Wilber

So bring down the government.

After ULSD

Is it any wonder the Americans want passports?

Canada should do what is right. Why can't you guys get over what Bush thinks? Who cares what he thinks. A lot can change in a year and a half, particularly if Bush is gone, Why commit ourselves to leaving now? It may be precisely the wrong thing to do when the time comes. I don't have a problem with saying that our commitment isn't open ended if we don't get more help but I have an ethical problem with saying we are just going to get up and leave on a particular date regardless of the situation.

It will be interesting to see if our military posters react to this. I wonder what they will think of being left in the line of fire for over a year and a half knowing they will be yanked if Dion wins the next election regardless of what they accomplish before then.

We'll see.

That is one of the most asinine comments I have seen on this forum. Just because you may not use western oil and gas doesn't mean there aren't others in this country who rely on it.

Not joking, it's the line we always get from Ontario when it's economy is the strongest in the country.

Really, why then does Eastern Canada import so much from outside Canada?

Speak for yourself Easterner, we use it. The country does depend on the revenue from that oil. Can you say taxes and transfer payments? Maybe they will and maybe they won't tax it more. In the meantime we sell it to them for less than we have to pay for it. Sounds like the NEP in reverse. Again the whole country depends on revenues from that oil no matter who buys it. Can you say taxes and transfer payments? Oil is priced on a world market, raising the price of ours will either reduce the amount we sell or result in higher prices world wide because of increased competition for oil that is not subject to higher taxes. Canada will not benefit from more money leaving the country to buy oil. Why not just set limits on emissions and have severe penalties for those who don't meet them. Government will not solve the techinal problems so why drag more money out of the economy which could be used to solve those problems and dump it into general revenue to be spent on god knows what?

More civilians died in WW2 than military personnel. 50% of the dead in WW2 were civilians in allied countries, mostly Russians, Chinese and Poles. The logic was applied by both sides and it was applied by the other side first. The German bombing of Guernica in Spain and the Japanese bombing and subsequent rape of Nanjing resulting in the deaths of 295,000 Chinese both occurred in 1937. Far more people died from conventional bombing during that WW2 than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are the final two of a long list, the difference was the weapon used. If my government decided it had to nuke 100,000 civilians on the other side to avoid the deaths of even more people on our side and ultimately far more on their side, I would consider that ethical but tragic. Not only that, I would expect them to do it.

You are only assuming this based on the fact that diesel fuel produces more energy (BTU's) per gallon. If your diesel fuel vehicle gets 35 miles to the gallon and my gasoline vehicle gets 35 miles to the gallon, who's engine is the most energy efficient? Answer: The gasoline powered engine is. There are other factors that don't make diesel engines attractive. 1. They are heavier. 2. Higher initial engine cost and overall vehicle cost. 3. Lower high end performance. 4. Diesel fuel gels in cold temperatures and you have to wait for diesel glow plugs to warm up combustion chambers before you can start the vehicle. Your comparable gas engine does not get as good mileage. Diesels Last longer. Aluminum is finding its way into more diesels. The Mercedes Bluetec is an all aluminum engine. It's weight isn't much more than the gas model. Their cost when produced in high volume for passenger vehicles is either not higher or only marginally higher. VW isn't selling a diesel here in 07 because their Blutec engine won't be ready till next year but comparing 06 models, the diesel option was $1700 in a Golf. That is in a market where they are the only guy on the block. If you want to buy an affordable diesel car you have to buy it from them. The gas model was rated at 29 MPH city, 40 MPH hwy. The diesel was rated at 46 city, 61 hwy. True there are gas powered cars that get better mileage but in this case we are comparing apples and apples. A 2L gas engine versus a 1.9L turbo diesel in the same car. If you drive much it won't take long to get that $1700 back. Hence the great popularity of diesels in Europe, even though ULSD is a bit more expensive than regular gas. How many people drive their cars at the high end of their performance range and keep their licenses for long. Even so the Le Mans 24 Hours was won outright last year by an Audi R10 powered by a twin turbo diesel. The E320 Blutec diesel is faster 0-100 KPH than the equivalent gas model. Diesels excel at low and mid range torque where most of our driving is done. For heavy duty vehicles gas engines aren't in the same league. You do have to wait for a few seconds to start a diesel in cold weather but if it is above 10 degrees I don't have to wait at all with my VW and I have never had to wait more than 10 seconds for the wait light to go out regardless of the temperature. It's not an issue where I live however I would plug in a diesel before I would a gas engined car. Time to get up to speed on the latest diesel technology and remember, diesels are years behind gas engines when it comes to the amount of R&D that has gone into them.

And you'd have even more with a carbon tax... Ah, another tax puts more money in your pocket? Ya right. How is increasing the cost of everything that involves the use of oil and gas in its production and transportation going to put more money in your pocket? Where is all this tax money going to go. I am always nervous of people who's simplistic answer to everything is transferring ever more money to government.

