 Henry Ford’s Contribution to Global Warming |
California to reduce carbon emissions by banning black cars? — It’s harder to make black cars ever look clean too. My superstitious mother used to think black cars were evil, apparently the Air Resources Board agrees!
In yet another case of Regulators Gone Wild, California legislation may soon restrict the color options for your next car. The specific colors that are currently on the chopping block are all dark hues, with the worst offender seemingly the most innocuous color you could think of: black. What resentment could California possibly harbor against black cars, you ask? Apparently, the Air Resources Board figures that the climate control systems of dark colored cars need to work harder than their lighter siblings, especially after sitting in the sun for a few hours. Anyone living in a hot, sunny climate will tell you that this assumption is accurate. Similar legislation already exists for buildings and has proven successful at reducing the energy consumption of skyscrapers.
So, what’s the problem? Paint suppliers have reportedly been testing their pigments and processes to see if it’s possible to meet CARB’s proposed mandate of 20 percent solar reflectivity by 2016 with a phase-in period starting in 2012, and it’s not looking good. Apparently, when the proper pigments and chemicals are added to black paint, the resulting color is currently being referred to as “mud-puddle brown.” That doesn’t sound very attractive, now does it? Windshields, backlights and sunroofs are also slated to get reflective coatings starting in 2012.
Found by Guilherme Cherman.
>First they ban black cars.
Then they ban black people.
It’s the slippery slope. I say “Nay”!
It’s the other way around. Liberal areas have seen their black populations declining for awhile now. Mainly because they make it too expensive for poor people to live there.
Government is unnecessarily oppressive when “encouragement” would do.
Don’t BAN black cars–just tax them more like a carbon cap and trade =or= allow them to be driven at night or in the winter time.
Society/environment is protected and individuals still have their freedom with accompanying responsibility.
Everybody wins. Many more issues could be approached this way.
why dont they just post some stats..
BLACK cars get HOT.
you have to use more air conditioning in them to keep COOL, which uses MORE power from the car, and wastes FUEL.
To all those who claim this to be a huge infraction of their personal freedom, we should clear up a few things. Please answer these three questions:
1) Do you vote republican?
2) Do you vote republican?
3) Do you vote republican?
If you answered yes to any of these three questions, you cannot make any claim to have personal freedom anywhere on your top ten list of important things in life.
If you answered no to all of these, then we can continue this conversation in a very nice civil manner.
For those who answered no, I love personal freedom. I just question whether I would lose more personal freedom by having to choose from among light colored cars or from having lower Manhattan wash away, my food supply interrupted, and many of the beautiful places to which I would love to travel become far less beautiful.
For those of us who have traveled to a lot of the world in search of wildlife, global warming is already a very real and observable fact. Glaciers are all in retreat. Sea ice is melting earlier. Birds who can are expanding their ranges farther from the equator. Birds and other animals who live either at high altitude or near the extreme edge of a continent, such as the Canadian far north, Tierra del Fuego, The cape in South Africa, etc. are all in decline. Polar bears are drowning. Literally everywhere I go, I see evidence of climate change.
So, this is very real to me. I am willing to give up my freedom to drive an SUV (which would be a nice vehicle for getting down to lake shores with my canoe), my freedom to choose a black car over a paler color, and even my right to a long hot shower and a home heated to T-shirt temps in winter.
It’s far better than ignoring the science and hoping all of our problems will just magically go away.
Now, who’s up for population reduction as the next serious topic?
#35–Scot===”Now, who’s up for population reduction as the next serious topic?” /// I call shenanigans. You can’t have a serious discussion about something that is not going to happen. Maybe about why it “ought” to happen, but since it ain’t going to happen, how serious can it be?
I just wish I had this amount of free time at my job that these people have to come up with the idea of the ban of black cars.
To all those saying how much of a violation of their freedoms this is, I just wonder what exactly you do when your local government tells you to cut back on your water usage during droughts?
Personally, I’ve always been suspicious of all those black mountains on the North American continent. Not sure about painting them white, or, how much paint it would take. Problem largely goes away in winter, so thats how global warming stops!
Doesn’t snow in southern Africa thanks to the population physical characteristics, or India (except in the largely uninhabited mountains), highly populated area all warm, South pole warm. Polar bear land warm (white bears, see!. Bloody obvious when you think about it, must be a Nobel prize in there somewhere? Could call it the Gore syndrome after the stuff which exits from the back end of male cows.
A whole new area of thinking
#11. I’m familiar with the deliberate effort for many republicans to refer to themselves as something other than Republican. I mean, hey, that’s why the party is eating each other like live lobsters in a small tank.
Still, if it quacks like a duck..
My point is you go out of your way to make a big fuss about the hairball notion of restricting the color black in cars. I’m past that ridiculous notion. What amuses me is the extent people like you go in jumping up and down on this, yet dismiss the 25 other really serious issues the GOP imposes on rights.
And yes, I have lots of anger to spread around – but it’s directed at the important things like civil rights. You should be angry too – but not bring it out for stupid shit like this.
>Literally everywhere I go, I see evidence of climate change.
