Now, I know this is going to be a tricky thing to point out without getting too political, but I’m going to try, because fundamentally we’re an automotive site, and when hilariously wrong information about cars is bellowed out from someone seemingly in a position of authority and trust to at least some segment of the population, we should probably make note of it, and do what we can to clear things up. In this case, the someone is one of the hosts of Fox News’ show Outnumbered, Emily Compagno. And even though she has no fucking clue what a catalytic converter on a car does, that doesn’t stop her from pretending like she does, and in the process manages to be just about entirely wrong. And it all started with the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile.
You may recall that just recently America’s premiere sausage-based vehicle, the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile, had its catalytic converter stolen. I don’t know how I missed covering that here, and I apologize for that. Anyway, catalytic converter thefts are a huge problem in America right now, and the fact that our favorite hot dog car isn’t immune hurts, and it hurts bad. Of course the media was talking about this, with varying approaches and angles.
Over at Fox News, we got this angle:
“The reason everyone is stealing catalytic converters across America is because under Biden's watch then gas is so expensive..” pic.twitter.com/AadLbhPqST
— Acyn (@Acyn) February 17, 2023
Oh jeez. Okay, even if we put the absurd and ham-fisted attempt to make this into a highly political issue aside, we have to address what Compagno says about catalytic converters, specifically this remarkably confident-sounding stream of bullshit:
“The reason everyone is stealing catalytic converters all across America is because under Biden’s watch, then gas is so expensive everyone needs the part that makes cars run more efficiently. This just shows that no one is immune to it, including Weinermobiles.”
Wow. Okay, so, none of this is true. A catalytic converter is absolutely not the part of a car that makes it run more efficiently, as though that was even somehow possible with a bolt-on part. A well-maintained cat should not affect fuel economy at all, though if you have one in poor condition it’s possible it may contribute to increased exhaust back pressure and cause your engine to be less efficient, but if it’s in good shape, a cat has just about nothing to do with fuel economy at all, certainly not improving it in any way.
Nobody is stealing cats to put on their cars to get better fuel economy. There’s no one out there with a Geo Metro and nine cats bolted to each other in line getting 174 mpg. It’s not a thing, and it never was a thing, and it never will be a thing. People steal cats because there’s valuable platinum, palladium, and rhodium inside that can be sold for currency, which can then be exchanged for other goods and services.
Also, catalytic converter theft isn’t a new thing that just now happened as a direct result of relatively high gas prices. People have been stealing cats for years and years, though there seems to have been a spike around 2019, and grew a lot during the COVID-19 pandemic.
What’s especially funny is that this is not the first time I’ve seen complete bullshit about catalytic converters used to make some half-assed political point. I wrote about one particularly insipid example a few years back, if you’re curious about the history of how morons willfully misunderstand parts of the exhaust system to make questionable political statements.
I think it’s the tone of assurance that really gets me here, the unwavering sense of confidence that comes through as an absolute fabrication is uttered, loudly, to make some sort of political point. I get that not everybody knows or even cares how cars actually work, but does nobody fact-check this stuff? I mean, clearly not, but holy shit, people, this is just stupid.
(thanks, BoingBoing!)
“Bolting multiple cats up to get better mileage” : This is the same logic I had when I was just learning about cars as a kid. I’d see a performance upgrade that promised 10 more hp, and another for 25 more hp, and would think “hmmm, I could do both and get 35 more hp!” Yikes. People are dumb. Unfortunately, people on TV are among the most ignorant.
Politics aside, this is proof that most people don’t know anything about how cars work. People drive them until a light turns on telling them to get gas, put air in the tires, etc. It’s also why hybrids are going to outsell EVs for a long time. People just don’t understand technology or understand how to make it work for them.
Maybe next time instead of going on about what a catalytic converter doesn’t do, perhaps include a brief summary of what it does do?
They reduce harmful emissions by as much as 90%. The platinum is distributed on a honeycomb mesh that runs the length of the cat. Think 1000 tiny drinking straws all bundled together. The unburned hydrocarbons, NO etc. heat in the presence of the platinum catalyst and much of it converts to less harmful CO2 and N2.
So next time one of the Autopians thinks an extra 1/2 hp is worth hacking off the entire exhaust system, they should know they are doing the same amount of polluting as driving around 10 cars at the same time.
