I'm changing my vote

[Bumpsis]

The Clinton-istas didn't/couldn't ratify the Kyoto treaty either........the oil companies are that powerful, whether you are a donkey or elephant......

.

I realize that the discussion has gone in another direction, but I thought it would be good to tie up some loose ends here on the topic of pollution.
It wasn't Clinton who didn't/couldn't ratify the Kyoto treaty, it was the Senat's job to ratify it. Clinton was all for Kyoto, but the Senat wouldn't ratify it. Gee, who was in control of the Senat then, any one remember?
Oh, what in the world is a Clintonista?

 

[Bumpsis]

So the big SUV's are polluters??? And the the Humvee, mentioned by name? I am pretty sensitive to vehicle exhaust, but the following is very un scientific: In the cold days of winter, I can easily tell when I am behind a diesel vehicle. I can hardly breathe in my car, and have to turn off the outside air to continue breathing. Yesterday, I was behind a 1978 VW bug, in 45 degree weather. I had to slow down and let the bug get away from me, it stunk so bad. Yet when I am behind a Humvee. or other big SUV, for that matter, I don't need to roll up my windows and turn off the outside air and let them drive away from me.

If, in fact they are polluters........actually, everything does, to some extent. Shucks, I pollute, just by breathing.... Let's quantify things here a little bit. What are the current government regulations for exhaust emissions for cars? for SUV's? What are they for diesel trucks (18 wheelers), and what were they, say, back in 1978, when that VW bug was produced?

So many folks throw out the bandwagon statements, that are heard so often. What are the actual statistics????

This inquiring mind would like to know.

I'm afarid that your mind isn't very inquring for inquring minds ususally find facts for themselves, especially when it comes to issues that seem to matter to them, like being sensitive to diesel exhaust.
But perhaps I can point you in the right direction. The America Lung Association is a fairly well informed organization, so I suggest to look them up.
As to the issue of choking on exhaust from a '70's VW, well, duh, that's the main reason why there have been regulations put into effect so we wouldn't have to breathe quite so many pollutants. So even the modern SUV is a bit cleaner than a 4 cylinder car from the 70's. The main reason why you were chocking on the Bug's exhaust was probably becuse it's an old engine that was burning oil, in addition to being originally dirty and even new they spewed out lots of partially burned carbohydrates.

Now, here's the shocking new for you: Yes Virginia, SUV ARE polluters and big ones at that. Gee, I hope your were sitting down for that one.

If you actually go to the trouble of looking up the regulations, you'll find that an SUV (and other "light" trucks) are permitted to emit up to 175% more Nitrogen Oxide, CO2 and other pollutants (small pariculate matter, hydrocarbons) than sedans.
I won't go into the chemistry of car exhaust but perhaps the easiest way to see how all these figures stack up, have a look at a new car sticker from a sedan and a truck based SUV (i.e. Explorer, Navigator, Tahoe, Durango etc.)
and compare the smog index figures. The differences are very substantial.

And if you're are at all concerned about the quality of the air you breathe and the Bush politics in this arena, look up the lead artice from NY Times Magzine (from April 4, 2004). If you avail yourself of all that info (focus on facts rather than opinions) and still remain unconvinced that the Bush Administration has sold our right to breathe healthy air for political contributions, you have your head in the sand, and that's not terribly inquring.

 

[ChileMass]

ChileMass wrote:
The Clinton-istas didn't/couldn't ratify the Kyoto treaty either........the oil companies are that powerful, whether you are a donkey or elephant......

.


I realize that the discussion has gone in another direction, but I thought it would be good to tie up some loose ends here on the topic of pollution.
It wasn't Clinton who didn't/couldn't ratify the Kyoto treaty, it was the Senat's job to ratify it. Clinton was all for Kyoto, but the Senat wouldn't ratify it. Gee, who was in control of the Senat then, any one remember?
Oh, what in the world is a Clintonista?

I'd like to chime in here. Once again, we have a scenario where one party occupies the Executive branch, and the other party controls either the house or senate. And they ain't exactly working together. I find it hard to credit or blame one man in the White House.

