china has some stringent fuel efficiency standards, with a more stringent level kicking in this year. unlike US standards, they don't do "fleet average"; each model has to meet the standards, by 16 weight classes. the largest class, 5,500 lbs and over, has to meet 21 mpg by 2008. They were designed to be more stringent for the highest weight vehicles.

The 2008 Chevy Suburban in its lightest (2 wheel drive half-ton) configuration, specified weight 5,608 lbs, gets 14 mpg city 20 mpg highway by EPA estimate, with the smallest most fuel efficient engine.

The 2008 Ford Expedition EL 2 wheel drive, 5,928 lbs, gets 12/18 city/highway.

There are no vehicles currently assembled in North America which meet fuel efficiency standards to be sold legally in China.

humanity is just the earth's way of getting all that carbon buried underground by plants during the carboniferous era back into the atmosphere where it belongs, so temperatures can rise back up to what they had been for most of the earth's history until the plants knocked the climate off equilibrium. once that's done, human technological civilization will be superfluous and will be killed off by the climate change. that's how negative feedback loops, as referred to so frequently by the "what AGW?" folks, work.

“If it’s so great to be smart,” Dr. Kawecki asks, “why have most animals remained dumb?”

...

The ability to learn does not just harm the flies in their youth, though. In a paper to be published in the journal Evolution, Dr. Kawecki and his colleagues report that their fast-learning flies live on average 15 percent shorter lives than flies that had not experienced selection on the quinine-spiked jelly. Flies that have undergone selection for long life were up to 40 percent worse at learning than ordinary flies.

“We don’t know what the mechanism of this is,” Dr. Kawecki said.

One clue comes from another experiment, in which he and his colleagues found that the very act of learning takes a toll. The scientists trained some fast-learning flies to associate an odor with powerful vibrations. “These flies died about 20 percent faster than flies with the same genes, but which were not forced to learn,” he said

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/06/science/06dumb.html?scp=9&sq=intelligence&st=nyt

"Fruit flies who were taught to be smarter than the average fruit fly tended to live shorter lives. This suggests that dimmer bulbs burn longer, that there is an advantage in not being too terrifically bright. "

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/07/opinion/07wed4.html?scp=2&sq=intelligence&st=nyt

another possibility, of course: it may just be impossible. we like to think that technology can overcome anything, but look at time travel instead: now, clearly, with essentially infinite time in the future, if time travel could be invented, it would. but we don't see time travelers. if we did, then it would have been much more crowded at the crucifixion of Jesus, for instance, than it seems to have been. so maybe the same thing holds for faster than light travel, and maybe the distances between technological races are large enough that without FTL, travel just isn't realistic.

another thing that i wonder about, in a different direction, is the assumption that "intelligent life" is a prerequisite for space travel. given that insects can construct and operate beehives, spiders can construct webs, etc. it's not completely out of the question that space travel is as likely to develop by instinct as through "intelligence". given that we don't know what intelligence really means, other than thinking like we do. most of the universe runs on random processes being filtered by outcomes rather than teleological reasoning.

of course, this leaves the window open for nonphysical modes of interstellar and/or time travel; remote viewing, astral projection, whatever. but once you throw those into the mix, anything goes.

you'd think we the progressives would know that there's a wide scale here, not just Good or Evil. And that it's multidimensional, so that Good/Evil isn't even right as a single axis of comparison.

does make more sense; you're right, yahoo search is useless. i like yahoo mail, though.

do you think our male ancestors would have sex 24/7, since women were not empowered to decline?

it's all just pounded into your head; males pursue, women play coy. if you don't follow that rule, you're obviously gay.

between the tax rebate and maybe a gas tax holiday, i don't even mind defaulting on my mortgage.

he understands that in times of war, you want to cut the funds that go into the government which funds our military, so that we can send more to the Arabian governments who fund our enemies.

obama would have a sex-change operation...

the rudeness and hostility of the immigration officials as they eventually do let you into the US, will undoubtedly serve to discourage the al qaeda terrorists, who are quite sensitive to such things.

hey america; i'm about as religious as most of you, and you know what that means... like you i just picked my church because of the location and some friends of mine who attended there and some movers and shakers who go there i thought it would be good to hang with; and wright was entertaining as hell so sunday's weren't boring. geez, if i knew i was going to to stuck with explaining my pastor, i would have interviewed quite a few before picking one. can't i go back to being a secret muslim again? y'all seemed to like that.

our foresighted leaders enacted the guano islands act in 1856:

"Whenever any citizen of the United States discovers a deposit of guano on any island, rock, or key, not within the lawful jurisdiction of any other government, and not occupied by the citizens of any other government, and takes peaceable possession thereof, and occupies the same, such island, rock, or key may, at the discretion of the President, be considered as appertaining to the United States."

http://uscode.house.gov/download/pls/48C8.txt