I believe in clean air and protecting the enviroment. However i am tired of all the schemes that claim millions dying everyday, the sea levels are going to rise and submerge CA. (Anyone know if Jason and David can swim?) Unless we spend billions which we get back in health and safety costs, but we need to double taxes to do it.
Hey government I cant afford for you to save me any more money.
who is claiming that millions are dying every day? ‘schemes’? I’m confused
Well there were the corn added to gas people, the mtbe added to gas the wind energy over gas energy, the summer/winter has people, the shut down coal people, those off the top of my head.
If we taxed Tesla, Amazon, Apple, and their billionaire CEOs, the same amount we pay in taxes, we would have plenty of money to pay for infrastructure and education needs.
No do the math. Those are billions accumulated. They dont earn billions every year also Elon lost like half his wealth this year in stock value as did some of his investments. Will he get billions back on a bad year? The government spends so much money if they taxed the entities you cited 100% the money wouldn’t last a year. Frankly the top 10% of economic scale pay 90% of the income tax. The bottom 50% pay nothing. So if we tax them like the majority they actually would be paying nothing.
“There’s no one out there with a Geo Metro and nine cats bolted to each other in line getting 174 mpg.”
*Looks up cost of a Geo Metro and nine catalytic converters*
*Does some math*
Yep, definitely a good idea. Someone please do this.
You mean does some meth?
There are an awful lot of “educated” people who don’t know jack about the simplest things. Sadly, many of them are personalities on cable news shows which I have pretty much stopped watching.
Just avoid watching shit like that.
Over here (DK) regular fuel (sold in liters for some strange currency..) is 8$/gal. Thanks for nothing, Joe Biden! 😉
Waitaminute WTF?! I stole 6 catalytic converters and rigged them up sequentially with the one I already had on my car so that I would get mega mpg! AND NOW YOU’RE TELLING ME THAT THIS DOESN’T FUCKING WORK?!?!?
You have to install them in parallel, not in series. Duh.
I’m old enough to remember two local half hour newscasts a day, one at 6:00, and another at 11:00, with the first broadcast followed by a half hour national newscast. And that was during the turbulent ’60s and ’70s.
An hour and a half, and we got all the dog-bites-man stories we could handle. Plane crashes. Ship sinks. Earthquake kills hundreds. And now, for sports.
Now “news” is on 24/7, and counter to every statistic on violence, education, and wars available they’d all have you think the World Is Getting Worse all day every day.
It’s not news that sells for these 24/7 talking heads.
It’s outrage.
Now when you hear about the car crash, you get 5 seconds of what and where followed by ten minutes of opinion about why the car was there in the first place and what politician allowed it to happen.
Crimes, teenage births, war, and general violence rates can easily be searched. Despite occasional small spikes, they’re all down during my lifetime. Tremendously. Way down.
But confirmation bias can be stronger than the facts. So the Faux News’ regular boogeyman gets “owned” more. Sheesh.
Where is the dipshit’s “don’t be political/proceed to be sexist” comment ? I’ve got my popcorn.
Fox viewers are probably stealing fuel sharks
The other day, I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, run by a group of very qualified naval historians (no, not navel historians, though that might be interesting, too). One of them mentioned that AdBlue was getting scarce in Australia (they never mentioned that AdBlue is a brand of DEF, maybe it’s the only one sold in Australia?) and another went into a detailed explanation about how AdBlue is added to diesel fuel to make the engines run reliably when it’s hot or cold out. They kept going on about how critical AdBlue is to the economy because diesel trucks won’t run well without it….
These guys aren’t political but they got it so wrong. I had to fight the urge to send them an email, but I’ve learned that correcting everyone on the internet is a Sisyphean task.
You do realize that Fox “News” is part of the mainstream media that you deride, no?
(That was rhetorical, in case you’re too stupid to understand.)
Did something happen to the comment threads in old posts? That previous comment certainly wasn’t directed at Jason, but at someone claiming Fox to be some sort of credible, anti-establishment news source.
There are a bunch of other comments that also appear to be responses to now-missing comments.
I’ve used the word “comment” far too many times in one.
Everything is political for Faux News.
And they will follow the political line they set up for their audience, even if internally they don’t believe in it… just because they need to pet the right way the people that listen to them to get paid at the end of the month.
A conservative plea for common civility, ladies and gentlemen.
