Did Obama exaggerate when he said that inflating our tires properly would save as much oil as drilling for oil would produduce?

No. If anything, he understated the case. According to Time Magazine:


Source: http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1829354,00.html?cnn=yes

Barack Obama's suggestion that we can't drill our way out of the current energy shortage, but we can solve the problem through tire inflation, has been the source of much hilarity. We did the math here, and found that it would take approximately 11,308 years of tire inflation to equal the energy we can obtain by developing our own petroleum resources. Now, remarkably, Time magazine has rushed to the defense of its candidate, arguing that "Obama is right."The author of the article, Michael Grunwald, mixes apple-and-orange statistics to try to create the false impression that there is more to be gained by inflating tires than through offshore drilling:The Bush Administration estimates that expanded offshore drilling could increase oil production by 200,000 bbl. per day by 2030. We use about 20 million bbl. per day, so that would meet about 1% of our demand two decades from now. Meanwhile, efficiency experts say that keeping tires inflated can improve gas mileage 3%, and regular maintenance can add another 4%. Many drivers already follow their advice, but if everyone did, we could immediately reduce demand several percentage points. In other words: Obama is right.Grunwald is trying, through sleight of hand, to conceal certain basic facts: Obama said that tire inflation could save energy equal to "all the oil that they're talking about getting off drilling," not just the outer continental shelf; the outer continental shelf, ANWR and Rocky Mountain oil shale contain an estimated one trillion, 28 billion barrels of oil--an estimate that is undoubtedly low--while the maximum savings that could be attained through tire inflation and tuneups, assuming that every single vehicle in America is driving around with semi-flat tires and has never had a tuneup, is a mere 420 million barrels per year.But there are more devious errors lurking behind Time's claim that "Obama is right." Notice the curious formula that Grunwald uses to quantify the energy potential of the outer continental shelf:The Bush administration estimates that expanded offshore drilling could increase oil production by 200,000 bbl. [barrels] per day by 2030.That equates to 73,000,000 barrels per year. Which may sound like a lot, but amounts to only four-tenths of one percent of the OCS's 18 billion barrels. Further, why is Time not only putting out an absurdly low number, but also talking about the year 2030? The implication seems to be that the oil wouldn't flow until then, or maybe wouldn't peak until then, but such a claim would be patently false.To get to the bottom of the puzzle, I tracked down the source of the statistic that Grunwald attributes to the "Bush administration." I'm pretty sure this is it: the Annual Energy Outlook 2007 with Projections to 2030, as published by the Energy Information Administration. This graph, I'm confident, is the source of the "200,000 barrels a day in 2030" claim:As you can see, the projected recovery from OCS drilling in 2030 is around 200,000 barrels per day. EIA projects recovery to begin around 2018, but as you can see from the graph, EIA projected that only a tiny percentage of the 18 billion barrels (minimum) under the OCS would be recovered.The explanation, obviously, lies in the set of assumptions used by the EIA in creating its forecast. The forecast was not based on the amount of oil that the OCS actually contains, it was based on the amount that was predicted to be economically remunerative at the then-prevailing price of oil. The EIA report makes this explicit:Although a significant volume of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil and natural gas resources is added in the OCS access case, conversion of those resources to production would require both time and money. In addition, the average field size in the Pacific and Atlantic regions tends to be smaller than the average in the Gulf of Mexico, implying that a significant portion of the additional resource would not be economically attractive to develop at the reference case prices.Aha! The obvious question, for anyone with the most rudimentary understanding of economics, is, What are the reference case prices? Here they are:That's right: the EIA, writing in early 2007, assumed that oil prices would decline from their 2006 peak; that in 2008, the price of crude oil would be around $60 a barrel; that it would continue to decline until around 2013 to a low of about $50 a barrel; and that the price would then gradually increase to a little under $60 a barrel by 2030. Those were the assumptions on which EIA concluded that it would not be economically profitable to get most OCS oil out of the ground.Earth to Michael Grunwald: that isn't what happened. The EIA was wrong. Currently crude oil is at around $120 per barrel, not $60. At the elevated prices we are now experiencing and are expected to experience in the future, vastly greater quantities of OCS oil (or ANWR oil, or shale oil) can profitably be exploited, and those resources can make a vastly greater contribution to our economic well-being.When we read wildly inaccurate reporting in the mainstream media, it's often hard to tell whether the reporter is incompetent, or is deliberately trying to deceive. You can make your own guess. For now, suffice it to say that Time's attempt to rehabilitate Obama's tire-inflation gaffe is a failure.

http://www.redstatemobile.com/node/193346

Ahhh no. Grunwald is using the quote from Obama, who in turn is quoting the president who "talked about" producing 200,000 barrals of oil a year extra, so semantically the statement is correct. It is, instead, the author of this article engaging in 'slight of hand' tactics by trying to ignore that the number in contention (200000 more brls) is the number Bush and the Republicans are talking about and not all the oil being produced. He is simply ignoring the context of the debate on purpose and it's pretty transparent.

