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GM Exec Stands by Calling Global Warming a "Total Crock of Shit"
DETROIT -- General Motors Corp Vice Chairman Bob Lutz has defended remarks he made dismissing global warming as a "total crock of shit," saying his views had no bearing on GM's commitment to build environmentally friendly vehicles.
Lutz, GM's outspoken product development chief, has been under fire from Internet bloggers since last month when he was quoted as making the remark to reporters in Texas.
In a posting on his GM blog on Thursday, Lutz said those "spewing virtual vitriol" at him for minimizing the threat of climate change were "missing the big picture."
"What they should be doing in earnest is forming opinions, not about me but about GM and what this company is doing that is ... hugely beneficial to the causes they so enthusiastically claim to support," he said in a posting titled, "Talk About a Crock."
GM, the largest U.S. automaker by sales and market share, has been trying to change its image after taking years of heat for relying too much on sales of large sport-utility vehicles like the Hummer and not moving faster on fuel-saving hybrid technology.
"My thoughts on what has or hasn't been the cause of climate change have nothing to do with the decisions I make to advance the cause of General Motors," he wrote.
Lutz said GM was continuing development of the battery-powered, plug-in Chevy Volt and other alternatives to traditional internal combustion engines.
GM is racing against Toyota Motor Corp to be first to market a plug-in hybrid car that can be recharged at a standard electric outlet.
Lutz has previously said GM made a mistake by allowing Toyota to seize "the mantle of green respectability and technology leadership" with its market-leading Prius hybrid.
A 40-year auto industry veteran who joined GM earlier in the decade with a mandate to shake up its vehicle line-up, Lutz is no stranger to controversy.
As part of a campaign against higher fuel economy standards, Lutz wrote in a 2006 blog posting that forcing automakers to sell smaller cars would be "like trying to address the obesity problem in this country by forcing clothing manufacturers to sell smaller, tighter sizes."
Automakers ended their opposition to higher fuel standards in 2007 when it became clear that proposed changes would become law with or without their support.
In December, President George W. Bush signed a law mandating a 40 percent increase in fleetwide fuel economy by 2020, the first substantial change in three decades.
Reporting by Kevin Krolicki, editing by Toni Reinhold
© Reuters 2008
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411 Comments so far
Show AllGee, what a surprise.
Shit is as shit speaks
Now that's how you sell cars! If your clientèle are SUV lovin', green hatin', science denyin' Republican red necks. Hey, keep up the good work - pulling GM out of the dumper. Me? I'll be buying Toyota.
Lutz is right that his dopey personal opinions have nothing to do with his marketing decisions for GM. It is the public that is supposed to be educated and enlightened, not its vendors or its politicians. Those guys are supposed to be whores, either making their living giving us what we want or going broke selling us cars that guzzle gas and wars that kill our kids and shoes that don't fit, and that is a good thing. It is when vendors and politicians try to convince us that we are supposed to want the junk they are selling that things go sour.
BUY TOYOTA, AND ALL THE OTHER ASIAN MARKET CARS-THAT'S ALL.
Sounds as if he is channelling Martin Durkin, whose subtlety of debate he echoes.
ride a bike , take the rail , walk...
gm stockholders should can this asshole
Perhaps he's just softening up the market and creating a pre-hype, buzz-friendly atmosphere for GM's release of a new class of SUVs-- a Ginormous Utility Vehicle (GUV) with separate engines for the front and back wheels and its own barbecue pit, perhaps.
And don't forget: "... [F]or years I thought what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa."
-- Charles Erwin Wilson, President of General Motors, 1953
"Shit is as shit speaks," very good. His own crock runneth over. Analogy with clothing and obesity = profit always right and righteous ("the American way"), in line with white house politics. Apply to selling hard-core drugs to the hard core. Deny. Smile. Run over whatever's in your way. These people are due, babe.
Hey, Bob, as an acknowledged expert on global warming, it's great to get your opinion.
Is there any possibility of bringing out a sixteen cylinder SUV, one that really has some grunt? Us good ol' boys have to keep the world hummin', Bob, keep those tyres spinnin', keep those oil shieks grinnin', keep impressin' them wimmin, yeeehhhhaaaaaa!
