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The topic of our environment has come up in the Parts Shed:
CES-R LEGACY BC-BF TURBO-BACK EXHAUST ON EBAY
http://bbs.legacycentral.org/viewtopic. ... 790#203790
My conscience has been on my case for awhile now, I see that I am not the only one.
The problem is real, I wish it was it was not. I may stand to loose a lot "money wise" with this post, keep that in mind.
Lets talk about it without any sarcasm, etc. Climate change is for real and the consequences will be for real unless we change ourselves. If you think the problem is "made up" please don't post here until you get the facts, please.
I want to thank dubrex and 93Leg-c for making me think of this during the daytime, this is something I lay awake in bed about.
We MUST get Gore into the Whitehouse, maybe then we will be able to reverse this situation, get some respect from the rest of the world and maybe even have a future for our Kids.
We may not have the power to bring a soldier home but we certianly have the power to put/keep a cat on our car.

I am a huge advocate for the environment. However, I did just get my Legacy and I do drive it around. I would, however, go completely catless, it is the least I can do.

ohh and I never litter

I studied environmental science a LOT throughout high school and college.

There is definately a significant increase in pollution out there.

I find it odd that Al Gore referenced catless Subaru's, but I have a hard time believing that every catless Subaru will cause an additonal .13 refugee's.

How does he support this claim? What proof? I'll be skeptical on his statistic.

I DO think heavy-duty truck emissions need to tighten up. The emissions regulations for diesel's is horrendous. Under full load, the only emissions regulation for diesel trucks is exhaust opacity. Unfortunately, it's nearly impossible to simulate full-load so the readings measured are never what they truly are (for trucks post 1990, in the state of Maryland, exhaust opacity must be at least 75%).

Still, cat's are good. I don't think it's a bad idea to keep one on the car, even if it passes emissions without one (mine did). I have cats on the Forester, and at least one cat will forever stay on the Forester.

But I'd rather see the 2-stroke motor go the way of the dodo bird, and I'd rather see far stricter emissions regulations on diesel work trucks.

Plus, I wish the E85 craze would hurry up and end. It pisses me off that the EPA allows cars burning E85 pretend to be cleaner. Any E85 vehicle in an automaker's lineup (*ahem* Ford and GM) automatically receives an EPA rating of 70mpg. Yep. 70mpg. Now, when have you ever seen an E85 Ford Escape get 70mpg? You'd be hard pressed to see 20mpg while burning the corn-gas. Now, the number of pollutants per volume of exhaust is far less with E85 (the EPA justifies the 70mpg rating by stating that those cars produce emissions comprable to standard fuel at 70mpg), but this rating bumps up the average estimated MPG of the company, further allowing dirty, dirty cars and trucks to fill the lineup of the automaker.

I THINK, currently, the EPA requires automakers to have a mean mpg of around 25 to 30mpg. With models getting 70mpg, it helps swing the weight of a Hummer getting 8mpg. BUT, there are some orginazations out there who are lobbying to raise that standard from that 25-30mpg up to 50mpg.

As a car guy, I'm torn. I have a lust for fast cars, and I don't care how many miles to the gallon it gets. To go fast, sometimes you have to be a little dirty.

Still, there are lots of big-fish and lots of reasons for the gross amounts of pollution in this world. Is putting a cat on your car going to save .13 refugee's? Probably not. But should you have a cat? Why not? Catalytic converter technology is pretty awesome today. You should at least put forth an effort to run a cat. It's not gonna hurt anything for you to run a cat.

Do your part. It's as easy as that.

I don't agree with the Gore thing, but definitely about the environment. And I'm really tired of all the brainless small penis stuff going on in the car world. I just read on carmagazine.co.uk about an 1170HP or whatever car. F@$%# stupid! Who the hell cares that your penis is an innie and you need that kind of crap to feel like a man? Why is 0-60 in 6 secs slow? That used to be fast for Ferraris. It's still fast, but just seems slow compared to turbo Porsche SUVds sucking gas and spewing pollutants on their way past. And regarless of emissions standards in terms of ppm, the more gas it uses the more pollutants. It's disgusting and pointless and exactly why I think the Lotus Elise is perhaps the only intelligent car being made. If they only put a taller 6th gear on it it would get well over its 30 mpg potential and it's still faster than any car I see. Most importantly it's fun to drive. Hell, I've had more fun driving 73HP GL Subarus than overpowered Nazi propaganda machines of Mercedes or Audi. Why does everything need 500 HP when everyone does 70 even when there isn't extensive traffic? I'm almost always the fastest car on the road and never had a car with over 160 HP which makes all this HP obsession even more pointless. And as retarded as my father is he did have two good ideas - when he was in high school he had a '58 Chevy wagon that was bone stock under the hood. He was cheap so he got used Mickey Thompson tires from drag racers and kept it out of tune and the air cleaner off so the car so it would sound cool and he'd just tell anyone who asked about the lumpy idle and sucking air sound that he had a built motor. Really, that's the only point of this crap isn't it - bragging rights of those with too much money and too little ideas to other insecure people?

