Speaking at The New York Auto Show, GM Car Czar Lutz defended his view that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is a crock of shit [not paraphrasing]. When manicmommies.com blogger Kristen Brandt asked Maximum Bob why GM didn't make a vehicle for breeders who want to save the planet, Lutz launched into an anti-AGW tirade. Maximum Bob said the recent 2008 International Conference on Climate Change (see video: Global Warming Snow Job) supposedly signals a turning point in the scientific community's opinion of AGW. "Don't worry about saving the planet," Lutz tut-tutted. "Trust me: the planet is going to save itself." "I didn't want to sound like a tree-hugger," the all-expenses paid blogger demurred. "Then don't sound like one," a bellicose Lutz replied. In other news, Bob is still hopeful the tree-hugger's four-wheeled poster child– the Chevrolet Volt– will be ready by the end of 2010.
Find Reviews by Make:
Read all comments
SO basically Bob feels that GM’s current lineup is good enough and you better like it!
The only guy left in the USA not scared to speak his mind.
Stupid people speak their minds all the time. Where have you been?
coupdetat:
I know a bunch of enviromentalist types who speak their minds consistently, so they are stupid as well?
Proper response to blogger:
“You want an enviromentally friendly car? Then get a damned wagon instead of a Suburban and tell your spoiled little spawn that they wont be watching Looney Toons on the way home, and they will like it.”
It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt . — George Eliot
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.– Abraham Lincoln (also attr. Confucius)
It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.– Mark Twain
Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding. — ‘Proverbs’ 17:28.
Lutz kills me. The “2008 International Conference on Climate Change” signals a change in the consensus! LOL!
They had a whopping 19 scientists show up for that, several known to be in the pay of oil, coal and gas interests. The showcase report from the conference is a vaguely edited version of a SEPP report that Fred Singer’s been peddling for years, attacking science that’s been passed by with arguments that have been proven wrong. Important sessions were led by the respected climatologist John Stossel and some comedian whose name I forget. Marc Morano’s important presentation should have been subtitled, “Taking Shots at Al Gore.” Give me a break.
There are some real skeptics out there but they’re people who actually do research and have doubts. It ain’t anybody from the Heartland crowd.
KixStart:
That conference was described to me as, “Never have so few been so wrong about so much.”
Well, he’s right about the “planet saving itself.” It’s never the planet that’s in danger. It’s us. Outside of the inevitable expansion of the sun, and a serious intra-space collision, the planet’s going to be fine.
As for anthropogenicism behind climate change, there’s plenty of doubt drowned out by an abundance of groupthink and hysteria. The politicization of the debate can be seen in the distracting attack on private transportation (read the automobile) and the lack of serious effort to quickly reduce carbon output from fixed-location infrastructure. If the AGW coterie were serious (and seriously informed) they would be pushing for rapid and dramatic reform on the consumption side in buildings, and on the production side in carbon banking, and deep-pockets subsidization of solar farming. But no. The IPCC and the politics surrounding it are not about an environmental issue. It is a cover for bureaucratic regulation and control by elites.
There’s no other explanation for priorities being wrongheaded.
It’s more than likely that Lutz’s view that AGW is a crock will be proven correct, but he’ll be dead before the evidence is in. So will most of us unless that long-term cooling cycle that advanced climate researches see on the time horizon arrives on schedule by 2030. It’s proven here and elsewhere that trying to change anyone’s mind on this issue is futile. So I look for consistency between belief and action. This is where the anthropogenic climate change alarmists fall flat on their faces. We barely hear a peep about the mega and macro initiatives that could have impact the soonest. Legislation to drive efficiency into the car fleet over the next 30 years…..please. This is a pea shot into the wind, and for a problem that’s already on a one-way street to impertinence because it will be solved. Particulate and water pollution, and local compound aerosols are the reason to continue to refine the automobile environmentally. Not carbon. The car you drive isn’t going to affect the temperature of earth’s climate in 2100 by a whit. Meanwhile, the points of leverage for real five and ten-year gains are ignored by the personal-transportation-hating elites.
The IPCC is calling for *halving* 2005 total annual global anthropogenic carbon emissions by 2050. This, we can all be quite sure, is not going to happen. And if a multi-century cooling cycle hits, as it did around 1500, we might need a little extra carbon in our ether. On the other hand, if the anthropogenic climate change alarmists are correct, I’m squarely in the camp of preferring to cope with a warmer climate than in a retrograde drift back to 1000 horses dying per week in New York City, horseshit in the streets, widespread diptheria, TB, cholera and other communicable diseases, and average lifespan of 45 years.
The next version of any kind of automobile you buy will be more efficient than the current one. And powertrain options are expanding once again. When anthropogenic alarmists show objective and considered strategic response to the problem they believe is threatening, it will be much easier to take them seriously. Prioritize near-term realizable carbon reductions, build seawalls and reservoirs. Build a national water distribution system. Invest in desalination. Etc., etc. Stop futzing with the car through meaningless feel-good measures. Lutz has his faults, but his sentiment on AGW isn’t among them. Nevertheless, GM is selling into a market that is affected by the AGW belief system, so fuel-efficient cars must be well-represented in its portfolio.
