The bill is, of course, worthless as an energy measure.

It's named an "Energy Bill", but this is just an empty title designed to fool voters and gullible reporters. The bill does nothing to enhance energy production in the U.S.--not nucleur, not coal, nothing.

The auto mileage/ethanol use mandates? Mere rhetoric. As if Congress could pass a law mandating scientific progress! The whole notion is about as UNscientific as can be.

The push for ethanol? Ethanol is about as INefficient an energy source as one can find. The taxpayer money spent subsidizing ethanol production impoverishes the taxpayer and, as it takes croplands out of production, drives up the price of food--a double whammy on Joe Sixpack.

Bruce and I agree that this bill is mostly worthless? That would be alarming if I wasn't certain that we'd disagree on who's responsible for our lack of progress on energy policy. Hint: his recent experiment with heating his building by burning his visitor logs was not considered a success (for energy generation).

In my fight against global warming I not only didn't use my snow blower but also kept the reflective snow on my sidewalks. Who said it was tough being green?

When did the idea that nature creates waste start? The removal of the nutrients in biomass converted to fuel will need to be replaced. It is a natural fertilizer.

Bruce-

There's more than one way to skin a cat, reducing energy consumption is as much a solution as increasing energy production.

But that doesn't enrich to oil companies that pay your salary over at the RNC, does it?

" Mere rhetoric. As if Congress could pass a law mandating scientific progress!"

But you believe Congress can pass a law mandating that new sources of coal and oil can be found, and that nuclear power can be made safer, right?

It's extremely comical do hear wingnut Bruce worried about Joe Sixpack.

Bruce would prefer Cheney and Big Oil writing our energy bills as they have done for seven years.

Worked out well didn't it!

Fuel economy standards have been tried before, and they didn't work.

The effect of making something cheaper is to encourage people to consume more of it. Increasing fuel economy has made it cheaper to drive; people are now willing, for instance, to live farther from their jobs, because it reduces the per-mile cost of commuting.

The low-hanging fruit in vehicle mileage (vehicle weight, electronic engine controls, fuel injection, etc) has been picked. To make further large advances will require large changes in the vehicles - hence the increased vehicle cost. The question is whether the additional cost will be returned to the buyer in the form of savings on fuel cost. Hybrids, for instance, for the most part don't make such a return.

There are those who say that high vehicle mileage is attainable with technology available today. If so, why is that technology not being used in Europe, where gas is $8 a gallon? (I was just in Belgium yesterday, so have recently seen the signs at the filling stations.) The reason is cost. Their cars look like ours, just smaller. That's what ours will look like in 2020, but perhaps more so; there are few cars on the road today that will average 35 MPG on the EPA driving cycles.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. The inmates are running the asylum here.

I find it odd that I'm agreeing with Bruce, but I'm agreeing with Bruce. This is as pointless as No Child Left Behind. The auto industry is given 12 years to bring mileage standards up to a point that is laughable in any other country than this one. There are at least one hundred European car models that get 40+ MPG right now.

Here's another shocker--I'm blaming a Democrat. Until John Dingell is out of office, this is pretty much the best we can hope for out of Congress.

Bruce,

You are proving more and more that you need to keep your mouth closed. Every time you open it, you take away all doubt as to how big of an idiot you are.

"Nothing to enhance energy production in the US . . ." Do you even know what a finite resource is? These sources won't last forever. Enhancing their production doesn't give you any more. It just gives you the opportunity to use up those resource faster.

Mileage mandates. Well the more efficient vehicles that we have out there the slower we will consume what we have. Science? Yeah that's part of it. Driving around in a Hummer is a bigger issue. Travel outside the US and you won't see the ridiculously large vehicles that we drive. They drive vehicles that are more fuel efficient.

Ethanol just a boondoggle? From Wikipedia - "Brazil’s 29-year-old ethanol fuel program uses cheap sugar cane, mainly bagasse (cane-waste) for process heat and power, and modern equipment, and provides a ~22% ethanol blend used nationwide, plus 100% hydrous ethanol for four million cars. The Brazilian ethanol program provided nearly 700,000 jobs in 2003, and cut 1975–2002 oil imports by a cumulative undiscounted total of US$50 billion. Today, Brazil gets more than 30% of its automobile fuels from sugar cane-based ethanol"

More jobs for the country and less money spent on outside fuel. Sounds like a win win solution.

