Being green IS an American value... we've just forgotten.

Copied and edited from an ageist rant... less most of the ageism, plus some technical points and clarifications. Blame Russell.

Back then, in the 1950's and 60's in America, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled; without being crushed, melted, and reformed, which costs more than washing.

Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. A lot of that clothing got made. Things got fixed, and you could fix them because they were made to be fixed.

http://www.ifixit.com/Guide

We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. We valued our appliances, tools, and cars and we took good care of them... and they lasted.

We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

- The VW Bug, best selling car of /all time/ was massively popular then and got better than 30 miles per gallon, 36mpg was the stated value!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Beetle

- The Model A ford (and there were a lot of them still on the road in 1950) got 25 to 30 miles per gallon. Of course, it was a death trap, and had a top speed (if you were crazy) of 65 mph.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Model_A_(1927%E2%80%931931)#Features

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. err... actually, it turns out that a high mpg car is probably greener than mass transit

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_efficiency_in_transportation#US_Passenger_transportation

Even a Camry (rated at 28mpg) gets very close to beating the bus on average. Rail is about twice as efficient as a car, IF the train happens to go where you need it. But still, Bikes beat everything but walking, and keep you in shape... if the cars don't kill you.

http://www.pietzo.com/storage/downloads/Pietzo_LCAwhitepaper.pdf

Locally grown food was the rule rather than the exception. In most metropolitan areas, the grocery van (and the milk, and bread and everything else) came to your house once or twice a week, serving everyone in the neighborhood in ONE trip, instead of each person driving to a different store at different times.

http://antiqueshoppefl.com/articles/Jan11/milkcans0111.pdf

In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us.

Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

MIT Professor Walter Lewin (a /rock star/ of physics lectures) says that the energy the average American consumes today "... is the equivalent of having 100 slaves working for me like dogs 12 hours a day"

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-01-physics-i-classical-mechanics-fall-1999/video-lectures/lecture-14/

We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry the clothes. Your clothes dryer puts about 4.4 pounds of carbon into the air /every single load/.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clothes_dryer#Environmental_impact

Back then, we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throw-away kind.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaper#Debate There are pluses and minus either way, but in a multi-child family, with a diaper washing service, cloth diapers do use less energy, if more water.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. Kids read comics and books and they played outside. Remember outside kids? It's that thing that goes by the windows of your car. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances.

When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used a wadded up old newspaper to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water.

Ok, look... I'm not saying we should go back to the 1950's in every way. We've made a lot of progress since then: Women are treated a LITTLE better... and now have the opportunity to work all day and THEN "make" dinner and "care" for the kids and husband. Safety is much improved; these days you can be a complete idiot and yet survive. Corporations are well regulated which prevents pollution and economic collapse. And I do think life is more open now, more connected and more examined. Our technology is worlds ahead of what it was; the intertubes give us access to information we don't need almost as fast as we ignore it.

But we tossed the baby out with the bath water. Frugality, and with it sustainability, went into the ditch. We got lazy, fat, and stupid. Looking back at what was /right/ in the 1950's might do us some good today.

http://www.pathtofreedom.com

Romancing the Road

540,000 miles from one car, one owner. And they are both pretty cool! The owner is 89 and the car is a 1964 Mercury Comet. She aways gets lifetime warranty replacement parts (16 free batteries so far) and carries a pistol (licensed) for protection on the long trips. Really worth watching.

These are the people and cars that made America great. I guaranty this car has done less damage to the environment for all those miles of travel than the average Prius owner does today. Why? Because once it was built, it was never discarded. If you really want to help the earth, rescue an old classic from the junkyard and pay a local hard working mechanic to restore it.

Sustainability = frugality over the long term

here is the big secret:

Actual sustainability = frugality over the long term.

If it costs more over its lifetime, it is NOT sustainable. So, when gas is at $2.50 a gallon, the Prius is NOT always sustainable.

Proof: The cost of any item, in the end, is the energy required to make it. All the metal, plastic, glass, etc.. needed to make a Prius is just setting in the ground, free for the taking. The real cost of making it into a Prius is the cost of the energy required to dig it up, ship it to the foundry, refine it, ship it to the parts factory, form it, ship it to the car factory, assemble it, ship it to the lot, and sell it to you. All of the equipment and people involved in those processes are, again, the cost of the energy required to make and operate.

Just about ALL of that energy is fossil fuels. So how does it make sense to spend $22,000 (http://www.toyota.com/prius-hybrid/trims-prices.html) worth of fossil fuel to get 51/45mpg, when you could spend $12,000 (http://www.toyota.com/yaris/trims-prices.html) worth of fossil fuel to get 29/35mpg? You are saving about 20mpg, or 12.5 cents per mile, for an expenditure of $10,000. You would have to drive 80,000 miles to make that worth doing. Given a 5 year average vehicle life, you would have to drive 16,000 miles per year or an average of 45 miles per day. So if your commute is less than ½ hour each way, a Prius actually HURTs our Mother more than it helps.

Of course, the numbers REALLY make a jump when you consider a USED car vs a NEW Prius. A 25mpg 2001 Camry for $10,000 with an average useful life of 20 years turns out to be a much more sustainable choice than a new Prius for that same 30 min commute.
http://www.truedelta.com/models/Camry.php

The REAL green people drive old cars and support their local mechanic until the repair bill exceeds the savings.

