Comments MikeCapone has made

Truth

Wind turbines are beautiful

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Good job

Excellent interview. Very interesting. Thanks.On A conversation with the makers of Who Killed the Electric Car? posted 3 years, 5 months ago 7 Responses

Yep

And the first hybrid version actually came out in 2001. We're so behind..

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Ridiculous

Not sure where I read that, but apparently there's so little demand for it for human consumption that they're making dog food with dead whales.

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After a quick scan

He doesn't seem to actually address much of the issue raised with the gasoline rebates but instead repeats the party line of "GM makes tons of 30+mpg cars! lots of E85 flex fuel vehicles! etc"

That's not very convincing considering that in the first claim they probably only look at highway fuel efficiency, and they probably count all their rebadge models as different cars.

It's also pretty well documented how GM is making E85 flex fuel cars to get alt. fuel credits to lower it's CAFE average and make more high-margin SUVs. Most of these flex fuel cars are driven with 100% gasoline and most of the time the owners of these vehicles don't even know that they can't put ethanol in them (not that E85 is available in most places).

The fact remains that trying to bribe people into buying gas guzzlers isn't very good.

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Peak Oil

Well, peak oil will probably change all that.. I doubt india will be able to "feed the world' when oil is $150/barrel (or whatever).On An interview with foodie author Michael Pollan posted 3 years, 5 months ago 5 Responses

Reel Mower

And of course, the mowing should be done with a reel mower..On Umbra on herbicides and lawns posted 3 years, 6 months ago 6 Responses

Gore

Can't wait to see that film. Good to see it's getting good coverage.. Hopefully online word-of-mouth will help it get seen by lots of people who would not normally go.

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I wasn't sure either

Hi Dave,

Mike from Treehugger here..

When I first had the idea for that series of posts, I wasn't sure if people would participate. Nothing worse than asking your readers to share and seeing a blank comment section for days..

Anyway, glad it worked! Other cities to come soon, and I'll make sure that every post in the series link to the others so that you can navigate between them easily.

Thanks for reading,

Michael G. Richard

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Libel

It's like with writing something false in a newspaper; the lie is always bigger than the retractation, and it is what sticks in people's mind.

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How can you lose?

Even if there's clouds or snow, it's still a positive thing. If you are still connected to the grid, there is no real inconvenient to losing power more often than someone in the desert, f.ex.

As for money, if the panels pay for themselves in 10 years instead of 8 years, is that such a big deal? As with hybrids, the fact that the technology isn't free and doesn't pay for itself really fast shouldn't be held against it; if your parents build a jacuzzi, is it going to pay for itself? There's no such thing as a free lunch.

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ARGH!

Okay, I give up now since you won't stop putting words in my mouth and seeing this in a binary way.

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Odo

"I could understand if you just hadn't though about this much yet, David and Mike, but you might stop and think about it before falling into a "defense" based on differences without distinction.

Mike tried to tell me "peak oil" was unique, and not like electricity and natural gas.  Why does google have 399 hits for "peak natural gas"?  Not a huge number perhaps, but it shows I'm not the only one thinking this way."

I did not say oil was unique; I said it was different from electricity and cookies.

And btw, one of these hits for peak natural gas is mine, as I wrote a post about it on Treehugger.

But anyway, the difference between oil and natural gas and electricity, for example, is that you can build new hydro, solar, wind farms and (gasp) nuclear plants, but you can't create more fossil fuel supplies once it has truly peaked (at least not on the human timescale).

The difference with fossil fuel is on the supply side, not the demand.

If there is a sudden surge in the demand of cookies or electricity, prices will spike, then new factories and plants will be built, then the prices will go down again. But with oil, after the peak it's all downhill...

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Dave's point

Isn't Dave's point that oil is different from electricity or cookies or whatever because in the current way it is allocated if you, say, reduce the US' consumption by 5mbpd, the price of oil will fall on the market and this will allow other countries to just buy more of it that they couldn't afford before?

Which is why the solution isn't efficiency ALONE. It's part of the solution, and on the local level it makes a difference, but ALONE it is not enough.

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Thanks for reminding me

I'm behind on my guest blogging for the Oil Change campaign..

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Trackback

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/12/brief_for_georg.php

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:D

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/09/glass_walkway_o.php

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How would it be a pretext?

