Critical Analysis of Recent Obama Engergy Speech

By now, everyone has heard or heard about, the comments Obama made this week regarding fuel conservation and his resistance to drilling.

Let's start off by setting an accurate record. Obama's exact statement was "There are things that you can do individually though, to save energy. Making sure your tires are properly inflated - simple thing. But we could save all the oil that they're talking about getting off drilling if everybody were just inflating their tires, and, and getting regular tune-ups. You could actually save just as much."

Ok, now the Republicans, and the Conservative talk show hosts, have all ridiculed this opinion. Obama says, "They're actually making fun of something that all the experts say, really will improve gas mileage by as much as 3-4 percent!" Obama is misdirecting the argument. This, for those who are not familiar with critical thinking, is what is called a red herring fallacy. To start with: THEY, are not making fun of a step that ALL the experts say will "definitely save 3-4% more gas" and the experts are not, to my knowledge suggesting that this will reduce our oil consumption by the drastic amount he suggested in his "pump up your tires" speech anyway.

Let's break this apart. The general usage of THEY in an accusatory tone, is conspiratorial. THEY is who? The big, bad THEY, always come up when people want others to think some great conspiracy is against them. Listen to people talk around you, and you will hear this type of statement all the time. THEY want to keep us poor, THEY want to give all our jobs to illegal immigrants, THEY want to make the rich richer and take all the money from the middle class, THEY are hiding a 100 MPG mystery carburetor that has been sitting on the shelf for years because THEY don't want to hurt the BIG oil companies, etc. There is no THEY, tell us WHO THEY are, and prove it.

Now lets get to the next part "... are making fun of a step that ALL the experts say will definitely save 3-4% more gas". ALL the experts say definitely? No room for argument if all of them say so; except that there is never a 100% consensus on anything among experts, and to say the experts all agree that we will definitely save between this percent and that percent? If they all agree definitely, then there should be an agreement on an exact amount too, shouldn't there? In point of fact, I recently heard about a study that showed changing the air filter had no significant effect on gas mileage. This is one step that many experts do say will improve your gas mileage, but apparently not everyone is agreement, even here!

Most experts agree that keeping your tires inflated AND keeping your car properly tuned up will reduce your GAS consumption by between 3 and 4%. This is true, and I agree! Reduce it over what, though? The answer is that it can reduce your fuel consumption by 3-4% over what your car would get if the tires were BADLY under inflated, and the car was severely in need of a tune-up. Having said that, most cars made since about 1996, do not really require a tune-up before they reach 100,000 miles, and even then, may not really need one. At 125,000 miles, I had my Nissan Altima tuned up, and all fluids changed and flushed. The week before, I had 4 new tires put on (and I check my tire pressure three times a week). Fuel savings? NONE! In fact, I actually got worse gas mileage after the tune up, and the car still does no better today (despite four trips to two different dealerships to rectify the problem). The car went from a 29 MPG average down to a consistent 26 MPG average. So what is the change? A nearly 10% increase in fuel consumption! It could stand to be said that the car, which showed no decline in gas mileage was not in need of a tune up, and in fact, getting one when it did not need one, was worse than not getting one if it had needed one!!!!

Now, lets get down to the facts. Accepting the reasonable premise that inflating your tires and getting a tune-up could reduce your fuel consumption by 3-4%, it still cannot reasonably be said that every car out there needs or has yet to take this step. In fact, according to Glenn Beck "It turns out that about two-thirds of vehicles already have properly inflated tires"(glennbeck.com). Beck goes on to say that this would likely save us roughly 800,000 barrels of oil a day. Now, I don't know if Glenn is taking into account that only 19 gallons of a 42 gallon barrel of oil goes to making fuel. The rest goes to petrochemical applications. If he hasn't, the real number is roughly 425,000 barrels of oil a day. Let's take the 800,000 barrels to give Obama a fighting chance. At 800,000 barrels a day, that is 292 million barrels a year!!!! Big scary number, huh? Well, if that sounds scary, lets look at some of the estimates. One estimate places the ANWAR (and this is just one oil field) at 92 billion barrels. Let's say that 92 billion barrels is all the oil we can get. How long would it take us to equal that amount with the savings Barrack says we can get in one simple step? 315 years!!!!! Three centuries!!! And that is assuming that EVERYONE (another red herring argument) does it when it needs to be done!

Now, Barrack has implied that THEY (we discussed THEY earlier) are making fun of something the experts say will definitely give us an OIL consumption reduction equal to all the domestic oil we want to drill for. The reality is that everyone is making fun of the fact that Barrack has taken a step that most experts say CAN (that is; possibly, probably, maybe) reduce an individual's FUEL consumption by 3-4%. A step that logic tells us is nowhere close to reducing our energy consumption to an equivalent of the increased supply we could get by drilling domestically. This is not the same thing. The difference is MILES APART!!! On an individual basis, you can prevent your car from losing fuel economy by maintaining it. That is really a NET ZERO effect. Your car is not going to get any better gas mileage than the day you bought it. In addition, this reduction - if it really were a reduction, would be in gasoline (and diesel) fuel use by vehicles; not a wholesale crude oil reduction. By the time you get back to the barrel of oil - again, assuming the 3-4% improvement in fuel economy - you are looking at less than half that percentage. When you get down to numbers this small comparing quantities this large; it is statistically insignificant. This makes Obama's "Pump up your tires speech" worthy of ridicule in my book! 

By the way, I can teach anyone how to safely get a 25% increase in gas mileage without making any changes at all to the car and it costs nothing to do it. Even with that savings, however, we still cannot avoid getting access to our own oil domestic supply immediately. It would take us months to access most of this oil. It would still take us more than 60 years to realize the same gains, assuming I taught EVERYONE to use the fuel saving driving techniques I currently employ and EVERYONE did it ALL THE TIME!

Again, I welcome anyone to comment that wishes to engage in a critical thinking-based discussion; whether in agreement or disagreement with this article. Please be advised; even if I agree with you, I will not allow fallacious arguments. I will either delete your posting or use it to point out the fallacies in your argument (this is not the same as "pointing" out "flaws" in your opinion). I expect the same treatment from anyone who writes. If you find a fallacious argument from me, Point it out!!! I will post your comment and respond.

Please, if you are going to quote someone in your comments, use APA style references in your posting. I'm not grading, so you don't have to be perfect, but I do want some accountability and I expect to be held accountable for mine as well!

References

Beck, Glenn (2008) Retrieved August 8, 2008 from http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/07/beck.energy/index.html


Obama Speech (2008) Retrieved August 8, 2008 from
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzZNP4tTfV0