What emissions standards before 80? W/ the interest in emissions, thought would do this topic again for those who have not seen it.
BY EPA

PS CA started earlier w/ their own laws.


[Modified by Ganey, 9:03 AM 2/11/2003]

 

I've got a friend (honest, I have!) who works for a large company who commisioned a major investigation into air pollution, as it was important to their product. They were expecting cars to be responsible for a large amount of pollutants, including C02, but were surprised to find that the biggest (human) production of C02 was due to..... cooking fires! Cars were way, way down the list. Just thought I'd throw that one in, another statistic never hurts!
:cheers:

 

Down here in Texas, we have a problem with cow farts producing vast quanitities of methane (true!)

:jester

 

paul, i can believe that.
a research company here in vegas did a study about four years ago to determine the sources of the 'smog'.
first of all, vegas is located in a valley, in the desert. what they found was that on average half of the visible smog was dust. well, duh, we live in the desert!
of the smog, they found the #1 polluter was mccarren international airport, which incidentally list their emissions generation as '0'. amazing all those trucks and fuel tanks and generators they have there don't produce any smog. maybe the EPA should find out how they do that! ;)
#2 was power generators, we still have a few coal and oil fired power stations
#3 was, restaurants. yep, cooking fires.
#4 automobiles.
don't really know what #5 was but it was truely insignificant. even automobiles was only about 20-30% of manmade pollution. :rolleyes:
i'm convinced the reason that cars are taking the brunt of the hit on 'cleaning the air' is because everything else has some type of group to lobby on their behalf. on a local level, our airport is a giant money maker so nobody is going to screw with them. the power companies and the restaurants are nearly all unionized, the cost of upgrading would shut down half of them. cars, you say, have the manufacturer to back them up. well, i believe there is some kind of unholy alliance between the manufacturers and the EPA to make the automobiles carry the load. after all, the public is ultimately picking up the tab.

 

Patrick Bedard (Car and Driver) has some interesting insight into the issue. It's refreshing to hear from the other side:
http://www.caranddriver.com/xp/Caran...=bedard&page=1

 

Clutchdust,
There's something about the aircraft industry that tells me our wonderful leaders aren't exactly concerned with being green, but more with being able to tax us with impunity with the excuse of the taxes being in place to save the environment. What a joke! The aircraft industry, certainly here, gets some worthwhile tax breaks on fuel. Not bad, considering the pollution that jet engines cause. Do enviromentalists protest outside Heathrow airport? No, but I've had earache from a Green about my singlehanded destruction of our planet by driving a 5.7L gas guzzler (she flies to Spain for vacations without giving a 2nd thought to the pollutants spewing out of the engines at 35 000 feet).
It's brainwashing of the masses: convince the populace that the automobile is the prime cause of global warming & then they can be taxed to the hilt for using the automobile without complaining to much. It's a cash cow.
Check out the pollution & energy required in the production of silicon chips - no environmental taxes on them. And the list goes on (power generation, heavy industry, oil rigs burning off waste gases, domestic & industrial heating systems.....).
The study my friends company did found that the 2nd largest producer of C02 was something completely unexpected, like cement production! (If I got that wrong, cement production is high up the list). Double standards prevail throughout.
:cheers:

 

What pisses me off is that they banned Freon because they said it causes ozone depletion. Never mind Freon IS HEAVIER THAN AIR. How is it getting up to the stratosphere??????

There was a study that showed the real reason for ozone depletion is jet engines. They're right up there close to the ozone layer. Of course that study was quickly quieted as soon as the airline lobbies found out about it.

