Tag Archives: Green

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Obama’s new fuel economy standards will raise car costs by over $5000

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From U.S. News and World Report.

Excerpt:

Within a span of three weeks, President Obama has announced back-to-back new fuel economy standards for passenger vehicles and trucks. New regulations put in place will require a corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) of 54.5 miles per gallon for passenger vehicles by 2025. New standards for trucks will require a 10 to 20 percent increase in fuel efficiency before 2018.

Whether President Obama realizes it or not, fuel efficiency does not come without compromising other aspects of a vehicle. One feature that will undoubtedly be affected by these new rules is vehicle cost.

According to a study conducted by the Center for Automotive Research, the new passenger vehicle standards could eventually cost consumers an additional $5,000-$6,000 for each new vehicle. Even if gas prices rose to $6.00 per gallon, the average American driver may not recoup that huge price increase through fuel savings. Similarly, new rules for trucks are expected to add an additional $1,050 for work trucks and $6,220 for supercab tractors.

One of the most efficient ways to increase the amount of miles a vehicle can travel per gallon of gasoline is to reduce the weight of the vehicle. Therefore, auto manufacturers will be forced to make cars that are smaller and lighter in order to meet President Obama’s new CAFE standards. Far from a win for consumers, this type of government-knows-best policy is the exact opposite of how a market economy functions. Instead of making their own demands, car buyers will be forced to comply with a federal mandate that insists on prioritizing fuel efficiency above all else—safety, comfort, size, and performance all take a back seat. Car buyers will be forced to pay more and have fewer vehicle options to choose from.

Given the fact that this is such an important policy goal for President Obama, it is fair to look at his own driving habits. The president is chauffeured in a vehicle known as The Beast, a 10,000-pound limousine that gets 8 miles to the gallon. In order to achieve maximum safety and security for the president, the vehicle must be extremely heavy which, of course, decreases its fuel efficiency.

Obviously, lighter vehicles are not nearly as safe for families as heavier vehicles, so there will be increases in traffic fatalities as well.

This is consistent with Obama’s desire for equality. Americans are too wealthy – we need to produce less and consume less so that we are more like other nations. Nations like North Korea and Cuba. Naturally, Obama himself will be exempt from these standards, just as he and his family are exempt from Obamacare. Oh, and his union supporters are also getting exemptions from Obamacare in record numbers.

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Child faces $535 fine and jail time for rescuing baby bird

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Baby Woodpecker
Baby Woodpecker

I am a bird lover, and this story just makes me sick.

Excerpt:

Eleven-year-old aspiring veterinarian, Skylar Capo, sprang into action the second she learned that a baby woodpecker in her Dad’s backyard was about to be eaten by the family cat.

“I’ve just always loved animals,” said Skylar Capo. “I couldn’t stand to watch it be eaten.”

Skylar couldn’t find the woodpecker’s mother, so she brought it to her own mother, Alison Capo, who agreed to take it home.

“She was just going to take care of it for a day or two, make sure it was safe and uninjured, and then she was going to let it go,” said Capo.

But on the drive home, the Capo family stopped at a Lowes in Fredericksburg and they brought the bird inside because of the heat. That’s when they were confronted by a fellow shopper who said she worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“She was really nervous. She was shaking. Then she pulled out a badge,” said Capo.

The problem was that the woodpecker is a protected species under the Federal Migratory Bird Act.  Therefore, it is illegal to take or transport a baby woodpecker.  The Capo family says they had no idea.

“I was a little bit upset because I didn’t want my mom to get in trouble,” said Skylar.

So as soon as the Capo family returned home, they say they opened the cage, the bird flew away, and they reported it to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“They said that’s great, that’s exactly what we want to see,” said Capo. “We thought that we had done everything that we could possibly do.”

But roughly two weeks later, that same woman from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service showed up at Capo’s front door. This time, Capo says the woman was accompanied by a state trooper.  Capo refused to accept a citation, but was later mailed a notice to appear in U.S. District Court for unlawfully taking a migratory bird.  She’s also been slapped with a $535 fine.

Why are we paying the government to take away our liberty? Liberty is the power to do what you ought to do. The government subsidizes abortion providers, and then they turn around and fine and maybe even jail 11-year old children who rescue baby birds.

My previous post on bird rescues is here.

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Drowning polar bears scientist being investigated for misconduct

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Is ManBearPig to blame for global warming?
Is ManBearPig to blame for global warming?

CBS News reports. (H/T Lonely Conservative via Reformed Seth)

Excerpt:

A federal wildlife biologist whose observation in 2004 of presumably drowned polar bears in the Arctic helped to galvanize the global warming movement has been placed on administrative leave and is being investigated for scientific misconduct, possibly over the veracity of that article.

Charles Monnett is an Anchorage-based scientist with the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement.

He has not been informed by the inspector general’s office of any charges or questions related to the scientific integrity of his work, according to Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

Monnett was told July 18 that he was being put on leave, pending results of an investigation into “integrity issues.”

On Thursday, Ruch’s watchdog group plans to file a complaint on Monnett’s behalf.

Lonely Conservative notes that this man’s government-funded “research” was featured by Al Gore in his “documentary”.

And here’s more on this story from the UK Telegraph.

Excerpt:

Something about this story is very odd. Surely, under the Obama administration any government official who was discovered to have been “emotionalising the issue” in order to raise public awareness of the terrible dangers of ManBearPig would be given a promotion, and a Congressional Medal of Honor at the very least? Can it really be possible that BOEMRE remains so principled and inviolate that it still insists its employees cleave to the truth?

It’s definitely one to watch, anyway. After all, the “drowning polar bear” story was instrumental in the US Interior Department’s controversial decision in 2008 to have Ursus maritimus declared a “threatened species.” (Despite evidence that polar bear populations have increased roughly five-fold in the last 50 years: not so much a threatened species, you might say; more like a plague or an infestation). It also prompted the silly scene in Al Gore’s fantasy movie An Inconvenient Truth where an animated polar bear is shown drowning because of “global warming.”

At Watts Up With That you’ll find an excellent World Climate Report essay reporting on the background to the “drowning polar bear” story.

But the part of the study that garnered the press attention so much so that it has become ingrained in global warming lore was that Monnett et al. reported the sighting of four polar bear carcasses floating in the sea several kilometers from shore, presumably having drowned. All four dead bears were spotted from the plane a few days after a strong storm had struck the area, with high winds and two meter high waves. Since polar bears are strong swimmers, the authors concluded that it was not just the swimming that caused the bears to drown, but that the swimming in association with high winds and waves, which made the exertion rate much greater, sapping the bears of their energy and leading to their deaths. The authors also suggested that the frequency and intensity of late summer and early fall storms should increase (as would the wave heights) because of global warming and thus the risk to swimming bears will increase along with the number of bears swimming (since there will be less ice) and subsequently more bears will drown. But they didn’t stop there—they suggested that the increased risk will not be borne by all bears equally, but that lone females and females with cubs will be most at risk—putting even more downward pressure of future polar bear populations. And thus a global warming poster child (or cub) is born.

But does all of this follow from the data? Again, we haven’t heard of any reports of polar bear drownings in Alaska in 2005, 2006, or 2007—all years with about the same, or even less late-summer sea ice off the north coast of Alaska than in 2004, the year of the documented drownings.

How is that science?

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