$.02

I wasn't blaming just "one man in the White House". The problem was with the Kyoto treaty itself in the first place. In 1994 the Kyoto treaty would have singled out the US as the primary environmental "bad guy" and the US was in position to get hurt - badly - by onerous international regulation that many other polluters (France, UK, Germany, Japan, China, Russia, others) were not required to live by. The Clinton administration (led by Al Gore) brought this bogus legislation home to Washington, and to this day (re: this thread) people are surprised the US Congress killed it after very little discussion. Note that both Democrats and Republicans voted against this bill, which would have placed US companies at a distinct competitive disavantage and created a precedent where internatoinal regulatory and legislative bodies can target the US for special treatment and get away with it. No matter what your politics, economic freedom and a level playing field (global economy) are very good ideas and worth protecting. Living in a world where Bulgaria or India can order Detroit to make cleaner (and more expensive)cars is not a situation we want to find ourselves in. AND - before you start throwing things at me - I bit my lip and actually voted for Al Gore 4 years ago. Unfortunately, I will likely have to vote for W this election because the Dems are so weak and don't realize that it's not 1969 any more.......

And - "Clintonistas" is the term coined by P.J. O'Rourke in 1993 as a goof on Bill and Hillary and their pals. I thought it was funny. If there's anyone out there that wants a good political laugh, read some P.J.........

 

[Bumpsis]

trip to a library

uphillclimber,
Not everything can be easily googled. You seem to be suffieciently interested in the subject so I do suggest a trip to your local library.
Books written on the subject of automotive emission and its regulation do contain original source citations, so you can get at the actual numbers without the author's conclusions and biases. Having a computer in front of you is great but sometimes it still is more efficent to actually look in the library.
One specific book I'd suggest is "High and Mighty" by Keith Bradsher.
Another good source of information, as prevuiously suggested, check in with your local chapter of the American Lung Association. They have reams of studies and reserach done on the subject.
There really is a lot of easily obtainable data out there which clearly documnets the amounts of the most offending compounds that we spew out of our tailpipes and their significance to our health and enviromental wellbeing.

Air pollution is just one aspect of SUVs which I find deeply disturbing. The other aspect is that these vehicles are very lethal in accidents. Again, I'm limiting my coments to the truc based SUVs. Paradoxically these SUVs are quite deadly to their drivers as well (look up The New Yorker, Jan 12, '04).

And because the auto industry has made a super job of convincing people that driving these trucks is the grandest, hippiest and safest experience you can have, the everyday driving has become needlessly more dangerous and unhealthy.

SPECIFIC NUMBERS: Ok, so here are some quick numbers I pulled off the web:
Over the distance of 125,000 miles, a Ford Excursion will get an average of 13 mpg and emit 134 tons of carbon dioxide.
Ford Taurus (6 cylinder), will get over the same distance 23 mpg and throw off 74 tons of CO2. Now, these are just numbers for CO2.
A deeper look will tell you about Nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxiodes, carbon monoxide, various organic compounds and particulate matter (colloidal particles present in exhaust linked to respiratory dieseases).

Good luck in your information hunt.

 

[ChileMass]

Bob - no problems at all - no offense taken now or before -

On my side, I just like to point out I am also in favor of effective environmental legislation, but that it's always a trade-off with competing priorities.....

 

[Bumpsis]

It would seem, to me anyways, that the simple solution is to make more fuel efficient vehicles, and I still believe Detroit needs to be called to task to do this. As I stated before, there are 2 vehicles in my driveway. Approximately the same weight (within 200 lbs. of each other), approximately the same performance, speed power, horsepower, acceleration. Yet the car is subject to more stringent guidelines than the truck, and thus gets better mileage, which equates to less emissions. I am required by my job to provide a truck, and it's a decent truck. But I am just frosted every time I go to the pumps. Why can't my truck get the mileage the car gets???? I know Detroit can do it. Sigh......

uphillkilimber, you make a good point. Detroit needs to be more accountable but they won't be if they don't have to. The industry spend a ton of money on lobbists and politicians so they wouldn't have to.

