Just when we were starting to think the main thing wrong with the Conservatives is their leader, Harper, they come roaring up with a ferocious reminder that they really are a dangerous bunch who really do not know how to use a knife and fork.
In the interior of BC a current Member of Parliament, a Conservative, is helping a new Conservative candidate to run for office in the next election. The present MP for the riding however is a member of the NDP, one whose popularity among voters has risen with each of the past two elections.
The Conservative MP now helping out the newly minted Conservative candidate, has said to listeners to a radio show not to bother with their elected MP, and if they want to approach government they should contact the new candidate, who is presently the mayor of a small town in the riding. This Conservative MP, Dick Harris, said that constituents would have a great benefit from having direct contact with the government which they have not had since 2004 ( because they have twice elected an NDP MP). That NDP MP, Nathan Cullen said he was floored by the vulgarity of Dick Harris who is "suggesting that the whole voting process is almost unnecessary by the Conservative perspective... because they will just simply appoint whom they wish to hear from as opposed to whom the people have chosen..."
Again we see that at heart this bunch is really the Reform crowd. They do not believe in democracy at all. They believe only in power. Let loose with a majority in power in Ottawa they would be as reliable as a bank robber let loose in an empty bank with the tills and vault stuffed with cash, and not a guard in sight. What the heck, if there are none but themselves to guard the bank, who cares about anyone else. They don't. Harper is a very bad thing. Harper's near gangster supporters are just as bad. Pretty soon they would decide that we do not really need elections either, in fact what is the point of a vote once they have power. People can always write to them, couldn't they. Sure.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
THE URBAN BULLY
PART 4
Outside the workplace, as in responding to academic or polemical bullying, you do not answer the bully directly other than by a short sharp rebuke, as in :"your comments are so grossly offensive that I will protest to your employer [editor, publisher, patron or promoter] rather than waste time on you." Then attack the audience, and that is very definitely not your audience but that of the bully, perhaps better called his protectors. Think carefully about exactly who that audience is, and think about what will disturb that specific audience, do not waste time on general motherhood issues. Instead of saying, "how can you editors publish such a bully," it would be better to say, "you can see from these quotes that this bully has no regard for his readers or the editors who have bought his material. Perhaps he has grown too big for his britches." Or "you can see from these comparison quotes that he just takes material from other writers and crudely uses it as his own. You may have liability from this."
However, to directly answer the bully, once identification has been made, is an act that can only be described as sincerely stupid. It will give the bully a great opportunity, which it will seize upon with joy, to kick you all around the floor.
Remember, the bully is not concerned with truth at all, just with the security of its audience and the certainty that it does have its claws fastened on a real victim. The only answer that is useful, as stated here, is one short, sharp and tight invitation to go to hell. Beyond that, let the bully get anxious while you attack the audience. And do not make any attempt at all to construct elegant argument based on reference to logical fallacies, or invite the bully to be "rational" (are you kidding?), or try to develop an imaginary round of verbal fencing (you may as well flounce across the floor in a tutu), or make phoney, nice or polite, or all the other chicken hearted things that intellectuals tend to do. To level a bully is a socially valuable function, so don't fool around, get into it and cut meat.
Every few days, for a week or so,get up and read the motto you have printed out, such as who among this creeps' possible audience shall I write to today, or who among my supporters shall I ask to attack his audience. In this effort persistence will pay off hugely. But who, if not you, will supply the persistence, and do not say "form letters".
Find something in the bully's production that should be corrected, if it is a matter of expert knowledge, and try to find some expert to do a short study, or more likely, tell you the chapter and verse of exactly why it is wrong. When you get these types of problems really understood then it is possible to write about them in a way that is unanswerable, often using material right at hand, instead of pages of footnotes. But this requires genuine intellectual work, which must must be done by someone for you (tricky) or by you yourself. If you want to show up the bully as an inferior specimen, you will surely have to make a superior effort.
Get close to the enemy. Look up the bully's other work, which is wonderfully possible on the internet today. Read its productions and get a feel for its proclivities and (usually) switches of position with fashion. Bullies do not care about truth, they just want to know what their likely audience wants to hear so that they can produce that and with it scout for victims and adopt the audiences pet hatreds in their own victim pursuits. So their "research" tends to drop off as soon as they can find something they can use to beat a victim over the head with. If they find a quote to the effect that there is a mass of research supporting their position, or they can find a claim based on apparent authority, they are not likely to go into that research to see if it exists and is reliable.
And since the main priority for the bully is to arm itself to attack the present victim, you are quite likely to find the bully worked the other side of the street in some piece a few years back. The consistent theme among literary bullies is that they will attack from the security of the established position in business and technology whatever that position is at the moment. That is where the security is, so that is where the bully will nest.
If by some unhappy chance the bully is on your side of an issue, then you should spare no effort to cut down the SOB and plow the ground he stood on with salt. Pro Labor bullies ALWAYS end up on the side of the worst of the exploiters, and when you consider how totally individual and selfish are their concerns you can see why. You can make book on their proposals such that going against what they propose has a pretty good chance of being the right choice.
There is one more thing. If you find that a bully quite suddenly tries to make friends or becomes polite, watch out. That just means the bully has intuitively felt that you are perhaps not a real victim and it wants to cautiously scout around a bit to see what you have got. If you let such a bully get close to you it will suddenly attack and give you quite a start. Remember, bullies are not like ordinary people, do not really want to resolve issues, and at bottom are actually mentally twisted a bit.
We are working into a time in society when we absolutely must have rational debates about a lot of very confusing stuff. It is definitely a time to make short work of bullies.
Conclusion of the Post on Bullies
Gramps
Outside the workplace, as in responding to academic or polemical bullying, you do not answer the bully directly other than by a short sharp rebuke, as in :"your comments are so grossly offensive that I will protest to your employer [editor, publisher, patron or promoter] rather than waste time on you." Then attack the audience, and that is very definitely not your audience but that of the bully, perhaps better called his protectors. Think carefully about exactly who that audience is, and think about what will disturb that specific audience, do not waste time on general motherhood issues. Instead of saying, "how can you editors publish such a bully," it would be better to say, "you can see from these quotes that this bully has no regard for his readers or the editors who have bought his material. Perhaps he has grown too big for his britches." Or "you can see from these comparison quotes that he just takes material from other writers and crudely uses it as his own. You may have liability from this."
However, to directly answer the bully, once identification has been made, is an act that can only be described as sincerely stupid. It will give the bully a great opportunity, which it will seize upon with joy, to kick you all around the floor.
Remember, the bully is not concerned with truth at all, just with the security of its audience and the certainty that it does have its claws fastened on a real victim. The only answer that is useful, as stated here, is one short, sharp and tight invitation to go to hell. Beyond that, let the bully get anxious while you attack the audience. And do not make any attempt at all to construct elegant argument based on reference to logical fallacies, or invite the bully to be "rational" (are you kidding?), or try to develop an imaginary round of verbal fencing (you may as well flounce across the floor in a tutu), or make phoney, nice or polite, or all the other chicken hearted things that intellectuals tend to do. To level a bully is a socially valuable function, so don't fool around, get into it and cut meat.
Every few days, for a week or so,get up and read the motto you have printed out, such as who among this creeps' possible audience shall I write to today, or who among my supporters shall I ask to attack his audience. In this effort persistence will pay off hugely. But who, if not you, will supply the persistence, and do not say "form letters".
Find something in the bully's production that should be corrected, if it is a matter of expert knowledge, and try to find some expert to do a short study, or more likely, tell you the chapter and verse of exactly why it is wrong. When you get these types of problems really understood then it is possible to write about them in a way that is unanswerable, often using material right at hand, instead of pages of footnotes. But this requires genuine intellectual work, which must must be done by someone for you (tricky) or by you yourself. If you want to show up the bully as an inferior specimen, you will surely have to make a superior effort.
Get close to the enemy. Look up the bully's other work, which is wonderfully possible on the internet today. Read its productions and get a feel for its proclivities and (usually) switches of position with fashion. Bullies do not care about truth, they just want to know what their likely audience wants to hear so that they can produce that and with it scout for victims and adopt the audiences pet hatreds in their own victim pursuits. So their "research" tends to drop off as soon as they can find something they can use to beat a victim over the head with. If they find a quote to the effect that there is a mass of research supporting their position, or they can find a claim based on apparent authority, they are not likely to go into that research to see if it exists and is reliable.
And since the main priority for the bully is to arm itself to attack the present victim, you are quite likely to find the bully worked the other side of the street in some piece a few years back. The consistent theme among literary bullies is that they will attack from the security of the established position in business and technology whatever that position is at the moment. That is where the security is, so that is where the bully will nest.
If by some unhappy chance the bully is on your side of an issue, then you should spare no effort to cut down the SOB and plow the ground he stood on with salt. Pro Labor bullies ALWAYS end up on the side of the worst of the exploiters, and when you consider how totally individual and selfish are their concerns you can see why. You can make book on their proposals such that going against what they propose has a pretty good chance of being the right choice.
There is one more thing. If you find that a bully quite suddenly tries to make friends or becomes polite, watch out. That just means the bully has intuitively felt that you are perhaps not a real victim and it wants to cautiously scout around a bit to see what you have got. If you let such a bully get close to you it will suddenly attack and give you quite a start. Remember, bullies are not like ordinary people, do not really want to resolve issues, and at bottom are actually mentally twisted a bit.
We are working into a time in society when we absolutely must have rational debates about a lot of very confusing stuff. It is definitely a time to make short work of bullies.
Conclusion of the Post on Bullies
Gramps
Monday, August 27, 2007
The House Servant
Today we hear that the Attorney General of the USA has resigned, and there he was all by himself at a podium, uttering the same words we have heard so often. What is this,no. 7 or is it 70 of the Disciples of Strauss and their pals swept into discard since last November. All it took, it seems, was the switch of a couple of dozen seats in the Congress and the historical broom started its awesome sweeping.
American political process is confused and raucous, but there is no escaping the majesty of their Constitutional Gods sweeping out the stable. I begin to wonder, is it possible it will reach all the way to the black and menacing figure of Cheney.
Already it seems that a harsh picture begins to emerge. One recalls Walt Disney's Sorcerer's Apprentice. When the apprentice calls up a spell to have the broom load the pails with water from the well and save him the work, he has no ability to stop them and soon the Sorcerer's house is flooded. Then the Sorcerer comes home.
So who is coming to the White House to take over from the hapless but bloody minded and very nasty little boy who has been causing such havoc these 7 years. Is it Bush the Elder and his group of pals from the oil industry, and other governing circles. The people who dress up in togas from time to time and wander around manicured gardens pretending they rule the world. Maybe the world is sort of like the fantasies that are so popular in movies, and they do fit. It is just the rest of us that are stuck in the mud.
They all remind me of a startling glimpse into that social world by Fitzgerald:
"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy-they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made."
Shedding his killers one by one Junior Bush still has quite a ways to go, yet we have already stumbled into a swamp where the media have no idea what to say, anymore. Do you suppose they might start telling the truth, just because there is nothing else to say.
American political process is confused and raucous, but there is no escaping the majesty of their Constitutional Gods sweeping out the stable. I begin to wonder, is it possible it will reach all the way to the black and menacing figure of Cheney.
Already it seems that a harsh picture begins to emerge. One recalls Walt Disney's Sorcerer's Apprentice. When the apprentice calls up a spell to have the broom load the pails with water from the well and save him the work, he has no ability to stop them and soon the Sorcerer's house is flooded. Then the Sorcerer comes home.
So who is coming to the White House to take over from the hapless but bloody minded and very nasty little boy who has been causing such havoc these 7 years. Is it Bush the Elder and his group of pals from the oil industry, and other governing circles. The people who dress up in togas from time to time and wander around manicured gardens pretending they rule the world. Maybe the world is sort of like the fantasies that are so popular in movies, and they do fit. It is just the rest of us that are stuck in the mud.
