Yet another analysis not worth the paper it is written on.
Two factors will completely overturn these simple minded projections: The analysis does not account for market driven changes both in (1)the fleet mix and (2)vehicle usage.

Lets consider how the Volt and similar vehicles might change the fleet mix. Very view cars get over 25 miles per charge today. Imagine the CO2 emissions from the tailpipe being zero for 2/3 of the miles driven by the owner. How valuable are the California numbers that do not account for smokestack emissions that provide those miles?

Those that advocate these "fixes" are simply extending the reach of government with empty, ill conceived, promises. Cafe is a joke and tailpipe regulation is the punch line.

Oil is nudging $100/barrel now. What will it be in 2015? What if gas is over $5.00 per gallon in 2015, how will that change the fleet mix.

Bottom line, Cafe was bad enough, and now even more tax dollars are to go up in smoke debating fictional outcomes.

in the worst case scenario we are powering the cars using combined cycle natural gas, which is about 3x more efficient converted heat to usable energy than a car's engine.

Depletion of N. American natural gas? Proved reserves increased in 2006 vs. 2005. That does not support your hypothesis. There have been predictions of natural gas depletion since the Carter era and they have all been dead wrong.

Van,

I love you free market guys. Where is the free market in oil? In OPEC? In the five oil companies that control94% of the retail petroleum distribution in the US? Milton Friedman, Calvin Coolidge and Adam Smith would all agree that there is no such thing as a free market in petroleum products.

Given the fluctuations in price from 1972 to 2008, why on earth would we all sit around and hope that a high oil price produces the desired GHG, energy security and efficient transportation results we desire (and desperately need?)

Just because I believe in a free market whereever possible doesn't mean I am not free to set government policy to achieve desirable goals. After all, I believe in evolution, but I'm not going to let a strep infection kill me just because that would be the natural course of events if not for penicillin.

Both CAFE standards and the ARB GHG are good policy. Let's not commit societal suicide because we believe in the tooth fairy and free oil markets.

Drivel and nonsense.

CARB is desperately trying to find a justification of its further existance, now that the job for which it was created is coming to an end.

CARB was chartered to cleanse the Air in California and to undertake such extra measures as would accomodate the unique air inversion problems of the Greater Los Angeles basin. It was even allowed to express early tougher standards in the "emergency" of dirty air. No such situation exists like that with CO2. Its presumed effects are worldwide, and not visible for hundreds or thousands of years, even to the "true believers".

That air is not yet clean; but its well on its way. By the early teens, America will be be able to claim Victory and acknowledge that the Air in America is now as clean as the day the Pilgrims arrived in the New World.

Americans have led the world in forcing such a cleanup. We have gone farther and faster, have implemented tougher standards, and earlier than any one else. Americans of whatever political persuasion have fought the good fight, and succeeded faster than any other society. Amercans will arrive at our destination of clean air before any others. Americans ought to be Proud.

The Auto and light trucks have become so clean that the CARB is now off looking to install catalytic converters on marginal sources of polution such as lawn mowers, hedge trimmers, farm tractors, railroad engines and auxiliary power for docked ships in California ports.

With the cleasing of the air job almost done, there would be no need for CARB unless... they can find a new justification for existence,budgets and headcount.

Nothing is more immortal than a government agency. Like Vampires you have to drive a stake through the heart.

CARB has decided that they can sign onto the fight agaisnt GHGs around the world. California is too small to affect the global air, if not a gram of CO2 were emitted in all of California. But that is irrelevant, to its efforts at justifications for continued life and budgets.

Meanwhile modern 21st century Science and the UN's IPCC almost daily shrinks the presumed power of the GHGs. The war against the GHGs has been succesful too. All the GHG gases except CO2 have now come under control, and are stabilized and declining. The shrinkage in GHG warming power is down to but 10% of what was originally feared in the 1970s and 1980s, with more reductions coming. Problems that might have occurred in a 100 years now would take a 1000 years to occur with the reduced power of CO2, if they occur at all.

CARB is setting off to expand its charter to justify its continued existence by fighting GHGs, as long as we continue to care about GHGs. ARB 1493 probably will be repealed long before the Pavely Phase 2 cutover and perhaps before Pavely Phase 1 is even well launched.

Why? Because the World simply won't care about the nonexistent threat, just like the world doesn't care today about Y2K.

@Stan:

I believe there is a large risk / near certainty that CO2 will cause problems in the near future through the warming of the climate. Therefore I have a question for you.

