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Earlier today, at Talking Points Memo, Benjy Sarlin authored Obama Mangles U.S., World History In Energy Speech. While Sarlin’s article provides some interesting nitpicking about President Obama’s excellent speech, a basic point: Sarlin mangled the reporting in a way that boosts the strength of his points via rather questionable journalism.  [Read more →]

Today, President Obama game a speech (text and comments after the fold) on energy issues. The takeaway line when it comes to clean energy:

“If some of these folks were around when Columbus set sail, they probably must have been founding members of the flat earth society. They would not believe that the world was round,” Obama told an enthusiastic crowd of hundreds of students at Prince George’s Community College in Largo. “Maybe they would have agreed with one of the pioneers of the radio who apparently said, ‘Television won’t last. It’s a flash in the pan.’ ”

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Amid all the screaming signs about Global Warming’s increasingly serious impact on the world around us and on human civilizations future prospects, the ‘luxury’ symbolic canaries in the coal mine always create mixed emotions.  Global Warming’s threat to  skiing (and declining viable Winter Olympics locations), and to wine making and bourbon and beer and chocolate  and  maple syrup and … production, etc … Yes, these are tangible examples of how global warming impacts the world around us and impacts us.  On the other hand, compared to increasing natural disasters, devastating storms and droughts threatening vulnerable populations and disruptions to global agricultural production systems, these are “luxury” items that (in and of themselves) whose disruption does do not represent a fundamental threat to human civilization (no matter how important the maple syrup for your pancakes or that bourbon for warming up after a day on the slopes).  Yes, as we all know in our Madison Avenue dominated world, symbols matter and cherished symbols even more so.

As a native of the Washington area, the Cherry Blossoms are perhaps the quintessential universal symbol of nature’s  beauty.  While those around the Tidal Basin are “the” trees for the Cherry Blossom festival, there are numerous communities with large numbers of these trees and it is hard to be a resident without having some connection — year in and year out — with this blossoming sign of spring, even if one doesn’t deal battle the tourist hordes to see the Washington Monument framed by blossoms. (Note, the photo above from GHBrett wonderfully captures the framing using a tree that I am almost certain that I have known for decades and have likely taken 20 photos over the years of various visitors/tourists/family members.)

Gardening provides many Americans their most intimate interaction with natural systems.  In my garden, bulbs planted in 1998 appeared in early/mid-April 1999.  This year: every single one had flowered by 12 March (and have been appearing earlier, it seems, with each passing year).  “A” garden, “a” backyard doesn’t prove global warming, especially when relying on one’s impressions rather than detailed records.  Agricultural systems and cultural icons, like DC’s Cherry Blossoms, drive detailed record keeping that move beyond impression to factual records that enable detailed and statistically sound analysis.

The Washington Post featured, on its front page 15 March 2011, a story driven by 2012’s “early” blooming Cherry Blossoms and building on a Nov 11 published scientific study (full study here) from University of Washington (which has its own Cherry Blossoms) and Korean university researchers that looks to Global Warming’s likely impact on this cultural icon for the decades to come.  As that study’s introduction noted, a 2001 study had already documented that

In Washington, DC area, 89 of 100 plant species surveyed, including flowering cherry trees, exhibited a significant advance of 4.5 days in first-flowering over the 30 years from 1970 to 1999

In short, their work suggests that Washington, DC, will have to move the Cherry Blossom up by nearly a month by 2050 or risk having blossom-less trees for the parade.

This type of scientific work is enable as, due to the international attention to the Japanese gift to America, detailed records exist for the Cherry Blossoms blooming. (An interesting item  is that this sort of detailed data set fits with other situations where people have kept, for entirely different reasons, natural data that enables providing yet another path toward showing quite tangibly the changing global climate.  Wine records dating back centuries. Bird counts. And, so on …  These very tangible records are one of the myriad of paths that show, quite solidly, how Global Warming is impacting natural systems around the world and the agricultural systems on which humanity depends.) Courtesy of TP Green, this graphic (based on National Park Service data going back to 1921) shows how the average blooming time for the trees has moved about 10 days earlier in the last 90 years:

As with study after study documenting what is going on, this chart certainly suggests that this garderner’s “impression” of ever-earlier flower blossoming is anecdotal evidence that is supported by scientific study.

