Bob Lutz FTW

[copperhead]

http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSN2237297620080222?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&rpc=22&sp=true

 

GM exec stands by calling global warming a "crock"

Fri Feb 22, 2008 3:08pm EST

 

DETROIT (Reuters) - General Motors Corp Vice Chairman Bob Lutz has defended remarks he made dismissing global warming as a "total crock of s---," saying his views had no bearing on GM's commitment to build environmentally friendly vehicles.

 

Lutz, GM's outspoken product development chief, has been under fire from Internet bloggers since last month when he was quoted as making the remark to reporters in Texas.

 

In a posting on his GM blog on Thursday, Lutz said those "spewing virtual vitriol" at him for minimizing the threat of climate change were "missing the big picture."

 

"What they should be doing in earnest is forming opinions, not about me but about GM and what this company is doing that is ... hugely beneficial to the causes they so enthusiastically claim to support," he said in a posting titled, "Talk About a Crock."

 

GM, the largest U.S. automaker by sales and market share, has been trying to change its image after taking years of heat for relying too much on sales of large sport-utility vehicles like the Hummer and not moving faster on fuel-saving hybrid technology.

 

"My thoughts on what has or hasn't been the cause of climate change have nothing to do with the decisions I make to advance the cause of General Motors," he wrote.

 

Lutz said GM was continuing development of the battery-powered, plug-in Chevy Volt and other alternatives to traditional internal combustion engines.

 

GM is racing against Toyota Motor Corp to be first to market a plug-in hybrid car that can be recharged at a standard electric outlet.

 

Lutz has previously said GM made a mistake by allowing Toyota to seize "the mantle of green respectability and technology leadership" with its market-leading Prius hybrid.

 

A 40-year auto industry veteran who joined GM earlier in the decade with a mandate to shake up its vehicle line-up, Lutz is no stranger to controversy.

 

As part of a campaign against higher fuel economy standards, Lutz wrote in a 2006 blog posting that forcing automakers to sell smaller cars would be "like trying to address the obesity problem in this country by forcing clothing manufacturers to sell smaller, tighter sizes."

 

Automakers ended their opposition to higher fuel standards in 2007 when it became clear that proposed changes would become law with or without their support.

 

In December, President George W. Bush signed a law mandating a 40 percent increase in fleetwide fuel economy by 2020, the first substantial change in three decades.

[Rally Pat]

Bah hahahahaha

 

That is awesome.

 

There is a Facebook group called "Al Gore is an Idiot, and Global Warming is fake". I am a proud, proud member.

[morabu]

while i do think that "global warming" is a naturally recurring event on earth, we're certainly NOT helping to minimize our impact. there is NOTHING wrong with creating tighter standards and less toxic ways of doing things, to help ease our impact on the Earth, and the atmosphere.

 

J.R.

[slow4now]

It's mind boggling to think that otherwise intelligent individuals think that introducing man made chemicals into the environment does not have a detrimental effect on said environment.

[OGRE]

IMO:

 

Global warming does exist - humans have nothing to do with it.

 

Acid rain does exist - humans fucked up.

 

There are some things we need to do to preserve what natural gifts this world has, but handcuffing every man, woman and child into a lifestyle of treehugging becuase of a fucking THEORY is bullshit.

[Scotty2Hotty]

Go git them tree huggers Bob.

[Zeppelin]

I never really gave it a second thought until I got into saltwater aquariums and started becoming aware of what is happenig with the coral reefs of the world recently. There are coral reefs several hundreds of years old, that have taken huge dumps in the last 10 years. Some real recently. There is a medium-large reef South of Florida that extends as kind of an underwater border between Florida and Cuba. Within the last several years, about 2/3 of it has lost all its color and has bleached, or is dead completely. These are reefs that have withstood the earth's cyclical events for several hundreds of years, at least, with no evidence of large dieoff under it which would show it had died previously, a long time ago, and had re-grown.

 

With my experience in captive growing corals, I see first hand what effects the coral negatively. While some of the things are chemical related, and specifically related to someone not properly maintaining the general environment, I do see one thing that is interesting. Even if a coral's general environment is close to perfect, too much light, or even a different spectrum of light, can negatively effect its look and health.

 

The oceans are being monitored closely and its a fact that the average temperature is rising, and is several degrees warmer than it was just 5 years ago. Over 3/4 of the earth is ocean. It taking something significant to raise the temp of a body of water that large. I wont even pretend to hypothesize about what that may be, but its something. Something that hasn't happened in quite awhile, if ever before.

 

While it may be 'greenhouse gasses' from emissions, or it may just be that we are clearing too much of the earth's natural vegatation and trees to be able to counteract all the carbon dioxide we are producing with the worlds increased human population and our carbon vices, or we're all just farting too damn much, I dont have a clue.

 

Sorry for the soapbox response. Anyways, that said, I'm not ready to toss the old combustion engine just yet. I cant imagine doing a long burnout and NOT getting to hear the roar of the motor over the tire sound!

[OGRE]

The oceans are being monitored closely and its a fact that the average temperature is rising, and is several degrees warmer than it was just 5 years ago.

 

Proof please, there are plenty of credible Scientists both for and against Global warming that say that our climate ahas changed 1-2 degrees over the past 100 years, not 5. Also "Several" degrees would be enough to raise ocean levels to a point that it would be seriously threaten coastal cities.

