From: harling@miki.pictel.com (Dan Harling)
Subject: Re: Hot rods & clunkers  (Was: Eth Bl Gas ... )
Organization: PictureTel Corporation
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 16:42:55 GMT

In article <1992Nov16.160302.8822@infonode.ingr.com> greg@cherokee.b23b.ingr.com (Greg Moritz) writes:
>Famous argument; 'Takes energy to make a new car - better to keep the old
>one up.'  I have never seen a definitive comparison between the amount of
>pollution and energy from building a new car and the amount of pollution
>and energy saved by driving a cleaner, more fuel efficient newer car.

Nor have I, but I suspect that the pollution created in scrapping an
old car and manufacturing a new one would equal that generated by a
well-maintained older car for a significant number of years.  Even
apart from the pollution due to material usage, consider the amount of
energy expended in manufacturing and machining.


>...a new Crown Vic.  It's a gas-hog next to a Saturn, but it is
>a fuel-misor next to a smoke-belching mid-seventies piece of V8 iron.
                        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This is obviously a stereotype; at least, "smoke-belching mid-seventies
piece of V8 iron" sounds more like a prejudice to me than a
qualification.  Some folks aren't clever enough to realize all old cars
do not necessarily belch smoke (or even that newer cars can and do if
they are not maintained), mainly because of characterizations like this
one.  At this very minute, someone out there is thinking, "is there
*any other kind* of old car?"


>It also puts out less than 1/3 of the pollution that the above-mentioned
>car put out when new.  When you come up with numbers that show a scientific
>comparison, I'll listen.  I'd love to add them to my arsenel of facts.

All you need to do is demonstrate that the pollution generated by
junking the old car and manufacturing the new one *and* running it for
'n' years would be less than running the existing car for 'n' years,
and you can justify keeping the car for 'n' years on the basis of
pollution *alone* (you may have other reasons to maintain the car
beyond that point).  Of course, "pollution" is anything but a concrete
term, and can be defined to include or exclude certain items (e.g.,
heat) as needed to prove a point.  Even if we had the numbers it would
be debatable.

Nevertheless, I am completely in agreement with the strategy of
providing incentives to get those old cars that *do* belch smoke either
repaired or off the road, so that they no longer give a bad name to the
older cars that the rest of us maintain in top condition.  Once the
"belchers" are gone, pre-'80 cars will make up a smaller fraction of
air pollution, and warrant less attention from "tree-huggers" (as I
affectionately call them).

Once that fraction goes down, the extreme measures under consideration
(and the naive yet conspiracy-laden lumping of *all* older cars into
the same category, regardless of how much they pollute *individually*)
will no longer be justifiable.  Let's hope we can accomplish this
before the crusher laws go into the books!  Once they're there, we'll
never get them out.
____________________________________________________________________________
Daniel A. Harling                        (harling@pictel.com)
PictureTel Corp.             Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of
Peabody, MA  01960                 PictureTel, but they ought to be!
Newsgroups: rec.autos,rec.autos.driving