Green vehicles of 2007

Took the words right out of my mouth. But too often public transportation systems have been looked at in isolation, especially if they are run as profit-making businesses. Whether privately run or run by city, state, county, etc., transportation systems must be seen as one part of a larger whole. For example, does it matter if the bus system loses money if that loss is more than offset by the reduced costs of road maintenance, pollution remediation, and health care?

Perce

Firstly the Prius is Corolla sized inside, not Camry as Toyota says. When you compare the fuel mileage of the two, of course the Prius is ahead by about 50%, but it is also about 50% more expensive. Then we have the life span of the very expensive Prius battery. Toyota guarantees it for 8 yrs., but most know that rechargeable battery go down hill in effectiveness after 3 yrs.. The battery price is over $5k. I feel it will be difficult selling a used Prius with the original battery after 5 yrs.

Bill Putney:

As a professional you should understand division of labor and the importance of specialists better than anyone.

You are not equivalent to a climatologist. You have completely different experience and education. Would you allow a climatologist to do your job? Not if you're responsible.

Stick with peer reviewed papers. The problem with magazines and newspapers is they give equal credence to anyone who pretends to know something about the subject, including non-climatologists, in the interest of being 'fair and balanced'.

Percival P. Cassidy:

Can't see the forest for the trees.

Clean-powered, public transportation? You guys are right on. I'm all for it.

As for the Green debate, I for one will side with caution. I'm conservative that way. I start with common sense and build from there. Unfortunately I have to live on the same planet as those who just don't care or just choose to follow the loony.

I did research on the "Global Warming is a myth" crowd. It led me to the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. Nice sounding name huh? Here's another nice sounding name, "The Advancement for Sound Science Coalition." Take a look at what they were all about.

Sound Science? They were tobacco cronies telling us that cigarette smoking wasn't harmful. Look it up. The executive director of that group...? "Dr." Jane M. Orient. What does she do now? She is professor of clinical medicine at ... wait for it... the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. Nice credentials.

What else is she doing might you say? "Dr." Orient is the executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons(AAPS). That group? "A 1966 article in the New York Times described the organization as an "ultra-right-wing... political-economic rather than medical" group." There is too much to write here on these fundamentalist whack jobs so go see for yourself.

Another OISM faculty member, Arthur B. Robinson an avowed Christian fundamentalist. Wiping out the people on the planet is not really a problem in his eyes. Here's a book that the OISM and "Dr" Robinson push... "Nuclear War Survival Skills." Want a quote from that book? "The dangers from nuclear weapons have been distorted and exaggerated."

Let me get this straight, smoking isn't harmful, nuclear war isn't that bad and pollution from cars and factories is not effecting the environment.

I'm not sure these are the "scientists" I want to bet on being right about anything.

Whether you call it global warming or climate change or just what we used to call it... pollution, it IS messing up the Earth. We are effecting our own future. We need to use less oil, less coal and make clean power to move us around and run our PCs and TVs. One small step in the right direction IS better than standing still and complaining that it isn't the final solution or that my car doesn't go faster than the neighbors.

See my next comment.

It has been admitted that the official State Climatoligist for the state of Washington stripped the title of Associate State Climatoligist (both people are "Scientists at the University of Washington) when the latter publicly pointed out that the data cited for stating that the snowpack in the Cascade Mountains was reduced by 50% in 50 years was fraudulently used. How was it fraudulently used? On datd that varies up and down from year to year, they took local maxima from 50 years ago and the local minima from a recent year. The ratio was half, so they knowingly fraudulently published that the snowpack had decreased 50% in 50 years.

I don't have to be a trained climatologist to know the fallacy of the original study. Or are you saying that the fact that I;m not a trained climatoligst means I can't make a valid judgment on that?

Ummm - the false data published and presented to the federal gov't as factual *was* dishonestly created and used by the official state climatologists. So you are incorrect in saying that this was media crap generating the fraudulent information.

Google some of the key words - check it out for yourself.

