thats because it will take 30 years to pay off your tuition debt. LOL
Yeah except Vandy has a “full tuition need policy” that coverers everything and the Clemson is a Flagship State (discounted) State college.
Either way, an Engineering graduate can graduate with $0 student debt.
Tough, yes but is it worth it?
I just hate it when facts are brought into the discussion.
Many colleges have very very good tuition assistance programs for financially strapped families. If you get accepted to Harvard and your parents earn less then $75,000 then you get FREE Tuition - Room and Board. Many colleges across the country are doing this. Harvard has enough money in their endowment trust funds they could pay all students tuition just off the interest.
At least engineers earn enough money to pay off their student debt. Teachers, Social Workers - not so much.
Back to Global warming and cars. Burning fossil fuel accounts for the LARGEST portion of Green House Gases which is a major cause of global warming. There’s a lot of data and scientific studies over the past few decades that support this. On the other side of the coin you have the deniers (this is where it gets political) mainly supported by special interest groups like the Coal Industry or Oil and Gas. They’ve been behind the anti-science funding for decades. They’ve spent BILLIONS AND BILLIONS trying to disprove Global Warming. In the past 10 or so years they’ve spent a lot of money trying to discredit the scientists that do the study. They stopped trying to disprove the study or research. Instead they’ve focused discrediting the scientists - NOT THEIR WORK.
The deniers biggest claim (LIE) is that the scientists at these universities are paid millions to do research to prove global warming is true. That is so laughable. The largest funding on global warming is from the Coal, Oil and Gas industry trying to DISPROVE global warming. Many researchers won’t accept this money because they are told what the outcome of their research should be or they don’t get their funding. Who’s paying the researchers in all the other countries (India, China, England, Japan, Chile, Brazil, Germany, Mexico, Canada…etc…etc)? Yes there is funding for research but not with an agenda. If it goes for global warming then great…if not then that’s great too.
Here’s one study that the conservatives HATE… Everyone’s Talking About the Koch Brothers-Funded Study That Proves Climate Change Is Real (businessinsider.com)
Koch Brothers view on Global Warming (basically the same view as Coal, Oil and Gas).
Taken from the article above. This alone is the reason for Global Warming Denying…and why it’s become political…
Koch Industries realized early on that it would be a financial disaster for the firm if the American government regulated carbon emissions or made companies pay a price for releasing carbon into the atmosphere. The effects of such a policy would be measured over decades for Koch. The company has billions of dollars sunk into the complex and expensive infrastructure of crude-oil processing. If a limit on greenhouse gas emissions were imposed, it could dampen demand for oil and diminish the value of those assets and their future sales. The total dollar losses would likely be measured in trillions over a period of 30 years or more.
Personally I like to drive. I love my vehicles. When ever I buy a vehicle I first consider a vehicle that meets my needs (what it’s used for, comfort). Second is longevity. And then MPG.
I personally think that car manufacturers can do better in MPG. They’ve made HUGE strides from when I first started driving in the late 60’s. Electric cars may be the future…I may not buy one (mainly because of range)…but I will be buying at least a Hybrid next (when ever that is). Long ways to go though.
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Thank you @circuitsmith, I’m late getting to the forum today.
I appreciate the effort to get it back to cars, @MikeInNH, but can you please tone down the all caps? This is one of those topics that is almost guaranteed to cause a fight.
If it goes back into a pure climate discussion I’m going to close it. Thanks.
And Art History majors, not at all.
Caps of one word is NOT shouting. They are considered emphasizing a point. A complete sentence that’s caps is considered shouting. This is standard internet etiquette.
Except that they aren’t, really. A 1985 Honda Accord got 22 city / 27 highway. Today’s non-hybrid Accord gets 30 / 38. An improvement, but nowhere near 4 times as good.
But in 1985 the top engine on the Accord made around 100hp. Today, the bottom engine makes almost double that, and you can get a 250hp one. Our trouble is that we’ve suffered from runaway performance expectations. I remember when I bought my 2007 Acura TL, which was much faster than I needed it to be, I’d see people on forums talking about how slow it was. The thing did 0-60 in 5.6 seconds. That’s all of .3 seconds slower than an '80’s Lamborghini Countach. And there are minivans that run that fast too - we have kid haulers that turn in numbers formerly reserved for high-dollar exotics, and we think they’re slow.
I like speed as much as the next guy, but at some point we have to recognize that our never ending quest for more and more powerful engines in daily drivers is eliminating the environmental advantage of engine efficiency gains. Sure, engines are more efficient now on a per horsepower basis, but that stops mattering much when you can go down to the Dodge dealership and get an 800 horsepower car.
I’m all in on the stupid-fast electric cars (from an efficiency standpoint, not from a “oh cripes, the stupid neighbor kid could potentially get his hands on one of these and kill someone” perspective). But electric cars can be charged with renewable energy. If you have the right setup, you can even charge them for free from an energy production standpoint with solar panels on your roof.
I’m also an aviation geek, with a particular fondness for private jets, but I also recognize that burning all that fuel to ferry 3 people to Vail isn’t a great way to treat the environment. I’m interested to see the advances in electric propulsion for aircraft. Once that matures to a certain level it will at the least reduce the number of planes flying around burning leaded gasoline. It’ll be awhile, if ever, before electric motors replace jet engines, but in the meantime that seems a good avenue for biofuels, which produce much fewer global-warming-causing emissions than regular jet fuel.