> no need to inject politics
Proceeds to inject lurid sexism
Ok
The misdirection concocted outrage of “OMG, they called a magazine a clip! Can you believe it?!” is not the same thing as deliberate misinformation or blatant unchecked ignorance used to hammer a square political point into a round hole. If they weren’t the dumbfucks they are talking to even dumber fucks and still wanted to make this a political item, they could focus on the driver of the thefts—lack of crime enforcement and maybe drug prevalence that they could blame all on leftist policies and economic desperation at the lower end due to the economy not reflecting what the official numbers indicate.
One final note. While I am as guilty as the next person about getting fired up on topics, I think a lot of people miss the fundamental foundation of it all …
Political opinions are not all that dissimilar from sports or many other analogies. It’s basically rooting for one team to beat the other. You like the Yankees, and I root for the Mets. Or, you like Ford, and I like GM. Etcetera…
It’s not even about who is actually better or right, it’s about picking sides and sticking to it. Regardless of the actual facts. All of these “legacy” media news channels see how strong the ratings are in sports and try to replicate the results…for money. Whether it’s the “My Pillow” guy funding the ad revenue, or it’s an ad for a pharma product. All that matters is that all the checks clear. Pick your side and buy your bumper stickers (or hats) and keep funding the ruse.
At the root, it’s basic emotional manipulation that has occurred for centuries. It’s up to every single one of us to “purchase” it or not. If you wanna go all in on something, fantastic. Have fun (or be miserable at the same time). I’m just trying to burn off as many calories as I intake in a day.
False equivalence is how the forces of Evil will win, if we allow them to do so.
Here’s an analogy: Humans have been killing other life forms and other humans since the beginning of time. Whether for convenience (squashing a bug) or for food (killing a deer) or for vile motives (killing a human in anger). But if we say that “everyone kills, so it’s no big deal” in order to justify a murderer, we’ve succumbed to false equivalence.
Fox News and their ilk intentionally murder the truth and then draw an equivalence between that and the honest mistakes or unconscious biases that legitimate news sources sometimes suffer from. If we buy into that story (and similar stories in the realm of politics such as “all politicians lie”) then we’ve allowed them to draw an equivalence between stepping on an ant and murdering your Aunt.
Nobody expressed this better IMHO than Albert Brooks in Broadcast News: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTCtiADVAWs
True but both parties do this.
Me: “haha, that’s not how catalytic converters work at all – what is she on?”
My Old Man: “yeah, but that goddamn Biden is why gas was $3.46/gal last week. It almost cost me 60 bucks to fill up the Charger.
Me: “but, that’s… what? This isn’t about gas prices – the catalytic converter thing… that’s just wrong.”
My Old Man: “These stupid environmentalists – the goddamn Government… ooo, I could just wring their necks!!”
Me: “…”
That’s how this works.
Years ago my wife taught at a high school that had a course called chemistry in the community. Some people assumed it was just low level chem light on math, but it strove to teach basic concepts so that the people who took it could be better voters. The older I get the more I think it was an amazing class.
If you haven’t, check out ‘Physics for Future Presidents,’ by Richard Muller. Same idea.
Huh… “physics for future presidents” was the nickname for my college’s physics for non-science majors course….
Then I looked up the book, and found this was from BEFORE it was published.
Also, the geology for non-science majors course was called “rocks for jocks”.
Ewwww
Please keep politics to a minimum.
Yeah there is no defending the stupidity of that comment.
But you only felt the need to post it because it supports your view of what you think of conservatives.
I’m not saying I disagree with you. But we need to find ways to get along and not bring politics into everything. That’s one way this site was a big improvement over the old one. I would hate to see it regress.
“Reality has a well-known liberal bias”
– Stephen Colbert, 2006 White House Correspondents’ Dinner
“It’s not that our liberal friends don’t know anything – it’s that they know so much that just isn’t so.” – Ronald Reagan
Just look at ANY graph post Reagan, he caused so much destruction the continues to this day.
https://twitter.com/WardQNormal/status/1206280031552454656
Gun grabber big government over spending Reagan: somehow he is a conservative hero and I can’t figure out how.
Even though Steve Colbert wouldn’t know reality from a hole in his sock, yet his liberal bias is legendary.
Colbert political philosophy is far from my own. However i find his writers hilarious and his presentation style high quality.
