33 Gas-Guzzling Buses, Trucks, Vans and Limos?
From Barbara Streisand's website: Simple Things We Can All Do to Help Stop Global Warming
The Streisand Foundation supports the non-profit group Earth Day Network, and they have compiled a list of a few easy ways you can conserve energy and help protect the environment from further deterioration:
1) Change old, incandescent lights to newer energy-saving models (compact fluorescent lights), turn off lights when not in use and dim lights when in use.
2) Update your heating/cooling system to a more efficient model
3) Tune up old heating/cooling systems, clean out the vents, buy a programmable thermostat
4) Make sure windows are sealed and doors are closed when running air conditioners and heaters
5) Turn on the energy saver switch near your refrigerator’s thermostat
6) Make sure that your refrigerator door seals properly
7) Clean out the condenser coil on your refrigerator (can improve the efficiency of your refrigerator by one third)
8) Wait until you have a full load before running your dishwasher
9) Invest in green stocks and renewable energy companies through socially responsible funds
10) Eat locally grown food and fruits and vegetables that are in season (if the food doesn't have to travel far, there's less carbon dioxide from the trucks that ship it)
11) Eat organic (the pesticides used on crops releases carbon contained in soil into the atmosphere)
12) Buy recycled
From Streisand's contract rider for her last tour (2006):
1. The building will need to supply the production office with 120 bath sized towels immediately upon arrival.
2. The show travels in our own thirteen (13) 53 foot semi-tractor trailer trucks. Please arrange parking for the following vehicles:
Thirteen (14) 53 foot semi-tractor trailers (one merchandising)
Four (4) rental vans
Fourteen (14) crew and band busses
One (1) limosuine (artist)
MP: I think that totals to 33 gas-guzzling, fossil-fuel burning vehicles for Ms. Streisand, including 28 large trucks and busses. I wonder kind of carbon footprint that tour left on the environment?
19 Comments:
To be fair - she her list makes no mention of driving smaller vehicles or throwing eggs at drivers in Hummer H2s.
"Eat locally grown food and fruits and vegetables that are in season (if the food doesn't have to travel far, there's less carbon dioxide from the trucks that ship it)"...often asserted, but simplistic. Food grown a thousand miles away and shipped by rail may use less energy than food grown 50 miles away and shipped in small, inefficient trucks. Also, some soils/climates require more fertilizer than do others.
It's counter intuitive but, people like Babs are hard to mock because they are so easy to mock. Sature is impossible.
I wonder if all the endangered Chilean Seabass, Al Gore served at his daughters wedding reception, was locally grown?
We had some in Cancun last week. I must admit, it is delicious. So, the guests must have enjoyed it.
Speaking of local as well, what kind of hybrid vehicle was that that Paul McCartney FLEW in to one of his international events?
These people can kiss my #$%.
Well let's get real for a second here, Babs and her ilk aren't going to be swayed by the facts...
Interesting that holeydonut should bring up the Hummer....
Hummer vs. Prius:
Which is eco-friendly?
But there is another way to do the math. The Dust To Dust study is published by a private West Coast research group. It takes everything into consideration — design, manufacture, delivery and vehicle life span — putting a per mile environmental cost to all vehicles.
So using that formula here is how the study breaks them down:
The Toyota Prius Hybrid: $3.24 a mile
The Honda Civic hybrid: $3.23 a mile
And the Big H2 Hummer: $3.02 a mile
“Really,” Stankowski said when he heard the results.
That’s not all: a Chevy Tahoe is $2.93 a mile, and the Hummer H3 is $1.94 a mile.
More details here
===================
Here's one of the tree hugging - root kissing bit of socialism that drives me wild: "Change old, incandescent lights to newer energy-saving models (compact fluorescent lights), turn off lights when not in use and dim lights when in use"...
Most of us have heard at least one horror story regarding CFLs...
Well there's more: Downsides:
More Expensive
Don't Fit Some Fixtures
Mercury
Phosphors
Greater Energy Consumption in Manufacture
Don't Last Like Linear Fluorescent Bulbs
Remember that a liberal can never be judged on the results of their desired policies. One must only judge a liberal on the intent of their policies.
How ironic that a tree hugger's list does not include the most practical way of reducing carbon:
Plant a tree....in fact, plant many
With regard to CFLs, how efficient is it to manufacture a ballast in every light bulb rather than change to a fluorescent fixture with a built in ballast? All of the problems with CFLs concern premature failure of the built-in ballast with the screw in CFL meant to replace the A-lamp incandescent.
Juandos,
I note the following quote from your report:
"The Prius registered an energy-cost average of $3.25 per mle driven over its expected life span of 100,000 miles. Ironically, a Hummer, the brooding giant that has been the bete noir of the green movement, did much better with an energy-cost average of 1.95over its expected life span of 300,000 miles."
While I can see that the battery might only last 100,000 miles, you don't have to remanufacture the entire car when you change the battery. I could not check the calculations on Honda but I can tell you it's just a pup at 100,000miles having had Accords that will go to over 700,000 km.
How old is that friggin' picture? She's 66, not 35. Even Botox has limits.
> These people can kiss my #$%.
They have large vehicles and planes to get them and their whole entourages to wherever your #$% is in great comfort. So that's less onerous than it would be for a mere plebe...
> Plant a tree....in fact, plant many
Just don't plant them next to your house if you live in Florida, or coastal Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, or South Carolina...
:oP
> While I can see that the battery might only last 100,000 miles, you don't have to remanufacture the entire car when you change the battery. I could not check the calculations on Honda but I can tell you it's just a pup at 100,000 miles having had Accords that will go to over 700,000 km.