They all remind me of a startling glimpse into that social world by Fitzgerald:
"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy-they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made."
Shedding his killers one by one Junior Bush still has quite a ways to go, yet we have already stumbled into a swamp where the media have no idea what to say, anymore. Do you suppose they might start telling the truth, just because there is nothing else to say.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
PROMISES PROMISES
PART 3 of 3
Facts and Fantasies on auto emissions
We begin to see that far from being at least a good start at reducing tail pipe emissions, the 2005 Voluntary Agreement injures the public interest. Here is a list of just some of the defects we have observed:
1. The agreement is primarily an intention to note or witness what is happening in the auto making field that would be done, and largely has been done, without any agreement.
2. The level of gas efficiency has not been going up, it has been going down for over 15 years and this agreement masks that fact while providing no improvements of its own.
3. This agreement is fundamentally BAU or Business As Usual in car making. If we need to reduce emissions in a serious way, we are deceived by it.
4. As a result of the way we have watched our Federal Government proceed Canada is pretty well at the bottom of the performance list for western nations. Only the USA is worse, though we are not even sure of that. Apart from Kyoto treaty obligations we are a long way from Japan or the European Union. It is stated in one of the best studies of the whole question: "The United States and Canada have the lowest standards in term of fleet average fuel economy rating, and they have the highest greenhouse gas emission rates based on the EU testing procedure".
(Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Vehicle Fuel efficiency Standards for Canada. Pollution Probe. February 2005. p.142)
5. By supporting this Agreement the Federal Government is assisting the car makers to avoid reductions they could and should be making, and hiding from Canadians that the Government already has a law that it can and should Proclaim, the 1976 Regulatory statute we have had on the books since then, and move promptly to regulate standards and enforce them.
6. In going along with the car makers the Federal government has allowed itself to be gradually moved away from legitimate public policy in reducing harmful emissions and into the promotion of sales interests of the car makers, which are not regulatory interests at all. The development of improved air conditioning in cars will reduce emissions overall by about 1.2 Mt CO2 e (as we can see from the California university study, Impact of Canada's Voluntary Agreement. U of California (Davis). Institute of Transportation Studies.N.P. Lutsey 2006) but that object is pursued to please buyers, not to cut emissions. There is no need to push the car makers to please customers, as they are regularly doing that anyhow. We are permitting a car maker distraction activity to deceive the public.
7. Much the same can be said about the gradual substitution of lighter parts or new materials in the construction of car engines and bodies, which is also contributing a small amount to reductions (or increased power), as we can learn by review of the Lutsey study. It is however ridiculous for the Government to stand beside the industry ad men as they brag about the marvels of tail pipe emission reductions being achieved when the little that is done is simply the normal development of autos and is not undertaken to reduce emissions.
To do that would require the setting of standards that forced the car makers to substitute emission reduction for power increases, which they do not wish to do and do not have to do at present. Thus power improvement itself will lead to a modest 0.9 Mt CO2e emission reduction over the whole period of 1999 to 2010, but we need to do a great deal more than that. The same goes for variable valve lift, direct gasoline injection, cylinder deactivation and the other high tech terms we have been fed.
Despite industry bragging in the web page of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturer's Association, we have not adopted a non-contentious way to bypass controversy and magically deliver painless emission control, we have just put ourselves in the position of suckers applauding carnival pitchmen while those elected to serve our true interests have gone along for the ride. If there have been any real improvements that is due to the influence of US standards development, which died over a decade ago excepting the push from California. However the Americans have not been heroes either, and we bump along at the bottom of world efforts, with them.
8. US standards are now voluntary as the Bush administration doggedly seeks to sabotage and delay any standard setting, though the EPA is going forward with Tier 2 now that the Supreme Court has largely brushed aside the Bush administration hindrance that delayed Federal Standards for CO2. While California has projected improvements in its 2006 legislation, it is contested by the car makers in the Courts. It is not that the goal of a 1/3 improvement over current standards (if they were being met) in the US, or the goal of 120 grams per kilometer in the EU, ( a standard being fought over now), cannot be realized. It is a question of the public will involved. against the opposition of the car makers.
9. The car makers use many dodges to fight against standards improvements. One is the claim that Canada is not a big enough market to do anything that varies from what the Americans do. We have seen that all kinds of different initiatives are happening in the US with individual states adopting the California law of 2006 (they can be called CAFE plus, or Tier 2) because of the failure of the Federal government to act. California does have regulation now and its population is similar to Canada. If they can cause the car makers to get moving on standards, and they certainly have, why can we not do so. We are a separate sovereign country and should have less difficulty than California. There some movement in some Canadian provinces to pick up the California legislation (BC).
10.There is good reason for suspicion that the car makers in Canada will not meet their promise to deliver 5.3 Mt CO2e even though they intended to do it without moving a muscle, so to speak. This is because they must first of all get the Federal government to agree to give them credit for everything that has happened to cars, which normally would be politically assured.
As Canadian federal politics is now developing that could become a very unpopular move for a government heading into an election before 2010. We do not know what the individual car makers have been doing, and it may be their industry association does not either, and never will. If the agreement becomes no longer a useful publicity tool, the car makers will simply drop it, behind a screen of lies about how the government has not been reasonable. Then our government will have no agreement, no progress that is provable, no data, no data bank for the past 10 years from industry, and no knowledge of what each company has been doing.
Of course it could be that the government has been collecting data all this time. One imagines federal inspectors secreting this or that car and measuring the tail pipe product. But it is pretty hard to get industry or company wide averages out of that. So it may be the case that the sooner the government tells the car makers to take their agreement and shove it, the better.
11. We can see some of the double dealing we can expect from the car makers in a few items already. For example, the Tier 2 regulations coming up in the US. Will the car makers get credit for those, say in nitrous oxides? One industry statement is referred to in the Lutsey study to the effect that there is "no double billing for NOx" but in a different statement it is set out that the Canadian auto industry expects to be credited with GHG emissions reductions for their actions in response to the Tier 2 standards ( in this case established for pollutant criteria control).
12. The same problem will surely come up with respect to fuel substitution such as blending ethanol in gasoline. A government official has stated that this is outside the Voluntary agreement but that is probably because the government has its own program to promote ethanol, so it would not want to see any improvement credited to two different programs. But who is ready to bet that the car makers will not claim it, and have already figured on a credit for it. The California study estimates that ethanol will reduce emissions by 0.68% in one year, 2010, and this is about 12.8% of the total of 5.3 Mt CO2e the car makers have promised.
13. And there are wild cards that the car makers will surely make a fuss about. Real world driving is not the same a lab conditions tests, and so standards need to allow for reality. There is plenty to argue about here. The Voluntary agreement assumes a gap of 20% but each new study seem to be widening the gap. Will our government throw up their hands when the car makers go off into a long argument about that.This item may amount to as much as 1.12% of the reduction (21.2% of the total 5.3 Mt CO2e) car makers promise.
14. It has turned out that tire pressure has a role in emission reduction and drivers need to be educated about that (apparently it could amount to as much as 0.5% of on road fuel use. The car makers in Canada have already announced they will be claiming for that. Can we doubt they will put in a claim for the One Tonne Challenge (a program since abandoned by the new Conservative government in its determination to get rid of whatever the last government was doing), and other driver education programs. But how can car makers claim a credit for an improvement in emission reduction associated with a government mounted consumer education program? They will.
15. So we can see, following the detailed account in the California university study, the car makers can meet the promise of 5.3 Mt CO2e if they are credited with everything that has reduced emissions, whether it was the result of outdated reference case projections from 1999, or involved technologies already in use when the Voluntary agreement was signed, whether it was already set to occur due to previous agreements or would occur regardless of the Voluntary agreement (Tier 2,on road real life driving adjustments, harmonized fuel consumption with USA, ethanol adjustment) or whether the result of regulations made for reasons other than climate change such as Tier 2 for specific pollutants and tire monitoring programs for safety reasons, even driver education.
There is plenty for government to resist there in the Government-Industry committee set up by the Voluntary Agreement to "adjust" the claims of the car makers to ensure "fairness". It is hard to see even the pro-business Harper regime going for all of it, but where are we if they do? And how will we know what they are about to do until after they have done it and put out the usual joint statement.
16. If the industry obtains credits, as described in the California study, since the Government-industry group that is supposed to be functioning under the Voluntary agreement has not published anything, then the result can be a little greater that 5.3 Mt CO2e. The industry will make its "contribution". The Lutsey study also considers a more strict definition for the car makers to match. This one would be based on new emission reductions that did not include already established programs as GHG reduction initiatives. In other words this program would not credit the already established vehicle fuel and technology trends. In this case the target of 5.3 Mt CO2e reduction by 2010 is not met.
17. The conclusions of the California study are sobering:
"The question arises as to whether the intent of the MOU is to witness a 5.3 Mt CO2e emission reduction or to actually be responsible for causing a 5.3 Mt CO2e emission reduction. It is apparently possible for the MOU agreement to be met with little or no impact on GHG emissions from Canada's fleet. If the MOU oversight committee decides to credit each of the mechanisms discussed, the primary role of the Canada GHG MOU would be to simply re-label a series of already-established programs as a GHG reduction initiative. "
Impact of Canada's Voluntary Agreement Lutsey U of Cal (Davis) 2006 at p.31
18. For the reasons set out Gramps concludes that the industry will try to push the government into accepting industry credit that makes the Agreement a mockery. Whether it succeeds or fails depends on public pressure on the issue of accountability. Either way, we have lost a lot of time. The government should be urged to proclaim the 1976 Regulatory legislation, move quickly to establish the equivalent of Tier 2 as a Regulatory goal to be met in tandem with the progress of the California standards (assuming court challenges to that program fail) and move on to rapid implementation.
August 28,2007
Conclusion of the post Promises, Promises on Auto Emissions
Gramps
Gramps
Facts and Fantasies on auto emissions
We begin to see that far from being at least a good start at reducing tail pipe emissions, the 2005 Voluntary Agreement injures the public interest. Here is a list of just some of the defects we have observed:
1. The agreement is primarily an intention to note or witness what is happening in the auto making field that would be done, and largely has been done, without any agreement.
2. The level of gas efficiency has not been going up, it has been going down for over 15 years and this agreement masks that fact while providing no improvements of its own.
3. This agreement is fundamentally BAU or Business As Usual in car making. If we need to reduce emissions in a serious way, we are deceived by it.
4. As a result of the way we have watched our Federal Government proceed Canada is pretty well at the bottom of the performance list for western nations. Only the USA is worse, though we are not even sure of that. Apart from Kyoto treaty obligations we are a long way from Japan or the European Union. It is stated in one of the best studies of the whole question: "The United States and Canada have the lowest standards in term of fleet average fuel economy rating, and they have the highest greenhouse gas emission rates based on the EU testing procedure".
(Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Vehicle Fuel efficiency Standards for Canada. Pollution Probe. February 2005. p.142)
5. By supporting this Agreement the Federal Government is assisting the car makers to avoid reductions they could and should be making, and hiding from Canadians that the Government already has a law that it can and should Proclaim, the 1976 Regulatory statute we have had on the books since then, and move promptly to regulate standards and enforce them.
6. In going along with the car makers the Federal government has allowed itself to be gradually moved away from legitimate public policy in reducing harmful emissions and into the promotion of sales interests of the car makers, which are not regulatory interests at all. The development of improved air conditioning in cars will reduce emissions overall by about 1.2 Mt CO2 e (as we can see from the California university study, Impact of Canada's Voluntary Agreement. U of California (Davis). Institute of Transportation Studies.N.P. Lutsey 2006) but that object is pursued to please buyers, not to cut emissions. There is no need to push the car makers to please customers, as they are regularly doing that anyhow. We are permitting a car maker distraction activity to deceive the public.