How would it be a pretext?

Isn't it actually something that the US should be doing (taking care of its poor)?

Also, isn't it what the free market is about; you can sell to who you want, at the price you want, and they are free to accept or not, etc.

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Thanks

Thanks for the links. We quite dug your post on thanksgiving and linked to it, not sure if you've noticed.

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Biodiesel

One of my TH posts got frontpage on Digg today, and there was some good and some not so insightful comments.

http://digg.com/science/Breakthrough_in_Biodiesel_Production

Many people didn't know what they were talking about, but a few were knowledgeable enough to not let the discussion degenerate.

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Important question

Will the CAFE standards remain the same, or will they soften them up so that automakers don't have to change anything?

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Wow

What a horrible man that Pat Robertson is.

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Soon!

Don't worry, I've been working on a post about this for treehugger since the story came out. It'll be published today (sunday).

Thanks for reading!

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Bradsher

This is consistent with Bradsher's book: "High & Mighty: The Dangerous Rise of the SUV".

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More craziness

This is all incredibly sad.

"Hit them while they're down" is the Republican's motto, it seems. It can't be long until it turns against them.

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Communication

Well, if we really wanted to we could have a pretty big impact. Educating the public to do something takes years (ie. seatbelts, recycling), but it can be done.

Never has human civilization had so many and so powerful communication tools. If we used 0.5% of Television's potential to tell people tips that help them save money AND conserve resources, we'd get somewhere after a while. Now add newspapers, the internet, billboards, etc..

But no. All these powerful tools must be used to peddle mickey mouse plastic crap and convince people that SUVs are cool.. Meh.

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Another point of view

"If a significant number of women were not attracted to the status conveyed by driving a $60,000 hummer, men would not drive them. It is a time-honored fact of life: cool cars are chick magnets."

I don't remember where I read that, but apparently most men are mislead when it comes to what car will attract chicks.

Some guy on a message board said that when he owned a Porsche, everytime he went to the pump a bunch of balding middle-aged men would come talk to him and ask him questions about turbos and such.

Now that he owns a Toyota Echo Hatchback (sold in Canada but not the US, known in the rest of the world as the Yaris or Vitz), a bunch of women in their 20s come ask him questions and start conversations with him about how cute his car is and such.

Besides, if you have good self-esteem and no penis complex, you don't need to buy a phallic car.

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Realclimate

I tend to defer to RealClimate.org when it comes to this kind of stuff:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=181

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If find it very conceivable

They will find all kinds of excuses to explain it, but basically it is consistent with the kind of conservative view of government that has been pushed ever since the early 80s.

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Funny and sad

It's always something to realize how many people just can't imagine a world that is different from our own.

"What? No big cars to drive around our 60 miles commutes? What are we going to do?"

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Batteries

Exactly, the added batteries are not dead weight if they are added to the main batteries, it's just that their "plug-in" benefits are limited to the first miles.

But with better, non-DIY batteries, it would probably be pretty easy to reduce price and augment the plug-in range.

And what if you drive only ~20 miles per day on average?

As for the monetary payback on the batteries: People don't buy cars to save money. They don't pay for mooroofs and bigger engines and mag tires to save money. Why should extra batteries save money? These batteries are there to save oil and reduce pollution. Otherwise, I doubt that he'd have invested in them.

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8-o

Holy!

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Heh!

Congrats Mr. Superstar! ;P

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Well

This is just another reason why we must stop heavily subsidizing bad foods - or at least bring organic and other "health" foods to the level of subsidies - so that it's more about choice than money.

It may be a bit counter-intuitive, but as Dr. David Suzuki explains, organic farms cost less to operate than industrial farms because a big part of the costs are fertilizers/pesticides/herbicides.

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Problem with car journalists

EPA figures are off for all cars, not just hybrids.

I noticed a trend: Almost all articles will compared an hybrid's real world mpg (which is easy to find because of the fuel economy feedback in hybrids) to the EPA mpg figures of other cars.

Car journalists need to realize that you either compare EPA to EPA, or real-world to real-world. You can't mix and match and get anything worth a damn.

Another thing is that car journalists don't usually drive for fuel economy; it's not their car, they probably don't pay for gas and usually just cite EPA mpg figures in their articles, so they don't have to calculate mpg during their tests. They just floor it and drive hard and have fun.

