socialy retarded

Your Prius is polluting my sensibilities.

Posted on 07. Nov, 2009 by Derrick in Bike Commuting, Politics, War, and Religion.

During Halloween, of all times, I got into an eco-driven argument with a self proclaimed eco-friendly tree hugger. Like all eco-freaks he was a liberal eco-wienie that clearly wore his heart on his sleeve.  The conversation started when the effete snobbish Prius owner pointed out that his hybrid was better than my poor Honda Civic. I calmly pointed out that he purchased a vehicle with a larger carbon footprint than mine and he was simply a sheep for following the star fucking environmental Hollywood nazi’s.  I told him that he was a fraud and his choice was uninformed.  I also informed him that if he truly wanted to be eco friendly that he should commute to work on his bike like me.

Mr. Prius went into a triad, daring me to say more, rudely interrupting me, and making false statements. I thought at some point, after I questioned his manhood, that he was going to actually hit me. Just like religious zealots, eco-wienies have no cognitive dissonance. The possibility that Leonardo DiCaprio may be wrong, jesus, the humanity!

No one emits righteousness like an eco-yuppy behind the wheel of a hybrid. I had a hybrid owner almost run me off the road on a bike commute to just lean out of the window and yell “get on the sidewalk!”. I found it ironic that she was overweight and smoking, but she did remember the requisite Obama sticker on her bumper. I can only imagine due to the inflated costs, Prius owners  must think the extra five grand they paid is worth every penny in terms of the smugness it affords them. But do hybrids actually benefit the environment? Recently a report was published from CNW marketing research pitting a Hummer vs the Prius. The report, titled “Dust to Dust,” was cited in a March 2007 editorial in the Recorder, a student newspaper at Central Connecticut State University. The report goes on to say that you would be better off buying a Hummer than to buy a Prius.

Now I’m not going to quantify my argument by stating you would be better off buying a Hummer. I think that premonition is a bit of a stretch, but Later I’d like to make a more apples-to-apples comparison. Mr Eco-fraud claimed during our argument that I had no basis for calling him out, so I wanted to bring some facts to the table. Shed some light on his ignorance.

The nickel for the Nickel Metal Hydride(NiMH) Battery array, for instance, is mined in Sudbury, Ontario, and melted at nearby Nickel Centre, just north of the province’s massive Georgian Bay.

Toyota buys about 1,000 tons of nickel from the facility each year, ships the nickel to Wales for refining, then to China, where it’s manufactured into nickel foam, and then onto Toyota’s battery plant in Japan.

That alone creates a globe-trotting trail of carbon emissions that ought to seriously concern everyone involved in the fight against global warming. All told, the start-to-finish journey travels more than 10,000 miles — mostly by container ship, but also by diesel locomotive.

But it’s not just the clouds of greenhouse gases generated by all that smelting, refining, manufacturing and transporting that worries green activists. The 1,250-foot-tall smokestack that spews huge puffs of sulfur dioxide at the Sudbury mine and smelter operation has left a large swath of the surrounding area looking like a surreal wasteland.

On the perimeter of the area, skeletons of trees and bushes stand like ghostly sentinels guarding a sprawling wasteland. Astronauts in training for NASA actually have practiced driving moon buggies on the suburban Sudbury tract because it’s considered a duplicate of the Moon’s landscape.

According to the National Renewable Energy lab, the Prius contains 38 NiMH batteries connected in a series. The extra weight caused by this array has also been researched by Carnegie Mellon (one of the largest university-based environmental education and research centers in the U.S.)

“……. In contrast, a PHEV battery pack may contain 3–30kWh and weigh 30–300 kg plus the additional vehicle structural weight required to carry these batteries, and the vehicle must carry this weight even after the battery is depleted. Additional battery weight decreases the attainable efficiency in miles per kWh in CDmode as well as miles per gallon in CS-mode (once the battery is depleted to its lower target SOC). Thus, while increased battery capacity extends AER, it decreases efficiency in both CD- and CSmodes.”

But of course, environmental devastation of Canada’s pristine land is a small price to pay for a pious gesture in support of environmentalism.

Toyota does admit that because the Prius’ engine and battery are relatively complex, assembling the hybrid requires more energy than making a similarly sized nonhybrid vehicle. But the company has never quantified that energy premium. In order to do an apples-to-apples comparison, let’s pit the Prius against a car more its size. My car. The Honda Civic. (Caution Science and Math ahead)

According to the federal government’s 2008 fuel economy guide (PDF), a Prius averages 46.5 miles per gallon (assuming half of a driver’s time is spent on city streets and half on the highway). Beyond 172,500 miles, then, the Prius will consume 3,710 gallons of gas. Each gallon contains approximately 124,000 BTUs of energy, so that translates into 460 million BTUs’ worth of burned fuel. But it takes 113 million BTUs of energy to make a Toyota Prius. The Prius has consumed the equivalent of 1,000 gallons of gasoline before it reaches the showroom floor. Think of it as a carbon debt — one you won’t pay off until the Prius has turned over 46,000 miles or so. The Prius will have to go 100,000 miles to achieve the same carbon savings as my 5 year old little Honda.

The scales could definitely tip in favor of my used Honda if you put the $14,000 you saved (blue book on my Honda is 8k) toward making some critical technological upgrades in your house—for example, converting your appliences to EnergyStar or buy some solar panels and get “off the grid”. The average American household uses about 600 watts on average. Over the course of 24 hours, you need 600 watts * 24 hours = 14,400 watt-hours per day. That’s a solar panel that measures about 285 square feet. That would cost around $16,000 right now.

You could use the money saved to buy yourself a top of the line commuter-bike with all the bells and whistles. Your carbon debt would be ZERO. I’ve calculated that over the time I’ve commuted on my bike I’ve saved over 4,000 miles or the equivalent of 120 gallons of gasoline (given the average mpg my Civic gets).

My Eco-conversant friend managed to get out, through his red-faced shrieking that, it was too much of an inconvenience to commute on his bike. It was to long (11 miles one way), and he would have to get up to early (5am). If he was that much of an environmentalist, no amount of inconvenience should stop him from his ultimate goal, saving the environment. He is a fraud.

That is the real reason for this blog, this was not ment as an indictment of the Prius. I actually don’t care at all if you buy a Prius. If your reasons are for the tax break in 2006, I get that. If it was for the economical gas savings, I get that also. What I dislike is the hand wrangling, soap box preening, holier than thou eco-cunt that claims that her over priced baboons ass for a car is better than mine.

I quietly go about doing my part to help the environment, I don’t make a fuss about it, nor do I command other people to follow my example. Just like my religious beliefs, I have no intentions of preaching to the masses.

Tags: Bike Commuting, eco-cunt, environment, Prius