Don’t Buy an Electric Car April 6, 2013

I live in California, home to all sorts of environmental nonsense.

We couldn’t build our house where we wanted to because of a tiny plant you can hardly see and a grasshopper that might – just might – live there.

It cost a fortune to replace our perfectly good septic system with a more environmentally friendly one to meet new codes. We’re just two people living on 10 acres. What do they think comes out of us, plastic?
You wouldn’t believe how many hoops we had to jump through and environmental consultants and regulators we had to pay off. It was a real nightmare.
Still, I’m not a green Grinch. Our house is entirely powered by an enormous solar array. My wife has owned a Honda Civic Hybrid since it first came out in 2003. It just turned over 100,000 miles today. It’s a good car.
When it comes to energy and the environment, I like to think I’m a pretty sensible, practical person. But I wouldn’t buy an electric car if you paid me.

Here’s why:
It’s not a piece of fruit. My wife buys organic chicken, eggs, vegetables, and fruit even though they’re way more expensive. It’s better for our health and the animals and farmers. I get that. But a car is the most expensive thing you own that depreciates – a lot. The cars we drive meet California’s tough emission standards. They don’t hurt my family or the chickens. I’m cool with that.

The car I want to drive doesn’t come in electric. There are two kinds of people in this world: car people and everyone else. I am a car person. I’m very particular about how I get from point A to point B. I have no idea why. Maybe it’s an extension of my male ego or a character flaw. Whatever. All I know is, it’s a free country, it’s my money, and the car I want to drive doesn’t come in electric.

It isn’t cost effective. I spent my career in the high-tech industry. When I tell you that it’s smart to be a late adopter of anything new, especially technology, you should listen. In time, competition increases, prices come down, and reliability goes up. Let rich people like rock stars and actors buy Teslas and Volts. They’re not for you.
It’s different. We bought the Honda Civic Hybrid because it looked just like a regular Civic. We embrace that philosophy. We don’t do fads. We don’t want to be different or trendy. We just want to be practical and sensible. Hybrids are practical, sensible cars.

You have to plug it in. Hybrids are great. They’ve come down the technology learning curve. They’re actually more efficient than standard gas powered engines. They deliver more bang for the buck. They don’t have to be subsidized. And, more importantly, you don’t have to plug them in. Ever.

The whole government subsidy thing. I bought a solar array. It was government subsidized. Do I think it should have been? No.

But for our needs, solar power made fiscal sense. I’m not going to cut off my nose to spite my face. Do I think the U.S. government should subsidize specific companies like Solyndra and Fisker? No. That’s just plain idiotic. That’s for venture capital and private equity firms with limited partners with beaucoup bucks and high risk tolerance, not for a government that owes $17 trillion or American taxpayers who can’t pay their bills.

Who says electric power is clean? When China has electric cars, they will be powered by electricity from coal plants that pollute the atmosphere, big-time. The assumption that, just because a car is electric, it must be green, clean, renewable, whatever, is nonsense. Just to be clear, I don’t have a problem with where our electricity comes from. I think we should drill, frack, and nuke to our heart’s content. I want America to actually export energy. What I don’t get is why anyone would think an electric car is in any way greener than a hybrid. It’s not.

I don’t like dumb fads. I guess the bottom line is that I don’t like the color green for the sake of being green. In other words, I don’t like fads, especially fads that are fueled by overblown hypocrites and bad science. In case you’re wondering, by “hypocrites,” I mean Al Gore. And by “bad science,” I mean man-made global warming, climate change, or whatever the hypocrites are calling it these days.

Here’s an idea. If you’ve got some extra cash you can part with, give it to a good charity like the Wounded Warrior Project. You know, the folks who are crippled while fighting to defend our freedom, our way of life. The folks our government should be spending what little money it has to take care of but doesn’t. Don’t waste it on an electric car.
Steve Tobak is a Silicon Valley-based strategy consultant and former senior executive of the technology industry.

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Lightbulb alert! Another one bites the dust February 2, 2013

Created in the 1930s, these fluorescent tubes are now obsolete.

The old joke, “How many (blonds, lawyers, etc.) does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” just got more complicated! The old  flourescent tubes that used to illuminate millions of homes, and still light up many garages, workrooms and office buildings, bid their final adieu on Saturday.