Screw this!
Let's go nuclear and start building power plants like France did. 90% of France's energy is from nuclear power and they have low energy costs, but in the U.S. the nutty anti-nuke 3% weirdo's control all future developments with their protests and the spineless dem politicians give in.

Paulo

The bill does nothing to enhance energy production in the U.S.--not nucleur, not coal, nothing.

Posted by: Bruce | December 19, 2007 2:21 PM

How can we take seriously someone who can't even spell? Clearly this "Bruce" character is in a league of his own incomptence and ignorance.

I always knew Paulo really loved the French.

I'm with Paulo on this one.

First nuclear plant gets built in Crestwood!!

I nominate Paulo's backyard to store all the nuclear, not nucleur Bruce!!, waste.

Hey congress and President Bush, is anyone up there at all interested in enforcing the CAFE standards (40 mpg) we have today? Most automakers fleets are nowhere near the averages that are supposed to be enforced.

I have no doubt that future presidents and congresses are looking forward to not enforcing this bill, too.

Good to see they're banning incandescents, though.

Nuclear energy is both clean and, if monitored properly, safe. Let's have more of it right here in Illinois!

Hey don't pick on Bruce!

He's emulating his hero.

When was the last time that Bush 43 actually pronounced nuclear correctly?

Dave,

Fuel economy standards didn't work? You care to back that statement up? They have worked.

Part of the problem is all of the exemptions that these bills give. Trucks, mini-vans, suvs, etc. Overall, however, the increased standards HAVE helped.

Europe versus the US. First of all they tend to have much smaller cars and they don't consume as much oil as we do due to their vehicles. A lot of that cost is also taxes in those countries. Even so, how many Excursions, Hummers, Tahoes, etc. did you see in Belgium? I've been to Germany, France and England and they simply don't have the gas guzzlers that we have. They also have different standards for diesels and use that technology more there. The taxis in London are nearly all diesels, without the smell and the particulate pollution.

Dogjudge, I wouldn't say ethanol is a boondoggle, but ethanol is not a savior. First of all, it's taking corn away from the table and from the animal feed. It's also taking other crops away, driving up their costs and farmers grow more corn and less wheat, soy, etc. And, since you are a Lefty and I am sure concerned about the environment, it is a dirty fuel that also puts more water vapors in the air, which causes "global warming."

Don't get me wrong, there is a place for ethanol, just not a very big one.

If you favor increasing the size and cost of government; if you favor higher taxes on the middle class; if you think poverty-stricken Brazil is a model for the U.S. to follow; if you think any government can, with a stroke of the pen, mandate scientific progress--then yes, this "Energy Bill" will work.

The only things certain to come from this bill are higher taxes, bigger government, and more regulations. The promised benefits of this bill are just that--promises.

For an article by a Brazilian dissing the alleged ethanol success in Brazil, see http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig7/desousa1.html

There is no doubt that, if you're willing to spend enough money and energy, you can produce ethanol for autos. The question is--at what cost? For now and the foreseeable future, corn-based ethanol requires huge taxpayer subsidies in order to be competitive. In fact, one calculation shows that for the US to go entirely to corn-based ethanol for its auto fuel needs EVERY US farm would have to grow corn, leaving no farms to grow the food we eat.

Brazil is indeed a model economy when it comes to an energy program. However, as was said but not explained, they produce ethanol from sugar cane, not from corn. Sugar cane has a lot more energy than corn, and I believe it is easier to extract as well (don't quote me).

Only if our government is utterly incompetent (not saying they aren't) will increased ethanol production increase food prices. Each year the government buys way more corn than we eat and either stockpiles it, destroys it, or sends it overseas for "relief". If the price of corn starts to rise, they simply have to stop buying out the farmers and it will stabilize.

The energy sources we need to be looking at are solar and wind power. (Also tidal and wave power, but I'm not sure those are as well developed yet) Offer more grant money to developing better solar panels and tax breaks to companies who want to sell this new technology (there's one already developed that doesn't use expensive silicon).

I've also done a lot of arguing over buying fuel efficient cars. Here in Illinois, it seems people refuse to buy something small because they're certain it will kill them (someone in a giant killer SUV will surely run them down and crush them to death). I for one, will buy the first electric car produced that looks good and performs well (electric power is extremely good in terms of high-performance, the question is will anyone decide it's a good idea to make? See the Tesla Roadster). I was looking at the Volt, but I think it will be unimpressive in terms of performance. Buy small cars people, they wont kill you!!!

