Two small bits on cars and global warming
Posted by Yankee on April 5, 2006 - 9:53am
I'm sure I need not point out that it seems contrary to Citroen's goal implicit message (thanks, Donal) to offer the cashback savings that's no-so-coincidentally the same as London's congestion charge.
Now I'm not going to claim that climate change is a good thing, but I have claimed before that there are benefits to climate change. Who's to say that higher sea levels won't provide long-term benefits--despite the short term discomfort of relocating large populations?Heck, I'll go so far as to propose we use an "Indiscretionary Principle" and proceed on the current course and see what happens. We can always adapt later...right?
Of course, he caught a lot of flack for that in the comments, so yesterday, he tried to explain himself. He compared his inner human to his inner economist, coming up with a set of questions for both sides to answer. Here's one of them:
Assuming global warming is happening and it is caused by human behavior, should we do something about it?Internal Human: Of course, you moron. Global warming is bad and we caused it so we have to stop it, reverse it, do whatever we can to save the earth for future generations.
Internal Economist: Well, that depends. Simply because we have demonstrated that global warming is happening and that we caused it, that doesn't automatically imply a call to action. What are the consequences of action versus inaction? Is climate change necessarily the equivalent of climate degradation? Why is change always bad in this context? Shouldn't we compare the expected benefits and costs of action against the expected benefits and costs of inaction rather than simply declare: Change is bad..therefore we must prevent (or reverse) the change?
I am not posting this because I'm looking for some economist-bashing, so please make sure to play nice, everyone.
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Our priority should be sustainability, and that may mean going along with the change rather than trying to stop it.
You lost me. What is Citroen's goal other than to sell cars?
But yes, of course, you're right. Their goal is not to be environmentally conscious, it's to sell cars. Poor choice of words.
How can you even BEGIN to total up the costs of global warming? We have no idea. Just to take one example, what is the cost of having all land based glaciers melt, and to lose the resulting runoff which feeds lakes and rivers (and provides water to irrigate crops)?
To do this kind of "analysis", you have to know what the effects of global warming will be. We haven't a clue. Do we know just how much warming there will be? Do we know whether or not the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica will melt? Do we have any clue?
The notion that this kind of cost/benefit calculation can be made is simply laughable.
The second problem (unfortunately) is that the balance costs / gains would be different for the different players. Countries like USA and China will resist curbing CO2 emissions to the very end, while Nepal or UK will have it as top priority. The net effect would be similar to what we saw last year - the biggest CO2 level increase of all times.
Sure, we can try to guesstimate. But when I think about it, the ledger seems heavily weighted in the "climate change is bad" direction.
Our economy (not to mention the world's ecosystems) is adapted to the climate we've experienced up until now. Whatever change occurs, it is highly unlikely that we will be better adapted to live in the changed conditions.
It is analagous to an organism. I read an article yesterday (Peak Energy linked to it) about coral reefs dying en masse in the Carribean due to increasing water temperatures in the summer. The environment changed in a way the coral is not used to. They didn't flourish, they died. I see the same negative consequences coming from global warming.
Cities are built on rivers as they exist now, the breadbaskets of the world are based in areas which currently have good growing conditions, etc.
I think the "we should do a cost/benefit analysis" argument is just a reasonable sounding smokescreen to delay taking preventive measures.
You probably think so, because it would be a daunting task and the interested parties will have the opportunity to argue against the conclusions for years.
But the reality is that a cost/benefits analysis is the only way to make those with money and power take some decisions and justify the enormous amounts of money that needs to be spend to tackle the problem.
In this analysis though I insist that we at least try to include the risks and the actual destruction of our environment due to GW. I realise that we can hardly price the extinction of the corals, but this is what our society is for - money. If you do not put a price tag for it nobody will take it serious. It may not be cynical, but so is the world we live in... Believe it or not, I've actually read in an economic textbooks how presumably smart people are calculating the cost of the human life - by the net present value of the expected income of the person until he/she retires. So the graduated student is "expensive", a retiree is worthed a lot less and if you are unemployed you are obviously worthed nothing... blah
It may be cynical, but...