Back when the the CAFE standards were established, they worked really hard to make sure that there is a loophole in emission, milage and crash safety regulations big enough to drive a truck through, literally. A "light" truck to be specific, so they could turn a truck into a "regular" passanger vehicle. It's substantially cheaper to build a truck/SUV than a regulation adhering sedan, thus the profit margins are HUGE.
As a consequence, our enviroment is a smoggier place and the road travel more hazardous for everyone.
I really don't have anything against light trucks per se if they are used by people who need them for work or some other really important reason where a sedan/station wagon or minivan just would't do the job. There is a nich which these vehicles really fit well.

I'm just convinced though that majority of people who buy an SUV really would do just fine with another automotive choice if they just gave it a bit of a thought.
For the sake of full disclosure, I do drive a Dodge Minivan for work (have to haul quite a bit of equpmnent arround) and that's not a very clean vehicle either. Not quite as dirty as an SUV but it's in that range. Better milage and less deadly though - I thought I offer that in my defense.

 

[threecy]

WMDs - Let's get one thing straight with the WMDs - they certainly were there, the question is where are they now. I don't have any problems with Bush's joke press conference/slide show, I found it rather amusing. Our military isn't just there for WMDs. If we could have stopped Hitler before 1941, do you think we should have? Saddam Hussein had slaughtered tens of thousands, many through the use of (dun dun dun) WMDs.

Don't forget our troops who came home sick from the first Gulf War due to his biological weapons.

Also don't forget Saddam Hussein violated the cease-fire the UN "enforced" 17 times.

UN - We cannot rely on the UN anymore - it is corrupt. Why did France vote against the Iraq resolution before Iraq did? Oil for Food. A HUGE scandal that isn't getting ANY coverage from the liberal press, despite SENATE hearings that are showing TRUE CORRUPTION on the part of France, Russia, UN officials, and the former Iraqi government. Billions of dollars! Russia/France are now trying to block an independent investigation!

Bush Responsible For 911 - How is Bush responsible for 9-11 when Clinton was OFFERED bin Laden on over 3 different occasions (Clinton admitted to this also) from Sudan? Clinton says there wasn't any reason - lest he forget the embassy bombings, USS Cole, the first World Trade Center bombing, and Black hawk down. Richard Clarke, by the way, is a partisan opportunist lying through his teeth.

Economy - is the strongest its been since the crash at the end of the Clinton administration. The unemployment rate is lower than the average rate of the 70s, 80s, and 90s. 500K+ jobs have been created in the past 3 months of this "jobless recovery," one of the best quarters in recent history. The average hourly wage has increased nearly a dime in the past 5 months as well.

Oil - we shan't tap our reserves to keep the "high" prices low - Kerry is misleading us with his "misery index" "gas prices" and "deficit" - he uses current dollars, not time adjusted. The 1981 avg. gas price is ~2.80 in current dollars. The deficit is certainly high (even Roosevelt had a deficit in the Great Depression), but not an all-time high. The misery index, Kerry's new statistic, actually shows that we are better off than under most of Clinton's term!

I don't think Bush is an idiot at all - he certainly doesn't have a politician's public speaking ability, however. He tries to speak in simple terms so that all Americans, as well as foreigners who know broken English, can understand. He has to be very careful about what he says, as bad word choice will be front page in the disgustingly liberal press (many major publications met in private with Kerry working on strategies a few months back - imagine if Bush did this? Scandal!). I think Bush is quite intelligent and is a lot smarter than most people think. Its amazing how people can draw conclusions just on his public speaking ability - when he doesn't think the camera is there, he speaks very well, for instance.

 

[John S]

Am I missing something here?


125,000 miles / 13 MPG = 9615 gallons of gas

134 tons CO2 x 2000 pounds per ton = 268,000 pounds CO2

268,000 pounds CO2 / 9615 gallons of gas = 27.87 pounds CO2 per gallon of gas


A gallon of gas only weighs about five and a half pounds.


Something doesn't add up. Am I misreading the information? Is it really possible that my individual contribution to pollution is measured in tons?

 

[MtnMagic]

The stats seem a bit high. Soon we'll not be able to breathe.

