Keep those small cars off the road

The rusting hulk of Myron Ebell rolled up to the Detroit Auto show last week to argue that America and its car industry should keep charging down the same old hole like there is no tomorrow.



He said:

Uh, and I think you can see from the Detroit Auto Show that for the media there are lots of little green cars, and for the public who want to buy cars there are lots of muscle cars and pickup trucks.

And I think if you look at the new CAFE standards you're going to see that in 2016 the average car will be the smart car which is not selling -- there was an article in the Post yesterday that Mercedes Benz was in terrible trouble with the smart car because nobody wants to buy it. But that will be the average car. Many people will have to be satisfied with smaller cars than I saw in the Detroit Auto Show yesterday.

There are now many many concept cars that are even smaller that no one wants to buy.

From the Washington Post article:

"It's very difficult for Smart to duplicate the success of Mini," said Rebecca Lindland, director of auto research at IHS Global Insight in Lexington, Mass. "The primary characteristic of Smart is that it's small. The primary characteristic of Mini is that it's irresistibly adorable, with performance thrown in."

The ForTwo, at 8 feet 10 inches, is more than three feet shorter than the Mini. Some Americans are reluctant to buy minicars because they are overshadowed on the road by massive pickups and sport-utility vehicles.

"The car is just so tiny in the U.S.," Lindland said. "I had a Mini and there were friends of mine who were afraid to drive with me."

America has a lot of very very deep problems. Myron and his friends are doing everything they can to make sure they keep them.

Meanwhile, over on the CEI blog Myron Ebell was thanked for helping with this post where they correctly blamed the Fed for the housing bubble (although the CEI thought it was great at the time) and lectured the government "to get out of the way of the productive sector" -- without whose bailout there would not have been any Detroit Auto show this year anyway.

The face of conservative ideology

From the blog of Julie Walsh, Female, comes:

Washington, DC., January 8, 2009 – It has been reported in the London press (link to CNBC.com provided) that poor old-age pensioners are having to resort to buying books at thrift shops to burn to keep warm during the prolonged bitterly cold weather in the United Kingdom.

In response to this humanitarian crisis, Freedom Action is calling on former Vice President Al Gore to join an effort to collect and airlift copies of his science fiction bestsellers to British people in dire need.

"We are collecting copies of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, Our Choice, and Earth in the Balance and will send them to Oxfam in the UK to distribute for free to vulnerable people trying to survive the cold weather," said Myron Goebbels, Director of Freedom Action. "We call on Mr. Gore to co-operate in our effort to relieve human suffering by providing copies of his books for burning in stoves and fireplaces."

It is appropriate that Al Gore's books should be used to help keep poor people warm, Ebell explained, "since the principal reason the British government is totally unprepared to deal with the brutally cold weather is because they have fallen for the global warming myths propagated by Gore himself in his bestselling books. Burning Gore's otherwise worthless books to keep people from freezing is their highest and best use."

Julie Walsh last featured in the Myron Ebell Climate last April when she exhibited a graph of Arctic Sea Ice Extent showing how the sea had refrozen over the winter from its shocking melt the previous summer -- and therefore there was nothing to worry about.

Hey, while we're on the subject of government unpreparedness for weather events, don't ever forget the CEI's pronouncement on the disaster in New Orleans.

"It was a lack of access to cars that led tens of thousands of people to remain in the city, says Sam Kazman, head of CEI's Automobility Project. "Many people may well choose a car-free lifestyle, but the notion that government should impose it in the name of sustainability is crazy. As Hurricane Katrina showed, it can be disastrous as well."

It's useful to have a simple mind when you don't want to be frightened by the rank evil you are part of.