No wonder they get crappy mileage on hybrids, they probably get in the 10-20 mpg range with most other cars...

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Denmark

I know that in Denmark many farmers build wind turbines on their property and get revenues of around $200,000/year from one turbine.

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That's pretty cool

My father has been talking about community wind farms for a while now.

I'll post about it on TreeHugger, thanks for the tip.

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Not even that sure

"While a globally warmed world is likely to produce greater crop yields"

I remember reading somewhere (sorry, can't remember exact source) that photosynthesis is less efficient above certain temperatures and that a change in the global average could cause some problems on that front.On In a warmed world, even food won't be as good for you posted 4 years, 4 months ago 4 Responses

Veggie

I agree with you Rachel, except that I'd recommend eating vegetarian all the time :)

You might want to check this out:

http://www.alternet.org/story/12162

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Environmental coverage

Going to CNN for enviro-coverage is like going to FOX News for the truth. Heh.

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Good

A step in the right direction for sure. Hopefully it's not in the printed literature only because they added it afterwards because people complained; I'd think that in the next batch it will be printed along with the rest.

And thanks for linking to my post, but I think that people would be better served by going here.

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Congrats

I voted for you.

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Or the really simple solution

Get your hubby a Prius if you can afford it. I don't know any eco-head who wouldn't want one, and it's the highest rated (94%) car as far as owner satisfaction is concerned.On Umbra on whether to eco-retrofit an old car posted 4 years, 7 months ago 12 Responses

Hmm

"Put an "Every Day Is Earth Day" bumper sticker on your car and drive around town!"

Or maybe driving around town just to show off a sticker is not such a sound environmental idea, except if you have a solar car :DOn Ten ways to turn that global frown upside down posted 4 years, 7 months ago 8 Responses

Vegans

Amiash,

Sorry if this post isn't a confession, but I just want to point out something pretty obvious that many people don't think about; there are tons of unobstrusive vegans and vegetarians out there, the reason why you don't see them is because they are unobstrusive! If they weren't, you'd notice them!

That's the same with everything. When you think that all X are Y, then think that maybe it's just a distortion, and that you only notice those X out of the total of them, and the others just blend in the crowd.

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My sins

I sometimes use new plastic bags.

I'm ovo-lacto vegetarian, which means that I still eat eggs and dairy (but only if they are part of a recipe, not on their own, and as little as possible).

I take public transportation 85% of the time, and the rest I try to drive very conservatively (I coast a lot and keep steady acceleration), but I feel that I should be doing more by getting a bike. It's just too bad because my city isn't very bike-friendly. I do try to walk more, though.

I try to use as little electricity as possible around the house, yet I leave my computer on all the time. I feel less guilty because the CPU is crunching climateprediction.net data, and because here the electricity comes from hydro, but still, I shouldn't do that.

That's all I can think of for now.On So tell us ... what's your dirty little environmental secret? posted 4 years, 7 months ago 84 Responses

EE

I agree completely that efficiency is crucial, if only for the simple facts that we won't be able to complete a transition to clean energy sources if we use up as much energy as we do now.

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Urban Agriculture

..is what they call it.

David Suzuki wrote about it in his book "Good News For a Change", and I wrote about that chapter of the book here and here in my blog.

I've also started growing tomatoes in my house :D I figure that if I have to buy a few less of the things that grew with petrochemical fertilizer, were sprayed with chemicals and shipped by truck, I'm doing a good thing.

Besides, seeds are cheap (or you could just get the seeds from store-bought tomatoes...)

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Exactly

These things need to be common knowledge. It's insane to believe that the invasion of Iraq would have happened without oil. It's all about how cooperative with the US the people in power are, not whether they are democratically elected (saudi arabia, anyone?) or even peaceful.

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GreenHybrid.com

http://www.greenhybrid.com/compare/mileage/

You can find a forum and a database there.

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As for compromise

At first, I tried to think of what trade offs would be acceptable. But the more I thought about it, and the more I tried to transpose that kind of thinking in the long-term (the real test of sustainability), the more I realized that it didn't make sense.

I ended up voting for "none of the above".

I mean, if we believe that murder is wrong, what cases would we compromise for? Would we be willing to kill people if it helped the economy? etc.