As long as we have lobbies, we don't have a democracy. :nono:

 

paul and zwede, i totally agree. i never even thought of putting the emissions in the context of creating a computer chip! how interesting. paul, your completely right about the brainwashing of these people. have you ever seen how irate they get when you challenge their beliefs? they're truely fanatical. they're like the al queda of the environmental movement! (try calling them that, it's fun :lol: :thumbs: )
zwede, the freon thing is so rediculous. this is a perfect example of what is wrong with government regulations. even after it has been proven to be false, you can't just repeal the law. it just sits there hindering business and our economy. :rolleyes: i can remember when i was a kid going to the parts store and seeing r-12 on sale, 2 for a $1. :nonod:


[Modified by clutchdust, 8:11 AM 2/12/2003]

 

Or how about MTBE in California? Law says they HAVE to add MTBE to all gas sold in CA. Plenty of scientists warned that the MTBE would find its way into the ground water. EPA ignored them. Turns out the scientists were right and many water reservoirs were poisoned. Some small towns have actually been forceably evacuated since they have no drinking water anymore.

But the law is still there! Only thing the EPA did was mandate a sticker on the pumps saying "WARNING, this products contains MTBE which is known to cause cancer". Great!

Nevermind that the original reason to add MTBE was flawed. MTBE is a oxygenator (Contains oxygen). The idea was that most cars are set to run rich. The extra O2 would lean them out making them run cleaner.

Wonderful theory, and it might even have worked except that all cars the last 20 years or so have a feedback system. You add O2, the engine leans out, and the O2 sensor feeds the info back to the computer which commands more fuel. So end result: Emissions unchanged, mileage down. But the EPA was too retarded to grasp this simple concept, and now the water in CA is poisoned.

 

Clutchdust,
I have hours of fun winding up the environmental extremists & now I own a gas guzzling "Yank Tank" I don't even need to try (even though the fuel economy is about the same as their trendy Land Rovers or 4 wheel drive people carriers).
What really gets me about those people is that they only quote from the studies that suit their cause - anything that contradicts their ideas must be wrong. Obviously I don't believe in polluting the place, but lets have a little bit of a balance here. While they are preaching to me the errors of my ways, their domestic heating boiler is merrily burning gas & giving out, er, oh, a greenhouse gas!
I can't remember the figures, but a silicon chip, weight for weight, is one of the most polluting mass produced products made (according to one of the trade magazines).
Next time I get some environmentalist wanking on about my errant ways I'll try your Al Queda suggestion (after I've told them I've got a french polished Brazilian Mahogany dash with Ivory inlays & seal pup fur seat covers!) :D
:cheers:

 

I believe in good environmental policies. The trouble is that many of the enviro groups are being run by people who think that going back to the stone age is a good thing. If we went back to the stone age, these same groups wouldn't want us to hunt animals for food or cook them with wood fires when we did.

 

Freon is an interesting choice to bring up. Did you know that the patent on R-12 ran out the same time that r-134a was introduced. And R-12 was soon banned for use by the public. You can give credit to Dupont and its lawyers for that one.

And 134a is supposedly more harmful in otherways than r12.

Methane production (aka cows) is the leading ozone depleter, its lighter than air and it eats ozone for breakfast lunch and dinner. Go figure. Now if we could just hook up a methane catcher to the cows butt we'd be in business.

 

:yesnod: :yesnod:
Here in the Austin area we are starting to have a pollution problem and may have emission testing here shortly. But what is interesting is that the best way to cure our pollution problem is to clear cut east Texas :yesnod: :yesnod: The majority of the pollution that we have here is coming from the pine trees in east Texas. Another big chunk is coming from the petro/chemical industry on the gulf coast. The kicker is, no matter where it is coming from, we have to clean it up here :crazy: So, East Texas, get your chainsaws out; Houston, time to shut down the factories. Then we can have clean air in Central Texas :thumbs:

tom...

 

Tom,
I'm curious, what sort of pollution do pine trees cause? As pine trees have been around for a few years might we have our defination of pollution a bit wrong?
442olds,
I think you could be onto a real money spinner here. Measuring up the attachment details might be a problem, but if all that methane could be collected it could be sold in pressurised canisters as cookin/heating gas (true recycling with the bonus of removing a greenhouse gas). The environmentalists would love it: they could use a natural product to heat their homes & cook their food, while doing some good at the same time. Ok, so the food might smell & taste a bit "earthy"....
:D

 

They produce ozone.