Better stats: Each acre of forest produces oxygen for 16 people.

I am certain that a gallon of gas weighs about 8 pounds. Water weights 8.3 pounds per gallon.

 

[Bumpsis]

Jeez !!! Lazyness seems to be common denominator here. Everybody wants either the primary sources or ready given answers. What happend to looking stuf up for yourself, ha? :wink:

Yes John S, you are missing something here. Essentially what you need to know is a bit of high school chemistry - sorry, I don't mean to sound condescending, really. Everybody is quite polite on this board so I'll play nice too.
Gasoline has various carbohydrons in it, but the primary one we're burning is Octane, C8H18. The process of combustion grabs a moleculem of oxygen form the air and adds it to the carbons released for Octane.
The balanced equation looks like this:
2C8H18 + 17O2= 16CO2 + 18H2O
short cut: 1 gallon of gas gives off 3.7 lbs of CO2.
(for full explanation of the above short cut, DO look up a chem. book)

I might have been off a bit on my original posting but I'm sill in the general ballpark.
9,615 gallons of gasoline will generate 177 tons (YES, TONS) of CO2.

 

[MtnMagic]

Ah, very well explained, the equation is balanced!

If you wish to check out all the stat's try this megasite:
http://www.epa.gov/otaq/toxics.htm and check the fact sheets.
_________________
Now in pdf format!

 

[Bumpsis]

Corrections

Good call uphillklimber,
I do stand corrected. My original shortcut calculation of 3.7 lb of CO2 per gallon is incorrect, so your math of total CO2 generated by 9,615 gallons of gas would be correct if it were not for my mistake.

In fact, one gallon of gasoline generates 18 lb of CO2.
So let's go through the numbers:
2 moles of octane generates 16 moles of CO2, that's from the previous equation: 2 C8H18 + 17 O2= 16 CO2 + 18 H2O
one mole of Octane = 114g
one mole of CO2 = 704g
one gallon of gas = 2650g of octane
so if 2 x 114g octane generates 16 x 44g of CO2
one gallon of gas generates 8,182.4g or 8.18kg of CO2
at 2.2lb to a kilo, that's 17.99 lb
Thus, if one gallon generates 18lb of CO2 then 9615 gallons comes to 173,070lb of CO2. At 2000lb per ton, so we're at 86.5 tons of CO2 generated by the SUV over 125,000 miles.

Granted, I was not careful enough and have not gone through the equation carefully in my original statement, but the main point I was making that a light truck or an SUV will put out significantly more pollution out the tail pipe than a more rigorously regulated sedan.
I hope that this clears the confusion a bit and puts the issue of emissons in some perspective.

 

[noreaster]

One of the top stories today on NPR http://www.wamc.org was on "Bush Urges Retaining Patriot Act" from Buffalo, NY. I credit NPR for presenting information from BOTH sides of the issue. Note this news story may be archived later in the week.

My personal view is that hearing view points from both sides of an issue is important for Democracy. This facilitates people forming their own opinion.

 

[Bumpsis]

man! It took me a good long while to dig all this up - and you made me do it!!

I know, the concept that a 2 weigt units can create 16 weight units of something else is quite counter intuitive. The trick that chemistry of combustion does here is that you're grabbing a lot of oxygen from "outside" the reaction.
You'll notice that the number of carbons on both sides of the equation is equal: 2x 8 (2 C8 ) = 16 CO2, sixteen carbons in 2 molecules of Octane and 16 Carbons in that many molecules of CO2.
It's the oxygen that adds the weight and it's the oxygen that gets added for combustion to occur.

Now, maybe somebody can explain to me a concept that I never got: electromagnetic fields or why peolple vote ( as in political elections) against their own interests.

 

[Stephen]

Well, let's see here.

I have 3 kids, I'll throw them in the back of the car. No, wait! The government has seen fit to require them to be in child seats until they are 8! Hmmm. I can fit 2 in the back seat, and one in the front... oops, can't put one in the front. I guess I gotta get a new car.

