Doing my part for energy conservation (merged environmental threads)

[Evil_inc]

So both of these factors need to be lowerd at a controlled rate equally to lower polution, keep the jet stream in place, and prevent global warming. Does anyone know of any other affects and/or causes of global warming/ solar dimming? And please be able to support your information with atleast some fact.

[Smoken Joe]

I hope not to offend anyone but the research supporting global warming is pisss poor. One decent volcanic eruption dwarfs the entire output of the industral age. Anyone that calles themselves a scientest and gets on a TV show professing knowledge needs to go back to scienticfic method 101 and/or Ethics 101 and hope like h#ll they pass because it is almost sure that they are failing right now on one of the two. The people doing good reasearch are not going to be on the TV because their answers are not going to be very exciting.

 

 

Not that I am not 100% for saving energy but really the simple things can do more right now untill some developments are made. One good example the dual eletric/power car by Honda is less fule effecent than there small gas only car in independant tests. Simply driving well made gas cars is more helpfull in this case. I think the Toyota fares better real world.

 

Simply reducing the number of land boats suv's and road only trucks could save a ton of gas not new tecnology needed. I know people with ford F350 cruw cab, towing package(lower geas less milage) and only use it to go to work and to the store it has never ben off road never pulled anything never hauled anything in the bed and probibily never will untill he sells it. What a waste. There are tons of these conspiuous gas consumption things around too all we would need to do is cut these in half or more and there would be a massive fule savings and gas prices could go down.

 

Hey if you have a real need for this I am not knocking you I would love to have that truck minus the low gearing so I could haul a bigger trailer around.

[UncleDavid218]

Dads F-550 Turbo Diesel = 5 miles a gallon fully loaded (he uses it to haul cars)

[Evil_inc]

I do agree that many people do buy excessively large and inefficent cars/trucks such as the hummers for no point at all except to impress others at the pump. It makes no sense to buy a veichle capable of alot more that it will ever do sherely for the fun of it. If you do work for a construction company or have another reason for having a heavy-duty truck that is understandable.

 

New technology takes a while to become effictive because of a push to have results faster than necessary to help catalize business. The gas/electric cars will someday become cheap and efficent, which would effectively remove gas guzzlers from the market with out severly impacting the oil industry. But intil then we must find new ways to conserve energy.

[Smoken Joe]

Note there is actualy a savings for excessivly large trucks or was they are expemt from the gas guzzler laws so you they ended up being cheaper than just large cars. Blame congress might send them a letter if you really want to do something done to stop gas guzzlers or to save energy it would be so nice to have cheaper gass. I will say a hand written note my old us mail spelling errors and all is 1000 times more effective than an email. No new tecnology needed! Huge amounts could be saved.

 

http://www.house.gov/writerep/

 

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_info...enators_cfm.cfm

[red930]

Note there is actualy a savings for excessivly large trucks or was they are expemt from the gas guzzler laws so you they ended up being cheaper than just large cars. Blame congress might send them a letter if you really want to do something done to stop gas guzzlers or to save energy it would be so nice to have cheaper gass. I will say a hand written note my old us mail spelling errors and all is 1000 times more effective than an email. No new tecnology needed! Huge amounts could be saved.

 

http://www.house.gov/writerep/

 

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_info...enators_cfm.cfm

 

I believe that really only applied to the biggest of vehicles - heavy duty series pickups (F250, F350) and the Excursion (not picking on Ford, just an example). Not that there weren't any people that didn't need them, but the vast majority of the heavy pickups anyways are heavily used as well, and taxing people that require the use of them isn't going to help anything.

[Evil_inc]

Great idea, I was going to work toward that eventualy. It is in my opinion that we must first consider the affects that reclassifing gas guzzlers would have on the economy, industries, and international relations because it would reduce our need for fuel by some.

[Evil_inc]

I believe that really only applied to the biggest of vehicles - heavy duty series pickups (F250, F350) and the Excursion (not picking on Ford, just an example). Not that there weren't any people that didn't need them, but the vast majority of the heavy pickups anyways are heavily used as well, and taxing people that require the use of them isn't going to help anything.

 

Could you look into that more and possibly find a list of all trucks that are classified in that way? It would help support this.

[red930]

Great idea, I was going to work toward that eventualy. It is in my opinion that we must first consider the affects that reclassifing gas guzzlers would have on the economy, industries, and international relations because it would reduce our need for fuel by some.

 

Personal opinion here -

 

There is no reason to begin taxing new gas guzzlers - there are FAR too many old ones that it wouldn't make a difference anyways. Plus many "gas guzzlers" are merely older cars where some of us can't afford to buy a new one. My van averages around 13 miles to the gallon - partly due to my driving style but also just because the damn thing is old.

 

It wouldn't be fair to tax old vehicles with, say, an engine larger than 5.0 liters either because again many of those are large trucks that see HEAVY use - probably more than new big trucks.

 

Taxing new 'gas guzzlers' would be ineffective since it wouldn't even help the environment due to all the other cars on the road, and people that need those vehicles would be forced to pay extra for it.

 

Could you look into that more and possibly find a list of all trucks that are classified in that way? It would help support this.

 

I'll see what I can find, but I remember reading back when the Excursion first became available that it was exempt from Fords average gas use - you know how each companies products must average 'x' miles per gallon overall? Well apparently it was so heavy, or its gross payload was great enough, that it was classified as a heavy truck instead of personal truck (or whatever term they use), so it didn't hurt Fords score and they weren't fined.

[Evil_inc]

This is where a system could be put in place to sort the essiencial veicals (such as those used for heavy moving and those that are just old) from the unessiencal (such as those that are just driven to work, to the store, and just around in the city). This can be come a very fine line and would be difficult to do.

[Evil_inc]

I am just going to throw in this link to provide factual evidence that there is a corilation between Co2 levels and temperature

http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/programs...ok-ice-core.jpg

[red930]

The Northern Hemisphere’s climate during the past 1,000 years may have been much more variable than suggested by recent analyses of tree-rings, ice cores, and other indirect sources of data on past temperatures. A new study suggests that the statistical method used in previous reconstructions of past climate is flawed, because it underestimates—perhaps by a factor of two or more—fluctuations in temperature that occurred over decades or centuries.

 

Hans von Storch of the GKSS Research Center (Geesthacht, Germany) and colleagues tested the ability of this statistical method to reproduce known temperature changes in the “virtual world” of a climate model. The researchers first used the model to produce a simulated temperature record for the past 1,000 years. They then generated virtual data for tree rings, ice cores, and other indirect data sources by adding statistical noise to the model’s simulated temperatures, mimicking the noise inherent in real-world data (such as the influence of changes in moisture and pest outbreaks on the width of tree rings). The team then applied the statistical method used in previous analyses to see how accurately it could reproduce the model’s simulated temperature record from the virtual tree ring and ice core data. They found good agreement for the past 100 years or so, but large disparities over longer timescales.

 

The new findings raise the possibility that the current warming trend may not be as unusual or unprecedented as previously thought, and that the climate’s natural variability may be greater than most recent studies have assumed. However, the authors emphasize that their results do not challenge conclusions that rising concentrations of greenhouse gases have contributed to the warming of the 20th century.

 

The study was published in the 30 September 2004 issue of ScienceExpress.

 

Source

 

If you've got the time, read up on this. There's plenty information on global warming. You just gotta look for it. I know, I know, it's really long. But it's a good read, if you want to know what we're in for.