Anti-global warming pols are hot for big SUVs
by Paul Mulshine
Thursday February 14, 2008

As a longtime student of science, I am greatly intrigued by the theory of anthropogenic -- man-made -- global warming.
There is just one flaw in that theory, however. No one can say with certainty that the planet won't enter a cooling cycle next year -- or tomorrow for that matter. What if it does? So much for that theory.
As long as it's around, however, it spawns another, more interesting phenomenon, anthropogenic hypocrisy. What natural force, for example, impels a character like Al Gore to hold forth at great length on the need to conserve energy while living in a 10,000-square-foot house? Sure, he buys carbon credits. But if he truly believed the planet to be in crisis, he'd knock down that house and live in a solar-powered yurt in addition to buying the credits.
I guess every crusader needs his castle, though. But the problem with the global warming crusaders is that they often turn out to have holes in their armor.
The other day an alert reader pointed out to me the hole in the armor of New Jersey's global warming crusaders. It seems that last month the state confirmed the purchase of about $3 million worth of vehicles. Were they 40-mile-a-gallon hybrids? Were they those tiny new Smart Cars from Germany? Nope. They were good, old-fashioned SUVs, among them Dodge Durangos and Chevy Suburbans, some of the worst gas-guzzlers known to man. And the more gas you guzzle, the more carbon dioxide you pump into the air. A Suburban pumps out about three times the CO2 of a hybrid.
Meanwhile, the Legislature has signed on to the so-called "California standard," which would require that all vehicles in the state, public and private, achieve an average fuel economy of 40.5 mpg by 2016. Even if the rest of us all drove Priuses and Smart Cars, the presence of just a small percentage of Suburbans on the road would make that goal impossible.
Nonetheless, Gov. Jon Corzine -- who travels in a convoy of Suburbans, by the way -- termed it "a horrendous decision" when the Bush administration ruled in December that New Jersey and 19 other states can't adopt that standard. Instead we'll have to stick to the federal standard, which requires a fleet average of 35 mpg by 2020.
But that standard is unattainable as well if people keep buying gas-guzzlers. And that SUV purchase doesn't mean that only state workers will be driving giant SUVs. Other units of government can also take advantage of the state's purchasing power, which brings the price of a big SUV down to the level of a typical sedan.
The Sierra Club's Jeff Tittel was predictably outraged when I reached him on his cell phone. Tittel carries a cell phone, by the way, because it's difficult to talk on a land line while you're hugging a tree. Just kidding. Anyway, here's what he said:
"Instead of buying clean cars to implement the law, these SUVs are going to be undermining the state's ability to meet the law for years to come."
Tittel said he sees many state workers driving SUVs.  "I've got a neighbor who works for the DOT, and he has a Dodge Durango and he commutes to Trenton in it," said Tittel. "He's a surveyor. What's the matter with a station wagon?"
Nothing at all, I'd say. I object to SUVs not because I love the environment but because I hate SUVs. They're road hogs as well as gas hogs. If I were king, every single SUV in America would be brought down to station-wagon size.
But I'm not king. I'm just a journalist who does things like walk around the Statehouse garage counting gas-guzzlers when the legislators are upstairs passing bills condemning global warming. When such a bill was passed last June, I made a survey of all the vehicles that had legislative license plates. The final tally was 17 big SUVs, 11 sedans with V-8 engines, six sedans with six-cylinder engines and a mere three sedans with four-cylinder engines.
I don't know what kind of houses these legislators live in, but you won't find them in yurts.
I bet you're wondering what a yurt is. It's a small, round structure first invented by Mongolians and more recently adopted by back-to-the-Earth types who live off the grid. I know a California surfer named Charley who lives in a solar-powered yurt in Humboldt County and rides a bicycle.
Charley is the only person I've ever met who could talk about global warming without sounding like a hypocrite.
But as for the Trenton crowd, people who live in Statehouses shouldn't throw stones.  They might knock the windows out of a state-owned SUV.

I had thought of hybrid vehicles as being not particularly helpful to our energy and environmental concerns, but at least not creating any new problems until I read this article. Now I see that the nickel required to manufacture the batteries is contributing to an environmental nightmare in Sudbury Ontario, nicknamed the 'dead zone' because of the nickel mines. Not only that, the combined energy to produce a hybrid vehicle like the Prius is proving to be 50% greater than that needed to produce the Hummer, the favorite scapegoat of so-called environmentalists.
To paraphrase PTG's previous post, there seems to be a 'consensus' among the Hollywood elite that they're doing something wonderful for America by driving a product of the nickel mines when they could afford to drive something so much nicer. But wait! Now they can "do something" for the environment and still drive a faster, more fashionable and expensive car than everybody else.

