$billions) patentable ideas for speeding it up.

Contact me.

Sep 26, 2004 - 9:41 pm 68. M. Simon:

JM,

You can’t buy commercial catastrophic insurance for commercial nukes.

There is a reason for this. Although the risk may be small (and with so few accidents we have no idea what the real risk is), the payouts are potentially very large.

Again the French program is a government program. Because only government can absorb the risk.

The good thing is – given the risks and popular aversion – we have wind coming along to fill the gap.

In the end until you can change a lot of minds about nukes no more commercial nukes bought by utilities at market price are going to happen.

Well any way even if you could get people to buy into nukes you have not solved the Plutonium proliferation problem. Given the current state of the world I consider that a show stopper.

Sep 26, 2004 - 10:40 pm 69. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

M. Simon

Wind power still suffers from the storage problem. It is not reliable baseload. Even having lots of wind farms doesn’t solve the problem. Allow me to bring out my meteorology background here and wave it like your RO credentials. Wind will halp with additional load, but very little with baseload. It is limited. There are limits to where you can put wind farms, so the total power from them has an upper bound. As I understand it, wind is booming now because recent improvements in turbines has significantly reduced maintenance costs. Hence the good spots are growing turbines. I also believe that tax credits and force purchase rules in most states have seriously distorted the wind power market. And I can’t wait until the bird enviros cross swords in a serious way with the wind farm folks. Ain’t enough wind power out there to do the job.

Plutonium – My comments hold. I don’t give a damn if a repository has bomb grade plutonium or just nasty radionuclides of other sorts. Same problem, same issue. Pu can be viewed as a pollutant or a bomb component. #1 is true of other isotopes in the mix. #2 should not be an interesting issue in requiring 10,000 year storage. What was mankind like 10,000 years ago? 1000 years ago? Putting 10,000 year limits on localized radiation storage is simply ridiculous given the rapid pace of change. Maybe in 100 years they will use the neutron flux of fusion reactors to just “burn’ the radionuclides from the waste, as one example.

Insurance – Feds Provide. Liability limit. Systems built in fortresses. Since so far no civilian power reactor of decent design has harmed anyone with radiation, this shouldn’t be a problem. If it is, fix it with legislation.

See other posts about variable valves. They are doing them now.

Regarding engineering, I do that. I’ve done a lot more in the past – primarily electrical engineering. Supercapacitors have been talked about for a long time. Heck, I’ve got a 1F capacitor in my junk box – about thimble sized. But with capacitors you have the issue of area, distance between the plates and dielectric (if you use it). Have fun.

If you can figure out how to make a megajoule capacitor that is a significant improvement, go get some money and do so. Capacitors are less desirable from a power conversion point than batteries, but heck, anything that has the right power density and cost is interesting in transportation. So far, the best way to store energy is chemicals that you burn, producing heat – say, gasoline.

I think I mentioned the bad environment under the hood. Because of the need for higher power devices, future internal combustion cars in the US are going to higher voltage (42V I think). The rest is well understood. Those who design for cars know the environmental conditions well – they haven’t changed and they won’t change much (except for main power voltage, and din some system a change in power glitch characteristics).

Sep 26, 2004 - 10:47 pm 70. Goof®:

Roberts

Do you know what I was doing in 1998 and 1999? I’ve written about it, but perhaps those were comments you missed.

I remember a time (early in 2000) when Cisco was worth more than GE. When the Controller mentioned it to me, I laughed and told him he should sell. By then, I was planning my escape…to California.

What a smile.

Sep 27, 2004 - 8:38 am 71. Goof®:

Roberts

Scratch “escape” above and substitute “next move.”

You know…

go easy…step lightly…stay free.

If not, ask Dennis. He knows…and I doubt he’ll rat me out.

Sep 27, 2004 - 8:49 am

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