OT: Why General Motors is doomed

[J. Clarke]

When gasoline was 25 cents a gallon they said that about 2 dollars a gallon.

People will find ways to pay for what they want.

[J. Clarke]

So it is your belief that there is enough oil to last forever if only we would "economize"?

The only way that there will be oil available for your descendants, say,

500,000 years from now will be if we stop using it altogether.

Well, if you think that there is a technology that will improve things you are welcome to bring it to market and see if the body politic agrees with your assessment.

Not this crap again.

[J. Clarke]

In other words you haven't a clue.

[Leon]

Actually when gasoline was 25 cents a gallon no one dreamed gas prices would ever raise to as much as 50 cents per gallon. But like you said, we all adjust.

[Leon]

A hint here, don't go looking for a deal, get the dealer cost and then go negotiate. Let them know that you have dealer invoice prices.

[Bob G.]

. The little

=========== Mike: Sorry Mike... BUT the above comment is just plain wrong...

I can not think of a single vehicle (sports car or not) made in the

50's that could "out handle" ANY modern vehicle..

I had my fair share of 50's sport cars...along with 60's and

70's and currently have five 60 and 70 era sports cars in my garage along with a 2 years old sports car...

Fact is my 2000 Pickup truck will "out handle" any of the older sports cars.. Modern tires and suspension systems are just light years ahead of the technology availabe 40-50 years ago...

As for Horsepower... well I do own cars with more then 300 HP but honestly I have not needed any more then that in at least the last day or too...

Bob G.

[barry]

Funny, that's just what I'd have asked of you, but then I'd not expect lucid response.

J

[barry]

Whooooooah there! We need more light than heat here, and should really open minds/close mouths a bit.

Think about the above mathematical nonsense. "square of the distance"? That's bs.

Fact is, long-distance electrical power transmission can be very close to 100% efficient.

J

[gfretwell]

"dealer Invoice" really doesn't mean much more than the sticker price. There are other incentives, rebates and bonus money kicked back to the dealer that does not show up on the invoice price. The bottom line is still going to be what they will actually let you out the door with. I agree it is nice to know what the internet says the vehicle should cost but that is not necessarily going to be the best you can do. I found out there was an extra $1000 dealer bonus out there (Ford trucks) that does not show up on the "invoice" price. Getting the dealer to actually take this out of his pocket and puit it in yours may be hard to do.

[gfretwell]

That was my thinking too. I think my father in law's Cadillac STS Northstar would kick my 69 Corvette's ass ... but I wouldn't tell him that ;-)

[gfretwell]

I already acknowleged my brain fart on the "square of the distance" but now you are going the other way. When did we start using supercondducting HV lines. Last time I looked they were still an aluminum/steel alloy which has plenty of "R". So much, in fact, that they have to use sag calculations for the amount of current they pump through them so they don't drag on the ground from thermal expansion. The average HV power line could easily fry an egg.

BTW the square deal does come in when they add extra current to a power line because we don't have enough capacity. I just mis-spoke about which issue we have to deal with. Distance and the amount of current the lines have to carry are both becoming critical. In the eastern half of the US it is virtually impossible to build new power lines, particularly in the north east where a significant number of the users live. Even here in the swamplands of SW Florida FPL is having a very hard time getting a power line easement. No matter where they want to put it, somebody is carrying a sign.

[dpb]

Similar, but not identically the same. We have surpluses at the present so at least initially it will be at least mostly using up existing supply and one would expect a shift in acreage towards those varieties specific for ethanol usage. But that won't _necessarily_ be at the expense of human consumption product. In addition, there's been a significant reduction in production acres over the last 20 years a goodly fraction of which could revert to production if there were incentive to do so. (I'm not going to with our acreage as I'm simply too old now to consider going back into active farming but if I were 30 years younger and the markets looked as if they were back I'd surely be looking at real hard.)

Those who claim zero or net energy loss w/ ethanol do so with a specific prior intent in mind in the beginning compounded by an insistence on continuing to use old data and arbitrary boundaries of what is/isn't counted as inputs/losses. You can find recent work at the DOE site and research actual numbers as easily as I can quote them.

Biofuels will not replace fossil fuels in the US in the foreseeable future and probably never will unless/until oil is essentially unobtainable. OTOH, it certainly seems a reasonable objective to both stretch the current supply by augmentation if only for the benefit of minimizing at least some of the volatility in prices. If, as a side benefit, there is an upturn in the agricultural sector to counteract much of the shrinking income and resultant slide in overall prosperity in the midwest with the resultant ripple effect throughout the rest of the US economy, that can only be, imo, "a good thing". (TM)

[Michael Daly]

The story so far.

Dubya admits that it's time for the US to stop being so dependent on foreign oil.

A technology, developed in large part in US universities in the '60s and '70s, referred to as hybrid gas-electric, has been available for a number of years as a commercial product from a number of companies. This technology provides significant fuel savings while providing adequate power for modern autos and light trucks.

The nay sayers claim it won't work in spite of the obvious evidence that there are real products on the market that use the technology. The nay sayers claim that it is an evil conspiracy on the part of nasty environmentalists to destroy American life. The nay sayers claim that it is the environmentalists who are out of touch with reality.

I wonder if these nay sayers are all descended from buggy whip salesmen.

Mike

[dpb]

Not sure what you mean by "recent is normal" or what you consider historical norm or even the area of "the area".

There are at least two problem in determing an "average" for the portion of the High Plains most affected during the 30s--one is there are few places that have records extending much over 125 years which isn't but a blink climatologically. The second is that the variability and extremes are so extreme that an average has virtually no meaning outside that of purely a statistical average. Virtually no year will actually have "average" precipitation whereas in places where rains are more frequent and not so subject to extremes, averages really do tend to look like years.