Phil
RF – What about your questions to Bob Lutz? From the looks of it, you guys got close enough for some hand-to-hand combat.
Dude.
Dockers?
Yes, the planet is going to automatically restock all those hydrocarbons miraculously.
*le sigh*
While I think Lutz is a bit of an idiot, I am tired of hearing about saving the planet. The planet will be here for another 4 billion years regardless of what we humans do.
What we need to focus on is saving ourselves.
I heard a guy on a local talk show on Sunday who is writing a book about AGW politics and he was talking about how a 5 degree temperature rise is nothing compared to temperature variations over the eons, and how people have this mistaken fear that the planet will burn up in some catastrophic event. (Who really thinks this way?)
While his point may be valid, I’m not worried about the planet burning up over a measly 5 degrees. I’m worried about the planet being able to support 6 freakin’ billion people after it has warmed up another 5 degrees. That’s the catastrophe.
“It’s more than likely that Lutz’s view that AGW is a crock will be proven correct, but he’ll be dead before the evidence is in.”
The next couple of years will tell a lot. Is this winter an anomoly or is the temperature of the Earth controlled to a great extent by the heat from the Sun? I think with the reduced activity from the Sun this cold winter will not be an anomoly but a preview of a number of cold winters to come.
Humans survived the last Ice Age and will survive this last small rise in temperatures. Of course humans have thrived during the warm spells and struggled through the cold spells. Still they survived the last Ice Age when there was miles of ice on top of the continent. And come to think about it the caribou in ANWAR could probably exist with a pipeline if they could survive an Ice Age.
And to think I was looking forward to living in tropical Canada with a little bit of beach front fresh water property.
Even if the GW science was right, China, India, etc. are the real problem since they are the ones exponentially increasing GW gases. And don’t forget water vapor is by far the number one greenhouse gas.
And i should have said he was the only man not so fearful of the enviros that he would express his opinion.
Global warming WTF. Ask the guy shoveling snow out of his driveway for the second time in 8 hours what he thinks about global warming. Just don’t stand too close because he may hit you. Ever notice that all the global warming conferences attended by the Al Gore acolytes are in places where the mean temperature is in the 90’s.
Phil Ressler well said. I have been saying the same things, but people don’t listen to it on to what Al Gore and the 5 o’clock news tell them to think.
Even if the GW science was right, China, India, etc. are the real problem since they are the ones exponentially increasing GW gases. And don’t forget water vapor is by far the number one greenhouse gas.
This is so true. Those Chinese and Indians wanting to live like we do – the impertinence of it. It’s just a bloody outrage, how dare they?
Potemkin:
The high today in the DFW area in 1931 was 91 degrees. Today, the high is supposed to be around the high 60s. As far as I’m concerned, Lutz is right. Global Warming is a crock.
Unless, of course, Al Gore and his legion of sheep are convinced that 90
I’ll take the global warming crowd more seriously when they start pushing for wider use of nuclear power to generate electricity.
Virtual Insanity :
March 20th, 2008 at 9:08 am
Potemkin:
The high today in the DFW area in 1931 was 91 degrees. Today, the high is supposed to be around the high 60s. As far as I’m concerned, Lutz is right. Global Warming is a crock.
Local, daily weather fluctuations and climate trends are not the same thing. Please see Donal Fagan’s post above.
Dean: you’re right.
The planet will recover. It did after the dinosaurs were gone…
I think production vs consumption is the real problem. Technology makes it ever easier to harvest the world’s resources and consume them ever faster. A few guys with picks and shovels in a coal mine is hugely different than scraping off mountain tops and enormous earth moving machines with rotating cutting wheels to scoop up dirt.
http://www.allowe.com/Humor/WhereIsMyDozer.htm
Yeah, we’re polluting the earth but we are using up the earth in an ever faster pace b/c everyone wants to live like the Americans and the Americans can’t imagine living any other way.
I think it is time to begin making the changes to America (and the rest of the world) that enables us to continue with a good lifestyle while using a fraction of the resources. Wait 20 years and we’ll see the Chinese, Indians, and some of the smaller players competing with the Europeans and Americans for massive amounts of non-renewable resources like oil and coal. I think denial of this amounts to putting one’s head in the sand.
There are certainly people in power (corporate and gov’t) who benefit from business as usual when they know that they will be retired or dead before the agenda they force now reveals it’s consequences.
For the folks bitching about a cold winter… We’ve had yet another warm winter here in TN. Not only that we have been battling a drought for a few years as well. Our storms also seem to be getting more powerful if less frequent. I hear the arguments for a cooling trend but as a kid in the 1970s/1980s we had much colder and snowy winters then than we have had in the 1990s and the new century. Thw eather must be changing in different ways in different places.
Phil Ressler: FWIW, more and more new buildings are conforming with LEED standards, which are better than nothing, and the “Cradle to Cradle” book by William McDonough & Michael Braungart has energized some young architects to design even more efficient and sustainable buildings. But just as with cars, no amount of energy-conscious design will matter until clients buy in. They control the money.
bfg9k:
I would argue that 30 degrees is not a “fluctuation”.
So, take your advice. See Donald Fagan’s post. Oh, sick burn.
Well he’s right. But we may not get to see it…