Perhaps you would agree with the mayor of Seattle: "'Obviously we're going to use whatever number the scientists at UW say is accurate,' Nickels (mayor of Seattle) spokesman Marty McOmber said." (ref:

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

I think the word "affecting" is a better fit with your meaning there. Or maybe you did mean it is creating the environment rather than just changing it.

If I broke my arm, I would much prefer that someone did nothing rather than to put a tourniquet on my leg, even though it might make *them* feel better.

Fact is we are at a solar maximum. Fact is the climate cycles naturally. In a few years, the same scientists will be warning of the coming ice age, as they did in the 1970's.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

Bill Putney:

You are demonstrating your misunderstanding of climate research. The researchers aren't claiming that humans caused global warming but that we are accelerating the process.

Never happened. Here is an example of popular media exploiting the minor fringe and giving them equal status as legitimate scientists (something still happening today with guys like Lindzen). The global cooling thing of the 70's was (primarily) Newsweek publishing the theory of two scientists who's ideas had already been discarded by mainstream researchers, who at that time already had begun researching global warming. Years later, Newsweek published an apology. This is why I warned you to avoid doing your 'research' in the popular media and stick to peer reviewed stuff.

Bill Putney:

You are so vague it's wasn't easy to find. I'm not familiar with the research but Googling produced pages full of documents making claims that the snowpack would be significantly reduced (40-60%) by 2050. When I add 'fake' to the search, the only relevant hits were posts by you and about a UW student faking data.

Ok... finally found it. Next time either provide a link or sufficient information that I don't need to spend 20 minutes finding some obscure newspaper blurb.

Some interesting facts...

• Albright, who lost his title is a part-time weather man, not a climatologist. He was not fired, just had his title stripped. Albright was previously the state climatologist but voluntarily gave up the position.

• Prof. Hartmann admitted the data was not peer reviewed but they decided to use the data anyway (!!! Red Flag !!! --> What did I say in my last post about sticking to peer reviewed data?).

• The data was presented by both Mote and Albright. I see nothing that pins the blame on Albright. I have to wonder if Mote's actions weren't reactionary and an attempt to deflect his share of the blame.

• The new Associate State Climatoligist is a plant pathologist.

Official statement on the matter:

The judgement was made by others, you just read it in the newspaper. I can't believe you would brag about it.

I didn't say this was media crap, we never discussed this subject before. Climate research doesn't hinge on the NW snowpack, either you are looking for excuses to disbelieve or you have not done your homework.

Article is gone but if citing the popular media is the best you can do, you're wasting my time (and your own).

Just Me (remove to reply):

Actually I meant clean as in sanitary, but clean powered would be great also.

Well, fair enough, but you're not doing the calculations. If somebody bought a Camry and drove 100,000 miles, let's just say it got 25 mpg. That's fair. Only 4000 gallons of gas. Now, in Europe, let's say gas is $7 a gallon for the next 6 or 7 years while this is happening. The fuel costs more than the car itself. ($28,000 for those of you that can't multiply)

Using your analysis, the hybrid becomes the preferred option. If you could cut that by a third ($9333.) by going to a hybrid, you'd save a lot more than the cost difference to move up to a Camry Hybrid. The prius makes even more economic sense in Europe. Toyota has no apparent interest in this. The question is, why not?

What that tells is that the actual cost of hybrids is much greater than the cost difference that we can currently see, comparing something like the Camry vs. the Camry Hybrid, or the Escape vs. Escape Hybrid. On the other hand, the ultra-super-clean diesels must be priced for profit, because that's what they sell in Europe.

Well, guess what. It's better than that. The Camry hybrid costs 41% more than the cheapest dirt-cheap Camry you can buy, and it's a pretty well-equipped car. It's really not a big premium over a comparable Camry. It's $1000 more than a 4-cylinder automatic Camry XLE, and they're trimmed about the same, depending on how pissy you are. The hybrid puts more power to the ground, of course, and it's lacking the standard sunroof of the XLE. That's about it. They're pretty close.

