It seems bogus to me. I own an xB and love it. But how can an xB be more efficient then an echo or xA? It gets worse gas milage with the same drive train. It just doesn't add up.

 

I've read studies reguarding the pollution of todays world. There was more pollution in the air back in th 40's than there is now.

 

If you don't want to believe it, nothing I say can convince you, and you can always find some credible-sounding source on the Internet to back you up.

If your mind is open, the consensus opinions of every recognized scientific body in the world, from the National Academy of Sciences to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change agree that global warming is accelerating.

That climate change is part of the planet's natural cycle is true, but irrelevant. The devastating effects will be the same either way, and if they can be forestalled by human intervention, what difference does it make if they were caused by human action in the first place?

The prevailing American attitude of "I didn't cause it, so I don't have to do anything about it, and I don't believe it anyway" is just stupid.

RichC

 

How can the wrangler be on an environmental list? it gets like 15mpg? mpg must have had nothing to do with this test at all, i'm surprised hummer didn't make the good list.

And i am not a firm believer in global warming either. Remember the age of the dinosaurs?? no ice caps period. oh and the entire center of north america was an inland sea, thats how high water level was. thats why people find sea shells places they wouldn't suspect them. and i don't think the dinosaurs were polluting. Also we don't have accurate temperature data to go on to make scientific analysis. the US has had decent records for close to a hundred years, but other countries are slightly iffy. And who do you think took the data back then? how can they be trusted, we are talking about a global change in temperature a fraction of a degree, how do we know they didn't round a little? especially on stations in the middle of no where. Also there is a theory about the heat island effect. where the world as a whole isn't really warming but the cities are due to concrete and factories, this skews the rest of the data. I live in Pittsburgh and work about 20 miles out of town, there is on average a 5 degree difference in temp.
Also in my opinion scientist still are rather in the dark when it comes to weather, they can't even get the forcast right a few days in advance most of the time, how are they gonna know what the temp is gonna be years from now.
10,000 years ago marked the end of the last large ice age, it has been warming and glaciers have been melting ever since.
Its rather hard to determine what melting is normal and what is due to the greenhouse effect. I just wish people that have no clue what they are talking about would stop talking about global warming

 

It's important to know that hisotrical records of temperature aren't taken from the Farmer's Almanac, nor do people measure downtown Pittsburgh and call it good. They are taken from gas trapped in ice cores than go back many many thoughsands of years, among other methods. The record shows that the change in temperature over the industrial age is _bigger change_ over a _shorter period of time_ than occurs anywhere in the ice core record. So it could be a natural fluctuation, but it is becoming less and less likely with improving data taking. The rate is important.

Also, "pollution" is not the problem causing global warming. "Greenhouse gases" are the problem. The air is cleaner than in the '40s (thank you cat, FI and O2 sensor) but it's hotter.

(most) people studying this are more careful than you give them credit for. it's not just a hobby, nor is it a crusade.

 

ps: the car "study" prompting this thread _is_ lame--the echo and or xA should be higher rated than an xB by any reasonable scale that I can think of. unless interior volume weirdly makes its way into it.

 

how do you take ice core samples from years prior to the last ice age???? this really confuses me? i mean between ice ages, lots of the time, there is no ice at all. how do you core ice that melted millions of year ago?? so that means these ice cores you are referring to only go back to the last time all the ice melted, at the longest. So you can't compare that with all of earth history seeing that that is basicly a blink of an eye compared to the age of the earth.
And I hope you weren't talking about me not knowing what causes "Global Warming" because i am very aware.
And just because i am not one of the people going around crying about "Global Warming" doesn't mean i don't think it could be an issue or is something that never needs to be worried about. But I am a scientist, i have degrees in Biology and Geology and I know lots of other scientist, much older and wiser than myself, and i know for a fact that a lot of the time they don't know what they are talking about. or they think they do and the next year or two everything changes. Science is an ever evolving process and they don't always get it right the first time around. I am just waiting for some better evidence before i start running around crying about global warming like a lot of people do, who don't even really know what it is.
Sorry for ranting.
I am all for a cleaner planet and am against useless burning of fossil fuels, etc. I believe if the government funded alternative fuel research as much as they fund oil companies, we would have had amazing alt fuel technology years ago.

Just my thoughts.
Not bashing anyone

 

"CNW Marketing Research in Bandon, Ore"

Huh, and I thought Bandon only produced cheese.

