The Easy Choice for Detroit: McCain over Obama

Should anyone be surprised that a conservative would endorse McCain? What are you protecting the Big 3 from?

Only the Democrats will solve the health care disaster, which is the biggest problem the Big 3 have in competing against companies from countries with decent health care policies.

Obama was correct. American cars of the same size have gotten worse mileage than the competition for 20 years. For example, it made no sense why a 2000 Ford Focus would get 30 mpg while a corolla got 34. That’s more than 10% worse fuel economy in the same class of car. It worked that way in almost every category. If you were a shopper who cared about mileage, you went with the foreign car that got 15% better mileage.

Yes, Toyota made Sequoia, but how many of those did they sell compared to Ford’s Expeditions and Chevy’s suburbans and Tahoes?

By the way, the scientific term is to ACCEPT Global Warming. Scientists accept a model when there is abundant support along many lines of evidence, but they are willing to accept new models that explain the evidence more clearly. As of now, there is only one model that explains the data. It’s global climate change caused by humans releasing CO2 that has been buried for millions of years into the atmosphere .

Ultra-conservatives and ultra-liberals won’t agree with me (surly Ed’s going to rip into me for this) but I see 2 relatively good candidates in Obama and McCain. Look who we’ve had in the past. Kerry, Gore, Bush, Dole. Pretty extreme candidates who pandered to their party bases and then showed they were out of touch with mainstream America.

I suppose if your only concern is the financial well-being of auto corporations, then McCain would be the “easy” choice. On the other hand, if you are also concerned about the overall economy, energy policy, environment, health care, the Iraq war, etc.–then asserting that McCain is the “only rational” choice is somewhere between extremely debatable and utterly ridiculous.

Nobody WANTS domestic car companies to fail, particularly for the sake of their many hard-working employees. But improving fuel economy standards, counteracting climate change, and investing in green energy are important issues that affect the entire country, not sham causes that liberals invented out of spite for automakers. Given a choice between the narrow self-interest of Detroit corporations on the one hand, and global energy and environmental crises on the other, I suggest that the “only rational” choice is for politicians who emphasize the latter.

McCain is the only choice unless the goal is socialism. Any American who believes in Capitolism and personal freedom has an easy choice in November.

You people who push the global warming and environmental causes above all else are unbelieveably arrogant to propose that man (and the automobile that has only been existing for about 100 years) can negatively impact the entire global climate. The scientific evidence has shown that the Earth has been cooling and heating in cycles for a very very long time. My car does not cause this.

Why don’t you people move to China and try to convince them of this hoax? There is a much larger population in China so the potential for destruction is 10 times as serious, right? If you really care for the planet you would be on the next paddle boat across the Pacific.

I don’t care how you spend your money and time, but do not try to force me to pay for your attack on my freedom.

Gosh, Abe, it sounds like you have a huge burden on your shoulders since you’re the only one who is “also concerned about the overall economy, energy policy, environment, health care, the Iraq war, etc.” Why is it that conservative policy points don’t care about those issues?

Marty–I’m not saying I’m the “only one” who cares about these other issues, obviously. It’s just that your column suggests that one’s choice of president should be based primarily on who would be “better” for Detroit carmakers. Though the Big 3’s financial health is important, issues like climate change and energy security are more so. If there were a way to substantively and immediately address these problems without forcing automakers to change, of course that would be preferred. But since there is no such way, I find it short-sighted to cast aspersions on global warming and increasing CAFE standards just because it might force Detroit to make some painful adaptations. This isn’t about punishing Detroit, it’s about making difficult but wise policy changes, because the current state of affairs simply is not environmentally or fiscally sustainable.

Actually, I’m casting aspersions on global warming because it’s unproven hypothesis–and all solutions proposed are hideously expensive, don’t guarantee reversal of “global warming” symptoms, and perniciously penalize Western democracies more than they do dictatorships like China, Russia and Venezuela.

Marty Padgett ‘08. I’d vote for you!

OH! “damn[dang]me?.
I must have missed: Obama[san] speech?.
Blaming the DETROIT[remaining]BIG THREE?.

Just read a comment recently: That he[obama] is BRAIN DAMAGED GOODS”. Telling the auto worker{whom}; in a greater possibility.
Have some clue as too the Attempt at the “” GLOBAL VILLAGE ORDER[S]”"”.{so-so}Same old-Same Old.
The onslaught of foreign wealth[thinking they! are the gifted]{which they are not}.
Auto industry down sizing !! : smaller car higher price has been the rule of “‘THUMB”[dumb], Since the Late fifties[50’s]Early sixties[60’s].{Pushed by Power and Sex}

Europe and the old world !! : sales and manufacture is PRIMARILY “ATTITUDE!, [ergo: Aristocratic in nature];
has nothing what so ever about being efficient or proficient in any thing ! ,other then [so-called] “”BRAIN THRUST.”‘{how well can I run off!! at the Mouth, [b.s.]than proceed to pull the wool over every one’s eye’s}.
Which in turn gets PASSED OFF too the tax payer, as their failures.

Which does not fit the modern market here in North America.{ europe and the old world[all] are not welcome here}.

Eastern Europeans:[at one-time] believed: that the black Man!!: was the `Sign-symbol`, OF the “”end of the world”".

The true end of the world is the black man “LINKED` in with Archaic euro-values{very misguided}.
Hence: plan for a greater destruction of industry[ every] in all of North America.
They will not stop, until, every one “”HEELS” TOO there MADNESSES!.

It is some what: The End Of The WORLD as We have Know It!.

McCain and his CRONIES!! , can not stop this !.

OBAMA!: on the other hand, will ONLY EXPEDITE the “” DEAD OF DETROIT”"!.
Please read as: !!OBAMA!!”": Black Man{Sign-Symbol} of the “‘END OF THE WORLD”.
This is very fitting of his Business partners and Cronies!.