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Great!

When can we expect this?

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Speaking of milk

Have a look at this.

Not to mention this...

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Definitions..

I wonder what is their definition of the word "permanent"...

:(

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ELF

"Godshall said one extremist group called the Environmental Liberation Front"

Actually, they were probably talking about the Earth Liberation Front...

If they can't even get that right, it doesn't augur well.

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Awesome!

I'm still reading "Good News for a Change" by David Suzuki and it is very well explained how ecosystems need their top predators to be healthy.

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Fencing

Glad you found it interesting. I think that we must get better at recognizing these tactics and finding ways to counter them.

I plan on writing some more about framing and fencing soon on my blog, but it's great to see Gristmill write about it because you reach a much bigger public than I do.

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Heh

Birdboy, I'm quite sure that Dave's "real" persona is the one on the left. Not that many people out there aren't arguing the points on the right...

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True but..

I think that the "biofuels lifecycle is energy negative" thing hasn't been true for a couple of decades (either production means have changed or the theory has been debunked -- I haven't followed it closely enough).

As for the use of petrochemicals in agriculture, we don't have to use those. In fact, using them along with monoculture results in overall lower yields (except maybe the first few years) than organic polyculture. But the chemical corporations are making way too much money off the business of ruining arable soils to let the people who know better stop them...

I suggest reading the chapter on this subject in David Suzuki's "Good News for a Change" book. The whole thing is excellent and very well documented.On Umbra on hybrids vs. veggie-oil cars posted 4 years, 8 months ago 11 Responses

Lets not underestimate...

Lets not underestimate how cool "uncool" can be.

A lot of what is cool is otherwise kinda dorky or geeky, or once was marginal and "alternative". Laughing at hybrid is probably an easier way to make them cool than to try to sell them straight. Most people are up to their necks in advertisements and will react more favorably at derogatory (up to a point, and if the product is good) comments than to high praise (because everything is "two thumbs up, cool, the best of the year, etc").

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Impact

Well, the least that it gets you is name recognition. That's a foot in the door.

At best, I see no reason why it couldn't start many people on a chain of events that would lead to interest in hybrid cars. After all, we've all discovered green issues some way or other, and it wasn't always from an expected source.

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My feeble incoherent attempt

To forget that we are alive thanks to the rest of nature is not in our best interest and leads to bad decisions. We must instead learn from the rest of life on earth to create a human society that will outlast our children's childrens, because the alternative - our current system - which is based on growth just can't go on for long for the simple fact that our planet isn't growing.

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Framing

Inhofe knew just who to blame: "This bill has been killed by the environmental extremists who care more about continuing the litigation-friendly status quo and making a political statement on CO2 than they do about reducing air pollution."

See, that's what they do. "environmental extremists" "ligigation-friendly" "status quo" "political statement", etc. All powerful expressions that are charged with meaning and subtext. In one sentence they conveyed about ten paragraph worth of (false) information.

To the general public that doesn't know zlitch about what is in the "Clear Skies" bill (but they'll assume that the name tells them what they need to know), this is framed in such a way that you can't help but mentally nod and agree.

They use framing in an Orwellian way and for propaganda, but if we want to counter it, we need to have good -- short -- answers that are as powerful as that Inhofe lie.

In short: We need to learn to do that, but use if for good instead of evil.

(I reserve the right to use my comment on my blog as another framing illustration ;P)

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Nature's Plan

Heh, that's nicely put by notmilk man but I still don't believe that there's any subjective "pleasure" or "pain" or anything close to those felt by any vegetables.

Objectively it's good for them that their seeds are put into the earth and that they are helped in their reproduction, but thinking that it pleases them is just us humans projecting our reactions and emotions on them (the same way that it would be to think that bacteria experience pleasure by multiplying or whatever). We have a tendency to do that with pretty much everything.

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Quickly

1. Plants are not sentient. Anything else you say gets a bit to esoteric and "cosmic harmony" for the planning of my dietary habits. Sorry if I can't follow you on that path.

2. re: Hunting wild animals. What I think is wrong with it is that: first, it's killing sentient animals. Second, it's unecessary killing, as we don't need killing them to live. In the past we did. Now we don't.