My father's only other good idea, if anyone cares, is that he told me to take up dance as a kid because then I'd be the only straight guy around a bunch of hot dancers and would get laid all the time. I thought it was a stupid idea and that people would just think I was gay, but I went out with a dancer by luck later on and can tell you he was right.

And any tuner that can't get the car to pass emissions isn't worth the packaging his lap top came in.

2-strokes in boats are pretty much going away and that's a start. Low-sulfur diesel should also help since then they can implement traps and injection systems to clean them.

Note:

This has become Ashtray material rather than Subaru-related specifically, hence the move.

Like other concerned car enthusiasts I am torn as well. It's a shame that my interest in cars predates my very recent concern for the environment. Growing up as a car dork has shaped so much of my life that my interest in cars is more an emotional response than it is a right-brain knowledge based thing. I KNOW that need to do my part and reduce the amount of damage I do, but I default to wanting faster and better. I've got a bunch of ideas for finding a balance between the two... it has to be clean and something approaching a cradle-to-grave ideal. Anywone have a compromise in mind?

SORRY! The .13 refugee thing was a bad joke... Not a Gore stat.

My humor is retarded, sorry.

I'd like to clarify something I said. I am a car guy, I like fast cars, and I don't care how many miles to the gallon a fast car gets.

But I do mind if it's dirty or clean. You can get poor gas mileage and still be pretty clean about it.

And for Steve, why do cars NEED 500whp? They don't. But it sure is fun! Face shredding acceleration is, simply, awesome.

I'll let the following do the reasoning:

bac52.pwnd.org/Misc/funnyface.gif

evolutionmovement wrote: Hell, I've had more fun driving 73HP GL Subarus than overpowered Nazi propaganda machines of Mercedes or Audi.

You need to get off your German car kick...sure...you may not like them...but they aren't bad cars...

And I had a LOT of fun driving my Mercedes

and the 5 cylinder Turbo Audis are about as badass as it gets

Id just like to point out here that cars cause less than 0.13% of greenhouse gasses. 95% come from natural sources.

Also, its been shown time and time again a catless subaru can pass emissions.

When the world stops overrating German cars and rewrites history to exclude them from building Nazi war machines I'll stop bashing them. But my point was the rediculous amount of power the Germans seem to cramming into their overweight wheeled tanks. Everyone's doing it, but the Germans are the biggest offenders by a wide margin. And yes, there are even a few German cars I do like. I like the M-B SSK, the BMW 507, 2002, 3.0CSi, Porsche 2.7 Carrera RS, and the last M5 and M3. And Messerschmitts were funny and I actually like the Nazi connection in that case because of the irony.

I like speed too, but you don't need 500 HP if the car doesn't weigh as much as a Saturn rocket. Not to mention that something small and light feels much faster at a lower speed. Do 80 in a Birkin and the experience 'll beat most of the isolating cars they have today at 150, provided you can find a place to go that fast. Any idiot can put a big engine in a car it doesn't take much creativity or an especially large amount of intelligence. As an extreme example, killing people may be fun to some people too (hey like the Nazis!) but there needs to be some responsibility. My GLs did 0-60 in about 13 secs and was more fun than most other cars I've driven, including the speed 3. It's not that I think we need to get rid of fast cars, but was the old M5 so slow with 400 HP that they needed 500 in the next one? Why not keep it 400 and use the advances in engineering to get a few more mpg? Either way, I've only seen a guy in a Lotus Esprit V8 use what he had. Most M5s could have 250 HP and the owners likely wouldn't notice.

But I guess the real question is: why couldn't the next form of propulsion be even better? If these tuners and engineers are so smart why don't they show it by doing something different?

If we don't choose to be responsible someone or something else will do it for us, be it the environment or the government and I'd rather be calling the shots for myself than either of them, hopeless as that expectation is. Seems we're approaching a cliff and I hope it's not too late for us to be able to choose whether we fall off or parachute.

555BCTurbo wrote:
and the 5 cylinder Turbo Audis are about as badass as it gets

within a few years I'll be putting an MC1 into a 4kQ. well, maybe a 20v if I can swing it. baddest cars around. $3000 or so and youve got a 2800lb, 400hp sweet looking sport sedan with an indestructable transmission and lockers.

on a more green note, I'd also like to put one of the new TDi's in a 75-79 rabbit and run it on some kind of controller with an economy and power setting. sick handling, 50mpg, and 400ft-lbs in a classic hot hatch would work ok by me.