If you have one of these old fixtures in your home, you’ll need to know your options when the lights go out. T12 bulbs, engineered in the 30′s and used for over 50 years, are no longer being manufactured.

I don’t have that particular fixture in my house, but I still get overwhelmed walking down the lightbulbaisle of the hardware store.

Our choices used to be 100, 75, or 60 watts, single wattage or 3-way, and maybe a few different shapes.  Now the choices of CFL, halogen, halogen incandescent and LED are growing annually. Luckily, with increased choices come improvements in lighting quality and energy efficiencies.

There are even 3-way and dimmable CFL’s and LED’s now, and the lighting quality has improved by leaps and bounds over first-generation offerings.

I found some great primers on the changes in lighting technology, and you’ll want to take a look before you head out to pick up any replacement bulb. You’ll pay more at the register, but with bulbs that last 50,000 hours and use 75% LESS energy than the old incandescents, the savings will light up your smile! (pun intended) I think even Edison himself would approve.

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How will the Army feed its BigBelly? Army GOs GREEN! January 26, 2013

Dec. 5, 2012: Rich Valcourt checks on a BigBelly solar-powered waste disposal unit at Natick Soldier Systems Center, Mass. NSSC has 12 of the units positioned across the installation. (Bob Reinert, USAG Natick)

To reduce, reuse and recycle, the U.S. Army plans to start stuffing its BigBelly.

The Net Zero Strategy is the cornerstone lf the Army’s commitment to go green, a plan to ensure the future Army has the same access to energy, water, land and natural resources as today’s. NetZero has five key components: reduction, re-purpose, energy recovery and disposal, recycling and composting.

Enter BigBelly.

Formally known as the BigBelly Solar Intelligent Waste and Recycling Collection System, it’s a compactor powered by solar panels that can contain as much as 150 gallons of trash thanks to its self-compacting mechanism.

According to the manufacturer, it can hold five times more trash than your standard bin.

As early as 2008, Georgia’s Fort McPherson and Fort Gillem rolled out BigBellies. Now Natick Soldier Systems Center in Massachusetts, home to innovation for the soldier, has also converted to BigBelly, purchasing twelve.

NSSC aims to give soldiers the best equipment in the world, focusing on developing advanced food, clothing, shelters and airdrop systems.

While Natick may be one of the smallest Army installations, it still has a whopping 78 acres. At the end of last year, it distributed the units throughout this expanse to collect waste.

Natick also purchased two indoor BigBellies that plug into electrical outlets instead of using the sun for power.

The model Natick has purchased weighs 170 pounds and can contain 50 gallons of waste.

Feeding the beast
Solar panels on the exterior continuously charge the battery during the day. The batteries allow a unit to function for more than three days without direct sunlight.

These batteries power the sensors, compacting and wireless communications.

Inside a BigBelly, sensors detect how full the container and trigger a compaction cycle. Each unit can tell its operator how many times it has compacted, when it is close to full and when it is indeed full.

A BigBelly owner can monitor how often each unit is opened and compacted, which are used most frequently, along with other statistics from his or her computer.

Each unit communicates with servers over cellular networks that transfer the data updates to the CLEAN Management Console. It can even provide real-time data by satellite, where it can be monitored by a standard computer.

Made in the USA at sites in Kentucky and Vermont, the BigBelly exterior is made from recycled U.S. steel and recycled plastics, such as leftover cuttings from the disposable diaper manufacturing process.

The BigBelly advantage
In the civilian space, the company’s research suggests that more than $2,000 annually can be shaved off collection with each trash receptacle in a downtown area.

Rather than crews emptying bins that are only partially full, the status reports BigBelly provides means crews can conserve time and effort by limiting collection to bins that are confirmed full by the system.

Cities like Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago and others now use the technology to collect all of their waste.  This smart approach means the Army, not to mention the rest of the military, can save money and better allocate resources, while reducing their carbon footprint.

Natick is a research and development facility with a laboratory that uses hazardous materials, so it also has particular environmental challenges. A new “Green Team” intends to introduce certified “Green Laboratories” and “Green Offices” for the center.

The goal for Army-wide Net Zero Energy installations: producing as much energy on site as it uses over the course of a year.