Yeah, Bob, you're sure one hell of a dangerous creation!
www.dangerouscreation.com
I thought this was a headline from the Onion when I first read it.
Do everything you can to avoid buying a car at all.
Get out of suburbia. Move to a neighborhood or get a job where you can walk, bike, use public transit. If you must use a motor vehicle - consider a Vespa or similar two-wheeled, low-cc vehicle. Electric versions are also available.
Since his cars are also said crock of feces, its only fair.
It this guy a creationist? Shall we try science next time folks?
Namste's hit (sh)it on the head.
GM's main accomplishment in the last decade and a half has been dumping many tens of thousands of workers.
Between this guy and the founder of the weather station, both of whom have denied global warming, it seems those accomplished in anything, can speak shit about eveerything as long as it's in the interest of those in power.
Let's write some letters to the Detroit & other papers.
Are we supprised that General Motors has turned Ouranos into our anus?
When looking for a job last year, I spoke to someone who sold (for 25 years) GM cars. The old boy advised me most strongly to find a job selling any car but GM...
If global warming were really a man-made phenomenon, they wouldn't have to create a list of scientist supporters most of whom were never consulted on the subject and many of whom actually disagree with that assesment in order to legitimize their theories.
Even if global warming were man-made planting a shit-load of hemp would do more for the planet than any illegitimate global carbon tax ever could.
It's ALL about global taxation in preparation for global government. Your foolish if you think global taxation for CO2 emissions won't eventually be extended to taxing the CO2 you exhale from your lungs into the atmosphere every day (you dirty filthy polluter).
Support Jihad... buy a SUV today! Your gas guzzling tanks enrich the Middle Eastern Monarchs and dictators as they funnel their petro dollars down to the religious fundamentalists in their glogal quest to rid their land of corporate America. Each time you fill up one of those huge gas guzzlers, pat yourself on the back for being an Osama believer!
A VP from a failing corporation is telling us about the big picture? I've had my laugh for the day.
Do the author and posters here not know that it's against the law to argue with men who obviously have executive-style hair? GM know this. That's why they keep this guy. Just look at the photo. Perfecto.
GM is a total crock of shit. I've been to Detroit and seen the eerie, post-apocalyptic landscape of abandoned office buildings, houses, factories... GM built itself a glossy new HQ with glass cylinders as seen in the background here, aping the success symbols of high-tech industries and GM's foreign competitors, as if to deny the distress all around them and pretend that they are still mighty and invincible. The truth is GM has become a finance company and a rapidly depreciating globalized brand name. The best cars they've sold in years were Toyotas. They'be been hanging on with the demand for big, stupid cars sustained by the artificially low gas prices Americans have been paying. Now that that's going away, GM is toast. They're going to introduce the revolutionary clean green hybrid technology? The Japanese must laugh over sake at that one.
This idiot is a penultimate example of Republican hubris. He 'believes' global warming is a crock of shit, therefore, it is. After all, he is a corporate veep. And he rules by decree. It follows that all climate science and weather science are also crocks of shit.
It seems that the biggest crock of shit lies between his ears. But he is in control. So he, like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, corporate officers and privateers all, can do real and lasting damage.
This jerk is an obstructionist, and apparently has been for decades. It is way past time for these corporate criminals to be brought down.
At the beginning of WW2, the auto indsutry turned on a dime, and produced tanks and planes instead of autos witin a year. Now you tell me, even with all the computerization that they did not have in WW2, that the 'poor American auto industry' can't change so fast to better greener vehicles, and has to have way much time to ease into doing somthing different... or think of new ways to postpone any progress.
It all has to do with profits funnelling upwards to this same bunch of greedy corporate criminals. Because of corporate types such as this jackass, and Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Skilling, et al, we cannot trust any corporate officers, and must take back the nation from them. Before they do even more damage.
GM needs to learn how to make a real car.
My next car just became a Toyota built here in America.
The vast majority of global warming is happening because of where we are in the cycle of our planet, Earth.