Let me try to recap my position.
Performing a meaningful cost/benefit analysis of climate change is impossible. There are too many unknowns, and any $ values you place on the costs and the benefits are just guesses. The ultimate balance sheet is therefore worthless as a guide for future action (or inaction).
The only reason for asking for such an analysis would be to get someone bogged down in the discussion, to argue over the $ amounts, etc., in order to gum up the works and prevent any action from being taken to mitigate the problem.
The qualitative information we do have all points toward serious problems coming down the pike. This is all we need. I don't agree with the notion that everything needs to be put into $ terms before things can be discussed, or decisions reached about what policies to pursue. I simply reject that hypothesis.
By its nature, economic theory is relatively well equipped to deal with incremental change, changes where parameters stay stable, functions that you can differentiate because they are continuous.
But in regard to discontinuities and parameters that suddenly become highly variable, traditional economic analysis breaks down. For example, could you do a cost-benefit analysis to decide whether or not it was of economic benefit for the U.S. to fight in World War II? I don't think so.
Similarly, when dealing with "lumpy" problems, you are forced to discard the sophisticated arsenal of economic "weapons of mass optimization" and fly by the seat of your pants.
Having said all that, I do believe in the effectiveness of market prices to help us find good responses to problems of increasingly costly oil and also effective approaches to various envirnomental problems. No, the market will not "save" us, but intelligent laws that use market forces as an alternative to government command/bureaucracies can make a huge difference to deal with what is one of the biggest challenges humans have faced since the onset of the last ice age.
Not to mention plankton, down by 30% in one study - http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/20020801plankton.html
Which, in concert with deforestation, may rob us of our breath - http://www.truehealth.org/oxydecl.html
How much is that worth?
How about this breath robbing:
http://www.safe2use.com/ca-ipm/01-02-05-report.htm
a particular engineered bacterium that had been approved by the USEPA for field testing.
These bacteria would therefore get into the root systems of all terrestrial plants and begin to produce alcohol. The engineered bacterium produces far beyond the required amount of alcohol per gram soil than required to kill any terrestrial plant.
Hopefully, one can't go out and obtain the bacteria.
No distilling needed to make vodka from switchgrass.
Vodka is defined as being at least 40% ethyl alcohol. I know of no way to obrain such a level w/o distillation.
placates the teeming masses by getting them too drunk to care about anything.
The problem is, untill you die, you can eventually sober up.
the court of St. James to buy one as he is refusing to pay the London congestion charge, much to the annoyance of Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London who with his customary understatement and diplomatic manner called him a"chiselling little crook"
Most people will probably pocket that money and not drive more than they would otherwise, though. The congestion charge - from what I know - is pretty effective.
Considering the lack of consensus on peak energy and its societal impact, it is absurd to initiate debates such as the one outlined above. Now, not bashing the economists here or in the world at large, but I am struck by the fact that only they would think of even considering this issue.
After reading his columns and listening to his opinions for many years, I am totally convinced that there is literally NO subject on heaven or earth for which he considers himself unqualified to pontificate upon.
Attention must not be paid.
Caveat reader is my opinion when it comes to George Will. He wrote a column of his on Peak Oil about a year ago. Not surprisingly, his message was not to worry, the market will solve everything.
The thing that really pisses me off about Will is his smarminess. In the peak oil article, he said that deepwater drilling in the GOM could yield 25 billion barrels of oil. Now, that sounds like a lot, until you realize that it is only about 10 months worth of global consumption. But Will didn't put it in context.
In the more recent global warming article, he brings up the fact that in the 70's scientists were warning about global cooling, implying that climatologists can be trusted about as much as a psychic when it comes to predicitions. The reader is left completely ignorant of the fact that the mechanisms for the initial cooling (aerosols), and now the warming (greenhouse gases) are well understood, and that there is virtually complete consensus among the scientific community.
