Grading PolitiFact: Obama right about tire inflation and tune-ups? Part 2

Give me a break!

Michael Goldfarb of the McCain campaign contacted PolitiFact and challenged one of their key numbers. PolitiFact updated their entry. And the rating stayed the same. The PolitiFact folks think Obama is right that inflating our tires and tuning our cars will save all the oil McCain wants to obtain by drilling.

Goldfarb may have done more than challenge just one of PolitiFact's numbers, actually, but it's hard to tell so long as the link to Goldfarb's letter leads to a "The page you requested is currently unavailable" message.

Did PolitiFact get it right this time after the appalling ineptitude manifest in the first attempt?

Update: After we published this item, McCain spokesman Michael Goldfarb called to dispute it, citing a Government Accountability Office letter of Feb. 9, 2007 that says tire inflation wastes 1.2 billion gallons of gasoline instead of the 2.8 billion estimate we used.

The letter says: "The Department of Energy’s designated economist on this issue indicated that, of the 130 billion gallons of fuel that the Transportation Research Board estimated were used in passenger cars and light trucks in 2005, about 1.2 billion gallons were wasted as a result of driving on under-inflated tires."

That estimate falls just under the estimated 1.4 billion gallons a year from increased offshore drilling.

Not to mention the fact that it is less than half the estimate PolitiFact used the first time around. And don't you love the way the 14% shortfall (200 million gallons a year) is "just under"?

But that doesn't persuade us to change our ruling, for three reasons.

This has got to be good.

First, 1.2 billion gallons in possible savings from proper tire inflation is still in the ballpark of the 1.4 billion gallons from drilling. Given that all of these numbers are estimates, it's hard to say the difference between these two numbers constitutes a falsehood.

If it is "in the ballpark" then Obama is justified in saying that it's more [Correction: Obama did not say "more" though PolitiFact did paraphrase him that way--Obama's statements were "just as much" and equivalents]? Who are they kidding? If you don't know then don't rate it as "True." Doing otherwise is lying. This is the logic gullible readers are expected to apply:

If what A said could be true then what A said cannot be called a falsehood.
Therefore, what A said is True.

Would PolitiFact stick with their judgment based on that reason alone? Who knows?

Second, it would take years of work to start producing 1.4 billion gallons of gasoline from oil pumped offshore -- the Energy Information Administration estimate contemplates production beginning in 2017. And the oil reserves would not be bottomless. Conceivably, the savings from tire-pressure correction could begin immediately and last indefinitely, thus easily overcoming the marginal difference in the estimates provided by the McCain campaign.

This is priceless. Even if offshore drilling produced an infinite amount of oil, Obama's statement could still be true via the automotive equivalent of Hilbert's Hotel. An infinite amount of tire inflation savings could definitely save an infinite amount of gasoline, according to infinite set theory.

This rationale is hogwash.

First, Obama did not specify offshore drilling. That qualification came from the PolitiFact author in an apparent attempt to capture Obama's underlying argument--as I've noted previously. It is nothing less than silly to suppose that Obama's underlying argument was an appeal to infinite set theory, thus the reference to the offshore oil reserves not being "bottomless" is a patently ridiculous justification. Even the identification of Obama's underlying argument as a comparison between annual saving and annual production is a stretch and that argument is not supported by the data under any fair evaluation. "Could be" isn't enough where the possibility is supported by assumptions. Obama's statement cannot be fairly rated "True" based on so much supposition.

And finally, none of this takes into account the impact of tune-ups, which Obama mentioned as part of his claim. If Department of Energy estimates of 4 percent mileage improvement for better-tuned cars are true, that alone would push the total savings above the estimated drilling yield.

Let's review that Department of Energy estimate.

Fixing a car that is noticeably out of tune or has failed an emissions test can improve its gas mileage by an average of 4 percent, though results vary based on the kind of repair and how well it is done.

It looks to me like PolitiFact is punting while insisting that their "True" rating is correct. We received no analysis from PolitiFact regarding the annual gasoline savings from tuneups based on the Department of Energy estimate. It is all too easy to imagine that the media professionals at PolitiFact took the total amount of fuel burned in motor vehicles and took four percent of that
total as the savings that make Obama ultimately "True."

But that is not what the Department of Energy estimate suggests. The entry specifically refers to "a car that is noticeably out of tune or has failed an emissions test." Without any attempt to quantify the number of cars that meet those criteria, the PolitiFact entry looks more like a stubborn refusal to admit error rather than a careful reconsideration of the issue.

Aug 8 2008: Corrected an incorrect paraphase