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Comments
For the life of me I can't figure out why somebody would want to drive a prius more...
2013 LX 570 2016 LS 460
That name escapes me at the moment too.
Here's a link - they get more speeding tickets too.
(Straightline)
Having driven and ridden in first and second generation Prius, I can honestly say they are not that much fun to drive or ride around in. The quiet start is kind of cool until the engine shudders to life, making you wonder how many times it can do that before self destructing. To each his own.
Make something cheap and people will use too much of it, with the attendant consequences. Like food - it's cheap in US and we're all obese. (Pollan). Cheap gas means more traffic, more asphalt, longer commutes, more accidents.
Similar positive effect expected if U.S. program is approved
So... for as bad as they say cars are, and people take the hint and don't buy...CARS....and they get RID of cars....
They want you to buy... MORE CARS !!!!!!!
..."Assuming a U.S. version of the scrappage program is passed by Congress, we'd expect a similar positive impact on the U.S. market," said Lonnie Miller, director of industry analysis at Polk. "Our recent estimates indicate nearly one million additional vehicles would be sold in the U.S. in 2009."...
Now they want to tax the cleanest energy we have electricity. They have already gone past the point of an EV being viable. Is that by design? Could be.
Well they have consistently said/called for and delivered ON higher prices for everything they have targeted:
1. like gas @ 4.58 per gal.
2. the house uses LESS electricity than it ever have and the cost is.... MORE or the MOST it has EVER been per KWH, etc.
3. the house uses LESS water than I ever have and the bill again is sky high.
4. we generate trash (bulk) per week, that is slightly bigger than a fully inflated basketball and again price is sky high.
5. I have never been a smoker, but the various governments at all levels make more money from a package of cigarettes than even the producers do !!!?? It is almost higher than an exponential amount.
I really find that to be interesting in this case - you go to all the effort to buy a prius then you undo that work by driving more and speeding? i guess it is the old "do as I say, not as I do" thing...
The only think I notice around here is that prius drivers are the ones least likely to yield to people crossing the street...
I also believe that cars that get better mpg can also encourage lifestyles that cause people to decide to drive more. As mpg has gone up over the years, the average number of miles driven annually also went up. And of course you have people who say - "well I rather have this house 30-miles from work, rather than buying a house 3 miles from work".
By Patty Fisher
pfisher@mercurynews.com
Why fly coach when $550,000,000 in new airplanes will do?
You cannot stereotype a group of owners of one type of car.
Just like owners of other cars, many people drive cars for many different reasons.
P.S. I read the story. All it means is that Prius drivers are more likely yo live in areas where driving is more dangerous for ALL drivers. My home town in Texas (pop 5000) has about 2 wrecks a month, and there is not a Prius in town. The study does not say that Prius drivers CAUSE all the wrecks they are involved in.
Most of the Priuses which pass me are being driven by YOUNGER drivers. I am very seldom passed by and very seldom see a Prius which is driving faster than I am which is being driven by a person my age ( 45 ) or older. Younger people have more wrecks.
P.P.S. Why are we even talking about this?
avalon02wh, "Are automobiles a major cause of global warming?" #5853, 19 Jul 2009 8:09 am
Jevons Effect or Jevons Paradox.
In reality I probably produce less GHG having only gas guzzlers to drive.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/08/12/world.population/index.html
The world is not going to build enough windmills or solar panels, or hybrid cars to make much of a difference in this large mass of poor people who are going to burn whatever they get their hands on, and deforest whatever land they need. CO2 in our atmosphere will go up regardless of what good intentions the well-off in the 1st world have. Even 25 million Priuses or Chevy Volts are insignificant to stopping the usage of resources on the Earth.
Wind and natural gas sources should provide the rest of the new power, the council proposed.
The council said conservation is already the region's third largest source of power at 12 percent, after hydro (55 percent) and coal (18 percent).
In the past three decades, conservation has allowed the region to reduce power demand by 3,700 megawatts, enough to power three cities the size of Seattle, council spokesman John Harrison said. That eliminated the need to build up to six new power plants, he said."
Conservation could provide 85 percent of power (Seattle PI)
I suggest to everyone that when they consider these articles be careful of what you think you're reading, as one word like "new" may make you misunderstand what's really being stated. Look at the DOE website and look at each energy source and predictions of future demand and you'll see almost invariably the demand for energy and different sources - going UP.
And conservation is a case of "low hanging fruit". It's very hard to find a way to reduce energy usage each year.
And our various governments wants you and I to get out there and get jobs, be productive, build houses, travel around the country ... all which require energy and resources.
.