Re PG:
I believe you were referring to “capitalism” when you wrote “Capitolism,” unless you have an unswerving allegiance to the secret wiretaps, domestic spying and the secret signing statements that the current administration uses to exempt itself from the law. In that instance, “Capitolism” might be perfectly correct.

To call global warming an “unproven hypothesis” is like calling the connection between cigarettes and cancer an unproven hypothesis. Technically both statements are true: by the strictest definition of the scientific method, no hypothesis is ever “proven,” only accepted as empirically useful until disproven or refined. “Proving” a hypothesis requires repeated testing under controlled conditions, like in a lab.

Obviously such testing is impossible for global warming. Or should I say, we are already conducting this experiment, by continuing to emit greenhouse gases unabated. Allowing this “experiment” to run for the next few decades before taking any real action, as skeptics effectively suggest, is obviously a self-defeating strategy and fundamentally misunderstands the capacity and role of science.

If you have already decided that the whole thing is bunk (like PG above), then no amount of research will ever make this a “proven hypothesis.” Think of a weather forecast. The meteorologist proclaims an 80% (or whatever) chance that a hurricane will hit your town. Do you stand pat because it isn’t a 100% chance? Or because the “economic cost” of boarding up your house and taking shelter elsewhere is too high?

My intention is not to squelch honest debate about this issue. There is SOME degree (I think relatively small) of uncertainty, and the science isn’t completely clear–it never can be. But let’s have an intellectually honest discussion, as a society, of how to deal with a threat that cannot be considered unimportant simply because it is uncertain. After all, this is also true of the threat of terrorist attack, and few question the need to take drastic action to address THAT.

Science is built around law and hypothesis. If you ain’t one, you’re the other.

Spoken like someone who isn’t actually a scientist.

Scientific ‘law’ comes about when evidence suggests that that the likelihood of outcome X happening as a result of input Y approaches absolute certainty.

Climate change solely as a result of human activity is by no means a certainty…

Climate change, however, is a certainty. The planet is getting warmer, warming has accelerated over the last fifty years and the concentrations of gases in the atmosphere that contribute to the warming effect are rising.

The key now is to reduce the liklihood and consequence of the various risks to humans as a result of climate change. One of the small contributions we can make to minimising risk is to look at the way we transport ourselves around the planet……which means among other things…cars.

From an outsiders perspective…….neither candidate is going to shake the status quo of abrogating risk to somebody else…..be it another culture in the world now or future generations of Americans….in the hunt for the Almighty Dollar.

It may be that we are unable to actually do anything about climate change or mitigate the inevitable changes that such change will wrought on our environment and culture…..however, to do nothing is akin to walking into fast moving traffic despite the presence of pedestrian lights that you could’ve made use of to minimise the chance of being knocked over simply because it was a little inconvenient to wait.

You’re sure that climate warming is a certainty? Explain the decrease in global temperatures for the past three years.

People can repeat the results of scientific studies ad nauseum but there’s a group of skeptics who will repeatedly try to use illogical and incorrect statements to argue that the entire scientific community is full of it. Considering the track record of the scientists of the last several centuries I prefer to lend their claims more levity. Thank you science for your contributions to Medicine, Agriculture, Communications, and Engineering.

Only, it’s not the “entire” scientific community, nor is science’s track record for the past several centuries stellar. Remember spontaneous generation?

I’m prettly happy to not have to worry about polio. I’ll accept pretty frequent Michelson-Morley Experiments in exchange.

Re: Greg
Sorry I misspelled capitalism. Spelling is a weak point for me, but I may be better than some on here.

I’m sorry, but I cannot agree with your perception of the present administration. The terrorist do not have enough courage to walk around with labels clearly stating who they are, so some degree of investigation is necessary. I have nothing to hide, so I am not worried about these things.

There is no consensus in the scientific community, there has been no increase in temperature over the last decade, and scientists are predicting no future increases until at least 2015. Global warming and cooling is a cycle that has existed for thousands of years, and that’s a verifiable fact.

Secondly, in the low chance we are causing global warming, any conceivable action we can take will only have a minimal impact on global warming. Even if all Americans stopped polluting right now, in ten years, China and India will have made up for it.

It’s remarkable how eager skeptics are to “debunk” global warming based on a few shallow arguments. It’s human nature to believe selectively in what you want to believe, and then grab onto whatever supports that belief. Obviously this tendency can cut both ways, but is much more pronounced on the side of skeptics, most of whom are all too willing to dismiss the conclusions of the clear majority of climate experts, on the basis of a few talking points they picked up somewhere.

Do you really believe, for example, that climate scientists are NOT aware that global climate has cycled naturally for thousands of years, or that they are not capable of taking this into account? That the IPCC and all the scientific academies of all major industrialized nations just OVERLOOKED such an obvious issue? It requires a great deal of bias to believe that so many scientists are this incompetent, while you have somehow triumphantly invalidated their findings by merely pointing this out.

“There is no consensus within the scientific community.” There most certainly is. Consensus is different from unanimity: a few dissenting voices does not mean there is no consensus. As I point out above, in science there is never 100% agreement on anything but the most basic physical laws, and to expect 100% unanimity is unrealistic and inconsistent with the standards of “consensus” we apply to any other area of practical scientific inquiry. A substantial majority of climate scientists agree that global warming is real. Scientists continue to debate the magnitude and potential consequences of this phenomenon, as they should. Somehow, many skeptics take this to mean that the basic CONCEPT of global warming is very controversial among scientists, but it is not.

To be continued…

Actually it’s critical that climatologists have detailed knowledge of the climate shifts of the past millenia. Almost all of their work depends on correlating the climate shifts to the factors that caused them.