Quote:
Science magazine (Dec. 10, 1976) warned of "extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation."
Science Digest (February 1973) reported that "the world's climatologists are agreed" that we must "prepare for the next ice age."
The Christian Science Monitor ("Warning: Earth's Climate is Changing Faster Than Even Experts Expect," Aug. 27, 1974) reported that glaciers "have begun to advance," "growing seasons in England and Scandinavia are getting shorter" and "the North Atlantic is cooling down about as fast as an ocean can cool."
Newsweek agreed ("The Cooling World," April 28, 1975) that meteorologists "are almost unanimous" that catastrophic famines might result from the global cooling that the
New York Times (Sept. 14, 1975) said "may mark the return to another ice age."
The Times (May 21, 1975) also said "a major cooling of the climate is widely considered inevitable" now that it is "well established" that the Northern Hemisphere's climate "has been getting cooler since about 1950."
End quote
So, in the 1970s the national media assured us that there was agreement among scientists that the earth was cooling, glaciers were advancing, and that we were headed for another ice age.
Now, just 30 yrs later, the national media assures us that scientists believe that the earth is warming, glaciers are melting and we are headed for a catastrophic warming period.
How can there possibly be scepticism ?
But of course THIS time the scientists really believe it. Really. Not like last time, when the national media tried to spin a catastrophe that really wasn't. That could never happen now.
Now while I am not necessarily saying that this applies to all climate change science, it does make you think about taking all of these predictions with a few grains of salt.
Look, the media reported on global cooling in the '70's. And they were partly right - the world was cooling at the time, even though warnings of a new ice age were not correct. I don't know how well the cooling was understood at the time.
You always have to look critically at any major claim, such as climate change. Scientists are wrong all the time. Remember cold fusion? And when the media reports on the scientific community, the waters can get muddied even further. In my experience, the media usually leaves off the caveats usually provided by scientists.
The point, though, is that scientists are constantly testing their theories and hypotheses against data collected in the real world. Which means our understanding is improving all the time. And that is especially true of our understanding of the climate, and how humans are impacting climate.
There is always room for skepticism. But this "last time the media said" argument is disingenuous - it ignores our improving understanding of the situation.
Reminds me of a Great (by way of being terrible) subway ad series that ABC had going, some 5-6 years ago in NY. The line was,
"Don't just sit there. Well, ok... just sit there! -ABC"
That, or the classic John Klies in Life of Brian ..
Judith- "Something is ACTUALLY HAPPENING, Reg!"
Reg- "Right! This calls for immediate discussion!"
"They Spell it Vinci, and pronounce it 'Vinchy'. Them foreigners could always spell better than they could pronounce." -Mark Twain
.. and exactly WHY does it sound so much better to say 'The engine restarts in under 400milliseconds'.. than 'in under half a second?'(ie 500milliseconds). No, you don't have to tell me. I know why. I'd like to see a form of regenerative braking that takes the energy of stopping and gives you a push when the light is green again. Could be pneumatic, springs, or HubMotors with Charging Capacitors..
And this one might be appropriate for our Doomer
converstaions!
Sounded like a doomer line, to me..
"Romanii veni DomUM" (I'm SURE the spelling is off on that one.. I, for one, have no idea how to conjugate latin)
I suppose it's pretty cheap to implement this though, so why not.
The internal engine frictional losses are more or less directly proportional to engine displacement. That is one of the reasons why the auto industry has been steadily moving toward smaller engines with higher output per unit of displacement. And that is also why large-displacement engines, such as a late 1960s Chrysler 440 cubic inch V8 for example, get such poor city gas mileage ...just the work needed to keep the thing idling comsumes a large amount of gas. Such engines don't get such great mileage on the highway, either, but the difference in mileage between them and modern high-performance engines isn't as great on the highway as with city driving.