Looks like conservation has saved us in the NW the need for 6 power plants and more conservation could obviate the need for much in the way of new ones over the next 20 years.
If we breach the dams here, then they'd need to add a plant to compensate for restoring the salmon.
Energy demands go up, but that demand can largely be met by conservation. We haven't scratched the surface in that department (double-checking to make sure all my power bricks are unplugged - opps, was baby-sitting for the neighbors and the TV/DVD gizmo is still plugged in. Gotta go fix that).
Oh yeah, new heat pump here. Last August's bill was $216.74. This August it's $86.63. I don't think my other bills will swing that widely but over the next year I'm expecting to save some money on that conservation effort.
My theory about this is that there is a certain segment of the population that takes great pleasure in ramming their 68 Caprice into every Prius they see !!
2013 LX 570 2016 LS 460
This year I turned them both off in the spring just to see if the gas bill would be lower. It has been lower this year to the tune of about $20. a month !! I would never have dreamed those pilot lights used that much gas !
2013 LX 570 2016 LS 460
The utilities companies should be required to put a digital meter inside people's houses, maybe next to the thermostat. With one of those electric load outlet gizmos, you can see your utility usage rate jump from 10 to 25 cents just by turning on the microwave.
Now just multiply that pilot light savings by a few millions of homes.
But reducing new demand is not going to reduce CO2, which supposedly even at much lower levels of years past, is supposedly causing GW.
If those Swiss glaciers started melting in the 1860's because of the level of human activity then, then we've got a long, long, long way to go to get 7 billion people to reduce CO2 output below that! :P
The power bill hovers around $60 in the Spring and Fall and doubles in the winter, easily. AC usage this time of year pops it up. 1500 sq. ft., all electric and yeah, I used to shut down the hot tub in the summer but I have better luck running it all year (skid packs run $300 and up).
Pass the caulk please.
The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and the American Council for Capital Formation (ACCF) released a study Wednesday that found under a high-cost scenario the House global warming bill could reduce economic growth by 2.4 percent and cost 2 million jobs by 2030.
And though the impact of the bill will grow over time, the economy will start feeling the effects of the carbon cap almost immediately.
“Industrial production begins to decline immediately in 2012, relative to the baseline,” the report notes.
Tony Kreindler, a spokesman for the Environmental Defense Fund, which supports the climate bill, said the business study is overly pessimistic about the development of nuclear power plants and makes other assumptions that raise the costs of a climate cap. For example, the NAM-ACCF study assumes a relatively small amount of international offsets would be available to businesses to help them meet carbon caps.
Even so, Kreindler criticized the study for its lack of details about exactly what assumptions went into the model.
The report’s executive summary, the only version released publicly, does provide some details about what assumption the study makes, relating to the development of wind and other renewable sources of power and the availability of offsets to help businesses meet their emissions reductions. Modelers also assumed that only 10 to 25 nuclear plants would be built in the next two decades.
The Energy Information Administration, however, assumed 95 plants would be built by 2030, under one scenario.
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/climate-bill-could-cost-2-million-jobs-2009-- 08-12.html
Can we even imagine 95 nuclear plants being built here in 20 years? That is mighty optimistic on the part of the people supporting the climate bill. I think 10-25 is not very likely with our regulations and NIMBY attitudes. We will still be fighting over solar in the desert in 2030.
And the Gulf Coast's dead zone algae is featured on Green Car Advisor:
"Silicon Valley startup LiveFuels Inc. wants to scoop up the algae - simple sea organisms that thrive on the farmland runoff - and use it to feed fish that could be processed for oil."
Entrepreneurs Hope to Convert Gulf of Mexico 'Dead Zone' Algae Into Biofuels
Oh, I don't know...
Year 1 - Soylent Green
2 - Soylent Yellow
3 - Soylent Red
4 - 55 mph speed limits
5 - Soylent Blue
6 - Soylent Orange
7 - $2 a gallon gasoline tax
8 - Soylent ________
And so on and so forth [BNSI]
Just can't get enough of that new icon.
Oil May Fall Below $10 in Next Decade, Prechter Says ...
The downside of course is more CO2.
I think the most interesting part of these maps is the lack of uniformity. Every region of the world reacts differently. The lower temps we are seeing here, as shown in blue, certainly match the numbers found here:
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/images/bis/climate/BISLCDJUL
U.S. Carbon Dioxide Emissions
http://www.eia.doe.gov/environment.html
Transportation is #2, at least in the USA.