 

you sir are talking out of the wrong end of your person.

[81mercury]

yeah fuck global warming, ill keep driving my car that gets 8 mpg while they burn more bad chemicals developing and recycling batteries for these hippie pleasing cars....no one figures in the green house gases from making new cars/ parts when they go on these rants......my cars been around for 27 years and crushing it would take energy too...

[Zeppelin]

Proof please, there are plenty of credible Scientists both for and against Global warming that say that our climate ahas changed 1-2 degrees over the past 100 years, not 5. Also "Several" degrees would be enough to raise ocean levels to a point that it would be seriously threaten coastal cities.

 

you sir are talking out of the wrong end of your person.

 

Ask anyone who keeps a marine aquarium, and primarily keeps fish. We are sustaining an artificial environment. We have specific 'live rock' and macroalgaes in the tank to break down the fishes negative impact on the environment, the fish pee and crap, along with any breakdown of the rock into dirt. There are several types of bacteria that are specifically grown in the tank. They break down the fish waste ammonia into nitrites, then nitrates. Then we use a macroalgae that feeds on those nitrites/nitrates and uses them to grow. The macro algae then releases oxygen, like land plants, into the water to keep the fish healthy. A natural cycle of changing fish waste back into oxygen for the fish. Water testing has factually documented this process. If you add too many fish, which really means youre adding more fish waste and ammonia, without letting the bacteria and macro algae production catch up so they are able to handle the increased bioload put on the environment, you get an ammonia/nitrate spike and are likely to kill all the fish. The same principles apply to the land, I would think. We are, through population explosion, exhaust emmissions, etc. increasing the carbon dioxide production in the atmosphere. At the same time we are decreasing the plants on the earth by subdivision development, rain forest clearing, etc. From your high school science class, I'm sure you remember that plants take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen for us to breath. Thats factual, not scientific mumbo jumbo at all. Well, if we are increasing carbon dioxide production, and decreasing the natural balance element of trees that absorb that carbon dioxide and turn it back into oxygen, why would there NOT be some kind of repercussion from all the extra CO2 in the atmosphere?

 

Kind of like our engines. If we add too much fuel, without any oxygen compensation, our motors lose power, and will eventually choke out. You need to have a balance of fuel and oxygen to create power. Thats kind of a left field comparison, but just trying to show how a balance needs to exist.

 

Most of what I see is from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. http://www.noaa.gov/ Here is an interesting article I ran across just doing a quick search of their site:

http://celebrating200years.noaa.gov/breakthroughs/warming_ocean/welcome.html The first page shows a couple images gathered from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program showing the minimum Arctic sea ice concentration comparing 1979 and 2003. Its a pretty interesting read that kind of timelines studies in this from the 1970s to 2003. The site has lots of other articles on both the oceans changes as well as the atmospheric changes over the last 30 years or so. Searching that site alone will give you lots of what I would consider factual 'evidence'. But like you said, there are lots of credible scientists on both sides of the coin.

 

Like I said, I wouldn't consider myself a 'tree hugger' as I love the sound/smell/teeth vibrating experience of a top fuel dragster doing a burnout while I'm sitting in the Garlit's seats at Norwalk Raceway Park. You know youre having fun when your eyes start burning. But, I am also open minded enough to realize that we are most likely having an impact on our world, and need to be open to seeing if there are ways we can minimize that impact and still have some fun with our toys. Like everything else in life, its all about achieving a balance.

 

I agree with you 81mercury, there are allot of other things that add to whats happening besides the combustion engine for sure.

[Patrick]

Global warming=natural occurrence on the earth.

 

We've contributed to it a bit, but not to the extent everyone says.

 

Bottom line is, I don't care.

[LPFSTheFett]

There was a post on here a couple weeks ago where this scientist was talking about global warming and our impact on it. After watching that, I'm convinced that we have nothing to do with it.

 

And while the reefs are diminishing at an alarming rate, it's hard to say or even prove that they haven't gone through this type of event within the last 100,000 years. I also scuba dive and go with divers that have been diving for 50+ years and they can speak personally for seeing the distruction of the reefs. They don't believe in global warming at all and say it's more the polutants that humans put in the water. While water temps have a HUGE impact on reefs, it's not us causing the temerature increase. They also gave plenty of examples of what the hotels in Florida did with their sewage that killed a lot of the reefs.

 

And while we are tearing down the rainforests, which certainly doesn't help with taking C02 out of the air, 99% of all oxygen produced on earth is from the top 1/2" of water.

 

All that being said, the US can 100% go green and it's not going to make much difference unless the rest of the world follows suit. Just like the HUGE decrease in global fish populations. If the US were to stop eating fish completely, the Earth would still run out of fish in the oceans by 2020 or something(Time Magazine article about 1 year ago)

 

I agree that we are having an impact on earth, just not on the weather, and unless as a globe we take steps to fix it, there will be no big changes until it's probably too late.

 

Another good factoid. If China continues to grow at the same rate the United States did after the industrial revolution, 20 years from now they will use more oil in one day then the entire earth currently uses today.

[AJ]

here is what jason is talking about

 

http://www.columbusracing.com/forums/showthread.php?t=46763&highlight=global+warming

[Nitrousbird]

I just walked outside. Global Warming is a bunch of BS.