About Journalistic Caveating

While The Washington Post‘s reporters did not, at least for this one occasion, go to see a quote from an anti-science syndrome suffering global warming denier (such as that prominent scientist James Inhofe), the wordsmithing to create doubt and uncertainty about the science in this article (including its headlines) is too typical of The Post’s faux and balanced routine when it comes to climate science.  Here are a few examples:

• The  online version is entitled “Could cherry blossoms one day be blooming in winter?”  Note, please, that the article states that “peak bloom period March 20 to 23” which places “peak” blooms as beginning the first day of spring which means (as the article discusses) that the Cherry Blossoms are already well underway in their blossoming — e.g, they are already blossoming in winter.
• The print version is entitled “Much-too-early bloomers? As temperatures rise, scientists speculate that cherry blossom time could advance by a month.” Hmm … “speculate” is the type of term used to foster increased belief in uncertainty.
• “Now comes a team of scientists theorizing that with drastic warming of the globe, future decades could see blossom times not just a few days early but advanced by almost a month.”  Again, “theorizing” is the type of word use to foster doubt. (Rather than “predict” or “research shows” or …)  (Also, by the way, “now comes a team …” when the formerly published article appeared four months ago and not late last night.)
• Ending the article with a quote from Robert DeFeo, Park Service horticulturist and chief cherry tree forecaster,”of [the University of Washington] global warming report: “They’re in a cerebral area that’s so far out from me that I can’t even intelligently comment on it.” …  DeFeo noted that other scientists have already theorized that global warming might be behind the advance of bloom periods during the last 30 years or so. Indeed, in 2000 Smithsonian scientists reported that the cherry trees were then blooming about a week earlier than they had in 1970, probably because of global warming. DeFeo said there’s no way to prove the future warming impact right or wrong. He added in an e-mail: “We’ll see in 2080.”

  While DeFeo’s “we’ll see in 2080” is a catchy statement of someone rather explicitly stating a disdain for studying climate (as opposed the ‘weather’ data right before him), notable is that The Washington Post authors did not quote climate scientists for their opinion as to the legitimacy of the scientists’ work modeling the Cherry Blossoms’ future under different climate scenarios. (Note that the article makes no mention of the excellent Capital Weather Gang post (a WashPost blog) which did a better job predicting, it seems, Cherry Blossom peaking — based on analysis of long-term weather patterns — than did the official forecaster.)

See:

• New Study: Global Warming Could Push Cherry Blossoms into February, The Green Miles
• Washington, D.C. cherry blossoms destined for early bloom, Capital Weather Gang prediction
• As Climate Changes, Tidal Basin Cherry Blossoms Could Peak At Their Earliest Yet, Think Progress Green
• Related:  25 tips for Climate Change Journalists, Under the Banyan

This Guest Post comes from a Great Lakes area correspondent, Muskegon Critic, who mixes science and recorded data with personal observation to provide a telling description of the changes Global Warming has already had on ice in the region.

I used to call them icebergs. Back when I was a kid.  Icebergs on Lake Michigan. Going out as far as you could see. And along the lakeshore, tall tall “ice dunes”. “Ice Dunes”. It’s a word I learned recently. I never knew them as ice dunes. But as ice is pushed ashore by waves, and as the waves themselves crash on the shore and freeze, massive structures form along the lakeshore, known as ice dunes.

I meant to go out and take pictures of the ice dunes and have on occasion traveled down to Lake Michigan with my camera this winter, but the ice dunes were small to non-existent.

In fact, ice cover along the Great Lakes this year was down to about 5% this year. The lowest amount of ice cover on the Great Lakes ever recorded. Ice cover on the Great Lakes has been steadily declining since we started taking records in 1973 when ice covered 93% of the Great Lakes.

Spectral analysis shows that lake ice has both quasi-decadal and interannual periodicities of ~8 and ~4 yr. There was a significant downward trend in ice coverage from 1973 to the present for all of the lakes, with Lake Ontario having the largest, and Lakes Erie and St. Clair having the smallest. The translated total loss in lake ice over the entire 38-yr record varies from 37% in Lake St. Clair (least) to 88% in Lake Ontario (most). The total loss for overall Great Lakes ice coverage is 71%, while Lake Superior places second with a 79% loss.