Last year, C&D or R&T took these type pairs (also including the civic and civic hybrid, and maybe something else) and they drove a great distance in all the cars. I think it was over 1000 miles. They determined for real the savings. Sometimes it was nothing, like on the Civic. It doesn't use any gas to begin with, and the hybrid doesn't do much either. But on the Escape, for instance, mpg was 18 vs 29 over the whole trip. Marginal in the US, right? But very economical if you were someplace with expensive gas. So where are the Hybrids? They're in the US, where they don't make economic sense.

So what about the battery? You're afraid that after 100,000 miles, the battery is shot. Do I get the option of spending $5000 on a battery, and then saving $9000 on a 2nd 100,000 miles? Is that the bad news? I'd take that deal, in Europe. I might even take it in Canada. I wouldn't take it in Saudi Arabia.

Okay, I lied here. They market the Prius worldwide. I'm not sure what else is available in Europe, but they've sold quite a number of Priuses in Europe.

Let's be honest, please.

There's a lot of false science going on today but that is being accepted as true science by people who should know better. You act like I only go by the popular media, and that's not true.

The global cooling thing of

You mean like the cherry-picked Cascade snowpack study.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

Now who is being mislead by media? Albright was Associate State Climatolgist. I never sadi he was fired. I accurately state that his title of ASSOCIATE STATE CLIMATOLOGIST was taken away.

From this article:

"The final chapter of the story occurred April 12, when Mote [the State Climatologist] stripped Mark Albright of his title as 'Associate State Climatologist.' After all the debate over the correct snowpack statistics, Mote told Albright 'to clear with me any communications on contentious subjects where the science was still under discussion' in an effort to limit Albright?s communications with others. In an email Mote said he wanted to control the way they 'communicate science to important stakeholders.'

"Albright refused to do that and, on the first day of a two-week vacation, he received an e-mail from Mote telling Albright he could no longer use the title. Albright continues as a research scientist at the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington."

So why don't you get your story straight and quit accusing me of not checking things out.

Yeah - the "scientists" representing the state of Washington published the fake data in a document titled "Scientific Consensus Statement".

From the same article: "Washington?s State Climatologist Phil Mote carefully repeated the statistic and used the underlying time period in numerous reports. The claim was picked up by politicians, environmental groups and others advocating dramatic steps to curb global warming. Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, who has been a leader in putting together a group of cities to fight global warming, used the statistic in an editorial in February 2007.

"The decline in snowpack is used to highlight the danger that climate change offers to the Northwest.For instance, last year, one of Nickels? advisors told The Seattle Times, ?We?re in a city in which the stakes are pretty high,? said Steve Nicholas, who directs Seattle?s Office of Sustainability and Environment. He said a 50 percent reduction in North Cascades snowpack has 'strained the city?s ability to manage drinking-water supplies.' In a state where salmon, hydroelectric power and water resources generally depend on snowpack, the claim is a potential blockbuster."

So while you want to argue that we need to ignore the media, here we have planners and policymakers believing the b.s. on false science.

THAT is what is so dangerous. I think *my* case is made.

And before, you were stating that Albright was merely a part-time weather mnn. You can't be that gullible.

So what. Albright, the previous one is a research scientis at the same UW - not a "part-time weather man" as you claimed.

Not sure what your point is. I assume you are not a climatologist either, so, by your criteria, you are no more or no less qualified than myself. Fact is we have brains and can evaluate information. I know b.s, when I see it.

Except the UW official statement alludes to it doing just that. And, like I said, and you continue to want to ignore and use to obfuscate, policy makers beileve the b.s. that comes out of these people who they and the state of Washington label as "scientists".

So you're going to cite a public relations statement from the state entity from which the b.s. originally emminated from.