You state that the effects of GHG will only happen in 100s or 1000s of years. Let's take 1 example: the size of the Norh Polar ice cap. When you look at the graphs, the decline is clearly visible, and speeding up. In the satellite age, I can safely assume this information is reliable. This is happening NOW. Where does your information come from? Or did you ignore the size of the North Polar ice cap in your assessment?

Stan...What political drivel are you pumping out? Environmental Americans for decades pushed America to clean up its pollutions. & all the way, non-environmental Americans opposed the cleanup. So don't say all Americans cleaned up, by using the American flag to cover yourself.

& of course, poor children are still coming down with breathing & heart disease the closer they live to freeways(what an errorneous naming). So why do you say the pollution war is over? You got to visit some kids in hospitals with breathing problems.

Actually, the previouys monthly global oil record was 86.13 million barrels a day set in 2006. The IEA reports a new record monthly production 86.5 million barrels a day during November of 2007. I imagine you'll concoct some fallacy ridden narrative to support your position. What do you need to do to warp the data in your favor? Back out natural gas liquids (which are surprise, put in with crude oil because they are components of crude oil)? Back out biofuels (which were never in the data in the first place)? Back out tar sands production (which is crude oil nonetheless)? Are you just ignorant? Or do you enjoy spreading misinformation?

http://www.platts.com/About%20Platts/Press%20Room/2007/121107.xml
http://omrpublic.iea.org/currentissues/full.pdf
http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2007/11/this-week-in-petroleum-11-28-07.html#links

The IEA reports a new record monthly production 86.5 million barrels a day during November of 2007.

FYI:  You're confusing NGL's and lease condensate, which is recondensed liquids from the gas stream at oil wells.  You get NGL's from fields which yield no oil, but not lease condensate.  There is an increasing amount of NGL being produced as natural gas becomes an exportable commodity.

(cot'd)

@Litesong,

Despite the co-option of the Environment issue by the left, whose only unconstrained governing experience is to make a complete cesspool of the Communist Eastbloc, your rhetoric doesn't wash.

Earth Day was bipartisan. The Republicans founded the EPA. The first clean air regulations were promulgated in a Republican administration. The first "conservationist" President was Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican.

But this is NOT a partisan issue.

I quote these Republican contributions, only to clear, and balance the record. There are plenty of Democrat contributions to the environmental movement. Both Parties have added Wilderness and Parkland to the national wilderness inventory. To the point where the land use set asides for such uses, exceeds the original area of the thirteen original states on the USA!

And not all industrialists are evil, despite leftist propaganda to the contrary. GM sponsored the R&D that led to the developemnt of the catalytic converter, that makes the automobile clean. Cummins and Mercedes have developed the T2 Bin 5 compliance technology, to make "almost clean deisels" feasible. Joint governemntal and Industry R&D has made the Li-Ion battery more than a laboratory curiosity. Ditto for the Fuel Cell going back to the Appollo Project. Compact flourescent lights, higher efficiency appliances, furnaces and Air conditioners came from hard headeds profit motivated indusrial research.

No loud mouth Green politician produced any of those advances.

Both Democrats, my old Party, and Reublicans and Independents have supported and funded the cleanups. Certainly, there has been disagreements, some about methods, some about schedules, but none really about objectives. America could not have achieved so much in so short a time, a mere thirty five years, if there was not bipartisan support for the objectives.

Why should we care if all the "missing" ice from the Arctic is in the Antarctic? I dunno, why should we care if there's drought from Mississippi to the Carolinas if it's plenty wet in Washington and British Columbia?

Maybe because it causes damage in both places? Ice around Antarctica doesn't help the Pacific walrus, which are starving this year because there's no ice to let them forage on their feeding grounds and food supplies near shore are depleted.

Stan, thanks for proving that my previous appraisal of your character was too generous by half.

A better source for NGL production: http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/natural_gas/data_publications/crude_oil_natural_gas_reserves/current/pdf/ch5.pdf

Still more of the same, small year over year increases (3-4).

Addressing your non-energy equivalence argument... It is bunk because their is no distinction for any of the barrels of crude oil counted. Heavy crude oil has more energy than light, but it is cheaper nonetheless. The magic is that light hydrocarbons require less processing in order to make final products. The raw energy of an input is not the concern. It is what amount of energy that input will yield once it is made into final products.

The filter has gone bonkers, so I'm going to break this into very small parts to find the problem.  Sorry, but there's nothing else I can do.

Quoth the Voice of "Reason":

There is no mention of a "liquids" category in the report. It explicitly says oil.

The total liquids production rate in October was reported to be 86.43 million bpd (see Table 3).... The IEA doesn't break out just crude + condensate...