Chrysler attacks global warming

[DoYouEverWonder]

10 January 2007

Chrysler's chief economist Van Jolissaint has launched a fierce attack on "quasi-hysterical Europeans" and their "Chicken Little" attitudes to global warming.

His attack is in sharp contrast to the green image that the US car companies have been trying to promote at this year's Detroit Motor Show.

Mr Jolissaint was speaking at a private breakfast where the chief economists of the "Big Three" US car firms presented their forecasts for auto industry sales this year.

Most of the audience - which was mainly made up of parts suppliers - seemed to nod in agreement with Mr Jolissaint.

Neither Ford's chief economist Ellen Hughes-Cromwick, nor General Motors' chief economist Mustafa Mohatarem, who were on the panel with Mr Jolissaint, questioned his assertion.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6247371.stm

Remind me never to buy a Chrystler.

[ReadTomPaine]

1. Chrysler is owned by a European company.

Wonder how this will fly with his "quasi-hysterical European" bosses in Germany. Sound like a hardcore, head in the sand, right winger.

Bio:
Van E. Jolissaint was appointed Corporate Economist for the Chrysler Group in March 2001. Prior to this position, he was the Associate Corporate Economist.

In his current position, he is responsible for analysis and forecasts of worldwide auto industry volumes and economic conditions in NAFTA. He and his colleagues provide regular briefings on these topics, as well as counsel on economic policies to management throughout the company. As a member of the Investment Strategy Group, the Currency Committee and the Investment Committee, Jolissaint also participates in foreign exchange and metals hedging activity and allocation of pension fund assets.

Jolissaint joined Chrysler Corporation in 1984 in Chrysler Finance.

His work experience and academic background include:

* Corporate Economist - Chrysler Group, March 2001
* Associate Corporate Economist - Chrysler Corporation, 1994
* Various positions in Chrysler Finance - 1984
* Vice President - Evans Economics in Washington, D.C.
* Staff Economist - U.S. Dept. of Labor
* Master of Arts, Economics, Georgetown University
* Bachelor of Arts, Economics, Virginia Military Institute

Jolissaint is a member of the National Association for Business Economics, Committee of Economic Development, Conference of Business Economist (CBE) and Society of Automobile Analysts.

http://cgcomm.daimlerchrysler.com/biographies.do?method=display&docId=281


Perhaps he's the reason they're losing money even after releasing a wildly successful car like the 300 series (Magnum, Charger, 300)

[Xipe Totec]

2. Translation: Chrysler missed the boat

and they don't have an electric car ready for market.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. BBC headline is now "Chrysler questions climate change"

which is much less ambiguous. I thought the original "attacks global warming" meant he said "global warming is bad".

[crikkett]

7. right and to attack global warming could be to help the environment...

[PerceptionManagement]

15. This is why indicative of why their cars are so crummy.

Little regard for science and sound engineering. Next! A Faith based Dodge!

[MindPilot]

21. Their cars have always been somewhat faith-based.

Get in, turn the key, and pray it starts.

[Nay]

4. Oh? How? By closing up shop?

[xchrom]

5. ... our lords and masters are showing their displeasure

at the discomfort that global warming is going bring their wallets and life styles.

[kintaro]

6. my balcony

December 2006, Germany, Frankfurt, my balcony, a huge amount of flowers started to blossom.

Global warming? Nah, never ever. :-P

Btw. they still blossom, and new ones are growing.

Is "quasi-hysterical Europeans" like "quasi-hysterical Americans" when it comes to terrorism? Ok, I know that was a bad one. Sorry for that. ;-)

[ima_sinnic]

8. the difference is that Europeans are only "quasi" while Americans

are just plain 100% hysterical about their latest boogeyman. :)

[Kahuna]

9. You can't buy a Mercedes either. Chrysler is a division of Mercedes Benz.

nt

[DoYouEverWonder]

10. Not a problem

I like Beamers better anyway.

[JVS]

18. The family that owns BMW were major Nazis

[Danmel]

11. I completely misread your header

I thought they were going to introduce high mileage vehicles to attack global warming. We are so scewed it isn't even funny.

[DoYouEverWonder]

13. I think that's why the BBC changed it

a little bit later.

However, I'm glad I caught the original. I love it when they screw up.

[MindPilot]

12. Chrysler is another company that's outlived its usefulness

The last decent product they had was in the early 70's and they still had to beg the taxpayers to bail them out (to save the jobs, doncha know) and now despite being owned by Daimler "more money than god" Benz, they still can't produce anything that doesn't look like it should be on the cover of a 1957 Mechanix Illustrated.