How long will it take GM's C. Lutz to spin:
A Crock of Shit into
A Load of Manure into
A Bag of Fertilizer into
A Generous Portion of that which makes things grow?
He's right, of course: global warming IS a crock of shit. The reason why I know this is because I'm an artist, and artists know a lot more about global warming than do climate scientists, as do automobile manufacturing executives. As a matter of fact, almost everyone, including George Bush, knows more about global warming than climate scientists do. Everyone knows this.
I say they all are moving to slow. I look at Europe and electric cars are sold in the car lots in several countries. Plug in parking spots same as our handicapped but for electric cars only. Even the 4 door 4 seat SMART car is testing electric in England with Roger Penski ( racing) backing it. Smart diesel at 80 MPG sold in Canada for years now, Why not the US?
Try the air car at www.theaircar.com if you want to see the next car I want to buy. I am on the waiting list right now. For under 10,000$ it is a deal Look at the video
I forget the extact amount, but it was in the business section of the paper that G.M. lost billions
of dollars in the last quarter. Give this guy a another million for his annual bonus.
Ted Stevens the Alaskan Psycho-Dinosaur says the ecological threats to polar bears are a "crock" too I'm sure. And it's a "crock" that Exxon is gouging for oil/gas profits, even though they made more money last year than ANY other company in U.S. history in these "tough uncertain times...." These PUTZES are going to have to discover their own consequences face to face, and I hope it's sooner than later....
Of course a big wig at GM will poo-poo climate change. They missed the boat way back in the 70's when the American market began to demand autos with halfway decent gas milage and didn't need to be manufactured mid-week in order not to be lemons. They have yet to reclaim the market share they lost back then, and if one examines their public pronouncements then, they were just as petulant and off the mark then. Now comes climate change and it appears as if the suits at GM, in the person of Bob Lutz, have learned nothing. When and if GM becomes a corporate footnote of history along the lines of Pan Am, let it be written that General Motors was driven into the ground by their executives.
Buick. Cadillac. Chevrolet. GMC. GM Daewoo. Holden. Hummer. Oldsmobile. Opel. Pontiac. Saab. Saturn. Vauxhall.
These are among the best-known of GM's cars.
We need never buy any of them again.
Don't be whining at me to ride my bike or take public transportation, child: I'm 64 years old, and I live 28 miles from work, in a mountainous part of the country that lacks bus and train service.
But I can buy a Ford, a Volvo, a bunch of Asian or British bangers...
There are only two languages that DWMs like Lutz understand. One is money; the other is firepower. The latter is not legal in private hands, but with the former, we can drive him to his knees, corporate scum that he is.
European car makers are light-years ahead of GM and have been for years. Europeans manage very nicely with smaller, efficient, intelligent, creatively designed cars. Why do so many US drivers think that they need a vehicle the size and weight of a tank, with aesthetics even more unpalatable? Maybe it has to do with the lack of real driver training in the US. In Europe, one has to learn to pilot a vehicle to receive a license. Most of the people who drive the gargantuan tanks in the US should be required to have a commercial driving license, with all the training that requires.
There's just not much intelligence applied to the aspect of cars and driving in the US. Where I live, you'd think the flashing turn signal device did not exist.
So what do you expect from the big cheese at Giant Motors?
I hate to go against such strong consensus but the fact is that there is no proof that global warming is man made. I also don't believe that it is necessary to denigrate people who disagree. It is best to present facts rather than insults. All the offered "proof" is correlational data and that kind of data does not reveal a cause and effect relationship. Now , don't get angry, refute instead. I would love to see proof that humans are causing global warmig. i am entirely open to the idea, but I have not seen any proof at all. the evidence tells me the opposite, actually. So sorry. Go ahead, call me a fucking moron. It seems to be the only "argument" offered.
It doesn't take much research to figure out that cars contribute to global warming. Just put your hand on the hood of one that's been driven a few miles. Feel the heat. Then multiply that heat by the number of cars on the planet. While the phenomenon of climate change may be on nature's calendar, all the cars and the myriad other heat-generating devices are certainly speeding up the warming.