 Bush was talking about the extra -- and so was Obama and no "slight of hand" is going to change that.  No matter how you want to play the word game they're still talking about the 200000brls extra.  That's simply following the debate properly. No magic to it.

So....no. That statement is wrong and Obama's is technically correct. If someone is out of the loop it's the Author of this 'counter article' when he can't follow the bouncing ball of a conversation past 2 participants, and so doesn't understand what Obama means when he said, "they're talking about". He misses that context.


...or he's completely stupid. Or he's purposely lying. Take your time picking, but those are the only choices.

Ahk

Raganite, engage brain ok? If it's out of context and that's "used a lot" maybe it's because it's done a lot.

Answer this question: when Obama says "they're talking about" is he talking about all the oil that is gained currently through off shore drilling, or is he talking about the new oil that would be produced using the new off shore drilling bill --- that's 200000 barrels -- the one bush and the Republicans are talking about? The same '200000 barrels/year' that's both quoted in the original article, the 'counter-article" and the current debate "they're" all talking about? We know "they're" not talking about the off shore drilling oil Alaska has been producing for the past 30 years so WTF is the author of the 'counter article' talking about. There are reasons why Time is Time and this other guy is nobody. This is one of them.

If you answered: "all the off shore oil being produced" you're either an idiot or a liar, or you're playing a game and just dont want to admit it. Considering you'd need enough intelligence to get the right answer as you would to be able to bookmark this site, navigate back to it, find this thread and respond to it i would be left with the latter two choices.
Considering you're reganite then I know you're smart enough to know I'm right and the auther of the article is wrong and you're playing a game. It's so transparent an 8-year old could see the slight of hand so i'm pretty sure you can get it.



...and anyways "out of context" beats the hell out of "I can't seem to recall" which is used and loved by the Reps so much.
Ahk

Thank you sir.


Yes, I'm sure if it were that easy ya'all would just want more gas-guzzling power from your vehicles anyways and it would negate it


Ahk

 Neue; I notice you post this absurd redstate article without comment...I KNOW you are smart enough to see thru it. The author accuses obama and Time of speaking in apples and oranges...then goes on to add facts and figures about bananas and grapes (to complete the metaphor) bringing in oil sources outside of the discussed factors.
 Reaganite was impressed... but that doesn't take much. I hope your not as dumb.

Time: "The Bush Administration estimates that expanded offshore drilling could increase oil production by 200,000 bbl. per day by 2030. We use about 20 million bbl. per day, so that would meet about 1% of our demand two decades from now. Meanwhile, efficiency experts say that keeping tires inflated can improve gas mileage 3%, and regular maintenance can add another 4%. Many drivers already follow their advice, but if everyone did, we could immediately reduce demand several percentage points. In other words: Obama is right.

Reaganite: "What you miss is that with Obama's plan he is assuming all cars have bad tire pressure and have not had tuneups..."
neue regel: "If I saw the highways littered with broken down wrecks with 20 lbs of tire pressure, I could go along with some of what Obama said. There is simply no way we can save that many barrels with tire pressure alone."

Thus works the conservative brain.
Experts in a subject say something that is inconvenient to conservative orthodoxy.

The conservative, with utterly no expertise in the area, denies it or spins it so that the outcome is the same. In this case, both our conservative bretheren would have us believe that:
1: Obama's numbers only work if all cars are defective (Reaganite), or
2: our cars are in such good repair that no appreciable savings could possibly be forthcoming (Neue). 

Is Reaganite's statement true? No. Obama's numbers can easily work if only some cars are defective.

Is Neue's statement true? If so, then maybe Obama overstated his case. All you have to believe is something that is obviously untrue, which is no problem for your basic conservative. Neue talks about smoldering wrecks on our hiways. I suggest another absurd extreme--automatons checking their tire pressure with metronomic regularity. Where's the reality? Rational people will no doubt admit it lies somewhere in the middle of the two extremes, which is what the Time magazine supposed--because the Time article was written for reasonable people, not conservative ideologues. Which makes Obama right in what he said. But conservatives can't accept that, so they have to go with the we-all-check-our-pressure-every-two-hours absurdity, and therefore are free to ridicule Obama for saying something utterly reasonable and backed up by experts (and by the way, something our public officials should be encouraging, not ridiculing for the sake of winning an election). 

You see, it's no wonder some conservatives find it easy to believe that humanity was created intact 10,000 years ago and that Noah's Arc contained dinosaurs. Despite all evidence to the contrary.
Or that tax cuts increase tax revenues. Despite all evidence to the contrary.
Or that global warming is just a liberal scare story. Despite all evidence to the contrary.
Or that universal health insurance can't work. Despite all evidence to the contrary.

Since critical thinking takes practice and discipline, it's a lot easier to think like a conservative instead. Just don't question orthodoxy (religion is good training for this), just be willing to believe anything at all in order to make your orthodoxy fit the facts. This is a great example of why I maintain that thinking like a conservative requires intellectual laziness or a lack of intellectual integrity. Or both.