This Weeks Reason Why Hybrids are Bad for the Earth

I wonder who paid for that, oil or the big 3?

 

Well they are my favorite Daschound.

 

From Wikipedia:

"Energy Probe is a Canada non-governmental organization which promotes alternatives to coal and nuclear power.[1] Energy Probe's executive director, Lawrence Solomon, is a prominent climate change denier and author of [ame="http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/0980076315?ie=UTF8&tag=probeintern-20&linkCode=as2&camp=15121&creative=330641&creativeASIN=0980076315"]The Deniers[/ame], a book which lionizes climate change denial. Energy Probe was founded in 1969 as a project of the Pollution Probe Foundation."

From their website:

"Energy Probe is a consumer and environmental research team, active in the fight against nuclear power, ..."

The bio of the author, on his organization's website, lists no scientific training or academic credentials of any type. He's just an activist.

And, apparently, he's one of those guys who will, by turns, say that global warming does not exist (his book, which is advertised on the home page of his organization) and global warming is good (this article). If he could at least pick one I might consider his arguments.

BTW the increased growth of green plants has been known for a long, long time. So this isn't news, just spin.

But even from the spin, a little work can lead to new information.

Looking more closely at this issue, about half of photosynthesis (NPP) occurs in the ocean, half on land. Hey, guess what, the NPP of the ocean declined 6% over this period.

NASA - Top Story - OCEAN PLANT LIFE SLOWS DOWN AND ABSORBS LESS CARBON - Sept. 16, 2003

They attribute it to the possible effect of warmer surface waters limiting the mixing of nutrients from deeper waters -- in other words, a more strongly temperature-stratified ocean, due to higher surface temps.

So, all of the net increase is due to more NPP on land.

Oh, and by the way, the NASA scientists don't attribute the increase to the direct effect of CO2, completely contrary to the original post. They attribute it primarily to more water, heat, and light in the right places. Primarily, the productivity increase is due to a longer growing season, not to the direct fertilizing effects of higher C02.

NASA - Top Story - GLOBAL GARDEN GROWS GREENER - June 05, 2003

This accords well with actual experimental data on C02 fertilization, summarized nicely here on realclimate.org. Based on those experiments, the C02 fertilization effect should be quite small.

RealClimate

So, to put it correctly, this guy's full of sh*t. It's not the direct effect of C02, it's the effect of higher temperatures.

 

a very popular car show studied the ford focus, toyota prius, vw jetta diesel, and the smart car, the vw jetta tested .01 tons of emissions higher than the prius, averaged 2 mpg less in the city, and 3-4 higher on the highway(75mph). sounds like i'm going diesel.

 

And pay more for fuel? Why? It must be to get the benefits of that famous VW Diesel reliability :_>

 

Better go watch the show again because you got you "facts" wrong. I'm guessing you already like diesels judging by your username and the fact you signed up to a Prius forum just to say that. I hope I'm wrong about the last part but I'm not about the first. Please list the exact emissions ratings they gave for each car and the exact emissions by chemical.