3. You haven't read what I wrote. Eating meat is eating an animal that has eaten plants all it's life. Meat-eaters are destroying more plants than vegetarians, so if you really believe in the preservation of plants, you should be vegetarian. As for B12, you can get that in a supplements (that's what I do). No worry there.

4. re: Discriminating against plants. That's where you get too esoteric for me. I also discriminate against bacteria, fungus and most other non-sentient life, and I don't see a problem with it. I was talking of what I eat, because I gotta eat something. It doesn't mean that I'm for the destruction of forests or that I don't like plants. Duh.

5. If you understand the theory of evolution, you understand why plants produce toxins and have other survival mechanisms. It doesn't mean that they want to live, it's just random mutations that proved to have greater chances of reproducing themselves, not some vague plant consciousness actively sending signals... Same with bacteria that gets more and more robuts as generations move along.

Maybe you are religious and believe in souls and other such supernatural things, but I don't. That "scientific" article about plants that you talk about must've been discredited since because it is definitely not the actual scientific consensus. I've heard about such studies (everybody seems to have heard about it -- probably because it's one of those "unexpected finds" that make good conversation fodder and Reader's Digest material) but never positively.

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Precision

I don't think that PETA claims that human should never have used any animals through history, or deny the existence of carnivore animals. Eating animal protein greatly helped us free up time so that we could develop skills & tools, art, language, etc.

Their point is that we are at a stage in our development where we don't need to eat animals anymore; industrial farming is incredibly inefficient in its allocation of resources, destructive to the planet, plain cruel and a health risk to the meat-eaters. Many people probably wouldn't even keep eating meat if there wasn't such a huge disconnect between it and where it comes from. A mandatory tour of a slaughterhouse and spending a few days with farm-animals, learning that they each have their personalities and interest in the continuation of their own life - just like any of the animals that we consider pets - would make things different I'm sure.

As for your "plants feel pain", I'll believe it when I see some credible scientific evidence of it and not just that "oh, I've heard that plants scream in pain!" thing that circulates around. Until then, I'll consider plants as sentient and pain-aware as bacteria and keep a healthy diet of 'em (the plants, not the bacteria).

I'll leave you with some quotes:

"If a group of beings from another planet were to land on Earth -- beings who considered themselves as superior to you as you feel yourself to be to other animals -- would you concede them the rights over you that you assume over other animals?"
George Bernard Shaw, playwright, Nobel Prize 1925

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated" - Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

"I have come from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look on the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men"- Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519)

"Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of survival for life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."
Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel Prize 1921

"The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for men." --Alice Walker

"The worst sins towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them. That is the essence of inhumanity." - George Bernard Shaw

"A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral." --Leo Tolstoy

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Argh!

Dave, it seems that we read many of the same things :D

I just wrote something about this article, quoted the same two excerpts, and all this without having seen this post of yours.

And then I see that you also posted about the device that turns air into water (via TreeHugger), which is something I was going to include in my mid-week update.

Sometimes I feel redundant. I'll have to find something to write about that you'll never think of for my next post!

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PETA FAQ

For those too lazy to find it by yourself, here's the PETA FAQ I talked about.

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Clear Skies

Despite what Bush said about litmus tests, I'm pretty sure that the new guy already agrees with everything Bush wants the EPA to do and I'd fall out of my chair if he said much about mercury.

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more

I forgot to add that I totally agree that writing snotty letters and such is counter-productive.

The best way to get people to support your position is to show them some of the things that convinced you in the first place - show them the path that brought you where you are - not to tell them that they should adopt your conclusions because they are "wrong", "bad people", etc.. That just makes them stop listening, and anyway they don't see why they should believe your conclusions without knowing how you got there.

It is a lot more convincing to ask people: "do you think your dog feels pain when you step on its tail? Is he happy when you play with him? Do you think he has his own personality and is different from other dogs? Do you think he has an interest in continuing living his own life? Do you think there's a fundamental difference between the mammals that we consider pets and those that we consider food?" than to say "MEAT IS MURDER! YOU ARE WRONG! BLAH BLAH USUAL STUFF"On Hook, line, and stinker? posted 4 years, 8 months ago 5 Responses

Sorry about that

I'll update it right away to properly source it. Alternet is cool, but you're the best :D --MikeCaponeOn Ahem posted 4 years, 8 months ago 1 Response