tj90

Feb. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Porsche AG is under threat from the drive to combat global warming, Chief Executive Officer Wendelin Wiedeking says.

Wiedeking has joined with other German luxury-car makers to protest a mandatory European Union cap on carbon-dioxide emissions that he says favors companies such as Renault SA and Fiat SpA that produce smaller vehicles....

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...d=a46FG2hBzreg

"Porsche's most powerful vehicle, the Cayenne Turbo S SUV, seats five and generates 520 horsepower, more than twice as much as some 18-ton delivery trucks. With a price tag that starts at $111,600, it also produces 378 grams of CO2 a kilometer." ``Why does an SUV need 500 horsepower?'' Wiedeking said, reading a question from a shareholder. ``Because it's a blast.''

Wow I thought everyone believed reducing CO2 could "save the environment"?! Oh well, Ill be curling up to STATE OF FEAR by Michael Crichton tonight. I wonder if this is mandatory reading over there at Porsche AG?

tj90

The article also mentions / confirms previous topics on Porsche's profit margins. Wowie - Zowie~

martyp

State of Fear is an interesting read. The ideas presented kinda ring true to me . . .

KLSpeed27

A couple of good movies related to this topic are Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" and "Who Killed the Electric Car". Both are worth renting if you have not seen them yet.

RallyJon

Definitely bone up on the subject before watching "An Inconvenient Truth". It's a worthwhile movie to see and makes some decent overall points, but there's a lot of, um, convenient truth-stretching and you'll get a better perspective if you know what to expect going in.

On the topic, I've always felt that the strongest emissions and safety enforcement should be imposed on/adopted by the largest contributors. Start with the big trucks and buses and mass produced vehicles where one rule can make a huge difference, and leave the relatively tiny production specialty vehicles out of it.

jimbo3

Are these found in the "Fiction" or "Comedy" section?

ilko

Here's Jeremy Clarkson's take on Porsche and global warming (from a year ago)...

http://www.topgear.com/content/featu...ries/03/1.html

Here's a little quote:

jimbo3

And Clarkson finishes it off with this accurate observation:

"Unfortunately, the people who tell us these things tend to be card-carrying lunatics with an agenda. They're the ones who were chained to the fence outside Greenham Common, saying atomic war with Russia was inevitable, and that if the Earth's climate changes - something it has done since the dawn of time - we'll all drown.

They're the ones who see only bad in the world. The ones who lie in fields of gold on glorious summer days, complaining about the distant hum of traffic. The ones who see a corporate conspiracy at the bottom of every packet of crisps.

Life has usually dealt them a handful of low clubs and diamonds. How many good-looking women did you see at Greenham? And because everything turned out so badly, they want to change the system. That's why they want us to cycle to work and adopt a fox - because it brings us down to their level, not because the oil's running out. Because it isn't."

The simple truth is that one major volcano spews out more greenhouse gasses than all the gasses put out by mankind since the Industrial Revolution. Al Gore's private jet-hopping and his 25,000 square foot homes (yes, he has at least three very large homes) and his fleet of SUV's put out more greenhouse gasses than the entire production of Cayennes will this year. That's not to say that nothing should be done about vehicle emmisions, but rather that folks get a little perspective and rational instead of blindly believing the whacked-out "science" that the loonies are putting out there.

Red rooster

Taking an engineering view of the whole subject , what explains that this temperature change has happened many times before ?
Ice core samples show a cyclic hot/cold situation in the earths atmosphere.
From memory the cycle time is around 1000 years .
Maybe we would be better occupied trying to deal with the situation than trying to stop a natural phenomenon ??
Maybe a Canute scenario !!

Geoff

Pete

Good points Rooster. When I took a graduate course in glacial and pleistocene geology over 30 years ago (a nono-second in geologic time) there was a school of thought among respected pleistocene geologists that the "ice age" wasn't even over yet and that we were just in an inter-glacial stage, many of which occurred in the last million + years.

Pete

VR4 Playa

The best person to consult on the topic of global warming, or any topic for that matter is George Carlin...

From his special in 1992 titled "Jammin With George" the track "The Earth Is Fine" sums it up best, some of his key points- "the planet is going nowhere, we're going away", "The earth has been through a lot worse than us: the magnetic reversal of the poles, sun spots, comets, meteors, earthquakes..."

pretty much to sum it up whoever said these films are by card-carrying liberals is right on the money and George goes on to say "these are your middle class liberals who think the biggest thing wrong with this country is there's not enough bicycle paths and they want a clean environment for their Volvos...."

the best part is he says to these liberals if they wanna know how the earth is doin ask someone who's frozen in place in lava in Pompeii or someone who's burried under tons of earthquake rubble if they feel like a threat to the planet

Finally remember that heavy industry has only been around for 200yrs while the Earth has been around for what... 4.5-5 BILLION YEARS....

I could go on and on and while a comedian is by no means a scientist or politician he sure seems to inform me through his trashy language that a lot of stuff that comes out of those so-called experts mouths is just that... garbage

The Brewmeister

No one can argue that climate change is happening, the numbers proove it.
What isn't proven is whether mankind has anything to do with it. Climate
change has existed on earth since it's beginning. The REAL "Incovenient Truth"
here is that the liberals are trying to use the subject as an excuse to
re-distribute wealth. They will try their hardest to silence or discredit
anyone who disagrees with them as well. It's already happening.

Dan V

I hope you guys realize you're bashing some folks' religion, which isn't nice

N51

Everything cycles. Planets, moon, markets, women. In comparison to the previous one, the only thing different is that Al Gore wasn't around to proclaim the end of the world as we know it.

Here's hoping that the global-warming science is correct - and that I live to see and enjoy it.

Noah

VR4 Playa

lol, well George Carlin is my religion... lol, jk

but in all seriousness, especially after taking a bible as literature course in college, I've realized that religion is what you want it to be and there's so much messed up stuff in the Bible that's supposed to show how so many bad things happen for a reason(i.e. 3 ways to describe the crucifixtion- mark, matt, and luke)... to me religion is a belief that there is a God and there is a meaning to life... as for all the rules, regulations, and structure... I go by what the US Gov't tells me...

but that's 'bout all i'll say on religion.... then again, I think you meant that the idea of global warming and the ppl who chain themselves to a fence in front of a factory are "religiously devoted" to saving the earth... lol... just like all the ppl in history that have killed themselves and others in the name of God....