How anyone can look at a photo of the Earth from space and realize that the VERY THIN blue line along the edge is all the atmosphere we have... and still believe that 6 billion people burning wood, coal, gasoline fuel oil, garbage, waste paper and a myriad of chemicals wouldn't affect that thin blue line is a total mystery to me.
At any given time, someone is burning off acres and acres of rain forest, there are massive coal mine fires all over the world, and any sailor can tell you that you can see the brown clouds over our cities from auto exhausts for miles out to sea.
Over 105 universities worldwide have done studies that have indicated that man is making global warming worse than it would normally be, and yet the flat-earthers are telling us that global warming is at best a fairy tale and at worst some evil plot to make the human race clean up it's act.
My living room is 7 feet above sea level at normal high tide... and 40 feetr from the bay... frankly, I don't want to see all of the world's glaciers and ice caps melt.
I say, better safe than sorry.
"My thoughts on what has or hasn't been the cause of climate change have nothing to do with the decisions I make to advance the cause of General Motors..."
Which is like saying McCain's personal belief America is a Christian nation that should be lead only by a Christian does not effect the decisions he would make as President.
It's good that these men are able to leave their personal beliefs at home when they head off to work...
The world is turning.. structures, behemoths of corporate industry are collapsing...
their ideas.. only 10 years ago considered truths.. are now seen as the lies that they are.
I hope, however, that their willfull ignorance has not slowed us down so much that it is too late.
perhaps though... we needed a huge dose of reality to force us ALL to come to that awareness... by all.. I mean the magic number of folks that will tip the scales into our favor of saving this planet and the survival of our planet in sustainable ways.
Namaste
We are going through a warming period. I believe this. Mars and Venus are getting warmer too. I believe we are witnessing a natural phenomenon. I am paerticualrly inpressed by the fact that CO2 rose steadily between 1940 and 1950, when world temperature actually dropped. This is consistently ignored. CO2 is rising because organic molecules are being exdposed to oxygen by combustion or other means. The world is heavily farmed and soil turn over exposes it to oxygen. Cows and pigs are responsible for a lot of CO2 as well. Certainly CO2 will help to increase warming but it is not as important a factor as some think. CO2 levels in Venus and Mars are extremely high ( 95% of the atmosphere) because there is no life to convert it to organic molecules. That is not the case on earth. Some people think backwards, they think the CO2 kills planets when the truth is dead planets can't get rid of CO2. This planet is not dead, so it will metabolize the CO2. I am not worried about CO2, I worry about pollution, especially of water. Global warming, in spite of its negative consequences can have positive consequences too. It may just be a change we have to live with. I do agree, however, that we should stop burning fossil fuels and reverse our policy of using chemicals in farming. We should follow the exmple of Cuba and have the kind of agriculture that respects the environment. I believe our main problem is that we are not willing to sacrifice any money or pleasure for the welfare of our environment.
The Hummer is a huge success, so much in fact, this type of corporate narcissist was probably hoping that more would get blown up in Iraq. He's not alone though, ask any executive in any industry where some inconvenient facts threaten profits, and they'll have people killed. (All of 'em: Pharma, Oil,Agri)
Busch made sure Americans would get a hefty incentive for buying a Hummer. Look up that appalling real story and see how the ruling class gets it done.
Lizard... okay, you are a fucking moron. Go see Al Gore's movie. Watch the patters of "natural" CO2 levels (the graph with the Cherry Picker scene. They are small blips... and they did cause climate change. Natural small cycles of climate change. Then he gets on the Cherry Picker and rides to the top of the end of the graph... 20 times more CO2 with MAN on the scene. THAT is irrefutable evidence.
People who WANT to NOT SEE... just don't bother looking. SHOW ME THE PROOF, they squeal.
It is ALL AROUND YOU. All you have to do is look, read, listen, comprehend.
Bob Lutz reminds me of an old man I know... who's never had a moment of profound independent thought in his life. But he is DAMN sure that everything he hears on FOX is true, and that nothing any "liberal" would say is fact-based.