Oh, wait, a Ford Explorer pumps out 134 tons of CO2 over 124,000 miles (http://www.idontcareaboutair.com/facts/emissions.shtml). I guess I'll have to buy another car, and we can just take two cars for the kids, my wife will drive one Ford Taurus (74 tons) and I'll drive the other.

So, our kids are safe, and we're plowing out 148 tons of CO2. Certainly much better than the 134 tons that an SUV will put out. Of course, we're not as safe as we would be if we were in an SUV ("SUVs weighing more than 5,000 pounds accounted for 92 deaths per million registered vehicles, whereas the smaller cars accounted for 249 deaths per million registered vehicles." http://www.uwire.com/content/topops031004002.html) but that's alright, we're doing this for the environment.

-Stephen

 

[John S]

“It's the oxygen that adds the weight and it's the oxygen that gets added for combustion to occur.”

Ah, my missing link. I forgot about the oxygen coming in. I should have remembered that since I replaced the air filter in my car just the other day.

Thanks, Bumpsis. Mystery ended.

 

[Stephen]

It also explains how a 2 bedroom apartment, upon moving, suddenly consumes a three bedroom house!

-Stephen

 

[jjmcgo]

The intelligence dispensed in this forum is what makes it so outstanding. This has been a great discussion with the chemistry lesson.

One of my elementary school teachers gave us a rhyme that's helped me figure weights when away from scales. A pint a pound, the world around." That's pretty close to the weight of a gallon of gas (8.3 lbs), according to Magic Mountain.

I wrote about a two-foot political rant that addressed a number of points on this thread, then realized I go into the woods and up the hills to get away from that crap. So I deleted it. Think what you want, I say to you!

 

[MtnMagic]

Feel free to add political rants on a subject that calls for it! That's what makes the world go around ...and this board. We too have that up North and you would have to travel as far away as the North Pole to avoid it. You just may find it there, too.
___________________
Welcome to the boards!

 

[skican]

Update on Iraq Efforts

(This is from a National Guardsman from Denison, Iowa - back on leave)

As I head off to Baghdad for the final weeks of my stay in Iraq, I
wanted to say thanks to all of you who did not believe the media. They
have done a very poor job of covering everything that has happened.

I am sorry that I have not been able to visit all of you during my two
week leave back home. And just so you can rest at night knowing
something is happening in Iraq that is noteworthy, I thought I would
pass this on to you.

This is the list of things that has happened in Iraq recently: (Please
share it with your friends and compare it to the version that your paper
is producing)!!

-Over 4.5 million people have clean drinking water for the first time
ever in Iraq.
-Over 400,000 kids have up to date immunizations.
-Over 1500 schools have been renovated and ridded of the weapons that
were stored there so education can occur.
-The port of Uhm Qasar was renovated so grain can be off loaded from
ships faster.
-School attendance is up 80% from levels before the war.
-The country had it's first 2 billion barrel export of oil in August.
-The country now receives 2 times the electrical power it did before the
war -100% of the hospitals are open and fully staffed compared to 35%
before the war.
-Elections are taking place in every major city and city councils are in
place.
-Sewer and water lines are installed in every major city.
-Over 60,000 police are patrolling the streets.
-Over 100,000 Iraqi civil defense police are securing the country.
-Over 80,000 Iraqi soldiers are patrolling the streets side by side with
US soldiers.
-Over 400,000 people have telephones for the first time ever.
-Students are taught field sanitation and hand washing techniques to
prevent the spread of germs.
-An interim constitution has been signed.
-Girls are allowed to attend school for the first time ever in Iraq.
-Text books that don't mention Saddam are in the schools for the first
time in 30 years.

Don't believe for one-second that these people do not want us there.

I have met many many people from Iraq that want us there and in a bad
way.
They say they will never see the freedoms we talk about but they hope
their children will.

We are doing a good job in Iraq and I challenge anyone, anywhere to
dispute me on these facts.

So If you happen to run into John Kerry, be sure to give him my email
address and send him to Denison, Iowa. This soldier will set him
straight.

If you are like me and very disgusted with how this period of rebuilding
has been portrayed, email this to a friend and let them know there are
good things happening.

Ray Reynolds, SFC
Iowa Army National Guard
234th Signal Battalion