[NotGivingUp]

14. i was gonna say to boycott chrysler, but after reading the article

i'm just going to continue with what i've been doing and boycott them all. i will not buy a new car until they put the electric car back on the road.

[Zenlitened]

16. Chrysler: "We were kinda lookin' to get out of the car business, anyway."

:crazy: like a... :dunce:

[Tempest]

17. What does an accountant know about global warming?

An economist is just a glorified accountant.

No wonder Chrysler is losing money, they're relying on this guy.

[MindPilot]

22. Probably only slightly less than he knows about cars. n/t

[rcdean]

19. Trouble is, global warming is still a tough sell.

We have to convince people of two different arguments:

1) Global warming exists
Lots of folks think the abnormal warm weather is just a blip. We need much more solid evidence to disprove their convenient delusion. Weather stats only go back a couple of centuries. Gore's movie showed a 650,000 year chart based on Antarctic ice core samples that--if accurate--was very powerful. But he didn't explain the technology behind the analysis to demonstrate its validity. Is there scientific backing for such an analysis? If anybody has something on this, I'd love to be able to pass it on to about a dozen friends--including several liberals who have seen Gore's flick--who are doubters.

2) Global warming is a problem
The harder argument to make is that it's a problem. Most people say 'So a lot of Florida will disappear. And...? A lot of rich people will lose their ocean frontage homes. And...? We'll have warmer winters up north. Where's the problem?' It's a tough attitude to argue against.

I'm not advocating these counter-arguments; just pointing out that this is what we're facing.

[MindPilot]

20. You're right...and welcome to DU rcdean!!

A conservative--not neo-con winger nutjob, just conservative--co-worker suggested to me when the subject came up that a single volcanic eruption put more greenhouse gases in the air than all the SUVs. I couldn't counter that argument; I didn't know if it was true or not or even if the calculation has been done.

One of the other big arguments we run into is "Sure the climate is changing, but it's just part of a natural cycle and human activity really doesn't have much effect on it."

Just another couple examples of what you are talking about.

[FVZA_Colonel]

23. I believe the statement about volcanoes could be true.

Of course, that does not mean that human activity over the past one hundred and fifty to two hundred years is not making a difference (at this point, I believe the evidence shows that it does. It could mean that we have simply thrown a finely tuned natural cycle dangerously out of balance.

[Solon]

28. Volcanoes have a cooling effect on the planet's climate...

While they do spew out all sorts of gases during eruptions, many of which are greenhouse gases, they spew out even more ash and sulfur, both of which end up cooling the planet, however slight. Sulfuric acid droplets are formed when Sulfur Dioxide is combined with water in the high atmosphere, this creates a haze, and spectacular sunsets and sunrises around the world, but also reflect sunlight back out into space. On the day of April 5, 1815, and ending ten days later, Mount Tambora lost its top, the volcano literally exploded, losing thousands of feet in height, and was the worst volcanic eruption in recorded history since the island of Thera destroyed itself in between the years 1639-1616 BCE.

The volcanic eruption of Tambora had devastating effects, especially in the next year, which was termed the Year Without summer, for most of Europe and North America. A common phrase from that time was Eighteen hundred and froze to death. Crops failed, livestock froze to death, during the summer months, and snow fell in July and August in places like Vermont. People starved to death, froze, or lost their farms and lands due to this disaster, it was also called the Poverty year.

Granted, these effects have a tendency to be short lived, Sulfuric acid doesn't stay in the atmosphere that long, a few years, compared to greenhouse gases, which can stay in the atmosphere for decades, even centuries. The point being that Volcanoes, on balance, are supposed to counteract most natural global warming effects, this most likely accounts for stable climate periods in Earth's history, but apparently humans have shifted the scales to one side.

[MindPilot]

32. Thanks for that --I'll pass it along.

[hatrack]

39. Another favorite from Rush Limbaugh, Ph.D. . . .

He's been known to go on and on about how ozone depletion is also a myth. Sure, Sherwood Rowlins and Mario Molina, who discovered it, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their discovery, but let's set that aside for now.

Anyway, Flush's favorite citation is how many millions of tons of chlorine Mt. Pinatubo's eruption back in 1992 put into the atmosphere. If that's the case, he maundered on and one, why is there any ozone left at all, and why should we worry about CFCs?

One little thing the Parkinson's Parodist left out - the form of chlorine produced by Pinatubo was chlorine dioxide, as it is in all volcanic eruptions. And what do we know about chlorine dioxide? Well, for starters, it's water-soluble, meaning that it precipitated out of the atmosphere as rain when it hit the boundary between the troposphere and the stratosphere. 99%+ of it never reached the part of the atmosphere where the ozone was - but then, why mention it if no one asks, right?