And it might be a good idea to tax the everloving hell out of private jets; They’re doing outsized damage to the environment, and the extra tax revenue could be put toward attempting to mitigate that damage.
The bottom line is that regardless of what vehicle we’re talking about, we need to be thinking a lot more about efficiency and minimizing fossil fuel burn rather than maximizing performance. Yes, that means we shouldn’t be buying 800 horsepower Hellcats, and it also means the billionaire should be flying commercial, or at minimum in something more efficient.
At the end of the day, it’s our planet. I don’t have kids, and I’m old enough that I’ll probably be dead before the worst impacts of climate change happen, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a responsibility to at least advocate for leaving future generations with a habitable world. My wife and I have already decided that going forward, we’re buying electric cars now that they’re established and practical. It’s a small thing, but it’s something we can do. We’re also already researching getting solar panels on the roof and plan to pull the trigger on that within the next couple of years, so when we do get that electric car it will at least in part be charged by the sun rather than coal.
Mr. Shadow , do you realize the feed back you are going to get for making a logical sensible post ?
We also have no kids and we worry about the future for young people .
I posted this before but our HOA just denied Solar panels for a person . Talk about nonsense .
One part of that is that todays Accord is a lot larger then the 1985 Accord. That 85 Accord is about the same size as todays Civic. The current Accord is 50% heavier then the 85. Even the Civic is heavier.
I do agree that gas mileage isn’t 4 times better. It is better…and for the same gas used current vehicles pollute a lot less.
That’s no different then the kid taking their dad’s Demon out for a spin. Stupid fast with an unexperienced kid at the wheel. We’ve had people posting in this forum about what sports car they should buy their high-school kid. I refuse to even acknowledge those posts.
That’s not going to happen any time soon. But nice goal.
Eventually we may. But I tend to keep my vehicles a very long time. My wife may be buying her last vehicle next year or the one year after that. Her next vehicle after that would be when she’s in her mid 80’s. It probably won’t be electric, but will be a hybrid. I won’t be buying my next vehicle until I’m in my mid 70’s. We’ll see if the electric range is practical enough for me then. Probably will be.
As a follow-on: I replace my 2005 Accord EX V6 with a 2017 Accord EX-L with the 2.4L I-4 and CVT. I used to routinely get 25 MPG, mostly commuting. In my newer Accord, I get about 40 MPG on the same drive. Power isn’t as good as a V6, which was available in 2017, but I decided that power was adequate in the I-4, especially as a commuting vehicle. I use almost 40% less gas, and that played a big part in the decision.
If could locate a well-preserved Civic CRX from the '80s, it (supposedly) got something like 80 mpg, according to a recent–very unbelievable–post.
Yeah, I agree. Which is the problem. We’re past the point of being able to do it later and get away with it.
The HFs got 50. Which is better than most cars today, including many hybrids. Mine got in the 40s highway, but it was (well, still is, but I haven’t driven it in a long time) an Si swapped DX. You won’t get 80, but a good HF, if you can find one, is one heck of a fuel sipper.
Yes, it was the HF, not the CRX, that someone on this board recently claimed to be capable of 80 mpg–or more. Everyone–including me–told him that his memory was faulty.
An excellent point was raised to the effect that “we’re squandering some of the vast improvements in engine development by using it for increased performance and size”., which is absolutely correct.
However, it’s not all bad news …
Most significant is that fully electric vehicles are being developed at a rapid pace, the cost is beginning to decline and the performance is greatly improving to the point that I’m guessing that the large majority of sales will be EV in 10-15 years.
I’ve been told that I’m over optimistic but past experience with electronics (and an EV is just another electronic appliance) has shown me that once a new technology becomes superior to the existing technology, adoption is extermely rapid even without any external encouragement but government has a role to play especially in the infrastructure development.
Development of our electrical grid, initial encouragement of the deployment of charging stations and most important in the development of our educational capability. We did it for IC vehicles through investments in our Interstate System and Oil Tax Credits so it’s time to do it again.
But the electricity has to come from somewhere. And I think currently, the majority of electricity is still coming from fossil fuels. I suppose the government will invest more money in alternative energy, the grid, charging stations, etc.
I’ll leave you boys to it. But I fear the effects of government spending (taxes) and government mandates (loss of freedoms) way more than I fear climate change in regards to the future of my kids.
Those evil fossil fuels that propelled me to work this morning and will heat my house this winter and have apparently raised the temperature a degree Celsius or two over the last century…I think we’d be wise to count the cost of getting rid of them upfront. But most people here seem to disagree.
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My daughter was recruited to Tulane and loved the place, cryed on the way home, it was above several Ivys but shortly after Katrina they eliminated Engineering as a major.
Instead she accepeted Vanderbil’s Engineering.offer.
Do you understand now why Nashville is one of the fastest growing areas?
Nashville has always been a fast growing area. Even when I was stationed just north of there at Ft Campbell when we returned from Nam.
And that is the type of thinking that got this country in this mess.
What mandates? This I’ve got to hear.