7. Much the same can be said about the gradual substitution of lighter parts or new materials in the construction of car engines and bodies, which is also contributing a small amount to reductions (or increased power), as we can learn by review of the Lutsey study. It is however ridiculous for the Government to stand beside the industry ad men as they brag about the marvels of tail pipe emission reductions being achieved when the little that is done is simply the normal development of autos and is not undertaken to reduce emissions.
To do that would require the setting of standards that forced the car makers to substitute emission reduction for power increases, which they do not wish to do and do not have to do at present. Thus power improvement itself will lead to a modest 0.9 Mt CO2e emission reduction over the whole period of 1999 to 2010, but we need to do a great deal more than that. The same goes for variable valve lift, direct gasoline injection, cylinder deactivation and the other high tech terms we have been fed.
Despite industry bragging in the web page of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturer's Association, we have not adopted a non-contentious way to bypass controversy and magically deliver painless emission control, we have just put ourselves in the position of suckers applauding carnival pitchmen while those elected to serve our true interests have gone along for the ride. If there have been any real improvements that is due to the influence of US standards development, which died over a decade ago excepting the push from California. However the Americans have not been heroes either, and we bump along at the bottom of world efforts, with them.
8. US standards are now voluntary as the Bush administration doggedly seeks to sabotage and delay any standard setting, though the EPA is going forward with Tier 2 now that the Supreme Court has largely brushed aside the Bush administration hindrance that delayed Federal Standards for CO2. While California has projected improvements in its 2006 legislation, it is contested by the car makers in the Courts. It is not that the goal of a 1/3 improvement over current standards (if they were being met) in the US, or the goal of 120 grams per kilometer in the EU, ( a standard being fought over now), cannot be realized. It is a question of the public will involved. against the opposition of the car makers.
9. The car makers use many dodges to fight against standards improvements. One is the claim that Canada is not a big enough market to do anything that varies from what the Americans do. We have seen that all kinds of different initiatives are happening in the US with individual states adopting the California law of 2006 (they can be called CAFE plus, or Tier 2) because of the failure of the Federal government to act. California does have regulation now and its population is similar to Canada. If they can cause the car makers to get moving on standards, and they certainly have, why can we not do so. We are a separate sovereign country and should have less difficulty than California. There some movement in some Canadian provinces to pick up the California legislation (BC).
10.There is good reason for suspicion that the car makers in Canada will not meet their promise to deliver 5.3 Mt CO2e even though they intended to do it without moving a muscle, so to speak. This is because they must first of all get the Federal government to agree to give them credit for everything that has happened to cars, which normally would be politically assured.
As Canadian federal politics is now developing that could become a very unpopular move for a government heading into an election before 2010. We do not know what the individual car makers have been doing, and it may be their industry association does not either, and never will. If the agreement becomes no longer a useful publicity tool, the car makers will simply drop it, behind a screen of lies about how the government has not been reasonable. Then our government will have no agreement, no progress that is provable, no data, no data bank for the past 10 years from industry, and no knowledge of what each company has been doing.
Of course it could be that the government has been collecting data all this time. One imagines federal inspectors secreting this or that car and measuring the tail pipe product. But it is pretty hard to get industry or company wide averages out of that. So it may be the case that the sooner the government tells the car makers to take their agreement and shove it, the better.
11. We can see some of the double dealing we can expect from the car makers in a few items already. For example, the Tier 2 regulations coming up in the US. Will the car makers get credit for those, say in nitrous oxides? One industry statement is referred to in the Lutsey study to the effect that there is "no double billing for NOx" but in a different statement it is set out that the Canadian auto industry expects to be credited with GHG emissions reductions for their actions in response to the Tier 2 standards ( in this case established for pollutant criteria control).
12. The same problem will surely come up with respect to fuel substitution such as blending ethanol in gasoline. A government official has stated that this is outside the Voluntary agreement but that is probably because the government has its own program to promote ethanol, so it would not want to see any improvement credited to two different programs. But who is ready to bet that the car makers will not claim it, and have already figured on a credit for it. The California study estimates that ethanol will reduce emissions by 0.68% in one year, 2010, and this is about 12.8% of the total of 5.3 Mt CO2e the car makers have promised.
13. And there are wild cards that the car makers will surely make a fuss about. Real world driving is not the same a lab conditions tests, and so standards need to allow for reality. There is plenty to argue about here. The Voluntary agreement assumes a gap of 20% but each new study seem to be widening the gap. Will our government throw up their hands when the car makers go off into a long argument about that.This item may amount to as much as 1.12% of the reduction (21.2% of the total 5.3 Mt CO2e) car makers promise.
14. It has turned out that tire pressure has a role in emission reduction and drivers need to be educated about that (apparently it could amount to as much as 0.5% of on road fuel use. The car makers in Canada have already announced they will be claiming for that. Can we doubt they will put in a claim for the One Tonne Challenge (a program since abandoned by the new Conservative government in its determination to get rid of whatever the last government was doing), and other driver education programs. But how can car makers claim a credit for an improvement in emission reduction associated with a government mounted consumer education program? They will.
15. So we can see, following the detailed account in the California university study, the car makers can meet the promise of 5.3 Mt CO2e if they are credited with everything that has reduced emissions, whether it was the result of outdated reference case projections from 1999, or involved technologies already in use when the Voluntary agreement was signed, whether it was already set to occur due to previous agreements or would occur regardless of the Voluntary agreement (Tier 2,on road real life driving adjustments, harmonized fuel consumption with USA, ethanol adjustment) or whether the result of regulations made for reasons other than climate change such as Tier 2 for specific pollutants and tire monitoring programs for safety reasons, even driver education.
There is plenty for government to resist there in the Government-Industry committee set up by the Voluntary Agreement to "adjust" the claims of the car makers to ensure "fairness". It is hard to see even the pro-business Harper regime going for all of it, but where are we if they do? And how will we know what they are about to do until after they have done it and put out the usual joint statement.
16. If the industry obtains credits, as described in the California study, since the Government-industry group that is supposed to be functioning under the Voluntary agreement has not published anything, then the result can be a little greater that 5.3 Mt CO2e. The industry will make its "contribution". The Lutsey study also considers a more strict definition for the car makers to match. This one would be based on new emission reductions that did not include already established programs as GHG reduction initiatives. In other words this program would not credit the already established vehicle fuel and technology trends. In this case the target of 5.3 Mt CO2e reduction by 2010 is not met.
17. The conclusions of the California study are sobering:
"The question arises as to whether the intent of the MOU is to witness a 5.3 Mt CO2e emission reduction or to actually be responsible for causing a 5.3 Mt CO2e emission reduction. It is apparently possible for the MOU agreement to be met with little or no impact on GHG emissions from Canada's fleet. If the MOU oversight committee decides to credit each of the mechanisms discussed, the primary role of the Canada GHG MOU would be to simply re-label a series of already-established programs as a GHG reduction initiative. "
Impact of Canada's Voluntary Agreement Lutsey U of Cal (Davis) 2006 at p.31
18. For the reasons set out Gramps concludes that the industry will try to push the government into accepting industry credit that makes the Agreement a mockery. Whether it succeeds or fails depends on public pressure on the issue of accountability. Either way, we have lost a lot of time. The government should be urged to proclaim the 1976 Regulatory legislation, move quickly to establish the equivalent of Tier 2 as a Regulatory goal to be met in tandem with the progress of the California standards (assuming court challenges to that program fail) and move on to rapid implementation.
August 28,2007
Conclusion of the post Promises, Promises on Auto Emissions
Gramps
Gramps
THE URBAN BULLY
Part 3
Another approach that works is to show that a bully who claims some special knowledge or experience does not know what he is talking about. If this can be brought forward with really simple, short and plain speech, it can be effective. If it can be further refined and expressed as comedy the bully can be undressed in public as surely as a goalie who goes to the left then is faked to the right (to the endless delight of pretty well everyone except the goalie's family). This requires skill and luck but happily a genuine and persistent research effort can substitute for these to some extent. But be sure to have your material reviewed by several knowledgeable people and check your facts two, three times. Try to avoid errors like spelling mistakes. Bullies are usually pretty thin on the ground even about subjects they pretend to be well versed in, and they tend to leave off a research effort as soon as they find something they can use to assault victims with, so they tend to be relentless on common and small stuff like spelling where they feel sure of their ground or can use a computer device like spell check. The essential thing is to realize that a bully wants to bully and does not really care about getting at the truth of an issue and so will not dare to press too far into areas requiring detailed knowledge of a subject.
Some hints for dealing with bullies in the workplace.
Identify that you really are dealing with a bully. This may require enough restraint to wait for the second attack, especially if you have an urge to deliver an instant counter attack.
An immediate response may be to brace the bully with an angry reply in words (but not in deeds since that will get you fired from the workplace). This is like responding with a five-second stare. It is not much much but it will cause the bully to start wondering if it has really picked a safe target. This is all that is useful in the way of a direct answer.
Counter-attack the audience. Go up to the first person near you and ask: "Do you support bullying of employees here?" They will not say yes, and neither will anyone else though someone may say you are making a big deal out of nothing. But that can only come from an even lower form of life: the Common Urban Bully Stooge, a creature even more cowardly than a bully. Just say"boo" and they will go away.
You can follow up with a declaration that you will file a grievance since this will not stop unless action is taken and you have been assured by the crew that bullying is not the policy. Then do it, exactly, and steady yourself to push the procedure all the way. You will succeed but understand that this is what the "fight" of this particular fight is all about. Hold your ground, your tongue, and your temper. If you are in a non union shop, type a notice and put it on the employee notice board or the safety board stating that you have been harassed by a named person and have written to management to ask that they enforce their harassment policy; and if they do not have such a policy you will go to Human Rights (Provincial Agency). If your note is removed (it will be) put it up again, and repeat as required. Ignore nasty little asides by low level management about how we all have to get along here, or that you are not liked for your efforts and are risking your job, or the bully is really a good old boy, and so on. Nobody really likes the bully, not even his stooges,so hold steady, do not respond to distractions, say absolutely nothing to the bully and you will probably succeed after some pretty miserable shifts. Avoid at all costs any important errors in your own job. Never attack the management directly unless the bully is one of them. The company cannot be seen to defend or support bullying, and that is the lever you must push on. Always remember that a bully injures production or morale or both in any plant and most managers know that intuitively.
Part 4 to follow
Another approach that works is to show that a bully who claims some special knowledge or experience does not know what he is talking about. If this can be brought forward with really simple, short and plain speech, it can be effective. If it can be further refined and expressed as comedy the bully can be undressed in public as surely as a goalie who goes to the left then is faked to the right (to the endless delight of pretty well everyone except the goalie's family). This requires skill and luck but happily a genuine and persistent research effort can substitute for these to some extent. But be sure to have your material reviewed by several knowledgeable people and check your facts two, three times. Try to avoid errors like spelling mistakes. Bullies are usually pretty thin on the ground even about subjects they pretend to be well versed in, and they tend to leave off a research effort as soon as they find something they can use to assault victims with, so they tend to be relentless on common and small stuff like spelling where they feel sure of their ground or can use a computer device like spell check. The essential thing is to realize that a bully wants to bully and does not really care about getting at the truth of an issue and so will not dare to press too far into areas requiring detailed knowledge of a subject.
Some hints for dealing with bullies in the workplace.
Identify that you really are dealing with a bully. This may require enough restraint to wait for the second attack, especially if you have an urge to deliver an instant counter attack.
