Tag Archives: Hummer

Copenhagen, India, China, the US, and GAIA

I’m beginning to think that Copenhagen was what it had to be, what it could only be. It fulfilled its Buddha-nature. Thus, I don’t consider it a failure. Nor do I consider it a success. It was what it was, what it could have been, what it had to be:

A gathering of emissaries from the 64 corners of the earth.

Courtesy of NASA

Earth From Space, Copyright NASA

Isaac Asimov observed in Foundation (ISBN: 978-0553293357) that “diplomacy, is the art of speaking for a long time without saying anything.” Most of the diplomats in Copenhagen had multiple agendas. Unfortunately for billions of the world’s poorest, the public agendas of sustainability and the abstract “Gaia Hypothesis” were distant fourth and fifth behind the private agendas of power, money, and influence.

The inconvenient truth is that much of Bangla Desh, California, Louisiana, Southern Florida will disappear, submerged, like the mythical Atlantis. China will continue to build 2 coal plants per week. And people will die.

But disregarding this notion, a Chinese diplomat Continue reading

R.I.P. for the S.U.V.

The New York Times

gets it right, but has trouble with math.

The Times’ editorial, “R.I.P. to the S.U.V.“, June 17, has the basics, but their numbers are wrong. Small cars like the Honda Civic emit about one quarter of the greenhouse gases per mile compared to trucks like the Ford F 150 and GM Hummer. GM doesn’t publish EPA milage estimates for the Hummer, but reports in the blogosphere peg them at 8 to 12 mpg. Assuming 10 mpg, driving 15,000 miles requires 1500 gallons of fuel. At $4 per gallon, that’s $6,000. The Times said $4,300 for the Hummer.

The EPA estimates that the Honda Civic EX gets 32 mpg city and 40 mpg highway. Taking the average of 36 mpg to drive 15,000 miles would require 417 gallons at a cost of $1,668 – about one quarter of the gas, and the costs to drive a Hummer. (The Times said $2,100 for the Civic.) This should be obvious – the Civic gets close to four times the mileage, therefore gas costs are close to one fourth those of the Hummer. Both vehicles would require the same number of oil changes, but with bigger engines that use more oil; these too cost more for the Hummer than for the Civic. And because the Hummer costs more to buy and to repair, insurance costs are higher.

The Prius, which gets 45 to 50 mpg, costs less to run than the Civic.   To drive those 15,000 miles at at 47.5 mpg would burn 316 gallons. At a cost of $4 per gallon, it would set you back $1,264.

Looked at another way, a 10 mile commute in a Hummer would cost 1 gallon, $4 each way, $8 per day, $40 per week.  In a CIVIC it will cost about $2.22 per day and $11 per week.  In a Prius, about $1.68 per day and $8.42 per week.

There is one area where the Hummer is better than the Civic – since it is so much bigger and heavier, its scrap metal value is higher.

Continue reading

Wired Gets It Wrong – Nuclear Power is Not Good For the Planet

Hummers: Illogical, Un-Economical, and Bad for The Environment. But They Sure Are Big!

Spencer Reiss, writing inWired Magazine says “Nuclear Power is The Most Climate Friendly Insdustrial Scale Form of Energy “. Forgetting for a moment that nuclear power requires fuel, waste management, national security infrastructure, massive government subsidies, including artificial limits to liability, nuclear releases tremendous amounts of heat into the environment, and new nuclear are estimated to cost about 2 to 4 times the price of new wind facilities, without cost overruns (and cost overruns are a given with nuclear power plants) and take 10 to 12 years.

The climate friendly industrial scale forms of energy are Solar, Offshore Wind,large scale Marine Kinetic –tapping the Gulf Stream, Deep Geothermal, CoGen, and the NegaWatts available via conservation. Just as a screw can propel a ship thru the water, a screw anchored to the ocean floor will spin because of currents, and can power turbines. Marine Current Turbines, Ltd., based in Bristol, England has just completed the world’s first megawatt scale tidal/marine current driven power plant in the Strangford Narrows in Northern Ireland. If with wind, the sky’s literally the limit, with MCT the sea’s the limit. Geothermal exploits temperature differentials for heating and cooling. Deep Geothermal

would use the earth’s heat in abandoned mines and wells to generate steam for industrial process power. Recycled Energy Development, RED

, of Westmont, Il does CoGen. REDcaptures industrial waste energy to produce electricity and thermal power, often without burning any additional fuel or emitting any additional pollution. For industrial partners, RED reduces energy costs substantially, increases reliability, and offers the opportunity for emissions credits. Akeena, Evergreen Solar, First Solar

, Sunpower, World Water and Solar, and Vestas Wind are old news. Ausradevelops and deploys utility-scale solar thermal technologies to serve global electricity needs in a dependable, market competitive, environmentally responsible manner.

Wired Magazinealso published a companion piece by Matt Power that says “Pound for pound, making a Prius contributes more carbon to the atmosphere than making a Hummer” (click here). The fallacy here is that they forget to mention that a Hummer weighs about three times more than a Prius, so to have an honest statistic you need to compare 3 pounds of Hummer to each pound of Prius. They do note that the operating efficiency of the Prius outweighs any manufacturing inefficiency. And they point out that it is better for the planet to buy a used car than a new car.