20% better MPG from an electro-magnet? Must be a joke, right?

In the "are you kidding me" department, we find this report of a simple device consisting of an electrically charged tube that can be attached to the fuel line of a car’s engine near the fuel injector. Using power from the vehicle’s battery, the device creates an electric field that thins the fuel, reducing its viscosity, so that smaller droplets are injected into the engine. That leads to more efficient and cleaner combustion.

And who says so? Has to be a quack, a jerk, some backyard mechanic? Errr. no, actually, it's Temple University.

http://www.temple.edu/newsroom/2008_2009/09/stories/taofueldevice.htm

"Six months of road testing in a diesel-powered Mercedes-Benz automobile showed that the device increased highway fuel from 32 miles per gallon to 38 mpg, a 20 percent boost"

"Temple has applied for a patent on this technology, which has been licensed to California-based Save The World Air Inc., an environmentally conscientious enterprise focused on the design, development, and commercialization of revolutionary technologies targeted at reducing emissions from internal combustion engines."

I believe the patent application is for number 20080190771 It seems to be for a device that uses the electric power from the battery to create a magnetic field around the fuel.

So do those con artists who sell the perminant magnet thing you put on the fuel line actually have something going on? Mythbusters, and many others, proved that they don't. So what gives?

The patent application says: "It has been surprisingly found that if the applied magnetic field is a short pulse, the induced dipolar interaction does not have enough time to affect particles at macroscopic distances apart, but forces nearby ones into small clusters. The assembled clusters are thus of limited size, for example of micrometer size. While the particle volume fraction remains the same, the average size of the "new particles" is increased. This may lead to the reduction in apparent viscosity because the value of the crowding factor k, is reduced. "

So it's a pulse, not a continuous application, that makes the difference.

Pulsing a magnetic coil with a specific, adjustable, duty cycle and pulse width is taylor made for microcontrollers like the PIC or MSP430, and pretty easy to do.

Buy a Prius, kill the earth?

The cost of anything, when you break it down and break that down and so on, turns out to be the total cost of the energy required to make it.

To make a Prius you need about $28,000 of energy. For example, the metal parts have to be machined (coal for electricity for the mill/lath/cnc and everything it takes to support the worker including fertilizer, pesticides and so on used to grow and transport his or her food) but first the metal must be transported (diesel) and before that smelted (electricity or NG) and before that the ore is hauled (diesel) and mined (diesel, etc...) and so on. The metal doesn't cost anything, it's just sitting in the ground as ore waiting for us to take it. ALL of the costs to make that metal part are the energy required to transform it from the base ore.

The point I'm trying to make is that the COST of the car is the ENERGY used to make the car.

We expect cars to last about 5 years. On the bleeding edge, one tends to bleed. Hybrid cars are not well tested, although they do seem to be holding up well in fleets and as rentals. Let's give it the benifit of the doubt: This thing is going to cost you $28000 / 5 (years) / 52 (weeks per year) / 7 (days per week) or about $15.38 per day no matter how much you drive it. That is how much oil, diesel, coal, fertilizer, pesticide, etc... you will consume with this car each day without driving it at all. If you drive it 40 miles a day (which is about the national average) then you will be spending 38 cents per mile, NOT including the gas.

At 47 to the gallon and gas at $4 (for now) that is $3.40 more or 8 and a half cents per mile. Add some regular maintenance, you are looking at about 49 or 50 cents or per mile.

That is the bottom line: A Prius costs you, and mother earth, about 50 cents per mile.

A Hummer, by the way, costs about a buck a mile.

My $10,500 used 2001 Camry, purchased in 2007, given that it has one of the highest reliability ratings in the world, will very probably last 4 years MORE or 10 years total. It has a proven track record. The mfgr warranty for most of the car is actually 8 years, for pity sake.

$10,500 / 5 (years I plan to own it) / 52 / 7 = $5.77 per day. It gets 23MPG (25 estimated, 23 actual) and I drive about 50 miles per day so add 2.18 gallons of gas at, say $4 dollars per gallon. That is $8.72 per day in gasoline for a daily total of $14.49. I have almost $5 a day more than you to put towards maintenance and repairs.

But that is with my crazy commute. In terms of cost per mile, I pay less than 12 cents a mile to own the car and less than 18 cents a mile to drive it at $4/gal. So that is 30 cents a mile!

If gas stays at $4 I save 20 cents a mile over you!

38 - 12 is 26 cents a mile allowance I have for gas more than you do just because of the base price of our cars. Gas would have to be around $6 a gallon to justify my purchasing a Prius.

At $6 a gallon, there are a LOT of sources for fossil fuels that start making economic sense and so will become available. Oil shale extraction in West Virginia, algae bio fuel, etc...

Maybe they will come out with a lower cost version of some of these hybrids in the next few years and all of this will change, but for now, driving an old beater is the most ecological thing any of us can do.

And then there is the crash test ratings...

P.S.
www.truedelta.com is a fantastic resource for reliability information. You can compare Prius reliability with Hummers for example.