An immediate response may be to brace the bully with an angry reply in words (but not in deeds since that will get you fired from the workplace). This is like responding with a five-second stare. It is not much much but it will cause the bully to start wondering if it has really picked a safe target. This is all that is useful in the way of a direct answer.
Counter-attack the audience. Go up to the first person near you and ask: "Do you support bullying of employees here?" They will not say yes, and neither will anyone else though someone may say you are making a big deal out of nothing. But that can only come from an even lower form of life: the Common Urban Bully Stooge, a creature even more cowardly than a bully. Just say"boo" and they will go away.
You can follow up with a declaration that you will file a grievance since this will not stop unless action is taken and you have been assured by the crew that bullying is not the policy. Then do it, exactly, and steady yourself to push the procedure all the way. You will succeed but understand that this is what the "fight" of this particular fight is all about. Hold your ground, your tongue, and your temper. If you are in a non union shop, type a notice and put it on the employee notice board or the safety board stating that you have been harassed by a named person and have written to management to ask that they enforce their harassment policy; and if they do not have such a policy you will go to Human Rights (Provincial Agency). If your note is removed (it will be) put it up again, and repeat as required. Ignore nasty little asides by low level management about how we all have to get along here, or that you are not liked for your efforts and are risking your job, or the bully is really a good old boy, and so on. Nobody really likes the bully, not even his stooges,so hold steady, do not respond to distractions, say absolutely nothing to the bully and you will probably succeed after some pretty miserable shifts. Avoid at all costs any important errors in your own job. Never attack the management directly unless the bully is one of them. The company cannot be seen to defend or support bullying, and that is the lever you must push on. Always remember that a bully injures production or morale or both in any plant and most managers know that intuitively.
Part 4 to follow
Saturday, August 25, 2007
PROMISES PROMISES
AUTO EMISSIONS FACTS AND FANTASIES
Part 2 of 4 25/08/07
While this history has unfolded in the US in Çanada we were following along, tied to their industries and limited by their politics, as we chose the voluntary route.The Act that we had passed in 1976 languished unproclaimed and even today could well be the starting point for genuine regulation. We just need a government that will proclaim it, order the car companies to publish their data, compel standards,and move to enforce them.
Today there is no truly native Canadian car company to be found in the CVMA though most of the European and all the American large car firms are. The government had developed two massive and detailed studies of the industry by the end of 1999 and these were used to develop a voluntary standard. The period to be covered by the plan was 2000 to 2010, but since the agreement was not actually signed till the Spring of 2005 and no actual improvements were due till late 2007, and no actual facts about any real change or improvement have even been claimed to date, the plan has not had a good start, despite the blustering of the car companies web page which goes on about how things are "well in hand" whatever that means.
In the auto industry as the car has evolved using the internal combustion engine we have a very large number of moving parts and an extremely inefficient use of gasoline. With each model year there are improvements, and since there have been a small number of large manufacturers, there has tended to be a grand procession of tiny steps, with little real change each year, but a great deal of publicity suggesting miracles are being delivered. This way the car makers make the most money, at minimum risk. Most of the changes are purely cosmetic, some are for safety reasons, some relate to incorporating new subsystems to the car, and those that are essential to the problem of engine efficiency tend to require a choice between power and efficiency. More of one is less of the other. Once the big boost of the oil shock had been delivered from 1973 forward to 1985, the car makers happily moved away from efficiency toward power, and they have never looked back. The whole system of small changes bumps along to keep the customer happy with new features each year, there is no cut throat competition. It is really a sort of socialism for the car makers, and it has a very bad effect on attempts to reduce tail pipe emissions.
In result over a period of 5 years we see a very gradual improvement in fuel/ mileage but it is swallowed in the much worse performance of the ever more popular SUV. In total, fuel mileage goes down year after year, and this is made worse by the trade off between power and efficiency. Plainly, the car makers have shown for 20 years that they will not deliver on fuel efficiency unless they are compelled to.
In 2005 when the government and the car makers finally produced an agreement to stretch to 2010 the manufactures say they agreed to "commit" to obtain a "reduction" of 5.3 million tonnes CO2 equivalent of tail pipe emissions by 2010. It is plain that the members of the CVMA (Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers Assoc.) agreed to do this through their association, without any one company undertaking to do anything specific or in any time frame. Of course. the agreement was not even a legal instrument and was totally voluntary anyway. But it seems to be the case that neither the government or anyone outside the car makers and their association has any idea what any of them has done, what are the tail pipe facts for any company and how, if at all, that has changed since 1999 or since April 2005. The agreement and later two so called Progress Reports that have been produced have long lists of specific technical features that each company proposes. But there is no statement to be found if any of these ,and which ones, have actually been done, or what effect any of them had. In Europe it has been a problem to get the car companies there to produce any data on any of their operations, so it would be no surprise to see that as a problem here. The two Progress Reports are just ad copy that contain many, many repeats of the claim that they will reduce emissions by 5.3 Mt CO2e, but very little else. There is no data on what their emissions were at 2005, what they are now, how each company has changed, if at all, or how they are in fact progressing towards the goal.
When the Auditor General of Canada produced a report at September of 2006 setting out what voluntary agreements should contain if they are to be of any use at all, that was before the car makers came out with their second Progress Report so they could not simply ignore the AG. But what they said was that they were not going to do anything now and they would consider that for their final report. Apparently then we shall see no third party monitoring, no fixed standards, no step by step schedule, no before, during, and after data, no tests, no real controls at all. We know the car makers have been large scale liars about every feature of their vehicles for decades and a huge campaign was necessary to bring in elementary safety features to reduce the carnage on the roads. Now the government has permitted this crowd of large scale proven liars to say "trust us" when there is absolutely no reason to do so based on their past record. True to form they now seek to simply ignore the Auditor General of Canada.
One of the most curious features of this agreement of April 2005 between the Federal Government and the CVMA car makers is the stated reduction to be achieved of 5.3 Mt CO2e. Since the whole agreement has a lot of vagueness to it, it was only signed when its originally expected period of operation was more than half over, and the car makers do not have any target they must meet, why the apparent certainty of such a figure? Why 5.3, why not 3 or 5 or 8?
We should mention that the tail pipe produces many gases, 96% of them CO2 but quite a number of others including some toxics. The scientists have worked out a compound number to take into account the main ones, and it is based on values for some of the minor gases at much more than one to one. For example a tonne of Nitrous Oxides is taken at 21 compared to 1 of CO2 and a tonne of Volatile Organics at 310 times one of CO2. So the single number of 5.3 Mt COt2 is supposed to represent all of what comes out the tail pipe.
Some of the improvements that the manufacturers had already done by 2005 would improve particular emissions but it seems that all of them are long since well known in the industry. In California, a study was produced on the Canadian voluntary plan that described it as an agreement to witness the improvements rather than one to perform them since most or all of the items listed for each of the car companies were things that were done already or would be done regardless of the Agreement. The author of the study was able to estimate to a fine level of detail how much CO2 emissions would be reduced with each one. He showed that if the car makers took credit as reduction for all these planned improvements they could easily make 5.3 tonnes reduction by 2010, but if they could not successfully claim them all they would not be able to. No such detail at all is to be found in the publications that are available for the MOU. What credit will be claimed and what will be agreed is also totally vague as it seems all Canada waits (it is now August of 2007 on an agreement evolved to deal with 1999 to 2010 though signed in 2005) to see what the car makers will claim and what the Federal Government will agree to in some form of committee. One could safely predict the car makers will demand all of them, and the government will agree.
As to the overall figure it turns out that when one examines the studies produced by the Federal government and available to the car makers in 1999, one can see the number of CO2 equivalent levels for the transport sector of the economy, and the car makers share of that for their fleets of cars, in 1999, and what it was expected to grow to by 2010. If one just deducts 1999 from what was expected in 2010 one will not get anywhere near the reductions claimed of 5.3. The gap is much wider than that. But if one takes the amounts that can be expected to reduce emissions based on the lists of items planned by the car makers, one gets a number very close to the 5.3. Such estimates can be done by review of the California university study of the Canadian voluntary agreement, which has detailed estimates for every planned measure. So it seems the car makers were not guided to reduce their share of emissions by deducting any figure from what the government expected to see transport emissions rise to by 2010. They just added up what they planned to do in the normal development of their products without any consideration at all of national concerns and used that figure as what they would contribute to emission reduction.
The trouble is that is essentially no real reduction at all The car makers have just listed what they would do if there was no MOU agreement at 2005 at all. And by getting government to negotiate this agreement, they have given the appearance of contributing to climate control when they intend nothing of the kind. The government has been taken, good and proper. The government has not served the nation well at all in this matter.
As well we see when we follow the publications in the CVMA web page, and the Progress
Reports, and the government studies at the beginning, that the car makers have got the government to get involved in great long detailed discussions that are not helpful to emission control. They are useful to the car makers who want to talk about highly graduated schedules narrowly differentiating each of their cars, and extremely detailed consideration of what their plans are to attract and please their customers. The government interest should not be in this area, but in determining what can be done and setting standards to get it done as soon as possible. The MOU is a total failure in this regard.
Again, the government has been conned. There is a great amount of talk in the MOU and its surrounding studies and web page discussion about customer preference and choice, which leads to softening of the standard sought and gradually the conversation, so to speak, is moved to the "consumer choice" area where the car makers want it to be, instead of in the area of achieving regulation that it urgently required. Reducing CO2 emissions gradually is replaced by producing and selling more cars and promoting the car culture. The goal should be to reduce the car culture.
The MOU is against the best interests of Canada, and the car makers have enlisted the government to promote their cause. As one result of this unhappy tale Canada is failing badly in emission standards, being only a little better than the US which is at about 250 where Canada is 220. The EU and Japan are in the area of 150, on a normalized standard created by the Pew Center on Global Climate
Change. These last two are now aiming at severe further reductions. And in Canada we cannot even be very confident that the standards we think we have are operational since it is not clear that our government knows what the car makers are individually producing.
Part 3 to follow
Part 2 of 4 25/08/07
While this history has unfolded in the US in Çanada we were following along, tied to their industries and limited by their politics, as we chose the voluntary route.The Act that we had passed in 1976 languished unproclaimed and even today could well be the starting point for genuine regulation. We just need a government that will proclaim it, order the car companies to publish their data, compel standards,and move to enforce them.
Today there is no truly native Canadian car company to be found in the CVMA though most of the European and all the American large car firms are. The government had developed two massive and detailed studies of the industry by the end of 1999 and these were used to develop a voluntary standard. The period to be covered by the plan was 2000 to 2010, but since the agreement was not actually signed till the Spring of 2005 and no actual improvements were due till late 2007, and no actual facts about any real change or improvement have even been claimed to date, the plan has not had a good start, despite the blustering of the car companies web page which goes on about how things are "well in hand" whatever that means.
In the auto industry as the car has evolved using the internal combustion engine we have a very large number of moving parts and an extremely inefficient use of gasoline. With each model year there are improvements, and since there have been a small number of large manufacturers, there has tended to be a grand procession of tiny steps, with little real change each year, but a great deal of publicity suggesting miracles are being delivered. This way the car makers make the most money, at minimum risk. Most of the changes are purely cosmetic, some are for safety reasons, some relate to incorporating new subsystems to the car, and those that are essential to the problem of engine efficiency tend to require a choice between power and efficiency. More of one is less of the other. Once the big boost of the oil shock had been delivered from 1973 forward to 1985, the car makers happily moved away from efficiency toward power, and they have never looked back. The whole system of small changes bumps along to keep the customer happy with new features each year, there is no cut throat competition. It is really a sort of socialism for the car makers, and it has a very bad effect on attempts to reduce tail pipe emissions.