These are the kind of people we have to leave behind in the discussion. As they say: "Never argue with a moron. They just pull you down to their level and then beat you with experience."
PS: Last time I checked, GMs lineup was a Total Crock of Shit.
I agree with CUBA and Europe. having spent time in CUBA it was great to go passed ( and pick ) fields of organic grown fruits and veggies in rich black soil. It is crop rotation and planting the right crops next to each other to ward off bugs and disease
As for Europe, I am signed up for the air car that sells for under 10,000$ and uses 100% compressed AIR. www.theaircar.com is their web site have a look
I saw Al Gore's movie. It was heartbreaking. He sounded like a salesman. I've been to many many scientific meetings, and, unfortunately, I guess, I can tell a scientific presentation from a sales pitch. Unfortunately, many don't. No, not impressed by the presentation. I do , however, have respect for Al Gore. i believe he believes what he says and I don't blame him, he is a politician, not a scientist. This is a scientific issue, Al Gore is not capable of dealing with this properly.
GM had the answer in 1980. The "X-Car" (Citation, Skylark, Omega, Phoenix) was light, peppy, roomy, fun to drive and got super mileage for its day. It was a technical masterpiece but a quality disaster. GM ruled the world with this car for a couple years until everyone started towing them in for repairs.
Not having learned my lesson, 20 years later my beautiful Impala, with great mileage and fun to drive, is a cheap electronics nightmare. Its really a shame GM just can't quite get it right.
Its hard to see GMs future. It has turned JIT manufacturing and Quality System Standards into a vindictive supplier robbing and bankrupting scheme while it outsources more union work every year. They spun off Delphi to let it die. You don't want to own one of their cars for a day longer than the warranty period, if they even honor that. GM loves to have the low sticker price, but you pay it all back to the repairmen. Our local Pontiac dealer just closed.
It isn't GM's fault it has to deal with non-union and foreign competitors, and has staggering pension and health care costs. The system was hammered out with the unions long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away where the VW Beetle was the only imported car that could compete on cost and quality. Before globalization, outsourcing and Toyota.
Even so, GM hasn't done much lately to earn anyone's loyalty. Customer, employee, dealer, or supplier. I guess the stockholders aren't exacly pleased, either. The last thing GM needs is one of its few officers with a "good guy" image to start shooting off his mouth about about global warming being a "crock".
GM had the answer in 1980. The "X-Car" (Citation, Skylark, Omega, Phoenix) was light, peppy, roomy, fun to drive and got super mileage for its day. It was a technical masterpiece but a quality disaster. GM ruled the world with this car for a couple years until everyone started towing them in for repairs.
Not having learned my lesson, 20 years later my beautiful Impala, with great mileage and fun to drive, is a cheap electronics nightmare. Its really a shame GM just can't quite get it right.
Its hard to see GMs future. It has turned JIT manufacturing and Quality System Standards into a vindictive supplier robbing and bankrupting scheme while it outsources more union work every year. They spun off Delphi to let it die. You don't want to own one of their cars for a day longer than the warranty period, if they even honor that. GM loves to have the low sticker price, but you pay it all back to the repairmen. Our local Pontiac dealer just closed.
It isn't GM's fault it has to deal with non-union and foreign competitors, and has staggering pension and health care costs. The system was hammered out with the unions long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away where the VW Beetle was the only imported car that could compete on cost and quality. Before globalization, outsourcing and Toyota.
Even so, GM hasn't done much lately to earn anyone's loyalty. Customer, employee, dealer, or supplier. I guess the stockholders aren't exacly pleased, either. The last thing GM needs is one of its few officers with a "good guy" image to start shooting off his mouth about about global warming being a "crock".
"Global warming, in spite of its negative consequences can have positive consequences too. It may just be a change we have to live with."
lizard,
Whoa, man, where did you miss the boat? While it may have some positive consequences, that will only be in the eye of the beholder, or rather, of those still alive and who haven't been evacuated from their flooded homes or from their dessicated farms.
As for GM: They deserve to go under. I believe this clown IS representative of GM's philosophy (as it is of most corporatists). The thing is, this guy isn't even a good businessman or he'd be going with the demand for greener products. What you're looking at above is a T-Rex - big teeth, little brain.
