People often look at the increased price and don't consider that they will also like sell it at a higher price. I bought a Prius in 2008 and it has only depreciated about $6000 since then, which isn't a bad depreciation rate over that time.

If I were to sell my Prius today I would certainly come out ahead financially than if I had bought a standard hatchback in 2008 and were selling it instead.

That's a very different car than the Tesla. Not all electric cars are equal just as not petrol cars are equal. None of the stats for the Leaf are in the ballpark of the Tesla.

Also, no cars are more efficient at high speed than lower speed no matter what kind of motor they use. Wind resistance is the main reason for fuel use above 30 mph or so (unless it's a monster car that gulps gas even when idling), and this resistance goes up with the square of the speed of the car. If the car is going 50 miles at 100 mph, it's doing a lot more work than a car going the same distance at 50 mph, so of course it will impact the range of the car if you're going faster.

Probably not as bad as you would think. Electric motors are very efficient at giving high torque, while for a gas engine it's really inefficient when doing the same.

The assumption was a steady 55 mph, so is certainly the maximum possible range, so I'm sure the actual range would be less if you were driving in the city.

Umm, no. The Tesla Model S has a range of 160-300 miles, depending on the battery pack. All of the current models of Corvettes have a faster 0-60 though (from 3.4-4.2 s depending on model).

I think you're misreading my comment. I argued that it's too late for tariffs. You seem to agree with me that tariffs are a bad idea.

I simply said, in response to the previous poster, that tariffs by China on our goods wouldn't matter because we export to them quite a bit less than they export to us. What does matter is just our own action of putting tariffs on products imported from China because Americans consumers would have no choice but to pay it.

Why would we care? We don't export much to China anyway. On its face it would hurt them more than us.

At this point, it would hurt us too without a doubt. For most consumer products, there's no choice but to buy something made in China, regardless of tariffs. The time for tariffs would have been 20 years ago when we still had domestic consumer production.

No, the study of the Earth's climate is hardly a pseudo-science. It is a hard science based on observation, computational models, making hypothesis and testing them. There have been satellites collecting observations for decades, surface measurements for over a hundred years, and ice core samples going back thousands of years. We can directly observe the output of the sun on the surface as well as in space, the concentration of various gasses in the atmosphere, etc.

How in the world is that a pseudo-science?

There's politics involved because it would be expensive to try to take corrective action. The change would need to be done on a massive scale, which is going to necessarily require the involvement of governments. The ozone hole would have never been closed if not for the governments of the world agreeing to stop producing CFCs.

What amazes me is that people think we can't affect the climate when we just recently formed large holes in the ozone later, passed policies to stop it, and those policies worked and mitigated the ozone hole at the poles. Clearly, the actions of humans can have global impacts.

The next argument is that the climate is always changing. While that's true on a geologic timescale, it isn't for a human timescale. We have never seen such a sharp increase in the concentration of CO2 gas in the atmosphere, even going as far back as ice core samples allow. What non-human reason could possibly be behind such a sharp increase that has never before occurred? In addition, we have good estimates of how much CO2 is released into the atmosphere every year and this amount is sufficient to account for the increased levels of CO2.

That pretty much matches my experience with my Prius. The mechanic at the Toyota dealership told me that they still haven't had to replace the brake pads on any Prius (and this is at a large dealership in Boulder, CO that sees tons of Prius cars).

I also average about 45-46 mpg overall. I don't deal with too much congestion, but drive over big hills every day. The cold weather also hurts mileage.

Actually, my math is a bit wrong. I should have divided by two since the 4096 great-great...grandparents would have had children as a couple. So the total would be about 150,000 (very roughly).

Your math isn't correct. The question is how many 2nd cousins, 9 times removed do you have. You only calculated how many great-great-great...grandparents you have. What blows up the number is the 2nd cousin. How many great-grand children did those 4096 ancestors have? That's how many 2nd cousins 9 times removed you have. I estimated that each one had 4 children who went on to have more children on average, giving 4096*4*4*4 giving 262,000. Given how rough these numbers are, I rounded it to 300,000. Given how many people of the time had 4-10 children (not all of whom survived long enough to reproduce), I think that's a reasonable guess.

That's not worse. I saw a guy with Lou Gehrig's disease (a friend of my boss). He could only make a grunting noises and move his eyes, yet his brain worked as well as ever. He was completely trapped within his body with almost no way to communicate to the world. He was also in enormous pain all the time because of a problem that formed with his neck due to it not being properly stabilized for months.

My boss was with him once. The guy started making noises and it took a few minutes for my boss to get over to him. He didn't know what was wrong and was trying to tell by just looking at his eyes. He then looked over him and found that a large spider had crawled onto him. The guy was terrified of spiders but couldn't do anything while watching one slowly land on him then crawl around.

He needed 24 hour care and was costing his family a fortune while 'living' in this state. Rather than waiting for his lungs to stop working, he opted to have his feeding tube removed so that he could die. Nobody blamed him at all. It was terrible for his family and friends watch him living such a torturous existence and it was obviously terrible for him.

Then what's the difference when comparing to nicotine? It also forms a physical dependency and strong habits. Where would you draw the line between a 'habit' vs 'addictive'? Many smokers for years just called it a habit.

There was an idea by a Republican congressman that was included in the original healthcare reform bill. The idea was based on what one hospital is already doing, which is to have doctors talk about end of life care with patients and their families so that their families could make informed decisions. Unfortunately, this was labeled 'death panels' and subsequently removed from the bill.

Try spending some time with someone with Lou Gehrig's disease or alzheimer's. You may change your tune.

Age is definitely a factor. If I was 75+ years old, I would hope not as much effort is spent trying to keep me alive as there would be if I was 30.