A) 700km==440kmiles, for Americans, LOL
B) Yeah, but the point is, the battery is BY FAR the most expensive and ecologically problematic part.
This all ties to Bastiat's Broken Window Fallacy and its corollary, the Law of Unintended Consequences, as well as to the paving material used on the proverbial Road to Hell.
Lots of idiots focus only on the ends they are interested in, ignoring the other ends that also occur. In truth, The End Does Justify The Means -- always -- but only when you consider all the ends, not just the ones that "interest" you.
Saving the environment is fine, if you don't kill millions and billions doing it. And we understand complex systems like ecologies far less than we should, so manipulating them directly is a certain exercise in falure. Or, as Michael Crichton put it: If you can't even manage Yllowstone Park, how can you hope to manage a planet?
> (one merchandising)
Just think, by cutting back one clearly unnecessary truck, what she could have saved the environment. Who knew? Oy!
I have one for Babs - STOP TAKING PRIVATE JET AIRCRAFT.
obloodyhell,
Do you really think that a Toyota Prius or a Honda Civic lasts a mere 166,666 km. or 100,000 miles where a Hummer lasts 500,000 km. or 300,000 miles?
Toyota Priuses have been used in Vancouver, BC for taxis for years:
http://www.hybridexperience.ca/Toyota_Prius.htm
Once you start looking at this report, there seem to be a great many inconsistencies in methodology:
http://climateprogress.org/2007/08/27/prius-easily-beats-hummer-in-life-cycle-energy-use-dust-to-dust-report-has-no-basis-in-fact/
> Do you really think that a Toyota Prius or a Honda Civic lasts a mere 166,666 km. or 100,000 miles where a Hummer lasts 500,000 km. or 300,000 miles?
What the hell would lead you to that notion? It can last just as long as the friggin' hummer -- 2x as long as the hummer, if you want. It's still going to have to have that battery core replaced 3-4 (or more) times in that time frame, and that is nasty crap, even if we create an infrastructure which does not currently exist to recycle it efficiently (in reality, I don't expect hybrid tech to last long enough to cost justify the creation of such an infrastructure).
The hummer has no such environmental expense to compare to. So the longer that piece-of-crap hybrid is on the road, the WORSE its effect on the environment is going to be. Most of the hummer's costs are up front. The Prius, though, just keeps on giving.
As far as to their usage as taxis in BC, how much are they subsidized by the Canadian, BC, and Vancouvber governments?
Have you even considered that, much less calculated it out?
Hint: "Subsidized" == "not cost justified".
If it paid for itself, then you wouldn't need to subsidize it. This is usually, (though not always, I grant) a sign saying that someone is attempting some social engineering having little or nothing to do with rational cost analysis. That's rarely either effective, desirable, or sensible, due to both Bastiat's Hidden Costs and The Law of Unintended Consequences.
In some cases, there are other, balancing justifications. But it ALWAYS means "it doesn't pay for itself".
I don't have major issues with subsidies which exist to overcome short-term inertial resistance to a tech which can be reasonably expected to succeed in paying for its usage in short order.
When you have things like 30 years of subsidy for "solar electrification" and such, though, it says "BULLSH**!!".
That tech doesn't pay for itself, won't pay for itself, and has no business being subsidized.
Taking money out of my pocket to pay for someone else's home electric bill -- at gunpoint no less -- is not only flat out assinine, it's theft.
It's defacto slavery -- and it makes me long for the days when the PotUS would make statements like:
I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution; and I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit. A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power and duty should, I think, be steadily resisted, to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that, though the people support the Government, the Government should not support the people.
(Grover Cleveland)
Such an attitude is sorely missed in this country.
Obloodyhell,
I wholly concede that the Prius battery has a high environmental footprint. That was not my point.
The fine print on the study is that they used very different life spans for these vehicles...estimated a very short life span for the Prius vs. a very long life span for the Hummer which skews the calculation in favor of the Hummer.
The last link in the previous post details many other problems with methodology on this study. I am sure that you are not committed to this study any more than I am committed to the Prius battery technology.
The 3 pg. snipit posted by Juandos (not the hundred of pages of actual report) claiming Sudbury is a treeless moonscape is a description 30 years of out of date. Sulphur dioxide emissions have been substantially reduced and thousands of trees have been planted (these non-existent trees can be seen in the photos on the City of Sudbury's website). Does it still have contaminated soil...sure...is it a pristine environment...hell no. Does it have a network of over 20 conservation and environmental groups working to improve and rehabilitate the environment...YES
My mother told me several years ago that she had read in the newspaper that there were no more crows because they had died of West Nile disease despite the fact that I could look out my window at 2 crows. It has become a running joke in my household to refer to crows as "extinct birds" or "wizards in disguise".
You can't believe everything you read...you have to check it for bias, and errors in methodology which could influence the results favoring one particular outcome.
Must agree with you about solar and subsidies. A 3x4 panel produces only enough power to light 1 lightbulb. My husband toured a solar factory in Macau recently...even the owner says it is not economically viable without massive subsidies. In Europe, they are subsidizing solar to the tune of 50 cents per KwH and it still has about a 1% return on capital investment to say nothing of the burden on the average taxpayer. Only Amory Lovens could tell you it is practical.
Fantastic quote from Grover Cleveland. Will save that one. Cheers.
In all honesty I don't like "Babs." Never have and never will.
Does it really suprise anyone that she wants us to change how we live while she drives a herd of large vehicles down the highway?
On a side note: If I have to read or hear the words, "carbon footprint" one more time I am going to throw up.
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I think Hybrid trucks and cars could be a short term solution until something electric that has enough power is developed.
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