I am going to have to quibble with you on this point. Any American, even the most die-hard environmentalist, is far from being green. The person you are referring to owns multiple cars, at least two homes and I suspect farms using tractors. This is all based on information he has volunteered over the years. Recycling a few plastic bottles and driving a Prius really doesn't make you all that green either, especially when you compare our lifestyle to the rest of the world. Those are just the facts. :shades:
http://www.mindfully.org/Sustainability/Americans-Consume-24percent.htm
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/810
http://www.greenlivingtips.com/articles/185/1/Consumption-statistics.html
So all those government bureaucrats have done a mighty fine job. :P
Yes, it is possible. However, we need to look at the numbers.
2009 Prius CO2 4.0 tons, mpg 46, 7.4 barrels a year
2009 Yaris CO2 5.9 tons, mpg 31, 11.0 barrels a year
2009 Camry CO2 7.3 tons, mpg 25, 13.7 barrels a year
2009 Sequoia CO2 12.2 tons, mpg 15, 22.8 barrels a year
If a person traded in a Yaris they could drive up to about 50% more before they matched their previous car in terms of CO2 emissions and fuel use. So, driving an extra 2,000 miles in a Prius is still far better than driving just about any other vehicle out there.
I think Nixon can be given the most credit. The EPA and getting the lead out was on his watch. Since then the EPA has only grown into a behemoth with little to show for the $billions wasted. CARB is a joke in my opinion. They pick on the easy targets and give the big polluters a bye. If we had been a little more willing to share technology and set standards with the rest of the World in the 1990s we would now be using less fossil fuel. Instead we keep setting the bar higher and cutting our mileage in the process. If you want to put our governments efforts to cut fuel usage, think Ethanol. The biggest boondoggle of the last 40 years. It is in the process of failing for the second time after wasting $billions of tax payers dollars.
So, no, I think overall the agencies have done little to save fossil fuel, cut GHG since the mid 1970s. We are still at the same CAFE numbers with a token raise in the future. Numbers dictated by lobbyist protecting the auto industry and the oil companies. Not to mention the road tax people that are not happy about the green weenies running around in their Prii tearing up the roads and not paying their fair share of taxes.
I believe you have some misconceptions on just what is green. You made reference to the American Indians a while back. Many believe the Indians lived a very green life doing little damage to the environment. I would agree, though at a major cost in human lives. The same Indian tribes that did not kill more buffalo than they needed had no problem killing other Indians to keep that balance of nature. Do you prefer that system to ours? I think the future has some daunting issues to address. People's lives should be the first and foremost in importance. I don't believe that is taken into consideration with climate change legislation. Unless you are a fat cat with a multi million dollar beach home you are fearing for.
If you just put the number for automobiles out there, it's far lower than #2. And since the rest of the world uses less oil/gasoline for transportation on a per capita basis than the typical U.S. citizen, this would drop automobiles even lower on a global-ranking.
And then remember that the amount of CO2 mankind emits even on a global basis, is a few percent of what is emitted naturally. And then CO2 is only 1 of many GHG emitted, and its effect is about 25X less LB-for-Lb than the GHG methane, and you can see that automobiles are a miniscule contributor to the global environment.
So which regulations would you drop? And, can we build it in your backyard? People are always quick to slam NIMBY until it is in their neck of the woods. Funny how that works.
Nuclear energy is an interesting issue. If you have seen some of the news articles in the last month or two you can understand how difficult it is to get one built, and it is much more than regulations or NIMBY.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/business/energy-environment/29nuke.html
"After four years of construction and thousands of defects and deficiencies, the reactor’s 3 billion euro price tag, about $4.2 billion, has climbed at least 50 percent.....Areva, the French company building it,..."
Keep in mind that this is being built by the French, the people with more Nukes than any body else!!!!!!!
A Nuke plant in Florida just cleared a hurdle. Final approval is set for 2012 with an estimated completion date of 2020 or so.
http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/5631#more
"The Future of Nuclear Energy: Facts and Fiction - Part I: Nuclear Fission Energy Today"
The Germans have idled about six nuke plants because of problems.
Nuke plants in Europe get shut down because of a lack of cooling water.
http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/08/13/nuclear-power%E2%80%99s-new-- debate-cost/
http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/08/13/the-bumpy-road-to-nuclear-en- ergy/
I do not expect to see more than a few nuke plants each decade. The sheer cost and long lead times give even the largest utility heartburn. And as the one oildrum article suggests, we will be lucky to build enough new plants to replace the older plants reaching the end of their useful life.
I agree with that. It is the climate bill that claims 95 nukes by 2030 if the article was correct. Congress mandates and State and Federal agencies block implementation. More negatives with our over bloated government.