Yeah, ice cover is cyclical. But the cycles seem to be 4 to 8 years. And it’s been dropping steadily.
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This guest post comes from Contraposition.

It is a conversation / interview with Herman Daly  on a range of topics from ecology to economics, policy to politics, relocalization to religion.  He is Emeritus Professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, pioneered work on Steady-State and Ecological Economics, and has received more accolades and written more books than we can mention. Find more about Steady-State Economics at steadystate.org, and reach out to your elected officials about the need to transition to a steady-state economy.

Joe Bastardi, who has a long record of dissembling truthiness and truthlessness when it comes to climate science issues, appeared on Fox News (yet again). Of of his comments has received much attention:

BASTARDI: CO2 cannot cause global warming. I’ll tell you why. It doesn’t mix well with the atmosphere, for one. For two, its specific gravity is 1 1/2 times that of the rest of the atmosphere. It heats and cools much quicker. Its radiative processes are much different. So it cannot — it literally cannot cause global warming.

Putting aside the fact that his comment is at odds with nearly two centuries of science and scientific work when it comes to the greenhouse gas properties of carbon dioxide (CO2), Bastardi’s comment drove a ‘what if’ scenario:

• If CO2 molecules are heavier than “the rest of the atmosphere” then
• Gravity (another one of those pesky Scientific Theories) would mean that CO2 molecules would concentrate closer to the earth which means that
• Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 at sea level would be much higher than at altitude which means that
• Sea-level CO2 concentrations would likely be lethal to humans which means that
• All of humanity must live at altitude to avoid the poisonous atmosphere at sea level.

Hmmm

Next time I take my children to the beach, thanks to Joe Bastardi’s excellent scientific observation, I will make sure that we pack enough oxygen tanks for the week.  (After all, wouldn’t want to have to pay the exorbitant prices a beach vendor would charge.)

Note: There are many who believe Joe Bastardi is a serious contender for the Geocronium Award:

to the climate change denier who exhibits the biggest apparent departure from reality

On Friday, 9 March 2012, The Washington Post front page had a prominent article laying out a case for ridiculing the Department of Energy for awarding an “affordability prize” to a $50 light bulb. The article laid out how the bulb was so expensive to purchase and discussed how that purchase price would deter people from buying such an expensive bulb. The article, itself, focused solely on the “cost to buy” (that $0.99 sticker price) and paid no attention to the “cost to own” (how much it costs to buy, operate, repair, etc over life-cycle) (See: Cost-to-Own: A Societal Imperative).

The cost-to-buy vs cost-to-own comparison came in a large graphic (provided after the fold) that laid out that this $50 bulb would be the equivalent of 30 incandescent bulbs that would total $30. And, with counting electricity throughout lifecycle, the 30 incandescent bulbs would use 1800 kilowatt hours and the LED would use 300 kilowatt hours of electricity. According to the post, that electricity would cost $18 and $3 respectively, leaving 10 years of the incandescent at $48 total and 10 years of the LED at $53.

Okay, The Washington Post made it pretty clear: the “affordable prize winning bulb” would cost more to buy and cost more to own.

Oops … notice something. 1800 kWh for $18? That means 1 penny per kilowatt hour when,  according to the Energy Information Administration, a more reasonable price is 11.8 cents per kilowatt hour placing that 1800 kWh at$212.40 and the 300 kWh at $35.40.  With that, the ten year total cost of the LED bulb would be $85.40 and the series of incandescents would cost $242.40.  Hmmm … in considering total ownership cost, an item not covered in the article, the LED lightbulb is about 1/3rd the cost of the incandescents it would replace.

A 3-to-1 return on investment, guaranteed, sounds pretty good to this investor after a decade of Wall Street battering.

When confronted with proof of its error, The Washington Post‘s reaction:  removing the error from the graphic online without any indication in the online article nor on the graphic of the error and then editing.  Saturday’s and Sunday’s paper: no comment as to the error.  Earlier today, however, this graphic replaced the one that had been edited a la a 1984 revisionist history to remove evidence of The Post‘s error.