However, the term media expert is an oxymoron. Their job is too look pretty and professional and read what is written on the teleprompter as if they know what it means. Those who fail at this become politicians. Whose job it is to read what is written on the teleprompter as if they believe and understand it just with much less coverage. And if they fail at this they become sports journalists. Whose job is too read…..
I think Jason’s point is that Fox is mis-injecting politics into a nominally non-political issue and it was such a ham-fisted attempt that it deserves open opprobrium.
BTW, I kinda feel like it’s conservatives who are attempting to inject politics into like EVERYTHING these days. I think the term is culture war and one side sure seems heavily invested in it. With a healthy dose of projection just for fun. Gotta own those libs.
The crazy thing about it to me is the actual reason and the fact the thefts are occurring plays into their talking points as well (inflation, people can’t afford stuff, crime out of control, etc) that they could have stuck to that and still thrown their base the red meat they crave.
The minority party always does this. Heck a while back there were liberals who actually attacked Trump any chance they had. Its true.
Its what politics is now and maybe always was.
You ought to Google Jason before making assumptions. He was literally just pointing out an idiot comment by a news person.
This comment makes you seem like a big baby.
I think Jason was pretty clear this article is covering the inaccuracy of the statement, not the political persuasion of the commenter.
Now if I may be political for just a moment – conservatives of late are way too quick to hide behind the “they’re attacking my politics” trope. Calling out a comment as ignorant, racist, hateful, etc. often has nothing to do with your politics and everything to do with your comment being ignorant, racist, hateful, etc. Its like the grown up version of hitting your brother, immediately calling a time out, and whining when he hits you back.
And let’s just consider this: assuming the author’s viewpoint is motivated primarily by politics is in fact a great example of “bringing politics into everything”.
I think you’re being way to sensitive.. Jason was pretty damned neutral in this.
Some people will view this as political. It’s not. It’s just a stupid comment by a media person trying to stir the pot.
I do have an honest question though, what is a “well maintained Cat”. I drive my cars on average 10 years and 200k miles. The only “cat cleaning” services I see all look like snake oil. And I’ve read some services void your warranty. The only cat I’ve ever replaced is one that cracked.
It’s a valid question. I think to maintain your cat you make sure you’re maintaining other things. Change your spark plugs, air filter, replace oxygen sensors if they go bad, etc
Pretty much. Basically just don’t drive around with a check engine light on. Many malfunctions that can throw a code the engine deals with by running a rich fuel/air mixture which is good for preventing engine damage but can be hard on the catalytic converter. It’s designed to deal with certain exhaust pollutants, not unburned fuel, and when fuel is present it can cause buildup on the honeycomb center or ignite and damage it.
Poor general maintenance can result in junk (mostly chunks of carbon) making it through the exhaust to the cat, where it clogs the matrix. It’s a frog in a pot sort of thing where the exhaust is very very slowly choked, increasing resistance, and thereby decreasing fuel efficiency, and sometimes building up heat. Some cars (Mazda RX-8s come to mind specifically) can be hurt by the heat long before the decrease in fuel economy, leading to the myth that cats kill engines (they don’t, crappy maintenance does).
They blame Biden for cat thefts. How is that not political?
Spayed or neutered and given yearly worm checks.
FoxNews talking heads aren’t necessarily dumb, but they have to play dumb to their (also dumb) audience. IMHO this is way worse, since they’re willfully spreading misinformation (like one blonde lady with a Masters in English from Oxford pretending to have difficulty pronouncing English words).
This has been a theme of the recent spat of articles covering the Dominion lawsuit.
This. That woman may know exactly how a cat works and that it has nothing to do with fuel efficiency. That doesn’t matter if your top priority is to pander to an audience that wants to see anything that reinforces their point of view, whether you know it to be true or completely false. Sure looks like Fox, as a network, is happy to knowingly promote falsehoods if it helps them pull viewers away from Newsmax and other far-right outlets. That would be the difference between Fox and legitimate news sources. The NY Times, Wall Street Journal, etc., don’t go that far.
Of course, it may also be that she has no concept of how any part of a car works.
Why is this a surprise to anyone? This is a population that routinely ignores medical advice from actual medical professionals in lieu of discredited, self serving words of nonsense from an aging Playboy centerfold and other wholly unqualified “celebrities” putting not only themselves in peril but their children and community too.
https://www.healthline.com/health-news/children-anti-vaccination-movement-leads-to-disease-outbreaks-120312#When-Pseudoscience-Becomes-the-Norm