In result over a period of 5 years we see a very gradual improvement in fuel/ mileage but it is swallowed in the much worse performance of the ever more popular SUV. In total, fuel mileage goes down year after year, and this is made worse by the trade off between power and efficiency. Plainly, the car makers have shown for 20 years that they will not deliver on fuel efficiency unless they are compelled to.
In 2005 when the government and the car makers finally produced an agreement to stretch to 2010 the manufactures say they agreed to "commit" to obtain a "reduction" of 5.3 million tonnes CO2 equivalent of tail pipe emissions by 2010. It is plain that the members of the CVMA (Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers Assoc.) agreed to do this through their association, without any one company undertaking to do anything specific or in any time frame. Of course. the agreement was not even a legal instrument and was totally voluntary anyway. But it seems to be the case that neither the government or anyone outside the car makers and their association has any idea what any of them has done, what are the tail pipe facts for any company and how, if at all, that has changed since 1999 or since April 2005. The agreement and later two so called Progress Reports that have been produced have long lists of specific technical features that each company proposes. But there is no statement to be found if any of these ,and which ones, have actually been done, or what effect any of them had. In Europe it has been a problem to get the car companies there to produce any data on any of their operations, so it would be no surprise to see that as a problem here. The two Progress Reports are just ad copy that contain many, many repeats of the claim that they will reduce emissions by 5.3 Mt CO2e, but very little else. There is no data on what their emissions were at 2005, what they are now, how each company has changed, if at all, or how they are in fact progressing towards the goal.
When the Auditor General of Canada produced a report at September of 2006 setting out what voluntary agreements should contain if they are to be of any use at all, that was before the car makers came out with their second Progress Report so they could not simply ignore the AG. But what they said was that they were not going to do anything now and they would consider that for their final report. Apparently then we shall see no third party monitoring, no fixed standards, no step by step schedule, no before, during, and after data, no tests, no real controls at all. We know the car makers have been large scale liars about every feature of their vehicles for decades and a huge campaign was necessary to bring in elementary safety features to reduce the carnage on the roads. Now the government has permitted this crowd of large scale proven liars to say "trust us" when there is absolutely no reason to do so based on their past record. True to form they now seek to simply ignore the Auditor General of Canada.
One of the most curious features of this agreement of April 2005 between the Federal Government and the CVMA car makers is the stated reduction to be achieved of 5.3 Mt CO2e. Since the whole agreement has a lot of vagueness to it, it was only signed when its originally expected period of operation was more than half over, and the car makers do not have any target they must meet, why the apparent certainty of such a figure? Why 5.3, why not 3 or 5 or 8?
We should mention that the tail pipe produces many gases, 96% of them CO2 but quite a number of others including some toxics. The scientists have worked out a compound number to take into account the main ones, and it is based on values for some of the minor gases at much more than one to one. For example a tonne of Nitrous Oxides is taken at 21 compared to 1 of CO2 and a tonne of Volatile Organics at 310 times one of CO2. So the single number of 5.3 Mt COt2 is supposed to represent all of what comes out the tail pipe.
Some of the improvements that the manufacturers had already done by 2005 would improve particular emissions but it seems that all of them are long since well known in the industry. In California, a study was produced on the Canadian voluntary plan that described it as an agreement to witness the improvements rather than one to perform them since most or all of the items listed for each of the car companies were things that were done already or would be done regardless of the Agreement. The author of the study was able to estimate to a fine level of detail how much CO2 emissions would be reduced with each one. He showed that if the car makers took credit as reduction for all these planned improvements they could easily make 5.3 tonnes reduction by 2010, but if they could not successfully claim them all they would not be able to. No such detail at all is to be found in the publications that are available for the MOU. What credit will be claimed and what will be agreed is also totally vague as it seems all Canada waits (it is now August of 2007 on an agreement evolved to deal with 1999 to 2010 though signed in 2005) to see what the car makers will claim and what the Federal Government will agree to in some form of committee. One could safely predict the car makers will demand all of them, and the government will agree.
As to the overall figure it turns out that when one examines the studies produced by the Federal government and available to the car makers in 1999, one can see the number of CO2 equivalent levels for the transport sector of the economy, and the car makers share of that for their fleets of cars, in 1999, and what it was expected to grow to by 2010. If one just deducts 1999 from what was expected in 2010 one will not get anywhere near the reductions claimed of 5.3. The gap is much wider than that. But if one takes the amounts that can be expected to reduce emissions based on the lists of items planned by the car makers, one gets a number very close to the 5.3. Such estimates can be done by review of the California university study of the Canadian voluntary agreement, which has detailed estimates for every planned measure. So it seems the car makers were not guided to reduce their share of emissions by deducting any figure from what the government expected to see transport emissions rise to by 2010. They just added up what they planned to do in the normal development of their products without any consideration at all of national concerns and used that figure as what they would contribute to emission reduction.
The trouble is that is essentially no real reduction at all The car makers have just listed what they would do if there was no MOU agreement at 2005 at all. And by getting government to negotiate this agreement, they have given the appearance of contributing to climate control when they intend nothing of the kind. The government has been taken, good and proper. The government has not served the nation well at all in this matter.
As well we see when we follow the publications in the CVMA web page, and the Progress
Reports, and the government studies at the beginning, that the car makers have got the government to get involved in great long detailed discussions that are not helpful to emission control. They are useful to the car makers who want to talk about highly graduated schedules narrowly differentiating each of their cars, and extremely detailed consideration of what their plans are to attract and please their customers. The government interest should not be in this area, but in determining what can be done and setting standards to get it done as soon as possible. The MOU is a total failure in this regard.
Again, the government has been conned. There is a great amount of talk in the MOU and its surrounding studies and web page discussion about customer preference and choice, which leads to softening of the standard sought and gradually the conversation, so to speak, is moved to the "consumer choice" area where the car makers want it to be, instead of in the area of achieving regulation that it urgently required. Reducing CO2 emissions gradually is replaced by producing and selling more cars and promoting the car culture. The goal should be to reduce the car culture.
The MOU is against the best interests of Canada, and the car makers have enlisted the government to promote their cause. As one result of this unhappy tale Canada is failing badly in emission standards, being only a little better than the US which is at about 250 where Canada is 220. The EU and Japan are in the area of 150, on a normalized standard created by the Pew Center on Global Climate
Change. These last two are now aiming at severe further reductions. And in Canada we cannot even be very confident that the standards we think we have are operational since it is not clear that our government knows what the car makers are individually producing.
Part 3 to follow
THE URBAN BULLY
PART NO 2 OF 6
Dealing with the Common Urban Bully is not all that difficult, but it does take work.
The best thing is to take away its audience, in the case of writing, or to threaten to do that, especially if the audience is fictional. So a writer who speaks of being read by millions can be dealt with by reference to any study showing the numbers of people who actually read any particular item or type of item in a publication. Size of the publication in press runs, or volume of a book run can be easily obtained.
How many persons are likely to read anything that appears on, say, the opinion page of a newspaper, set against the publication numbers of the paper. Do you read them, or editorials, much? Is the bully really pretending that its tiny bull horn is the same as that of the publication, where the owner of a publication chooses to let the bully give out a little squeak from time to time. One can ask the bully if he believes that more people read his offerings than say,the weather report, reports of a junior hockey game, the horoscope. He won't answer because common knowledge blows his claim. He knows further discussion on this theme will get round to the question of just why he makes such a claim and what it has to do with the value of what he does.
However, the fact is that the true audience of the bully who writes regularly for publications like newspapers is not the number of papers sold, or the assumed readership, but the editors. And this audience, numbering in the dozens to a few hundred at the most, and not in millions, is not necessarily interested in truth or the quality of writing. This can be seen by anyone who takes the trouble to read articles listing what prices are offered, and publication rights demanded by newspaper editors who have been solicited to pick up the offerings of self syndicated writers scrounging for spots to dump their copy.
The newspaper is just a retail ad flyer with features thrown in to catch the attention of possible purchasers. Editors will want to please the advertisers, mainly, and so they will favor right wing zealots whose writing caters to the cave dwelling and intensely parochial mentality that dominates the population of businessmen. Editors will choose "think pieces" or "color" as they like to say, that will reassure their advertisers that the paper really does belong in the cave with the "right thinking people." Editors select material for publications that are in the business of selling advertisements, and their first test will be whether their customers (not readers) will like it. The editors are most comfortable with sports page writing where a lot of violent language is used to dress up pretty dull game reports and fake controversies are endlessly raked over in Dick and Jane language.
If you doubt this just ask yourself why editors would choose op ed pieces that would offend their customers, if they want to sell papers. Consider how they use the word "color" in characterizing writing and whether that usage fits with any respect at all for literary values.
Beyond the momentary fun of throwing a few tomatoes at a bully, it is much more productive to attack the bully's audience instead of the bully. Letters can go to whoever buys his product or pays his wage, attacking the supporter as being out of step. The dwindling number of climate skeptics, for instance, who do not believe there is global warming or have a vested interest in saying so, are beginning to regard each other in a wary and furtive way as they sit around the table of their right wing interest groups. Who will be next to cut and run? Who will turn on a dime, as bullies so easily do, and use his knowledge of his colleagues faults to attack them? Why is everyone repeatedly glancing at the door marked exit? The general population has been thoroughly frightened by extreme weather events so that even though it has been dumbed down by the decades of anti-intellectual assaults from the writing bullies of the establishment it may be capable of turning on them very quickly. Telling the bully or his patron that they are out of step, with details, will send ice water through the veins of the bully, and will surely cause the patron to raise its head from the trough and re-appraise the situation.
What is suggested here is that even though it may be pleasurable to throw clever or carefully developed remarks at a bully, it not really useful to answer one directly. Go for the patron. If the bully feels safe in his location, among his supporters, with friendly greetings as he comes into his office or group, he will not be deterred by any number of merely verbal counter attacks on himself, no matter how untrue or venomous his material. That will all be like water off a duck's back. The squawking of victims may even entertain the bully's audience affording the bully a chance to really luxuriate in a perfect riot of scornful abuse.
But if the audience or patron has not been tested before, it may very well recoil under attack, and that will terrify the bully in a way that is truly astonishing to see. The bully will suddenly turn on a dime, it will plead that if the patron (usually an editor) will just tell it who is to be attacked the bully will do it right now, even if the new target was the subject of praise yesterday. The bully is not encumbered by ethics or a conscience. And a display of this startling flexibility by the bully will lower him a lot in the eyes of the patron or editor who will start looking for a writer made of sterner stuff.
Part 3 to follow
Dealing with the Common Urban Bully is not all that difficult, but it does take work.
The best thing is to take away its audience, in the case of writing, or to threaten to do that, especially if the audience is fictional. So a writer who speaks of being read by millions can be dealt with by reference to any study showing the numbers of people who actually read any particular item or type of item in a publication. Size of the publication in press runs, or volume of a book run can be easily obtained.
How many persons are likely to read anything that appears on, say, the opinion page of a newspaper, set against the publication numbers of the paper. Do you read them, or editorials, much? Is the bully really pretending that its tiny bull horn is the same as that of the publication, where the owner of a publication chooses to let the bully give out a little squeak from time to time. One can ask the bully if he believes that more people read his offerings than say,the weather report, reports of a junior hockey game, the horoscope. He won't answer because common knowledge blows his claim. He knows further discussion on this theme will get round to the question of just why he makes such a claim and what it has to do with the value of what he does.
However, the fact is that the true audience of the bully who writes regularly for publications like newspapers is not the number of papers sold, or the assumed readership, but the editors. And this audience, numbering in the dozens to a few hundred at the most, and not in millions, is not necessarily interested in truth or the quality of writing. This can be seen by anyone who takes the trouble to read articles listing what prices are offered, and publication rights demanded by newspaper editors who have been solicited to pick up the offerings of self syndicated writers scrounging for spots to dump their copy.