And, oh, by the way Mr. Rex - I have two Toyotas in my driveway! The worst car I ever had was an Olds Cierra - a GM car. The paint bubbled (after they forgot the primer coat), the transmission died, and the engine mounts broke. What a crock of shit that was!
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/04/070406-global-warming.html
The above article seems to indicate that most of the world's climate scientists think that global warming is both real and caused by human actions. But I guess it doesn't really prove anything.
Ruscle: You are making my point. You are not a fucking moron, I respect your concern. But you are correlating, and that isn't science. Science is the collection of facts derived from experimentation. Experimentation requires a control. There is no control here, therefore this isn't science, this is called CONJECTURE. No scientist can buy this. But a scientist could ride the bandwagon to further the cause of fighting pollution. The ends justifies the means. It's a trick, a well meaning trick. By all means, let's reduce pollution and bad habits, but let us not just accept whatever some well meaning pseudo-scientist has to say. Please. All this panic is another version of 9-11. I guess both sides can play the same game.
Corporations are machines, simple, the way sharks are simple.
They respond to external stimulus, they have no "philosophy" or "ethics". Why should they. Sell all you have and make more they same way you did before is the cheapest way to make more product to feed sales and maximize cash through-put.
It is up to a self-educated public to change their product by changing demand. What Americans and other consumer societies DON'T do is to organize purchasing attitudes the way you organize political movements.
And don't mention socialism. Socialism is even LESS individual aware than capitalism.
Everybody in Socialist Countries do what everybody in Monarchies do... pray for a Benevolent enlightened dictatorship!
PRO VOICE -- Cross posted from yesterday's bunch, and right along with your thin blue line.
We need to continually remind ourselves of the “Whole Earth”, and keep that picture of a precious life sustaining blue marble surrounded by exceedingly thin and vulnerable layer of air.
It is the mysterious Van Allen belts of magnetic force lines, although invisible to the eye, they shield precious Earth from the otherwise ravaging supersonic rivers of Sun matter (we call it solar “wind”)
SOLAR “WIND” is but a misnomer to quiet our otherwise arosed fear.
It’s actually the streaming boiled off surface of the Sun, with pieces being flung abundantly outward in all directions, not anything like our friendly familiar atmospheric wind of air moving as we commonly think of blowing through the trees.
More aptly imagined, this continually replenished but quite variable and violent stream of Solar particles, has been heated to millions of degrees, and is more likened to a raging stellar meta-herculean-sized (literally) disastrous storm of destruction. Think 300 mph hurricane winds (but multiplied by a factor of several million fold) bending palm trees down until they touch the ground, and then ripping them out and hurling them thousands of billions of miles out.
Much beyond the orbit of Pluto - and even past Halley’s comet, the Oort Cloud, all the way to the heliopause, where an even more stupendous larger storm rages driven outward from the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy
Just imagine the lifeless surface of the Moon, or Mars (maybe), which has no protection of either magnetic shielding nor atmospheric thickness (mostly with 20 miles). That is the neighborhood that our lively blue marble survives and thrives within.
We are very very blessed, and could spend every waking moment in fervent gracious acknowledgment and gratitude for this lovely and peace corner of the universe — but, we chose to ignore the warnings of climate change and resource limits to growth, an how precious life really is across the millions of trillions of miles that we’ve observed and catalogued. So far, the Earth is unique and the solitary place in all of creation where we can survive.
The way many people think, the Earth is as easy to replace as a used role of toilet paper.
! _ N _ O _ T _ !
WAKE UP to the storm that is raging mere miles above our heads — and consider that you’ll need an SPF of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 to survive long enough to last for just a fraction of one second — without the shields of lovely Earth. Oh, I forgot about the part about holding your breath (or going w/o water) - how long can you stop your breathing for?
… … … … … Mahatma Gandhi … & … ML King … … Inspiration … … … … …
« We must be the change we wish to see in the world »
« There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed »
« We adopt the means of nonviolence because our end is a community at peace with itself » — MLK