None of which has anything to do with black cars. It is obvious that the agenda is one of restricting freedoms rather than helping the environment.
35, 36: In a very sick and twisted sort of way, why stop with cars if color is THAT important to stopping man-made global warming?
Heck, we can aggressively profile blacks in America to have less children (aside from the outrage due to a lack of political correctness)for the same reason that their skin color is probably aiding in man-made global warming. We can justify it based off the science of color and the greater concern of man-made global warming.
Heck we can use a lot of those Chinese-made condoms for the Africans who will hopefully not die of AIDS (but because you can never tell with the QA of Chinese-made goods, those same condoms may break and AIDS will count more victims). Where do you want to draw the line on color?
And before you liberals get your panties in a bunch, let me emphasize “sick and twisted sort of way”. I’m not suggesting we actually go through with the ideas.
40, In your eyes, politics is strictly reduced down to two parties. That’s your prerogative.
As for ridiculous notions, there are those on the left who think American consumption of beef should be reduced because it’s causing global warming as well. http://tinyurl.com/bksltv
With all this fanaticism with “man-made global warming” and a desire to socialize health-care, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Obama administration raises taxes on those of us who love eating dead animal flesh (myself included) because of the double-whammy the liberals will say beef causes to our environment and to our health. And as insensitive as this may sound if it comes down to that, I’ll just nicely give the finger as I chow down on some Red Robins, Culvers, or Wendy’s.
All these restrictions are required to prevent a global calamity. Yet when people suggest nuclear power as a solution, those same people grow silent or object.
To get the 80% reduction in emissions by 2050, you have to build one nuclear power plant every other day. Wind can generate 10% of that, and solar about the same.
# 43 MikeN said, “Yet when people suggest nuclear power as a solution, those same people grow silent or object.”
That’s because it has nothing to do with averting “global warming”…
Founder of Green Peace promoting nuclear energy: http://tinyurl.com/qa6rn
#45 Yes, he left Green Peace because the enviro movement was taken over by those with political agendas and dropped science as its means of deciding what needed to be done.
The founder of GreenPeace says: “And although I don’t want to underestimate the very real dangers of nuclear technology – – – ” and then thats exactly what he does.
Nukes won WW2 and should have ended with that war.
Beyond “retro” to think Nukes are anything but a necessary evil not understood at the time.
The FUTURE is renewable====not poison.
Stoopid Hoomans.
The year 2050 review of the nuclear accident that took out New York City:
Yes, it was a great way to create economic chaos and amass power & wealth. The 1st phase was to create hysterical fear of power shortages that only nuclear energy could solve. Many with low IQ fell for that part. The same ones fell in as “bots” to carry forward with the political agenda-the familiar suspects: rogue capitalists, fradulent politicians, religious end-times nut bags.
Stoopid Hooman – – a stretch goal and character challenge for Paddy-Zero and his ilk.
49, Toshiba wants to market micro-nuclear reactors to power city blocks and apartment complexes. 🙂 http://tinyurl.com/2mg9n5
50, So what’s your take on the next realistically viable alternative if not nuclear? Just curious to know.
#51–Guyver==aren’t you the engineer? I’m just a reader of pop culture and a few on line magazines.
Near future looks like photo-voltaics to me. A few more % of efficiency and a distributed power production national grid will be well on its way.
As that has been around awhile, I do hope some kind of bio-fuel that can work in large industrial tanks off of waste material can be found but the productivity of sunshine based bacteria is phenomenal.
My main recognition is that there won’t be one or two major solutions (like Nuke or Coal conversion) but rather a combo of 5-6 smaller renewable distributed energy and co-generation solutions.
These all seem to be on a back burner for Obama. Too bad as “energy” does fuel everything else and would be a technological and job boone as well.
Just stop trying to apply “old and discredited” applications = whether they be political, tax, or energy or anything else. The future is there for a reason.
#36 – bobbo,
#35–Scot===”Now, who’s up for population reduction as the next serious topic?” /// I call shenanigans. You can’t have a serious discussion about something that is not going to happen. Maybe about why it “ought” to happen, but since it ain’t going to happen, how serious can it be?
Shenanigans, yes. However, it is a topic for serious discussion, albeit probably not on this thread. It is going to happen. The only question is whether it will be voluntary. To that, you are probably correct.
#43 – MikeN,
All these restrictions are required to prevent a global calamity. Yet when people suggest nuclear power as a solution, those same people grow silent or object.
To get the 80% reduction in emissions by 2050, you have to build one nuclear power plant every other day. Wind can generate 10% of that, and solar about the same.
Actually, a lot of environmentalists are jumping on the nuke bandwagon. The problem is that it will create more problems than it solves. We need about 25 times the number of nuclear power plants that we currently have, if we are to do this with nukes. Most of those will be in developing countries.
Are you going to defend Iran’s right to nuclear power? What about nuclear weapons as a direct result?
Then ask yourself that question for every other nation in the world. How many do you want to have nuclear arms?
Then ask how you will defend the nuclear power plants from terrorist attack. They are prime targets.