Now THAT’s going green.

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Hottest year ever? Skeptics question revisions to climate data January 12, 2013

July 6, 2012: Six-year-old Alexander Merrill of Sioux Falls, S.D., cools off in a cloud of mist at the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, Neb., as temperatures reached triple digits. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)

2012 was a scorcher, but was it the warmest year ever?

A report released this week by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) called it “the warmest year ever for the nation.” Experts agree that 2012 was a hot year for the planet. But it’s that report — and the agency itself — that’s drawing the most heat today.

“2012 [wasn't] necessarily warmer than it was back in the 1930s … NOAA has made so many adjustments to the data it’s ridiculous,” Roy Spencer, a climatologist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, told FoxNews.com.

A brutal combination of a widespread drought and a mostly absent winter pushed the average annual U.S. temperatures up last year, to 55.32 degrees Fahrenheit according to the government. That’s a full degree warmer than the old record set in 1998 — and breaking such records by a full degree is unprecedented, scientists say.

But NOAA has adjusted the historical climate data many times, skeptics point out, most recently last October. The result, says popular climate blogger Steve Goddard: The U.S. now appears to have warmed slightly more than it did before the adjustment.

“The adjusted data is meaningless garbage. It bears no resemblance to the thermometer data it starts out as,” Goddard told FoxNews.com. He’s not the only one to question NOAA’s efforts.

“Every time NOAA makes adjustments, they make recent years [relatively] warmer. I am very suspicious, especially for how warm they have made 2012,” Spencer said.

The newly adjusted data set is known as “version 2.5,” while the less adjusted data is called “version 2.0.”

NOAA defended its adjustments to FoxNews.com.

Government climate scientist Peter Thorne, speaking in his personal capacity, said that there was consensus for the adjustments.

“These have been shown through at least three papers that have appeared in the past 12 months to be an improvement,” he said.

NOAA spokesman Scott Smullen agreed.

“These kinds of improvements get us even closer to the true climate signal, and help our nation even more accurately understand its climate history,” he said.

One problem in weather monitoring occurs when there is a “break point” — an instance where a thermometer is moved, or something producing heat is built near the thermometer, making temperature readings before and after the move no longer comparable.

“Version 2.5 improved the efficiency of the algorithm…. more of the previously undetected break points are now accounted for,” Smullen explained.

He added that the report also recalculated “the baseline temperatures [that] were first computed nearly 20 years ago in an era with less available data and less computer power.”

Spencer says that the data do need to be adjusted — but not the way NOAA did it. For instance, Spencer says that urban weather stations have reported higher temperatures partly because, as a city grows, it becomes a bit hotter. But instead of adjusting directly for that, he says that to make the urban and rural weather readings match, NOAA “warmed the rural stations’ [temperature readings] to match the urban stations” — which would make it seem as if all areas were getting a bit warmer.

Aaron Huertas, a spokesman for the Union of Concerned Scientists, argued that the debate over the adjustments misses the bigger picture.

“Since we broke the [temperature] record by a full degree Fahrenheit this year, the adjustments are relatively minor in comparison,”

“I think climate contrarians are doing what Johnny Cochran did for O.J. Simpson — finding anything to object to, even if it obscures the big picture. It’s like they keep finding new ways to say the ‘glove doesn’t fit’ while ignoring the DNA evidence.”

Climate change skeptics such as blogger and meteorologist Anthony Watts are unconvinced.

“Is history malleable? Can temperature data of the past be molded to fit a purpose? It certainly seems to be the case here, where the temperature for July 1936 reported … changes with the moment,” Watts told FoxNews.com.

“In the business and trading world, people go to jail for such manipulations of data.”

 

Climate blogger Steven Goddard, who in the past helped program government climate models, has put together a graph to show how the adjustment warmed the most recent years and cooled past years. (Steven Goddard)

Lit Motors Builds a Car that Breaks the Rules December 20, 2012

A San Francisco startup has developed a car that could be a game changer for the auto industry.

In a large garage in San Francisco’s SOMA District, a company called Lit Motors is building a car unlike any other.