The newspaper is just a retail ad flyer with features thrown in to catch the attention of possible purchasers. Editors will want to please the advertisers, mainly, and so they will favor right wing zealots whose writing caters to the cave dwelling and intensely parochial mentality that dominates the population of businessmen. Editors will choose "think pieces" or "color" as they like to say, that will reassure their advertisers that the paper really does belong in the cave with the "right thinking people." Editors select material for publications that are in the business of selling advertisements, and their first test will be whether their customers (not readers) will like it. The editors are most comfortable with sports page writing where a lot of violent language is used to dress up pretty dull game reports and fake controversies are endlessly raked over in Dick and Jane language.
If you doubt this just ask yourself why editors would choose op ed pieces that would offend their customers, if they want to sell papers. Consider how they use the word "color" in characterizing writing and whether that usage fits with any respect at all for literary values.
Beyond the momentary fun of throwing a few tomatoes at a bully, it is much more productive to attack the bully's audience instead of the bully. Letters can go to whoever buys his product or pays his wage, attacking the supporter as being out of step. The dwindling number of climate skeptics, for instance, who do not believe there is global warming or have a vested interest in saying so, are beginning to regard each other in a wary and furtive way as they sit around the table of their right wing interest groups. Who will be next to cut and run? Who will turn on a dime, as bullies so easily do, and use his knowledge of his colleagues faults to attack them? Why is everyone repeatedly glancing at the door marked exit? The general population has been thoroughly frightened by extreme weather events so that even though it has been dumbed down by the decades of anti-intellectual assaults from the writing bullies of the establishment it may be capable of turning on them very quickly. Telling the bully or his patron that they are out of step, with details, will send ice water through the veins of the bully, and will surely cause the patron to raise its head from the trough and re-appraise the situation.
What is suggested here is that even though it may be pleasurable to throw clever or carefully developed remarks at a bully, it not really useful to answer one directly. Go for the patron. If the bully feels safe in his location, among his supporters, with friendly greetings as he comes into his office or group, he will not be deterred by any number of merely verbal counter attacks on himself, no matter how untrue or venomous his material. That will all be like water off a duck's back. The squawking of victims may even entertain the bully's audience affording the bully a chance to really luxuriate in a perfect riot of scornful abuse.
But if the audience or patron has not been tested before, it may very well recoil under attack, and that will terrify the bully in a way that is truly astonishing to see. The bully will suddenly turn on a dime, it will plead that if the patron (usually an editor) will just tell it who is to be attacked the bully will do it right now, even if the new target was the subject of praise yesterday. The bully is not encumbered by ethics or a conscience. And a display of this startling flexibility by the bully will lower him a lot in the eyes of the patron or editor who will start looking for a writer made of sterner stuff.
Part 3 to follow
Friday, August 24, 2007
PROMISES PROMISES
AUTO EMISSION FACTS AND FANTASIES
as reviewed by Gramps
Part 1 of 4 24/08/07
One can have the impression from the daily press that there is a great deal of regulation about what comes out of the tail pipe of motor vehicles. Here we are concerned with cars and light trucks, adding up to about 12% of transport's share of all emissions in Canada. The fact is there is no actual regulation in Canada, not much in the States (Federally) and none in Europe. What we have is a lot of voluntary agreements that involve averages for whole fleets, the total outputs of car companies, where the car companies tell their associations, and they tell the governments. If you believe any of these characters play the game straight go directly to the corner and put on the dunce cap.
That does not mean that there are not efforts to control and reduce the emissions, just that it is not going on mainly by regulation but on a voluntary basis that is a long way from satisfactory. Regulation is the setting of standards by the State followed by a legal requirement that everyone has to conform to it, together with testing, audits, penalties, fines, and so on. There are voluntary agreements in Canada and Europe. While the Auditor General in Canada has said what ought to be attached to a voluntary agreement for it to be useful, we do not have any of that in Canada and in the case of the tail pipe voluntary agreement that does exist with the car makers there are no such useful features such as third party verification, fixed goals with detailed progress reports, required testing and monitoring. Informed of what the Auditor General wants, the car makers in Canada have said they will think about that in their 2010 report. Since that is the end year of this agreement, we do not get much comfort from that, and the other side of that agreement, the government, has remained as quiet as a Church mouse.
So the MOU (Memorandum of Agreement) as the Canada one is called is not very sound. This is not a document in which the government and the auto industry agree to perform particular actions, it more like an agreement to watch or witness such actions performed in ways that have nothing to do with the agreement. As this agreement is voluntary no body has to do anything, anyone can leave when they want, the industry association (Canadian Vehicle Manufacturer's Association) that signed for the big car makers, or any of them,can leave. The government never will know, it seems, what is the tail pipe output of any car or any car company, just the fleet wide or company wide emissions and that is just a matter of the company telling its' association. No one on the public side will ever have any idea how much CO2 emissions were reduced by any particular measure, or how exactly the measuring was done or by whom. Some of the improvements will be the result of things that were done before the agreement was made, back to 1999, some are things done for safety reasons, most or perhaps all, we do not know for sure, are things that were done or will be done for reasons that have nothing at all to do with the agreement. It is stated in the document that it is not a legal agreement and does not create any rights anyone can claim, and in the car association web page (not in the agreement) the association repeatedly insists that there is no known technology to reduce CO2 emissions and the only control measure is to reduce the tailpipe output by driving less miles or getting more distance out of each liter of gas. Since tailpipe emissions are about 96% CO2, that is not very reassuring.
There is nothing new in this remarkably limited way of reducing emissions. We have had the same response in Canada to the problem since the 70s.We recall that when the Israelis were beating up on the Arabs back then the Arab countries that had formed an oil cartel, OPEC, turned off the oil tap to help the Arabs and sent the price sky rocketing. In fact, the price back then was quite a bit higher, in terms of the cost of living than it is now. During the subsequent 10 years of oil price wars the US government demanded that the car makers double the fuel economy within a decade, or by 1985 which they did without difficulty. Up to a point, with each model year, the industry game is to tempt the customer with more power, but that can be turned into greater fuel economy as a goal in the alternative. After 1985 there have been no more federal efforts in the US and the fuel efficiency has been going DOWN ever since then. This is because there have been some gains in the cars but they have been overwhelmed by the losses imposed on account of the market share of light trucks (SUVs). They have come out of the pick ups of that period to be about 50% of all sales in the US (40% in Canada) and their more generous standards are the reason for the decline. The car makers like to quote the performance of the cars only and clamor that things are still improving, but it is a lie. In the same way they claim they are only 1% of th problem in transport but they get to that by claiming that cars are 12% of the burden of tail pipe emissions and since new cars are only 8% of cars on the road then take 8% of !2% and hey presto! they are only 1% of the problem. When you are reading any industry propaganda you can remember this unusual approach they take to facts.
Since then there has been no further regulation, if what was done can be called that.New standards have been called for and used in various American states, the most outstanding being California. The Federal Regulator, the EPA, tried to set a national standard but was ordered off that course by the Bush administration on the basis of the idea that CO2 was not a pollutant, so the EPA standard or CAFE, was on old, until the Supreme Court of the USA decided that CO2 was a pollutant and the EPA could go ahead. But the Federal standard throughout has been a voluntary one, not a regulated standard.
California, due to its climate and population was the first to have serious problems with ozone destruction and smog, two main problems of tail pipe exhaust and it was therefore given the right of a "waiver" by the Federal government so that it could set its own standard and it did so, with a statute in 1962, It can be recalled that in Canada the first national highway (Trans Canada Highway Act), only came in 1949, and the road was not fully paved till 1962. This is why California has been the leader in this field since the 1950s. Later, other states were given the right to adopt the waiver or California standard and about 11 states have done so so far. This seems to be a regulated standard though complexities about its nature and implementation raise doubts. The Federal standard, called CAFE, has been used in California, but the present proposals to go from Tier 1 (where cars and SUVs have different levels) to Tier 2 ( where both will have the same one) seem to be political footballs in play at the moment in California.The State is also being sued by the large car makers who are attempting to stop California from using its standards. California is aiming to have standards that will be a third better than Tier 2 in 2016. So do 11 other states which have followed the California lead.
There was hope that this level of standard would become national within an Energy bill now working its way through the Federal legislative bodies, and it has been passed in the Senate but in the lower house, the House of Representatives, fuel efficiency standards were dropped from the bill by the Democratic Congress leaders apparently in order to get agreement on the rest of the Energy bill. It may be they will be restored in the Fall when the two legislative bodies consult to produce a single bill,but at the present there is no national standard that is enforceable as Regulated, and no new standard is approved by legislation.
In Canada we have just followed along after the Americans.Originally this was due to the way in which the Ozone and then the Smog problems developed in large urban areas, the fact that car manufacturing was concentrated among a few large (then) American firms, wherever the cars were assembled. An agreement was made at Montreal to deal with the emergency matter of the Ozone problem and later voluntary means were used to deal with smog. There was success here with the reduction of hydro carbons and carbon monoxide at the introduction of catalytic converters. And laws were passed, the Clean Air Act in the US in 1970 , and the Motor Vehicle Consumption Standards Act in Canada. We followed the CAFE standards, with ours called CAFC (Company Average Fuel Consumption) at 1976.
But the Canadian Act, though it was passed through Parliament, was never proclaimed in law, we went the route of voluntary agreements with the industry.
The most recent of these is the MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) of April 2005 which is supposed to deal with auto emissions from 1999 to 2010. They had all the information from Federal studies Available at the end of 1999, they have been studying it for five years, they do not promise to achieve anything till the end of 2007, and they clam great success in having this agreement which will end at 2010 and today, at August 2007 we still do not have any detailed statement as to what if anything has been achieved so far.
Another problem in unraveling this history is the tangling up of the ideas of "clean" and "dirty". From pollution problems we have the idea of dirty, and the need to remove or clean up toxics in environments. But CO2 is not properly considered a pollutant and we learn in grade school how it takes up CO2 and releases Oxygen. But when Harper came into Office he followed the Americans in lock step and introduced a Clean Air Act which was actually a crowd of minor and often confusing amendments to our existing Environmental Statute, CEPA, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. In result we have the problems of working with climate change and toxics all tangled up in the same law, and people get the idea that we have to remove CO2 as a toxic.
These then are the main themes we find as we look into the question of whether we are achieving anything useful with steps taken in this field.
Part 2 to come.
----------------
as reviewed by Gramps
Part 1 of 4 24/08/07
One can have the impression from the daily press that there is a great deal of regulation about what comes out of the tail pipe of motor vehicles. Here we are concerned with cars and light trucks, adding up to about 12% of transport's share of all emissions in Canada. The fact is there is no actual regulation in Canada, not much in the States (Federally) and none in Europe. What we have is a lot of voluntary agreements that involve averages for whole fleets, the total outputs of car companies, where the car companies tell their associations, and they tell the governments. If you believe any of these characters play the game straight go directly to the corner and put on the dunce cap.
That does not mean that there are not efforts to control and reduce the emissions, just that it is not going on mainly by regulation but on a voluntary basis that is a long way from satisfactory. Regulation is the setting of standards by the State followed by a legal requirement that everyone has to conform to it, together with testing, audits, penalties, fines, and so on. There are voluntary agreements in Canada and Europe. While the Auditor General in Canada has said what ought to be attached to a voluntary agreement for it to be useful, we do not have any of that in Canada and in the case of the tail pipe voluntary agreement that does exist with the car makers there are no such useful features such as third party verification, fixed goals with detailed progress reports, required testing and monitoring. Informed of what the Auditor General wants, the car makers in Canada have said they will think about that in their 2010 report. Since that is the end year of this agreement, we do not get much comfort from that, and the other side of that agreement, the government, has remained as quiet as a Church mouse.