The French get a way higher percentage of their electricity from nukes than the US, but the US has almost twice as many nuclear power plants as France (59 vs 104, per Wikipedia).
The percentage of power from nukes is 87%% in France and 20% in the US.
So far, only two towns in France (Gaffière and Lauzon) can't drink their water or water their crops from the nearby rivers because of uranium leaks. No swimming or fishing either. :P
There's not much swimming going on over in Roane County TN where the toxic coal sludge breached the holding pond dam and ruined the fishing in the Clinch River at Kingston.
Cheap electricity is nice but you have to wonder where our drinking water is going to come from if it all gets contaminated.
“The problem of doing both of them together is that it becomes too big of a lift,” Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas said in an interview last week. “I see the cap-and-trade being a real problem.”
The resistance by Lincoln and her Senate colleagues undercuts President Barack Obama’s effort to win passage of legislation that would cap carbon dioxide emissions and establish a market for trading pollution allowances, said Peter Molinaro, the head of government affairs for Midland, Michigan- based Dow Chemical Co., which supports the measure.
“Doing these energy provisions by themselves might make it more difficult to move the cap-and-trade legislation,” said Molinaro, who is based in Washington. “In this town if you split two measures, usually the second thing never gets done.”
Hopefully there are enough Democrats with some common sense left.
failing that I think a company such as that can easy get tax credits to move another American industry (along with the .... JOBS) off shore.... :lemon: :shades:
I recall when Senator Kerry was running for President. They did a story about how many ("American") plants they had "off shore" it was 59/75 for 79%. I wonder what it is UP to NOW?
"The Forbes 400 survey estimated in 2004 that Teresa Heinz Kerry had a net worth of $750 million. However, estimates have frequently varied, ranging from around $165 million to as high as $3.2 billion, according to a study in the Los Angeles Times. Regardless of which figure is correct, Kerry is the wealthiest U.S. Senator. Kerry is wealthy in his own name, and is the beneficiary of at least four trusts inherited from Forbes family members, including his mother, who died in 2002. Forbes magazine (a major business magazine named for an unrelated Forbes family) estimated that if elected, Kerry would have been the third-richest U.S. President in history when adjusted for inflation."... link title
Prius' get 50 mpg avg.
People keep new cars only 6 years on avg.
The typical car is driven 14,000 miles a year.
People will pay near twice the lifetime gas savings in hybrid premium just on initial sales price to drive a hybrid. They are only looking for a 50% recoup of initial cost. They are not looking for any recoup to carry $6k extra loan size.
Can these be bebunked??? A Chrysler salesman told me this yesterday:
Chrysler no longer produces cars and will not have ANY car inventory until Sept 15th.
Toyota has scored 70% of all C4C sales volume. Followed by Honda, then Nissan in 3rd place.
The top D3 manufacturer in C4C sales volume is Ford, now in 4th place.
People keep new cars only 6 years on avg.
The typical car is driven 14,000 miles a year.
On the average the figures indicate the average age of passenger cars @7.5 to so called SUV's light trucks @ 8.5 years.
Of late the newest research indicates 9.3 years.
Average driver does between 12,000 to 15,000 per year. This does not include the last years indcation of 3% less mileage and therefore consumption due to the economic D...sion.
We're tire-kicking a 2010 Prius. We figure the "hybrid premium" payback is a bit over 6 years for us. We always drive them for a decade so that actually works good for us.
I have a laser printer and I don't want an inkjet. The toner lasts me forever, and I'd rather pay more up front not to have to buy ink. Of course, a gallon of gasoline is a thousand times cheaper than a gallon of ink, but you get my drift. I can control my up front cost better than I can control the price of ink or gas in a year or three from now.
The Prius is still a bit overpriced for the feature set you get with it, unfortunately. Now, if it came in a squared off hatch, we'd be all over it.
OK, what is your definition of green? I would consider sustainability to be a key part of being green. Fairness...tread lightly....
"The same Indian tribes that did not kill more buffalo than they needed had no problem killing other Indians to keep that balance of nature.
I am sure that there were some casualties, but were all the battles fought over resources? How many where killed by settlers? Also, how about
Belgium vs. Congo, 1885-1909, 8 million casualties
Japan vs. China, WWII, 25 million casualties
Germany vs. Russia, WWII, 25 million casualties
I would wager to say that the skirmishes the Native Americans had in North America were rather insignificant to wars that have raged around the world.
"Do you prefer that system to ours?"
How would you expect me to answer that? None of us have ever lived that lifestyle. Living on a tropical island or some parts of North America might have been rather nice, on the other hand.