I dunno how accurate this research is, but I still know the xB is a damn good when it comes to fuel economy and greenhouse gas emmisions. Toaster powers, activate!

 

jason2000, what would constitute "better evidence" in your estimation?

RichC

 

maybe some good scientific papers that make sense. 99% of crap i see about it are in newspapers, tv news, or online news. I don't believe much of anything so i take everything with a grain of salt. But here is something maybe worth reading
http://www.junkscience.com/news/robinson.htm

 

The EPA's global warming site is as good a place to start as any. There are plenty of references and cites available there.

http://yosemite.epa.gov/oar/globalwa...ent/index.html

RichC

 

jason2000:

"...and I know lots of other scientist, much older and wiser than myself, and i know for a fact that a lot of the time they don't know what they are talking about. or they think they do and the next year or two everything changes."

saying you know some scientists who do bad science, therefore all science is bad, is not a great argument. it's good to be skeptical, though, particularly about what to do, if anything.

also, junkscience.com is a pretty questionable resource. don't they try to call carbon dating and the fossil record junk science, too, in the creationist vein? Let's not start that.

Anyway, that particular opinion piece has a temperature graph showing decreasing temps, attributed to the "Marshall Institute". Aside from being heavily funded by Exxon, the graph is just wrong. Temperatures, particularly since the 80's are increasing. Just look around a little--the EPA is as skeptical as anyone, so why not start there. Have fun!

 

I'm the type of person that cares about the environment, but not enough to worry about it. I know nothing about recycling except that it has failed miserably on the Gulf Coast of FL. I also think that global warming is being blown out of proportion just to make money off of it.

 

what is apparent to me is that people on both sides of the argument are using data to show two different things. Which means to me that it might be somewhat flawed data. But since i didn't do the testing i can't vouch for it.
All i am trying to say is that I don't know if "global warming" is doing what the newspapers are saying its doing, and i doubt anyone really does, only time will tell.
I do think there are bigger things to be worried about that aren't in the papers or talked about as much.
Like the amount of Mercury in the fish we eat, overpopulation, disease.....

 

i dont understand how and or where they came up with these numbers. hmmmmm

 

A VERY well put response. Thank you. Good explanation. . . and you even provided reasoning for your logic!

 

I was just thinking about how f-ed people are gonna be when temperature starts going back in the other direction and we have another full blown ice age. Right now with the earth still warming since the last ice age the only main problem is the people who were dumb enough to build their house right at sea level (or below it ). These jerks are fighting nature trying to build walls to keep out the ocean and destoying the habit of the ocean in the process.
So when the next ice age happens people are super screwed. During the last ice age glaciers hundreds of feet thick moved south all the way into pennsylvania, about 40 miles north of where i live, that means NY State and all of Canada would be flattened under a Massive slow moving ice block. The same thing would happen in Europe, Russia, China. etc. So where would all these people go? i would guess that close to 20% or more of the worlds population would be forced to move. That would be messy.

 

I dunno if you are serious or are joking, but you do realize that you are talking about that an even that will happen over thousands, tens of thousands of years? The ocean moves VERY slowly. . . mm to inches/year at the fastest rate. It's not like the ocean is going to rise to Pennsylvania over night. Worst case scenario, people will have to move out of their properties some time in their lifetime. We'd be talking about a gradual economic disaster. . . but ambient environment (that is stil above water) is still habitable, the death toll would be fairly low. I'm speaking strictyly about the effect of the waters rising, and not the air quality/temperature.

 

Junk Science, Junk Science, Junk Science. Welcome to the Exxon/Mobile School of Climate Change!!!

 

I love my scion but i have some mixed emotions. yes it is energy efficient. when i see the escalades and the large gas guzzlers. i get somewhat angry. no one should be entitled to waste the earth's resources. sadly, we are killing people overseas to make sure that we have access to oil. (why did god curse them by putting their families on top of our oil?)

global warming is real. when you think of how we are burning down rainforest and creating dead zones in the oceans. it is like the only thing that matters is money.

i love my scion but we should be looking for even more energy efficiency.

oil is a nonrenewable resource. it is going to become increasingly expensive. even if pumping increasing volumes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere didn't matter, what does it say about us wasting our children and grandchilren's resources? will be simply be a shrug of the shoulders someday when they say to us that we knew better and did nothing.