So, if you're driving something like a 1970 Dodge Charger with a 440 engine, auto transmission, and high gear-ratio rear axle, and you do a lot of city driving, don't expect to get out of single digit gas mileage. (But that doesn't matter, if the car is in fine condition it is worth plenty.) The brief Muscle Car era was a lot of fun while it lasted, but it sure came to a screeching halt during the 1973 Oil Embargo.
Today's high-performance cars are SO much better in every respect, but they just don't have that certain crude and brutal feel as some of the old Detroit Iron.
This is all nonesensical nostalgia, because before too long we will all be driving variants of the Toyota Prius. And I suppose that's the way it should be.
The reason a 1960's v-8 burns sooo much fuel is because it has little to no real-time tuning. Yea a carb... you can kinda control how much fuel is going into the engine. (I am reminded of a year that gm's 305ci made a whopping 127hp).
Overnight the auto industry discovered computers. Suddenly you didn't need 305ci to make 127hp, you could do it with 200, or by today about 100. And cutting that much cast iron out of the engine decreased the weight of the vehicle, and made it more fun to drive. I haven't much time, but in sum:
Friction in an engine is most affected by the type of lubricant used.
6.0 Liter cars are comming back (Camaro, Charger, Challenger, Mustang...) and thanks to ECM's getting near 30mpg on the highway. (Go look up what cylinder deactivation is)
I can't wait until we get the final peice of the puzzel and computerize the valvetrain...
I still maintain that, all things being equal, frictional losses are more or less directly proportional to displacement, within the bounds of a certain type of engine configuration. If, say, you scale up a 200 ci engine to a 400 ci engine, with all the key dimensions proportioned accordingly, the 400 ci engine will have roughly twice the frictional losses as the 200 ci engine. Roughly, I say.... not exactly. Sure different configurations of engines will have different frictional losses, but I'm only speaking in general.
And the type of lubrication will affect the various engines in more or less the same manner. So that is a wash.
And finally, I seriously question the claimed EPA highway mileage for some of these big 6.0 liter engines. Hell, I don't even get anywhere near 30 mpg on the highway with my 2.2 liter Subaru Legacy wagon. So why should a 6.0 in a car significantly heavier? Gas mileage is like fishing and sex: everybody lies about it.
Clearly, the trend will continue: smaller displacement, higher output engines. With more and more real time control of the vital engine functions.
I have no doubt that idle losses are noticeable - as I said it is fuel used not moving the car. I'm just not sure that focusing on that first would make sense. For instance, I doubt it would even be noticeable on my commute (I'm not at idle much). OTOH, it's probably not a big deal to do, so go for it.
total hooey.
You are more or less right, but not completely.
Yes, it is correct that even if the friction forces related to the movement of the piston remain the same, that force moves over a longer distance (the increased stroke), and hence more work is required.
But the force does not quite remain the same. When you increase the stroke length (picture lengthening the pedal crank on a bicycle), the force from the piston exerts more leverage on the crankshaft and hence generates more torque. The increase is not linear, but is related to some sine function having to do with the actual piston rod/crank geometry. In hot rod parlance, that is why a 'stroker' engine generates more torque: it uses a crank with a longer throw.
I will reiterate that, in general, if you have two engines with the same output, the one with the larger displacement will have greater fuel consumption due to having larger frictional losses (not to mention larger water pump, oil pump, fan, etc, etc).
- Citroen C1 is even smaller and more fuel effecient then the C2 is.
- Internal Human: Of course, you moron. Global warming is bad. Internal Economist: Of course, you moron. Global warming is bad. Half the worlds population lives near the sea. Historically river delta's have the most fertile lands and are the most productive. Most people live there.
In other words, GW in economic terms is probably more devestating then in human terms."It's the wave of the future."
Being an economist I tend to err on the side wanting to know the costs and benefits. Yet I know the will have large confidence intervals (plus or minus billions?). I know that there is a power and a limitation to economic reasoniong. We need to use this analysis coupled with equity both inter-generational (sustainablility) and intra-generational equity (north-south) as well as bit of humility to try to tease out an reponse path.
I don't think economists answer the question but we can help focus the debate.