:eyes:

[meow mix]

36. not only that (very informative points ty)

but i would imagine the amount of greenhouse gas emitted each day by all our fossil fuel burning activities...dwarfs anything a single volcano could do.

more likey it would take several (maybe 20 or so volcanos going off simultaneously each day) to equal what we do.

[FVZA_Colonel]

37. Thank you for clarifying.

In hindsight, I don't really know why I thought otherwise.

[0rganism]

26. hard to argue it's a problem? get real

If the mid-Atlantic conveyer shuts down due to oceanic temperature changes, you're not going to have to dig to prove it's a problem to anyone.

And it's not just a few rich folks in Daytona who will be losing their yacht moorage as a result. Whole island populations in the Pacific and Indian oceans are already looking at abandoning their homes entirely by 2020. The economic damage this alone is going to cause is immeasurable.

Add in increased tropical storm intensity, extended disease propagation zones, rapid changes in regional rainfall, and the rest of the climate change buffet, and you have a situation where the economic concerns of Chrysler aren't even a blip on the radar.

[rcdean]

42. Get real yourself

If you think any of those arguments hold sway with the typical American, you're living in a dream world.

[0rganism]

43. maybe the "typical American" needs to get real, then

:shrug:

[aggiesal]

24. Quick, someone call Lee Iococca. ...

Maybe he can set this clown straight.

[Amonester]

25. He'll call him "Schmuck" LOL

Lee Iacocca Calls Bush Cronies Schmucks
http://www.waxingamerica.com/2006/05/lee_iacocca_cal.html
(snip)
"see how George Bush qualifies. The people that surround him are just friends, and I think most of them are just schmucks, because I know a lot of them. Who runs the country? Cheney, who is getting old and sick and had this hunting accident. And “Rummy,” Rumsfeld, whom I know real well—they’ve been together forever, and they run the country. They had Condoleezza Rice for lunch. I don’t know what she’s got on Bush, but, boy, he believes in her. Other than those three, the mastermind of them of all, the boy genius, is Karl Rove—slime bucket that he is. You’ve got to know him to see how slimy he is."

[Megahurtz]

27. Oh, he has no $$$$$Underlying Agenda$$$$$

to make statements like this, does he?:eyes:

[brentspeak]

29. Wow. So this guy has TWO Ph.D's?

One in economics AND one in the hard sciences? Incredible.

:sarcasm:

[BrightKnight]

30. The tobacco companies were sued for playing those games. - n/t

[against all enemies]

31. I remember when Chrysler attacked shoulder restraint seat belts.

Now they brag about safety. Too bad the car manufacturers are too stupid to realize if they made a clean, economic car they could brag about that too.

[Blue_Tires]

33. those

"quasi-hysterical Europeans" sign your paycheck, jerkoff.....who is your company owned by?

[Canuckistanian]

34. "Parts Suppliers" - say no more

I think this is at the heart of the resistance to the battery electric car.

Without all those lovely, greasy, dirty and complex internal combustion engines, the parts industry goes south.

Think about it. Oil Filters, mufflers, distributors, automatic transmissions, spark plugs, emission control devices....

There's a whole lot of people who make BIG money off of these things. And don't tell me it's American jobs being lost either. Auto parts are made mostly in third world countries now.

Face it, auto dealers don't make profits on car sales. It's the "after-sale" service department that brings in the dough.

[MindPilot]

38. And the "part" they don't seem to get is

Those "Oil Filters, mufflers, distributors, automatic transmissions, spark plugs, emission control devices...." would simply become windings, drive modules, bearings, controller assy's, regeneration brake packs, batteries...

And the things are still going to need brakes, tires, glass and sheet metal.

[Canuckistanian]

44. Not brakes...

Regenerative braking makes brake shoes and disks obsolete. And regenerative braking is a non-contact process.

And when was the last time you had to replace the electric motor in, say, your furnace or A/C unit?

They last so long because they're just wires and bearings.

[llmart]

35. If they continue along this line of thinking......

they'll be left in the dust by the likes of Toyota and Honda. And I'd say they deserve it (even though my husband works there and would lose his job). This is shortsighted thinking.

[roguevalley]

40. scratch them from my list. I want a smart car. :)

[truthisfreedom]

41. If they truly want to attack global warming, they should focus on alternative energy cars.

That's how we'll win the war on global warming. Not by denying it exists.

[SleeplessinSoCal]

45. Guess I won't be getting the PT Cruiser...

It was on my wishlist along with the Prius and other Hybrids. I figured the PT Crusier would be converted to a hybrid. Wrong! Drat!