the trend towards bulking up cars cant be blamed just on ze germans, its a universal thing in the auto industry. the average person doesnt care that their 04 civic weighs 1000lbs more than it did 10 years ago, and thats why its not really an issue. they like that it is safe, quiet and has nice features. that the companies are adding a bunch of whiz bang crap noone needs is pretty lame, but hey, it gets them sales.
what I'd like to see is turbodiesel electric hybrids with less crazy features and lighter weight construction. maybe instead of permanent awd companies could start making it selectable again.

myself, I put a cat back in my car to quiet it down a bit, but after doing so I realized how much nicer it is to have an axhaust that doesnt stink as bad too.

what about huge ocean going vessels? those things burn hundreds of gallons per hour of the lowest grade fuel oil and from what I have heard, have no emissions equipment whatsoever.

interesting side note, I just got back from an ice rally X and the winner of most classes (he raced studded and non studded) was a 70 hp car. Against race prepped rally cars. Just goes to show what hp means in the slippy twisties (which is where the real fun it). Plus i think subaru and other japanese cars are being the lesser of two evils by only having 4 cylinder cars while american cars are still being released with V8's, and to top it all off they brought back the hemi . But that get's me into the oil wars, and politics, and the next stage in that conversation is the 9/11 conspiracy and george bush being evil and I'm not going to go there

keep rocking the sick 4 bangers, and when you are driving remember, your penis is the thing in your pants, not the thing you are driving in.

Mean global temperature has been increasing since the end of the last Ice Age, some 12,000 years ago. More recently there has been considerable warming since the end of the" Little Ice Age" that reached its coldest in the late 1600s.

It was so cold in London, for example, that the Thames River froze thick enough to support a coach and four horses. That would take weeks of 30 below temps. Many big trees in the hardwood forests were split by the frost such that many furniture makers became unemployed--a shortage of suitable lumber.

It is now about as warm as it was in the late 1200s when that phase of cooling started. The best explanation of that cooling was due to a remarkable decline in the output of energy from the sun. This was accompanied by a diminishing sunspot count, known as the "Maunder Minimum"--named after the researcher who assembled the data and made the conclusions.

One of the first issues in attributing the long warming trend to mankind is one of the problems in formal logic. This is the tendency to assume that because two things occur at the same time they must be causally related. It is called a primitive syllogism.

The common example is that the crowing of a rooster causes the sun to rise. Lesser known, is that I've been using the same shampoo for 25 years and it has turned my hair grey.

Recently released research on Mars observes that it has been on a warming trend as well and it probably is tied to the increasing energy output from the sun.

As an aside, if it is called global warming on earth could we call it marble warming on Mars?

Additionally there are much longer term forces acting on the climate that cause regularly recurring Ice Ages and the intervals known as the "Interglacial"--one of which we are enjoying now.

I'm all for improving the environment, but no amount of authoritarian legislation will stop this Interglacial until it has run its course.

By way of qualification, I took a degree in Geophysics, which includes the study of ice ages.

Lawn and farm implements cause far more pollution than cars, nevermind ocean liners.

Splinter wrote: farm implements cause far more pollution than cars

I wouldn't be so quick to say such a thing...

I work for a farm...and our combines and tractors run at pretty much a constant RPM and fuel delivery all day, and therefore do not emit much any particulate matter...

The only time I see a John Deere smoke is when it is being throttled up, or becomes loaded down, which is very rare

Particulate matter is the best kind of pollution. Its far heavier than noxious gasses and settles out of the air quickly.

The stuff thats bad is the stuff you dont see. COx and NOx.

You can argue logic and such till you're blue in the face, but that doesn't mean you're scientifically correct. Science Magazine recently did a study of the abstracts of 928 scientific studies that related to climate change. Their findings -- not one tried to refute that humans are contributing to global warming.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/f ... /5702/1686

The IPCC committee that summarizes all of those papers draws politically correct conclusions--their living is dependent upon this--and those who submit sound papers are ignored and largely unfunded.

We are talking religion here and authoritarians in the Old Testament contrived the concept of "Original Sin", or sex, as a controlling device.

Devotees of the new religion have devised the concept of living, itself, as the new "Original Sin"--bigger deal than just sex. Besides, you can't promote a religion these days based upon sexual morality.

Hey--as Confuscious might have said:"Mind like parachute-works best when open."

I dont trust scientific research anymore.

They're all funded by someone with a vested interest in the outcome of the project

Splinter wrote:I dont trust scientific research anymore.

They're all funded by someone with a vested interest in the outcome of the project

Ah, so what type of research do you trust...

Dumbshit opinions?

Basic observable facts and draw my own conclusions.

My conclusion is: Running my car catless isnt going to give my grandkids cancer.

Check out this electric impreza. I found it after watching "Who killed the electric car?"

http://www.proev.com/

Splinter wrote:I dont trust scientific research anymore.

They're all funded by someone with a vested interest in the outcome of the project

can you cite a specific example of this please?

cigarette companies claiming that smoking is good for you in the early 1900's, based on clinical and scientific "facts"