It is true that the during the mid 1910s and 20s most of the High Plains had higher precipitation levels although often actual totals weren't so much above normal but rather the rains happened to come at the right time(s) so that what crop failures there were weren't widespread enough to be known.

After the 30s, we have since had a period in the 50s which wasn't quite as long in duration but nearly as dry most years and accompanied by a number of severe dirt storms similar to those of the 30s. I can recall several vividly such that visibility was such that one couldn't see the fence along side the road during the middle of the day.

Most of the 70s were also extremely dry and according to my grandfather's records, a couple of those years were, in fact, dryer than any year in the 30s or 50s (that, of course, is specifically true only for the one location where our farm is located, but it is indicative of how little rainfall we had in some of those years).

By the, 50s, however, despite the fact there were serious dirt storms on a few occasions, the changes in farming practices and improvements in crop genetics meant that while there were a few years of very poor or no harvest, the overall effect was nothing even approaching the effect of the 30s. By the 70s, continued improvements including by then the advent of irrigation mitigated the results to the point that there were dusty, dirty days, but no widespread "blackouts" and only a few very localized areas that had real dirt storms.

As for recent history, we have now been in the longest period since the

30s and with the exception of the summer of 2003 which was very wet from June thru the end of August or early September on record, approaching the length of time of the 30s. So far this year we have had less than 7" total moisture and something over 5" of that came over a two-week period ending three weeks ago this coming weekend. Except for that, we had been w/o any significant moisture for nearly three months. NW KS and SE CO and OK and TX panhandles, and NM are worse off than we, even.

So, in reality, not sure how to judge "recent" history -- history for the period since 1900 hundred here indicates that there are roughly 20 yr cyles of drought of varying length and intensity interspersed w/ periods of more abundant rainfall. But, even in "wet" spells, the climatology of the area is so variable both chronologically as well as geographically that any given year may produce near-desert totals in any given locality.

As an aside for aiding perspective--given the shortness of climatic records in the area, any given day has something approaching nearly 1% of setting a new record for high/low/precip/etc. Consequently, the current obsession w/ "record-setting" in the media and popular culture is really quite a short-sighted and recent phenomenon.

[J. Clarke]

How close? According to who?

[J. Clarke]

[Michael Daly]

I was wandering through a prairie recently with a professor of botany. Since we had just found the oddity of two types of plants that are usually widely separated - one a wetland plant, the other a dry prairie plant - within a few feet of each other, I started thinking about something I had recently read about the agriculture of the US and Canadian prairies. I asked him about the controversy in some circles about proposals to plow massive agriculture areas under and let them go back to grassland. He quickly corrected me on the exact nature of the natural plant growth in these areas (not all grassland) but then said he believed it would be better to revert much land to nature than continue to produce surplus crops and misuse the land in many areas.

He then mentioned the dust bowl and the precipitation. I was paraphrasing his comments on the amount of rain/wetness of the area. While direct weather measures are not complete going back much more than a century, careful soil and plant remains studies can reveal the weather characteristics over longer periods of time. Hence the fact that the area of the dust bowl has been drier over a long period than in recent times. Trying to farm such lands over a long period of time can be more trouble than it's worth, especially if other areas can produce more grain/oil seeds/whatever. France produces more wheat than Canada, for example. Hard to sell these concepts to most farmers.

If you look at it globally, there is a new weather record set every day somewhere.

Mike

[Edwin Pawlowski]

While your statement is trued, what we pick in North America is far different that what the Asians and Europeans use to achieve the same goal. A family in England will load up the Cooper, the Italians will load up the Fiat and off they go. Of course, the Germans used the Borgward and had lots of room.

[dpb]

Where might this "praire" be located? W/O some idea it is very hard to know what you and the prof might have been seeing...

Exotics are certainly nothing particularly unusual almost anywhere any more given the extent of transportation and other widespread movement. I would suspect the wetland plant won't be there long unless there is a source of water other than native (or it is marginally a "wetland" plant)... ...

Well, that again depends on where you're talking about. Certainly there was very little that wasn't grassland in the vast majority of what was the heart of the dust bowl. What few trees there are here today (even the cottonwood) along the river bottoms or other low-lying spots are not native in the sense they weren't there when Lewis & Clarke came through, for example.

Other areas (mostly farther east like in the Flint Hills or other tall-grass prairies had a much wider variety of vegetation than the short-grass prairies.

And, "better" in what way, and for whom?

Again, w/o knowing what/where you're talking about and what period of time is meant by "longer periods of time" and "recent" this means little, if anything, to me.

As for whether farming it is "more trouble than it's worth" or not, if that were the case it's quite unlikely we would continue indefinitely. It certainly isn't easy work compared to sitting at a desk, but then again while you can eat a pencil eraser, it's not very satisfying.

So, since France with heavy (even with respect to US) government subsidies can grow more total wheat than Canada, we're supposed to not grow any here?

I see no concept worth trying to "sell" here...otoh, I see a great deal of effort and dedication in improving farming practices and maintaining quality of the land and water and other resources by those with whom I mingle every day. It is exemplified by the aforementioned facts of the difference in the effects of extreme dry weather as compared to the similar times in the past.

[dpb]

.....

That's the _only_ reasonable estimation of a car.... :)

And to the folks who made the choice I'm sure it looked very much like a good choice. The point is when you place another set of values on the choice other than the buyer's, then you obviously aren't always going to agree on the level of "goodnes" in those choices, by definition.