You have proven my point of dishonesty on the part of your side of the argument in spades.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

BTW - for those interested in a very level-headed source, you might want to watch Glenn Beck's special "Exposed: The Climate of Fear - The Other Side of the Global Warming Debate" on CNN Headline News - Wednesday, May

2nd - 7 p.m., to be repeated at 9 p.m.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

Bill Putney:

Beck is an up and coming, ultra conservative, shock jock, radio host that will say anything to get ratings. Not the best source for unbiased or serious news and information.

A few tidbits:

"Glenn Beck is the conservative radio talk show host of The Glenn Beck Program ... and America Right on XM satellite radio"

"Glenn Beck called hurricane survivors in New Orleans 'scumbags,' said he 'hates' 9-11 families," Media Matters for America, September 9, 2005.

"Beck again warned that if Muslims don't 'act now' by 'step[ping] to the plate' to condemn terrorism, they 'will be looking through a razor wire fence at the West'," Media Matters for America, September 7, 2006.

"Beck cited debunked scientists to back his doubts that 'we're the ones causing' global warming," Media Matters for America, September 22, 2006.

^^^^ Nothing unbiased there. Make assumptions and then find sources to support them, it's the dittohead way to enlightenment.

Bill Putney:

And I accurately stated that he wasn't fired. Why do you have a problem with that?

Right, like I said, Albright was the state climatologist before Mote. Then Albright publically pointed out errors in Mote's report. Mote tried to prevent Albright from embarrassing Mote further and Albright wouldn't agree (who would?). Albright embarrassed Mote and Mote retaliated. This is a boss being abusive with his power, not a conspiracy.

You left a lot of facts out of your previous post, I don't know if you knew them or not but I suspect you didn't. You didn't check the facts and were too eager to believe it was part of a conspiracy because that reinforces the assumptions you have already made.

You're being defensive. The data was not peer reviewed and it was wrong. That is why the peer review process is so important and why you shouldn't accept op-ed pieces about climate change (or conspiracies) at face value. You didn't rely on radio show hosts or newspapers to teach you about engineering, don't rely on them to teach you about climate change.

And you are making my case that popular media (like Beck) is substantially at fault for giving equal time and credence to anyone who claims to have a valid counter argument to decades of research and peer reviewed data. No one, not you, not your mayor nor your state climatologist should be relying on the media or on data that hasn't been peer reviewed.

Look it up, his occupation was stated as part-time meteorologist when he took the position of state climatologist.

I didn't have to evaluate the data and neither did you, once it was reviewed the errors were found.

Haven't you been stating all along that the statement was full of errors?

It is their official statement about the error. Is there something specific you have an issue with?

BTW, what point of dishonesty are you talking about? I don't remember you leveling any accusations that I have been dishonest.

You obviously have never listened to Glen Beck. He has a regular show every evening on CNN Headline News.

That is true. Of course, to the left, anyone who questions what they do is subject to a smear campaign.

Both statements taken out of context. I guarantee you he wasn't speaking of all 9/11 famileis or all Katrina survivors. It is dishonest to take statements out of context to prove a point. But that's what your biased sources are saying. Once again, thanks for proving your own dishonesty and double standard.

Good for him. Of course to a lefty, that looks like a bad statement.

That's a good think to question false science and the false scientists, isn't it? But that would make him a bad person because he is questioning something dear to the left.

No - he didn't make assumptions. He showed the false sceince that is out there. The people he debunked were dishonestly influencing the public's belief and the actions of policymakers - AND STILL ARE. Exposing something that is true to educate is not biased. It is showing what is true, as opposed to your habut of creating lies to discredit.

You have no integrity with which to make such a comment. You said the Associate Climatolgist for the state of Washington was a part-time weather man - made it up out of thin air to discredit someone who challenged the religion of the left. Beck exposed people who deserved exposing.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

Once again: For those interested, you might want to watch Glenn Beck's special "Exposed: The Climate of Fear - The Other Side of the Global Warming Debate" on CNN Headline News - Wednesday, May 2nd - 7 p.m., to be repeated at 9 p.m. Consider watching and then decide if he makes his case.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')