The company’s C-1 is half the size of a Smartcar and designed for a driver with one passenger in the back seat. But despite its small size, the vehicle is capable of driving in all weather, with gyroscopically stabilized wheel technology that prevents it from tipping over. The C-1 is fully electric, and can drive up to 200 miles on a single charge.

In fact, the C-1 isn’t really a car at all: It’s officially classified as a motorcycle, but CEO Daniel Kim says that the vehicle resists classification.

“It’s disrupting the automotive space,” says Kim.

According to Kim, it’s a concept whose time has come. Today’s youths are less interested in buying cars than they are in buying iPhones and other gadgets: Car ownership among people between ages 18 and 34 is down by 30 percent in the last five years.

“Younger people don’t look forward to buying a car,” says Kim. “The cost of ownership of a car is really expensive, so a lot of people are veering away from owning a vehicle, and moving towards ridesharing services and public transportation.”

While motorcycle and scooter sales are up, “that’s limited because a lot of people have safety concerns about these types of vehicles,” says Kim.

Lit Motors’ C-1 bridges the gap between a car and a motorcycle, providing the safety of a car without the high ongoing costs of ownership. Because the vehicle is electric, commuting costs are negligible: “You can get to work and back for less than 50 cents a day,” says Kim.

As for the vehicle’s purchase cost, the ticket price is estimated to be close to $20,000 for early adopters, but that cost will go down significantly–to around $16,000–once the product gains sufficient market share to enable bulk manufacturing. The C-1 is slated for initial release in May 2014, and more than 250 people have already put down a deposit to buy one as soon as it’s available.

Impressively, this engineering marvel doesn’t come from a well-funded automaker, but from a lean San Francisco startup with just 10 employees. Kim and his staff built the prototype by hand, using its own patented technology. The total cost to produce the prototype was less than $800,000.

“We’re at the same place that Tesla was at after $7 million in investment after only $780,000. We’ve been incredibly resourceful,” says Kim.

Right now, the company is working with venture capitalists to secure additional funding, which will help them perfect the prototype and bring it to market. Kim says that, given how much they’ve done with minimal funding, investors are eager to work with them.

Once the C-1 is widely available, Kim believes it could have a transformative effect on the fledgling green automotive industry.

“Right now, electric cars are not sustainable,” he says. “The average electric car battery pack is four times larger than ours, with one-third the range. If every car in the U.S. had that battery pack, we would need to produce four times more energy to compensate for that. Where is all that energy going to come from?”

The Lit Motors vehicle provides a sustainable alternative that could help curb U.S. dependence on oil.

“New technologies are propelling the world forward,” says Kim. “Cars need to catch up.”

Video on Lit Motors:   http://bcove.me/tmyd6ze7

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Will E15 fuel damage your car? December 4, 2012

When it comes to ethanol, AAA wants to keep things simple. At least until drivers are better educated.

The American Automobile Association is asking the EPA to suspend sales of E15 gasoline because a survey of its members found that 95 percent of them don’t know what it is and could unknowingly damage their cars as a result.
E15, a mix of 85 percent gasoline and 15 percent ethanol, was recently approved for sale by the EPA as a way to increase the use of renewable fuels, but it comes with a caveat.

While E10 (a 10 percent ethanol blend) is approved for nearly all gasoline-powered vehicles, by law E15 can be used only by cars and light trucks from the 2001 model year and later, because it could have an adverse affect on the engines and emissions systems of older vehicles. According to the Renewable Fuels Association, 62 percent of the vehicles on the road today are cleared to use it, and regulations require pumps dispensing E15 to be clearly labeled with this information, but AAA thinks more needs to be done.

In a statement, AAA’s President and CEO, Robert Darbelnet wrote that “the sale and use of E15 should be suspended until additional gas pump labeling and consumer education efforts are implemented to mitigate problems for motorists and their vehicles,” adding that “consumers should carefully read pump labels and know their auto manufacturer’s recommendations to help prevent any problems from E15.”

According to the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, those problems could include engine damage caused by the corrosive ethanol, even in the late model cars that the EPA says are good to go. The organization, which represents 12 major automakers, including Ford, GM and Chrysler, says its own long-term durability tests found that E15 could cause a host of issues for even newer cars, including misfires, increased emissions and costly damage to engine components like valve stems and cylinder heads.

Its members seem to agree.