And, when you finally get done with urgent questions about Armageddon, you can get on to the more mundane topics of:
* Where to store the waste.
* How to protect the waste from attack.
* What to do with the depleted uranium that we currently don’t even think of as waste, despite its half life of hundreds of millions of years.
* Health of the miners.
* Safety of the plants in developing nations who may have standards somewhat less high than say … Chernobyl.
When you get through honestly answering any of those questions, let me know. I think you’ll find that you’re lying to yourself. You probably haven’t even admitted to yourself that not one single gram of nuclear waste has ever been properly disposed of.
Here’s a more detailed write-up of my opinion on the subject, complete with numerous links to make my points.
http://tinyurl.com/2ls68u
#53–Scott==hoomans aren’t stoopid. The housing sub-prime fraud reveals that nothing, not housing, not the human population of earth, can always keep inflating without a downturn.
Constant growth is always a ponzi scheme, always going to falter.
So, the even more interesting question is actually when the population does crash, will it stay at reduced numbers or will that just be a new base from which even bigger numbers evolve?
Our relative positions have hardened. Without any firm basis to do so, I say the carrying capacity of earth is far higher than you think==but I don’t claim to be misanthropic, just pragmatic.
#51 – Guyver,
… what’s your take on the next realistically viable alternative if not nuclear? Just curious to know.
I’d like to field that one too, even though not directed at me.
Enough solar energy hits the earth in one hour to power the entire earth for a year.
http://tinyurl.com/cnqmyq
We just might be able to make some practical use of that.
On point is this new article:
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/03/coaltoliquids.html
What becomes interesting is how such “value judgments” should be resolved.
Pro’s and con’s to everything. What if “coal to liquid” was cheap and could be put on line in 3 years making us totally energy independent for the next 50 years – BUT – the oceans would turn acidic killing all the fish and global warming would rapidly advance?
Suppose the alternative is green energy with tax subsidies for the next 20 years before it became competitive with coal?
Whats the “best way” for that kind of decision to be reached: plebiscite or a leader with vision?
#51 – No one here will be able to answer that one as there isn’t currently an option that is as cost effective. Hence, Omama’s “energy plan” is a farce.
http://iht.com/articles/2009/03/27/healthscience/dyson.php
#58 – Paddy-trOll,
#51 – No one here will be able to answer that one …
Moran! Try reading the replies before you type yours. There were already two before you typed that. Perhaps you should walk out into the sunlight one day; I bet you really do turn to stone.
And, by the way, nuclear power is the most expensive power on the planet. The only reason the power companies like it is because many governments will pay for the power plants and then just give them to the power company. But, at around $5-10B per power plant and 10 years to come online, this is not the cost effective measure you seek. Nor is it possible to solve global warming in the necessary time frame through the use of nuclear power. We simply don’t have the time or money to build 25 times the current number of power plants.
Oh, and of course, you couldn’t possibly have actual answers to any of the issues I listed regarding nuclear power, could you?
I thought not. That’s why despite seeing actual answers, you assert that I have none and then fail to answer my questions.
Troll!
You’ve proven my point Scott. You talk of all these problems with nuclear power, but the alternative is
‘having lower Manhattan wash away, my food supply interrupted, and many of the beautiful places to which I would love to travel become far less beautiful.
fact. Glaciers are all in retreat. Sea ice is melting earlier. Birds who can are expanding their ranges farther from the equator. Birds etc. are all in decline. Polar bears are drowning. Literally everywhere I go, I see evidence of climate change.’
Given all this and more, people should be eager to jump at nuclear power. Instead we get all sorts of minor problems thrown in. I say minor, because all of those problems already exist. A terrorist attack could also happen at an existing plant, so it is meaningless to talk about the prospect of an attack if there are more plants.
Nuclear power generates about 20% of US power, 80% in France, 30% in the EU, and 30% in JAPAN of all places. One would think if there was a major safety issue, the Japanese would be the most sensitive.
It just occurred to me reading these posts, inspired by Mr. Scott’s comment in #58, that no matter how much factual information is put out there, the trolls will continue to regurgitate more of the same old bullshit with every new thread.
You just can’t fix stooopid.
* Where to store the waste.
Where is it being stored now, and why won’t that solution scale by a factor of 7?
* How to protect the waste from attack.
How is it being protected now, and why won’t that scale by a factor of 7?
* What to do with the depleted uranium that we currently don’t even think of as waste, despite its half life of hundreds of millions of years.
* Health of the miners.
There are health problems for people in lots of fields, for example coal mining. Something that needs to be dealt with, but not a serious problem when compared to the health of the planet. A 7-fold increase in mining doesn’t strike me as too much of a problem.
* Safety of the plants in developing nations who may have standards somewhat less high than say … Chernobyl.
Chernobyl uses a different design, and newer designs are much safer. Also, countries that are increasing their electricity use to the point of spending tens of billions on nuclear power plants, are presumably developing in other ways, and can manage things safely.
The IAEA will be there to help as well.
What evidence is there that a 7fold increase will not work with regards to plant safety?