So the MOU (Memorandum of Agreement) as the Canada one is called is not very sound. This is not a document in which the government and the auto industry agree to perform particular actions, it more like an agreement to watch or witness such actions performed in ways that have nothing to do with the agreement. As this agreement is voluntary no body has to do anything, anyone can leave when they want, the industry association (Canadian Vehicle Manufacturer's Association) that signed for the big car makers, or any of them,can leave. The government never will know, it seems, what is the tail pipe output of any car or any car company, just the fleet wide or company wide emissions and that is just a matter of the company telling its' association. No one on the public side will ever have any idea how much CO2 emissions were reduced by any particular measure, or how exactly the measuring was done or by whom. Some of the improvements will be the result of things that were done before the agreement was made, back to 1999, some are things done for safety reasons, most or perhaps all, we do not know for sure, are things that were done or will be done for reasons that have nothing at all to do with the agreement. It is stated in the document that it is not a legal agreement and does not create any rights anyone can claim, and in the car association web page (not in the agreement) the association repeatedly insists that there is no known technology to reduce CO2 emissions and the only control measure is to reduce the tailpipe output by driving less miles or getting more distance out of each liter of gas. Since tailpipe emissions are about 96% CO2, that is not very reassuring.
There is nothing new in this remarkably limited way of reducing emissions. We have had the same response in Canada to the problem since the 70s.We recall that when the Israelis were beating up on the Arabs back then the Arab countries that had formed an oil cartel, OPEC, turned off the oil tap to help the Arabs and sent the price sky rocketing. In fact, the price back then was quite a bit higher, in terms of the cost of living than it is now. During the subsequent 10 years of oil price wars the US government demanded that the car makers double the fuel economy within a decade, or by 1985 which they did without difficulty. Up to a point, with each model year, the industry game is to tempt the customer with more power, but that can be turned into greater fuel economy as a goal in the alternative. After 1985 there have been no more federal efforts in the US and the fuel efficiency has been going DOWN ever since then. This is because there have been some gains in the cars but they have been overwhelmed by the losses imposed on account of the market share of light trucks (SUVs). They have come out of the pick ups of that period to be about 50% of all sales in the US (40% in Canada) and their more generous standards are the reason for the decline. The car makers like to quote the performance of the cars only and clamor that things are still improving, but it is a lie. In the same way they claim they are only 1% of th problem in transport but they get to that by claiming that cars are 12% of the burden of tail pipe emissions and since new cars are only 8% of cars on the road then take 8% of !2% and hey presto! they are only 1% of the problem. When you are reading any industry propaganda you can remember this unusual approach they take to facts.
Since then there has been no further regulation, if what was done can be called that.New standards have been called for and used in various American states, the most outstanding being California. The Federal Regulator, the EPA, tried to set a national standard but was ordered off that course by the Bush administration on the basis of the idea that CO2 was not a pollutant, so the EPA standard or CAFE, was on old, until the Supreme Court of the USA decided that CO2 was a pollutant and the EPA could go ahead. But the Federal standard throughout has been a voluntary one, not a regulated standard.
California, due to its climate and population was the first to have serious problems with ozone destruction and smog, two main problems of tail pipe exhaust and it was therefore given the right of a "waiver" by the Federal government so that it could set its own standard and it did so, with a statute in 1962, It can be recalled that in Canada the first national highway (Trans Canada Highway Act), only came in 1949, and the road was not fully paved till 1962. This is why California has been the leader in this field since the 1950s. Later, other states were given the right to adopt the waiver or California standard and about 11 states have done so so far. This seems to be a regulated standard though complexities about its nature and implementation raise doubts. The Federal standard, called CAFE, has been used in California, but the present proposals to go from Tier 1 (where cars and SUVs have different levels) to Tier 2 ( where both will have the same one) seem to be political footballs in play at the moment in California.The State is also being sued by the large car makers who are attempting to stop California from using its standards. California is aiming to have standards that will be a third better than Tier 2 in 2016. So do 11 other states which have followed the California lead.
There was hope that this level of standard would become national within an Energy bill now working its way through the Federal legislative bodies, and it has been passed in the Senate but in the lower house, the House of Representatives, fuel efficiency standards were dropped from the bill by the Democratic Congress leaders apparently in order to get agreement on the rest of the Energy bill. It may be they will be restored in the Fall when the two legislative bodies consult to produce a single bill,but at the present there is no national standard that is enforceable as Regulated, and no new standard is approved by legislation.
In Canada we have just followed along after the Americans.Originally this was due to the way in which the Ozone and then the Smog problems developed in large urban areas, the fact that car manufacturing was concentrated among a few large (then) American firms, wherever the cars were assembled. An agreement was made at Montreal to deal with the emergency matter of the Ozone problem and later voluntary means were used to deal with smog. There was success here with the reduction of hydro carbons and carbon monoxide at the introduction of catalytic converters. And laws were passed, the Clean Air Act in the US in 1970 , and the Motor Vehicle Consumption Standards Act in Canada. We followed the CAFE standards, with ours called CAFC (Company Average Fuel Consumption) at 1976.
But the Canadian Act, though it was passed through Parliament, was never proclaimed in law, we went the route of voluntary agreements with the industry.
The most recent of these is the MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) of April 2005 which is supposed to deal with auto emissions from 1999 to 2010. They had all the information from Federal studies Available at the end of 1999, they have been studying it for five years, they do not promise to achieve anything till the end of 2007, and they clam great success in having this agreement which will end at 2010 and today, at August 2007 we still do not have any detailed statement as to what if anything has been achieved so far.
Another problem in unraveling this history is the tangling up of the ideas of "clean" and "dirty". From pollution problems we have the idea of dirty, and the need to remove or clean up toxics in environments. But CO2 is not properly considered a pollutant and we learn in grade school how it takes up CO2 and releases Oxygen. But when Harper came into Office he followed the Americans in lock step and introduced a Clean Air Act which was actually a crowd of minor and often confusing amendments to our existing Environmental Statute, CEPA, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. In result we have the problems of working with climate change and toxics all tangled up in the same law, and people get the idea that we have to remove CO2 as a toxic.
These then are the main themes we find as we look into the question of whether we are achieving anything useful with steps taken in this field.
Part 2 to come.
----------------
THE URBAN BULLY
Gramp's studies in urban fauna
Part 1 of Six
The bully is a person who looks around to find a victim for sport, not for survival. It is important to realize we are not dealing with someone who does this because they need to eat, or find shelter, or get warm. To bully is not to fulfill a physical need but this animal, the COMMON URBAN BULLY, treats it as a vital need of life. So we have to know that we are dealing with a person that is out of the normal range, one that probably is disturbed in some systematic way. A bully is not like the ordinary person.
The bully wants to find a victim that it is absolutely safe to attack. It will shy away if there is any chance at all that the apparently vulnerable prospect has strong allies, is in a herd, may have unsuspected powers, or responds with a level stare or angry words. Bullies are initially very shy.
It will run a test. In the workplace it will offer some mildly offensive comment, something that can be passed off as a joke, to see what the reaction is. There are two reactions it wants to see, ands the first is the one from the victim. Is there any sign of unsuspected strength, such as an insult to a woman producing the instant reaction that she loudly denounces the bully.
But that is not the main thing. The bully wants to see how it's first shot is received or viewed by the audience, which is all the other workers in the area. If their reaction is approval then the bully can go on to more intense comments and move in to really harass the victim, which is what it wants to do. A bully's most favored weapon is some fault or weakness in the victim that cannot possibly be removed, like a physical fault, or a small person, a weak person, or a person from a surpressed minority group. The bully will fasten on that, pull off the scab, and scrape the wound again and again, with knowledge of the damage it does and lusting for that exact result.
The bully will always be a terrific coward and it will turn back again and again to make sure that it still has the approval of its audience. A bully may forget to do this in the sheer joy it has in devastating a victim so it can sometimes be caught by setting up strong disapproval in the audience, such as an anti-bully policy in the workplace, so its actions may be followed by suspension or even dismissal of the bully. The bully will then beg borrow and steal every known legal device and procedure, exploit every opportunity to creep back into employer favor, ever ready to tell the most astonishing lies, anything to get back into the position it had. This would be viewed by the bully primarily not as a job but as an opportunity where it had something like a uniform (police) or a dominant role (foreman) or fawning approval of an audience (sports hero bully). But a bully will not ever change if allowed to return to such a role. The bully's emotional reaction to this loss is very strong but what it is regretting is the opportunity it had, and this is not genuine remorse,
Once it has a victim that functions as a victim and a safe situation with local approval, there is no limit and the bully will go on getting worse and worse. Its language will stray from the original topic and go ever deeper into personal insults, body references, and more and more remarks that involve body waste and sexual parts. This is because everyone is timid about these matters and slamming the victim with such references helps to separate the victim from the the audience and so enhance the bully's security. If there is an available type of person irrationally disliked at work, like a group politically out of favor, or an assumed sexual perversion, or knee jerk hatred of a human type, the bully's language will wander into that. So we see that where the situation starts up with reference to a work problem (lateness, alleged mistakes, methods of work) yet the bully will wander into "too busy whacking off to get up" or a"can't find his own asshole to stick his finger up" or " just like any other slut" as well as all the usual suspects such as homo, commie, whore, nerd ( a new one) and so on.
Probably the bully needs the audience but the bully is fearful it will turn on him, since his experience has been that he can get it to unreasonably turn on other victims he has worked on. The bully needs to feel safe among its audience since that is the safest place to be. And of course the bully needs to have a victim that will not threaten the bully, by failing to conform to the expected role.
The bully needs to have an audience that can easily be switched on, that will not think before it reacts to the call of the tricky word. A bully knows in some intuitive way that it need not function on the basis of truth, whether the project is to terrify a female employee with job loss, or get the crew to join in harassing a newby, or to make verbally violent attacks in various kinds of writing (review, polemics, e-mail). If the feel of the situation is that the bully is SAFE then there is simply no rational limit to the frequency of its assaults or the intensity and deepening vulgarity of its manner. One supposes that this is because the bully going at its pleasure is pretty much like a pig at a Smorgasbord restaurant. Will it stuff itself? Of course it will. It is a pig, isn't it?
Part 2 to follow
Gramps
========================
Gramp's studies in urban fauna
Part 1 of Six
The bully is a person who looks around to find a victim for sport, not for survival. It is important to realize we are not dealing with someone who does this because they need to eat, or find shelter, or get warm. To bully is not to fulfill a physical need but this animal, the COMMON URBAN BULLY, treats it as a vital need of life. So we have to know that we are dealing with a person that is out of the normal range, one that probably is disturbed in some systematic way. A bully is not like the ordinary person.
The bully wants to find a victim that it is absolutely safe to attack. It will shy away if there is any chance at all that the apparently vulnerable prospect has strong allies, is in a herd, may have unsuspected powers, or responds with a level stare or angry words. Bullies are initially very shy.
It will run a test. In the workplace it will offer some mildly offensive comment, something that can be passed off as a joke, to see what the reaction is. There are two reactions it wants to see, ands the first is the one from the victim. Is there any sign of unsuspected strength, such as an insult to a woman producing the instant reaction that she loudly denounces the bully.
But that is not the main thing. The bully wants to see how it's first shot is received or viewed by the audience, which is all the other workers in the area. If their reaction is approval then the bully can go on to more intense comments and move in to really harass the victim, which is what it wants to do. A bully's most favored weapon is some fault or weakness in the victim that cannot possibly be removed, like a physical fault, or a small person, a weak person, or a person from a surpressed minority group. The bully will fasten on that, pull off the scab, and scrape the wound again and again, with knowledge of the damage it does and lusting for that exact result.