It's the Tesla! This baby is 100% electric and will do 0-60 in 4 seconds. No oil or gasoline required, just a little nickel from Sudbury, Ontario, which spreads a little sulfur dioxide in the neighborhood and kills a little vegetation, hence the 'dead zone'. But the folks up there are probably glad for the business, unlike our middle east oil suppliers and Hugo Chavez.

And we're treated with the spectacle of Al Gore showing up for his Academy Award in a Tesla with the same clear conscience that enables him to own stock in Occidental Petroleum and land with zinc rich deposits.

March 7, 2007  
Prius Outdoes Hummer in Environmental Damage

The Toyota Prius has become the flagship car for those in our society so environmentally conscious that they are willing to spend a premium to show the world how much they care. Unfortunately for them, their ultimate ‘green car’ is the source of some of the worst pollution in North America; it takes more combined energy per Prius to produce than a Hummer.

Before we delve into the seedy underworld of hybrids, you must first understand how a hybrid works. For this, we will use the most popular hybrid on the market, the Toyota Prius.

The Prius is powered by not one, but two engines: a standard 76 horsepower, 1.5-liter gas engine found in most cars today and a battery- powered engine that deals out 67 horsepower and a whooping 295ft/lbs of torque, below 2000 revolutions per minute. Essentially, the Toyota Synergy Drive system, as it is so called, propels the car from a dead stop to up to 30mph. This is where the largest percent of gas is consumed. As any physics major can tell you, it takes more energy to get an object moving than to keep it moving. The battery is recharged through the braking system, as well as when the gasoline engine takes over anywhere north of 30mph. It seems like a great energy efficient and environmentally sound car, right?

You would be right if you went by the old government EPA estimates, which netted the Prius an incredible 60 miles per gallon in the city and 51 miles per gallon on the highway. Unfortunately for Toyota, the government realized how unrealistic their EPA tests were, which consisted of highway speeds limited to 55mph and acceleration of only 3.3 mph per second. The new tests which affect all 2008 models give a much more realistic rating with highway speeds of 80mph and acceleration of 8mph per second. This has dropped the Prius’s EPA down by 25 percent to an average of 45mpg. This now puts the Toyota within spitting distance of cars like the Chevy Aveo, which costs less then half what the Prius costs.

However, if that was the only issue with the Prius, I wouldn’t be writing this article. It gets much worse.
Building a Toyota Prius causes more environmental damage than a Hummer that is on the road for three times longer than a Prius. As already noted, the Prius is partly driven by a battery which contains nickel. The nickel is mined and smelted at a plant in Sudbury, Ontario. This plant has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the ‘dead zone’ around the plant to test moon rovers. The area around the plant is devoid of any life for miles.

The plant is the source of all the nickel found in a Prius’ battery and Toyota purchases 1,000 tons annually. Dubbed the Superstack, the plague-factory has spread sulfur dioxide across northern Ontario, becoming every environmentalist’s nightmare.

“The acid rain around Sudbury was so bad it destroyed all the plants and the soil slid down off the hillside,” said Canadian Greenpeace energy-coordinator David Martin during an interview with Mail, a British-based newspaper.
All of this would be bad enough in and of itself; however, the journey to make a hybrid doesn’t end there. The nickel produced by this disastrous plant is shipped via massive container ship to the largest nickel refinery in Europe. From there, the nickel hops over to China to produce ‘nickel foam.’ From there, it goes to Japan. Finally, the completed batteries are shipped to the United States, finalizing the around-the-world trip required to produce a single Prius battery. Are these not sounding less and less like environmentally sound cars and more like a farce?
Wait, I haven’t even got to the best part yet.

When you pool together all the combined energy it takes to drive and build a Toyota Prius, the flagship car of energy fanatics, it takes almost 50 percent more energy than a Hummer - the Prius’s arch nemesis.
Through a study by CNW Marketing called “Dust to Dust,” the total combined energy is taken from all the electrical, fuel, transportation, materials (metal, plastic, etc) and hundreds of other factors over the expected lifetime of a vehicle. The Prius costs an average of $3.25 per mile driven over a lifetime of 100,000 miles - the expected lifespan of the Hybrid.

The Hummer, on the other hand, costs a more fiscal $1.95 per mile to put on the road over an expected lifetime of 300,000 miles. That means the Hummer will last three times longer than a Prius and use less combined energy doing it.

So, if you are really an environmentalist - ditch the Prius. Instead, buy one of the most economical cars available - a Toyota Scion xB. The Scion only costs a paltry $0.48 per mile to put on the road. If you are still obsessed over gas mileage - buy a Chevy Aveo and fix that lead foot.

One last fun fact for you: it takes five years to offset the premium price of a Prius. Meaning, you have to wait 60 months to save any money over a non-hybrid car because of lower gas expenses.