There are some great city cars in Japan as well. I guess they figure there isn't enough market for them here yet to make it worthwhile to certify them for North America. Probably only a matter of time. Beijing is full of Citroen cabs. Shanghai is full of VW cabs. Older designs which I think are built locally, as well as a bunch of no name (to us anyway) local cars. GM builds Buick's in Shanghai (you see lots of them), the well heeled drive the kind same cars as they do here (European, Japanese) as do the less well heeled who can afford cars. They used to sell Citroen's and Peugeot's here, I had a Peugeot 504 wagon for years. Gutless but built like a tank and really roomy and comfortable. A buddy of mine had a Citroen Masserati. Cool car but it must have been the most complicated thing on the road at the time. Everything was high pressure hydraulics including the self leveling headlights which turned with the steering. Cost a fortune to fix it especially the Masserati engine. My mother had a Renault R5 for awhile. The French either couldn't hack it in North America or weren't willing to do what it took to survive. Either way, they left.

You make this sound like a big deal when in reality it isn't. You must remember the average mechanical efficiency of an internal combustion engine is around a LOWLY 20%. So your 20% CO2 and less CO is almost meaningless as their still is a tremendous amount of pollutants being produced for basically nothing along with an 80% waste of energy per litre or gallon or whatever. I think a vehicle that only releases one gallon of hydrocarbons into the atmosphere to move one person forty miles instead of a vehicle that releases two gallons to move him the same distance is a big deal.

The first sentence is horse pucky. Evidence please. The second is true.

Again, diesels have always produced 20% less CO2 and much less CO than gas engines. CO2 is the major product of greenhouse gas from vehicles. Why? a big reason is because they burn less fuel. New technology is going a long way to reduce their other emissions like they have for gas engines. I have a 1966 vintage car with a great honkin V8 and no emission controls. It's exhaust stinks when it is running and pollutes far more than modern diesels in every category.

Who cares if it is an incentive, why give it to him at all. Reward efficiency, not the flavor of the day technology. You better double that 14K if you want to buy a hybrid.

The Japanese made their choice when they decided to go to war in the first place. They did not give the people of Korea, China, The Philippines or any of the other countries they occupied a choice. An estimated 10 million Chinese or almost 2% of the population was killed as a result of WW2.

Yes the box was opened, do you think it would have been better if it remained closed? Someday, somewhere, someone was going to try one of these things on a real target. At least the first use of this weapon was to end the most destructive war in history, not start the last. Of course, they might have come home the only survivors from their regiment and in the meantime you might have broken your neck in the bathtub. There are no guarantees to life at any time. The subject is a war and the use of weapons, not random accidents. Maybe they were thinking of giving up after the first one. How was Truman supposed to know that? If the Japanese were still prepared to fight on after the use of two nuclear weapons, that is a further vindication of those who predicted a huge bloodbath after an invasion of the main islands. There were over 200,000 military and civilian Japanese dead and missing during the invasion of Okinawa alone. That would have been peanuts compared to an invasion of Honshu or Kyushu.

Getting back to hybrids, unless you are only trying to promote the technology, the idea of just subsidizing hybrid purchases is dumb. If Cadillac or Lincoln come out with hybrid Escalades and Navigators that barely get over 20 MPG, do we give the guy willing to plunk down 70K for one tax money put up by a guy who just bought a Yaris? Some of this crap just isn't very well thought out.

I'll say it again, there is no carbon content in air. The oxygen consumed in combustion is proportional to the amount of energy contained in the fuel that goes into the engine. If less fuel is being used by the engine, the less O2 it is capable of consuming and the less greenhouse gas it is capable of emitting. Diesels us less fuel than gas engines. The diesel truck I use to tow a 10,000 trailer averages nearly 15 MPG when towing. A big block gas engine producing a similar amount of torque would be lucky to get 8 or 9 MPG. If diesel fuel contains only about 10% more energy than gasoline by volume and the diesel truck is consuming nearly 50% less fuel, how can it consume more O2 per mile for combustion than a gas engine? Diesel fuel actually contains slightly less energy than gasoline by weight so if diesels are using more O2 for combustion per amount of fuel consumed, it can only be because they are more efficient when it comes to getting energy out of their fuel. A diesel doesn't need a 14.7:1 ratio because it relies on compression ignition. It doesn't matter what the ratio is as long as there is enough fuel to ingnite when it is compressed. There is no need to control airflow because any O2 not consumed just goes out the tailpipe back into the atmosphere. A gas engine has a throttle plate because it needs to maintain a specific ratio throughout its operating range in order to operate at all. If you want to say they both use oxygen, that's true. So does anything else that burns.

What does your personal opinion of those conflicts have to do with the competence of those who were there. They were political decisions to go there, not military. So you would prefer military commanders who are inexperienced so they can continue to repeat the same mistakes over and over until they learn their jobs.

At the end of the day though, the glowing piles of control rods and uranium aren't leaps and bounds ahead of where they were 20 years ago. Nuclear is a very irresponsible option long-term. Of course the the technology is far ahead of where it was. Thats like saying the internal combustion engine isn't ahead of where it was 20 years ago because it still burns the same kind of fuel. It seems the burning of massive amounts of fossil fuels is also an irresponsible long term option.

Almost 80% of France's electrical power is generated by nuclear plants.