The bully will always be a terrific coward and it will turn back again and again to make sure that it still has the approval of its audience. A bully may forget to do this in the sheer joy it has in devastating a victim so it can sometimes be caught by setting up strong disapproval in the audience, such as an anti-bully policy in the workplace, so its actions may be followed by suspension or even dismissal of the bully. The bully will then beg borrow and steal every known legal device and procedure, exploit every opportunity to creep back into employer favor, ever ready to tell the most astonishing lies, anything to get back into the position it had. This would be viewed by the bully primarily not as a job but as an opportunity where it had something like a uniform (police) or a dominant role (foreman) or fawning approval of an audience (sports hero bully). But a bully will not ever change if allowed to return to such a role. The bully's emotional reaction to this loss is very strong but what it is regretting is the opportunity it had, and this is not genuine remorse,
Once it has a victim that functions as a victim and a safe situation with local approval, there is no limit and the bully will go on getting worse and worse. Its language will stray from the original topic and go ever deeper into personal insults, body references, and more and more remarks that involve body waste and sexual parts. This is because everyone is timid about these matters and slamming the victim with such references helps to separate the victim from the the audience and so enhance the bully's security. If there is an available type of person irrationally disliked at work, like a group politically out of favor, or an assumed sexual perversion, or knee jerk hatred of a human type, the bully's language will wander into that. So we see that where the situation starts up with reference to a work problem (lateness, alleged mistakes, methods of work) yet the bully will wander into "too busy whacking off to get up" or a"can't find his own asshole to stick his finger up" or " just like any other slut" as well as all the usual suspects such as homo, commie, whore, nerd ( a new one) and so on.
Probably the bully needs the audience but the bully is fearful it will turn on him, since his experience has been that he can get it to unreasonably turn on other victims he has worked on. The bully needs to feel safe among its audience since that is the safest place to be. And of course the bully needs to have a victim that will not threaten the bully, by failing to conform to the expected role.
The bully needs to have an audience that can easily be switched on, that will not think before it reacts to the call of the tricky word. A bully knows in some intuitive way that it need not function on the basis of truth, whether the project is to terrify a female employee with job loss, or get the crew to join in harassing a newby, or to make verbally violent attacks in various kinds of writing (review, polemics, e-mail). If the feel of the situation is that the bully is SAFE then there is simply no rational limit to the frequency of its assaults or the intensity and deepening vulgarity of its manner. One supposes that this is because the bully going at its pleasure is pretty much like a pig at a Smorgasbord restaurant. Will it stuff itself? Of course it will. It is a pig, isn't it?
Part 2 to follow
Gramps
========================
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Northern frolics
This is a first post on a blog. Like standing on top of a rock that took 15 minutes to climb up to, what do we do now. There is the water below. Is it deeper than three feet? No body else seems to be diving, and this rock is dry, not wet from many feet. What the hell....
Watching Harper develop a Northern policy is like watching a guy play a pinball machine who has been told he helps to move the ball by arm waving gestures. We had a wide gesture that included a big new world class ice breaker, just after the Russians had commissioned a monster that was nuclear fueled. Then that died down and a series of small quick motions accompanied statements about up to 8-- count them--new fisheries patrol vessels. Three or four hundred million. That faded pretty quick as Quebec became a more important topic of the moment. Then we had the two arm wind up about 3 point something billion dollars, ladies and gentlemen; 3 point something BILLION. For six new ice breakers..no..well patrols that can break some ice...well Class 5 arctic patrol vessels. There, that was it. The cymbal clash was still echoing when we were told that was money to be spent over twenty five years and included upkeep. Since such ships only last 25 years, I guess it includes scrapping them. Two years from now they will still be drawing pictures to design the first of them.
Then we had a curtain call, self inspired by government. There would be a brand new deep water port in the northern seas. This announcement was a bit muffled by moans from a disbelieving press as the following items came out of government:
it was part of the 3 point something billion
it would not actually be new but sort of used
it was an abandoned mine where they had not yet torn out a
refueling dock and some of the buildings. Jeez. are they going to pay for this to some out fit that bought the bones of a mining outfit as a tax loss?
it was not really way, way, way up there in the North like they had said earlier, but it was far enough up that these new patrol ships would not be able to get into it in the winter ( they never told us these would be ice breakers, did they. Class five out of eight is down near the bottom end scaled by size and ice capability).
well, nobody would be able to get through the Northwest Passage in winter either except maybe the Russians, so maybe they would help us get to this new deep water port, or help us help the Americans get through whatever stretch of the Arctic seas they were bragging about at the moment
Then we had a couple more curtain calls. The Rangers, all 4000 of them who sort of came between Mounties and Soldiers, they would all get uniforms, brand new ones. That was good news in the North since if they hold any parades they can ask the Rangers to come along in these uniforms. I don't know what they wear now, maybe polar bear suits to counter effect the false stories being spread by nasty eco freaks that never had to sweat it out clubbing baby seals that the polar bears are drowning.
And there would be troops stationed up there all the time, about 30 of them. It was not clear what this was for, maybe to wave at the cruise ship passengers in the summer when the ships came up to the Northwest Passage.
This last item had a desperate sound to it, and one wondered if it would be followed by an announcement that the Mounties were going to resume their dogsled patrols across the North. All real Canadians get misty eyed about dogsled patrols by the Northwest Mounted.
It is almost as big a nation building tale as the two Mounties who rode in among 15,000 Sioux and laid down the law near Fort Saskatchewan, just after said Indians had been very rude indeed toward Custer and friends.
Some people who live up in the North were heard complaining that government should come across on previous promises to build up the community assets there instead of waiting for religious groups to go up and build but it is pretty hard for them to be heard clearly in the din of the main line media. Same with those who said the government should stop fooling around with this childish fake empire building where foreign countries drop little souveniers of their flags to the sea bed, or write articles about how ridges on the bottom of the sea 4300 foot down connect to "their" continental shelf" at 130 meters down, or send their atomic subs in a very sneaky way right across the Arctic ocean without notice to Canada, or set up tents on the ice, or fly planes around for no reason except to show they can, or brag that they never did sign any treaty and would send the CIA in to break it if they had (the Americans).
One is afraid that Harper's promises here are just BAU (business as usual) for the Canadian North. Mining or Oil will bring in money and jobs for a while, then it will go away and the North will be back to school teachers running blogs that show pictures of how beautiful and solitary it is up there. But oil and money will destroy a lot there forever. Near
Vancouver you can hike up to the glaciers area in the vast Garibaldi Park and see the outline of planks on the ground, 8 inch wide planks that were laid there when campers put up canvas tents before the First War, almost 100 years ago. The trees only reach about 12 foot in height. They are wedge shaped and 200 years old. Hard to live in an extreme cold climate up on the mountain or up on the planet, and the damage you do today will be there for a very long time. Mr. Harper climbing off the plane for 3 days in the high arctic to throw a few handfuls of imaginary herring at the public is a very depressing scene.
Why not let the Northerners tell us what needs to be done, instead of manic mining predators from Calgary or ambitious generals coming out of the woodwork in Ottawa. They cannot possibly give worse advice than Harper is working with right now. Harper can give us a real one billion ice breaker, or give the North a draft for say 5 billion of the next few years surplus, and let them decide what to do. Or take off. But quit fooling around.
Watching Harper develop a Northern policy is like watching a guy play a pinball machine who has been told he helps to move the ball by arm waving gestures. We had a wide gesture that included a big new world class ice breaker, just after the Russians had commissioned a monster that was nuclear fueled. Then that died down and a series of small quick motions accompanied statements about up to 8-- count them--new fisheries patrol vessels. Three or four hundred million. That faded pretty quick as Quebec became a more important topic of the moment. Then we had the two arm wind up about 3 point something billion dollars, ladies and gentlemen; 3 point something BILLION. For six new ice breakers..no..well patrols that can break some ice...well Class 5 arctic patrol vessels. There, that was it. The cymbal clash was still echoing when we were told that was money to be spent over twenty five years and included upkeep. Since such ships only last 25 years, I guess it includes scrapping them. Two years from now they will still be drawing pictures to design the first of them.
Then we had a curtain call, self inspired by government. There would be a brand new deep water port in the northern seas. This announcement was a bit muffled by moans from a disbelieving press as the following items came out of government:
it was part of the 3 point something billion
it would not actually be new but sort of used
it was an abandoned mine where they had not yet torn out a
refueling dock and some of the buildings. Jeez. are they going to pay for this to some out fit that bought the bones of a mining outfit as a tax loss?
it was not really way, way, way up there in the North like they had said earlier, but it was far enough up that these new patrol ships would not be able to get into it in the winter ( they never told us these would be ice breakers, did they. Class five out of eight is down near the bottom end scaled by size and ice capability).
well, nobody would be able to get through the Northwest Passage in winter either except maybe the Russians, so maybe they would help us get to this new deep water port, or help us help the Americans get through whatever stretch of the Arctic seas they were bragging about at the moment
Then we had a couple more curtain calls. The Rangers, all 4000 of them who sort of came between Mounties and Soldiers, they would all get uniforms, brand new ones. That was good news in the North since if they hold any parades they can ask the Rangers to come along in these uniforms. I don't know what they wear now, maybe polar bear suits to counter effect the false stories being spread by nasty eco freaks that never had to sweat it out clubbing baby seals that the polar bears are drowning.
And there would be troops stationed up there all the time, about 30 of them. It was not clear what this was for, maybe to wave at the cruise ship passengers in the summer when the ships came up to the Northwest Passage.
This last item had a desperate sound to it, and one wondered if it would be followed by an announcement that the Mounties were going to resume their dogsled patrols across the North. All real Canadians get misty eyed about dogsled patrols by the Northwest Mounted.
It is almost as big a nation building tale as the two Mounties who rode in among 15,000 Sioux and laid down the law near Fort Saskatchewan, just after said Indians had been very rude indeed toward Custer and friends.
Some people who live up in the North were heard complaining that government should come across on previous promises to build up the community assets there instead of waiting for religious groups to go up and build but it is pretty hard for them to be heard clearly in the din of the main line media. Same with those who said the government should stop fooling around with this childish fake empire building where foreign countries drop little souveniers of their flags to the sea bed, or write articles about how ridges on the bottom of the sea 4300 foot down connect to "their" continental shelf" at 130 meters down, or send their atomic subs in a very sneaky way right across the Arctic ocean without notice to Canada, or set up tents on the ice, or fly planes around for no reason except to show they can, or brag that they never did sign any treaty and would send the CIA in to break it if they had (the Americans).
One is afraid that Harper's promises here are just BAU (business as usual) for the Canadian North. Mining or Oil will bring in money and jobs for a while, then it will go away and the North will be back to school teachers running blogs that show pictures of how beautiful and solitary it is up there. But oil and money will destroy a lot there forever. Near
Vancouver you can hike up to the glaciers area in the vast Garibaldi Park and see the outline of planks on the ground, 8 inch wide planks that were laid there when campers put up canvas tents before the First War, almost 100 years ago. The trees only reach about 12 foot in height. They are wedge shaped and 200 years old. Hard to live in an extreme cold climate up on the mountain or up on the planet, and the damage you do today will be there for a very long time. Mr. Harper climbing off the plane for 3 days in the high arctic to throw a few handfuls of imaginary herring at the public is a very depressing scene.
Why not let the Northerners tell us what needs to be done, instead of manic mining predators from Calgary or ambitious generals coming out of the woodwork in Ottawa. They cannot possibly give worse advice than Harper is working with right now. Harper can give us a real one billion ice breaker, or give the North a draft for say 5 billion of the next few years surplus, and let them decide what to do. Or take off. But quit fooling around.
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