Only flex-fuel vehicles designed to burn fuel blends that contain up to 85 percent ethanol, 2013 model year Fords, 2012 Model year GM cars and Porsches built since 2001 are specifically approved by their manufacturers to use E15.

BMW, Chrysler, Nissan, Toyota and Volkswagen have already said that their warrantees will not cover E15-related damage, while eight others, including Ford and GM, say E15 use may void coverage on unapproved cars. That leaves just 12 percent of the vehicles on the road fully compliant with E15, according to the Alliance.

In July, a service station in Lawrence, Kansas, became the first in the nation to offer E15 and AAA says that only a handful of stations have followed suit, mostly in Corn Belt states, so it wants the EPA to act now before the fuel is widely adopted.

Although EPA has not responded directly to AAA regarding the request, it has issued a statement saying it shares the association’s concerns over E15 awareness, but that the labels “will help ensure consumers are aware about which vehicles are approved for its use.”

The head of the Renewable Fuels Association was less diplomatic. According to the Detroit News, the Association’s president and CEO, Bob Dinneen, accused AAA of being the back pocket of the petroleum industry, saying that “the fact is E15 has been the most aggressively and comprehensively tested fuel in the history of the agency.”

The EPA regulation does not mandate the sale of E15, but simply allows it. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, many serviced station operators are taking a wait and see attitude before investing in the infrastructure needed to supply it.

In the meantime, you don’t have to travel to the Midwest to see what E15 is capable of in the right machine. Just tune into the Daytona 500 in February. NASCAR’s Sprint Cup cars have been using the fuel since 2011. With the full support of their manufacturers, of course.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2012/12/04/will-e15-fuel-damage-your-car/?intcmp=obinsite#ixzz2E7tiWNRz

AARGH! We’re ALL DOOMED, bellows UN – right on schedule November 22, 2012

It REALLY is the last chance this time, honest. Ho hum

With the next round of international climate change talks looming, the usual sources are issuing the usual warnings that if massive cuts in carbon emissions aren’t agreed then we’re definitely really doomed this time.

This time it’s the UN Environment Programme, which has just lobbed out a report saying that the “Greenhouse Gas Emissions Gap” is out of control:

Greenhouse gas emissions levels are now around 14 per cent above where they need to be in 2020.

Instead of declining, concentration [sic] of warming gases like carbon dioxide (CO2) are actually increasing in the atmosphere-up around 20 per cent since 2000.

If no swift action is taken by nations, emissions are likely to be at 58 gigatonnes (Gt) in eight years’ time … in part as a result of projected economic growth in key developing economies …

Previous assessment reports have underlined that emissions need to be on average at around 44 Gt or less in 2020 to lay the path for the even bigger reductions needed at a cost that is manageable.

“This report is a reminder that time is running out,” comments Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. But she insists: “the policy tools to allow the world to stay below a maximum 2 degrees Celsius are still available to governments”.

The full report can be read in pdf here.

Comment

Of course Ms Figueres is right. If the world’s governments choose to they can easily achieve the carbon reductions called for by the UNEP, IPCC and similar organisations: provided they can maintain authority over their citizens, anyway.

They might even be able to do so without destroying the world economy, by moving largely to nuclear power. The Fukushima disaster – following which not a single person is set to be measurably harmed by radiation – has shown that nuclear power is safe, and new research strongly suggests that it issustainable for the foreseeable future too. However, these facts are not widely known and such a course is not being considered by any government.

Unfortunately the alternative, massive use of renewable power, means economic disaster and global poverty; and indeed all the more honest green campaigning groups admit this. They generally suggestthat the human race should abandon any aspiration to greater wealth (or even maintenance of the same wealth, in the case of rich nations), and focus instead on some other goal.

But realistically, even if a few governments are willing to inflict misery on their people in pursuit of green goals – and some are, notably the British government - China and other developing powers are not. It seems unlikely that the US will move to weaken itself unilaterally as China’s power grows, so it matters not at all that a few western European nations are content to hobble their own economies.

So nothing will happen at the Doha talks, and the carbon gap will appear. Given that global temperatures have obstinately refused to go up over the past decade and more, and even if they do the consequences seem likely to be fairly minor, that may not be such a bad thing after all.