(On a side note, freight trains have been running on a diesel generator and electric motors for years. It's a great system, almost as efficient as it gets, and automakers are just picking up on this after 40 years of it being in service. Thank you GM for being the first, at least in the spotlight.)

Bruce,
What was the Manhatten Project if it wasn't government mandate of scientific progress? As you like to say, we'd be speaking German or Japanese if it wasn't for the money our government lured the brightest minds in the world to come over and help develop a weapon to end WWII.

Bruce,please inform the Swampers about the size of govt.during the six years your wing nuts had total control of govt.

Double dare ya.

This energy bill doesn't give us any energy. We need to drill for oil--we need refineries.
Communist China is drilling for oil off Florida's gulf while we our hampered by the Sierra Club and other environmental wacko groups.
Raising gas mileage by 2020 well whoopee.
Since Jimma Carter you can't just turn down the thermostat and put on a sweater.
Get a look at Algore's ugly light bulbs full of mercury that the enviro wackos also don't like. Wait till Fido knocks the lamp off the table and the hot mercury starts the carpet ablaze. There goes the American dream.
Also you can't put these by the curb you have dispose of them at hazmet sites and they have to be double bagged and you have to leave the room for 15 minutes while the fumes are released.Who says environmental people aren't crazy?
As for me I'm stocking up on incandescent bulbs they work with dimmers these spupid things don't. I pity my 5 grandchildren growing up in this new age pscyhobabble and PC dreams of radicals.Jerry White, Springfield, IL

Well, yes, dogjudge, I'll back it up.

Since 1978, the first model year in which the fuel economy standards were effective, through 2005, the last year for which I could readily find the population estimate, per-capita gasoline usage in the US has declined from 1.37 to 1.27 gallons per day per person, a decrease of a little over 7 per cent. (Gasoline usage data from the US Energy Information Administration, population estimates from the Census bureau.) This in the face of an increase of the automobile mileage standards from 18 MPG, well above the prior fleet average, in 1978 to 27.5 MPG today.

If you make something cheaper, people will use more of it. Annual mileage traveled per vehicle has increased from about 10,000 in the 1970's to near 15,000 today. People have more cars, reflected in the demand for three-car garages in new houses. There are fewer and fewer car pools. All of this contributes to the inelasticity of gasoline demand with respect to mileage standards.

You do see Excursions, Hummers, Tahoes in Belgium and other European countries, but they are not common, and look out of place. Much more common are Range Rovers and Jeep Cherokees; the latter are assembled at a Chrysler plant in, IIRC, Austria. Their car fleet is, as I noted above and I'm sure you agree, different from ours; fewer SUV's and generally smaller sedans than ours, and a lot more small "two-box" cars.

Once the 35 MPG overall standard is in effect, what will the American car fleet look like? An inkling can be gotten by looking at the EPA fuel economy guide, available at www.fueleconomy.gov (I'm looking at a 2007 model year hard copy that I picked up on my last visit to EPA in Ann Arbor). Remember, any vehicle that doesn't average 35 MPG hurts an automaker's average fuel economy. Chevrolet Aveo, at 26/34 MPG city/highway? No help. Ford Focus, 27/34? Nope. Honda Civic Hybrid, 49/51? Yes, but people's cost per mile will go up; hybrids generally don't pay for themselves in the gas saved. Suzuki Aerio, 25/31? It is to laugh. Toyota Yaris, 34/39? Maybe. Looking at these numbers, I seriously doubt that the car fleet of any European country averages 35 MPG.

At 35 MPG, the US automobile fleet will be made up of much smaller vehicles and will be more expensive. Of course, if you make things more expensive, people will consume less of them, so maybe those standards will finally work after all! Perhaps we won't be treated so often to the spectacle of people driving to the Powerhouse Gym to exercise, then driving home again.

What was the first (Secret) Energy Bill? No one has seen it yet, even though it was subpoenaed many times. That exercise ended, years later, when Cheney said he wasn't part of the Executive Branch. What happened to all this spin? Did the media finally buy it, or is anyone still looking into this unspeakable travesty?