I'm not an economist. I was required to take Econ 101 when I was working on my BS in chemistry and more econ when I was working on my MBA.
Here's my problem: You assume that there needs to be, or, perhaps, should be or could be, a discussion about this topic and that economists can help define the debate.
How about that this is a crock of stuff that is absurd on its face value? It is analogous to the idiot economists who posit that peak energy is no problem because the market will come up with alternatives.
A long time ago I managed a process developlment group of 60 people in polymers and resins. I was a wild child who loved pushing the envelope of reaction times. But, I put my credibility on the line each time. I didn't ask my staff to pull off my crazy ideas of cutting a 30 hour reaction to 7 1/2 hours. I'd put on my hard hat and go out and do it. Failure would have cost me my job.
Now, how many economists lose their jobs when they blow it? I'll answer rhetorically, none that I'm aware of. There is always some extenuating circumstance that couldn't have been foreseen. In a debate that shouldn't happen in the first place, economists are the last group that should be involved.
http://www.thenewyorkerstore.com/assets/1/52630_m.gif
http://www.zapworld.com/cars/xebra.asp
I like the zebra paint job, I've wanted a car painted like that since watching Daktari, but the other colors look awfully retro.
Twike has starting listing prices in dollars, around $15K, instead of just euros:
http://www.twike.us/
"There's a significant body of scientific evidence indicating that last year's record insured loss from natural catastrophes was not a random occurrence," said the general manager of insurance giant Swiss Re in a 1995 internal report. "Failure to act would leave the industry and its policyholders vulnerable to truly disastrous consequences." Munich Re, another of the world's largest reinsurers, takes a similar stand, recently stating that "the threatened climate changes demand urgent and drastic measures."
from:
http://www.smartcommunities.ncat.org/articles/warming_di.shtml
The problem is not so much the slow planetary warming of a few degrees. In the 100 year timescale economics is blind. But an exponential increase in the number of expensive natural disasters is a serious economic problem. I can't find the Science articles showing the increase in strength and power of weather. These were written pre US hurricanes, I think in 2003-2004.
But enough about coolness and its being able to take the place of a wagon or minivan. The two major things the Prius does is regenerative braking, and shutting the engine off when not needed. The old shut off the engine when sitting still trick goes back to WWII gas rationing I believe, and regenerative braking is an idea that's been around a long time too - it's just that toyota's actually done it.
Its two minor tricks are all that fancy computer stuff and engine etc management, and it has really clean aerodynamics. Driving with your window down and your elbow hanging out the open window will cost you a minimum of 10 MPG!
For all its fancyness this stuff isn't rocket science. Small thrifty hatchbacks have been done before. So has walking, biking, and I saw two guys on rollerblades today, those are cool too. I'd love to be able to do with so little that when I'd talk about my "wheels" they'd be a bike or 'blades.
have to chuckle when we read discussions
about mileage and getting it up to 30mpg.
My Daihatsu 1300cc manual 5 speed does
around 55mpg. And in NZ we pay $1.60 a
litre (US$4.40 a gallon). Of course our
wage level is about half that of the US,
so we also find the whingeing about
fuel prices rather amusing too.
But what I really wanted to say was the
cost-benefit analysis for global warming
must commence with virtually a total
wipeout of the US economy -complete
destruction of pretty well every
building that is not hurricane or
tornado proof, total annihilation of all
farm production etc. as its base point,
since such a prospect is not just possible,
but is is more or less inevitable under
an abrupt climate change scenario that
results in a 5 degree C or 8 degrees C
rise in average temperatures. Even a
3 degree C rise in average temperature
(and we are well on the way to that)
will probably render much of the US
uninhabitable.
That economists are prepared to risk such
outcomes for the sake of maintaining the
the status quo is simply ludicrous.
The central character represents the USA.
Tell me more.
But I have seen that marvelous
parody of economic gurus, Peter
Sellers in 'Being There'. Such
is the blind faith in the economic
system, walking on water becomes
a reality in the final scene.
Kevin