Compare the emissions being emitted by actual race cars against say.....school buses. Or even rental car shuttles at the airport belching diesel. It is not even close.

 

Exactly.

 

If 99 doctors told you that you had cancer, and one said you'd be fine, what do you believe? I heard this statement recently and it does put it into perspective. It's kind of obvious at this point. The problem with the Earth is there are just too many people on the Earth. Everyone and their dog having the need to spawn and hatch out more of themselves. With too many doing this it caused a population explosion. All these new humans need food so we have to grow more, have more animals for meat, and require more fuels for electricity, gasoline, etc. At the same time we are trashing the Earth. We are ruining freshwater supplies, like in Flint Michigan, due to poor choices, money, and bureaucracy or through practices of fracking. Then there is the destruction of the Ocean. That is another lengthy subject/discussion. I mean it's pretty obvious at this point if you look at the data around the globe. Only in the current age could facts be ignored and politicized. Politicians grabbing them and twisting them up then selling it off to their minions. I look at the science, the facts.

Even locally, you could see, tell, the weather changes. We had uncharacteristic drought for years on end, lasted the better part of the last decade, hotter too. In that time the municipality doubled the water rates. So I'm paying s 100% increase compared to 6-7 years ago. Watering the lawn is becoming so expensive I'm going to kill the grass and replace it with rocks, sprinkler heads converting to drip lines soon. This year we didn't even get a winter. and we had devastating storms which killed people and destroyed homes, cars, etc. Uncharacteristic because it happened in the winter, a day after Christmas. Unheard of here. The climate doing its thing is costing me money, electricity due to longer seasons of heat and hotter temperatures, major increase in water cost, so that is when you really understand it's not some hype or some political talking point. It isn't from cars running without a cat, or from coal plants, or from cows taking dumps, it's from everything collectively. There are just too many people on this planet and Mother Earth is barking and will continue to do so.
If the global population continues to increase you'll see Mother Nature react and kill more of them. Unless population control occurs I don't think we'll be able to do anything about it either.

 

No, TPC elected not to go through CARB certification. But I see no reason why it wouldn't pass a smog test at normal idle with the factory cats. Which is good enough for my conscience.

 

Jeff raises the issue of enforcement. The altered car would a violation of the EPA rule, but it may not be detectible by conventional means. The government won't be going much deeper than that unless they find a way to check the code and wiring of every car.

 

Mine too. The problem is that it's not good enough for the EPA. The effect of their new rule would be that you need to think of a car's engine and all its subsystems and controls as as sealed package. Break the seal and you break the law.

 

Practically speaking, I'm with you. But I don't want to have to be an outlaw to drive a car with modifications, even when it passes my state's sniffer.

 

To simplify things up a bit, a catalytic converter's main function on a vehicle has nothing to do with CO2 reduction. It's main function is reduction of Nitrous and sulfrous oxides, the main components of smog. Whether a car has a cat or it doesn't, really makes no difference for CO2 emissions. To add to your other comments I also agree that CO2 is largely harmless in it's current, and increasing, atmospheric concentration.

Every few years (decades?) a few scientists make a big hullabaloo about population growth and the coming crisis. Then, as now, it's a false narrative and a non-issue. The Earth's population is most likely to peak before 2050; it's just the natural progression of things. As countries become more developed their population growth rates plateau. At the present, most developed countries have zero or negative population growth (especially if you don't count growth through immigration). In essence, as more countries join the first world, their population growth will slow down and peak. And even with current (nuclear fission) technology we will never have a problem providing electricity for the whole world.

99 doctors telling you you have cancer is an analogy to what? Perhaps the (easily debunked) claim of 97% of climate scientists endorsing the AGW narrative? Even if one does believe in this claim, what can be done? The only realistic approach at this point is to adapt. But there's little in it for governments to use that strategy. Allowing governments to control the production of energy lets them exert almost unlimitless power over the citizenry. And why do so many small underdeveloped countries squawk about AGW? Because they think they'll get paid. If properly funded (won't happen) the UN's Green Climate fund will supposedly pay out $100 billion a year from developed countries to undeveloped countries, for "damages inflicted" by human caused climate change. The mainstream media tried to make a big deal of the recent Paris COP21 agreement, but even if that agreement is not broken by any countries it will still have no noticeable effect on the climate. Even Google scientists spent several years looking into a "solution" to the AGW problem and concluded that it is too late (http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/rene...climate-change ).


That is not to say that I'm dismissive about very real and ongoing environmental problems the world over. Clean water supply, marine pollution (from things as seemingly innocent as sunblock chemicals) over-fishing, deforestation (especially of the rain forests)...there are plenty of real tangible problems that do require our help. And we need to be careful of solutions to supposed problems, that result in even worse problems. Such as Europe and palm oil ( https://www.government.nl/latest/new...-oil-in-europe ). Europe thinks it's a good idea to increase consumption of palm oil instead of more traditional oil sources. Most palm oil is produced in Malaysia and Indonesia. Demand goes up and palm plantations have increased, taken over land that was previously rain forest. This ill thought out plan by the Europeans is directly responsible for increased destruction of rain forests. And this is just one example..

/rant

Hope nobody considers me a loon now

 

Well said!

 

One of the most objective and sane of the loons we have...