What does this show? Using 11 cents per kilowatt hour, below what Americans paid on average in 2011, spending $50 today on that LED lightbulb would lead to $145 in savings over a ten year period (with, as it notes, “based on the bulb being on a little more than eight hours a day”).

Sadly, that ownership cost analysis did not appear in the front page article’s discussion Friday.

Sadly, an incorrect graphic appeared in Friday’s paper.

Sadly, Washington Post editors decided to edit the graphic without any explicit statement as to it being an edited version to remove an error.

Sadly, The Washington Post has not yet taken action to inform its readership about this error.

Supposedly, Monday’s Washington Post will provide a correction.  Questions to ponder:

• Will it appear prominently on the front page or be buried where few readers will see it?
• Will there be a discussion as to how the article mislead readers by not seriously discussing life-cycle costs?
• Will this failure to deal truthfully with energy issues in a front page article be dealt with forthrightly at The Washington Post or will they hide behind the ridiculous error in the graphic as if that were the only problem here?

On Friday’s article and the mistaken graphic, see A. Siegel’s Where’s the front-page correction? WashPost Fails Math, Fails Ethics, Fails Readers, Brad Johnson’s Right Wingers Attack Innovative $50 Light Bulb Because They Can’t Do Math, and Shauna Theel’s excellent dissection in The Washington Post‘s Bad Math Tarnishes Innovative Light which importantly points out that the entire premise of The Post article was wrong: this wasn’t a prize on affordability but a prize for technical achievement in improving LED lights.

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The Washington Post‘s front page, 9 March 2012, featured an article entitled “Affordability award goes to $50 light bulb” (and the online title: Government-subsidized green light bulb carries costly price tag). Reading like a partisan hit job against the Department of Energy’s efforts to use ‘prizes’ to foster technological innovation into the market place, this article focused on “cost to buy” without any serious discussion or calculation of “cost to own” implications (see here) of buying a super efficient and long-lasting bulb.

That is, with one major graphical exception. Yesterday’s Post had this graphic quite prominently displayed in the article’s continuation to page 4.

Do you notice anything striking about this?

Look again.

Wow, not only does that LED bulb cost $50 (wowza!) but it costs five dollars more to own over a decade! OUCH!

And, I promise you, this is where 99+% of those who looked at the graphic stopped.

Look again.

Hmmm … 1800 kilowatt hours of electricity for $18 and 300 kilowatt hours of electricity costs just $3? 

Talk about too cheap to meter …

I didn’t only get The Washington Post yesterday, I also go my February electric bill.  For a total usage of 638 kWh, a bill of $79.21.  Yes, $21.48 is “distribution charge” but that still leaves me above 9 cents per kilowatt hour. In fact, according to the Energy Information Administration, the average price of residential electricity in 2011 across the United States: 11.8 cents per kilowatt hour.

Okay, look at that graphic which “proves” that over ten years, incandescent lighting would cost the purchaser $5 less than buying LEDs (and, of course, this is simple payback — it doesn’t get into factors such as the time value of money (paying that $50 for the LED today vs tomorrow’s electricity savings), investment risk (the risk of buying a household of LEDs and then moving); opportunity costs (what else could you do with the money); etc …. (Note, just as in the article, there is zero dealing with the sides that benefit LEDs which include: saved time on having to buy / replace light-bulbs, greater saftey, etc …)  If one plugs in 11.8 cents (remembering, of course, that electricity prices have been going up much faster than general inflation), then the 1800 kWH over ten years costs $212.40and the 300 kWh $35.40.  Putting aside the fact that the LED light would almost certainly last longer than 10 years, the ten year total cost of the LED bulb would be $85.40 and the series of incandescents would cost $242.40. Of course, that is “average” across the country. As another commentator put it:

result is you pay $180 for electricity with the old bulbs vs. $30 with the LED bulb.  The electricity savings alone pays for the bulb 3 times over!  Even paying the cheapest electricity rates in the country, a consumer will save about $100.  But if you live in NY, PA, CA, or AL it’s about $200.  In HI it’s over $500!  That’s not “affordable?”  

As per that, numerous people caught this error (see comments to the Post article and a major example in full after the fold) and contacted The Washington Post. 

 Here’s a more accurate graphic, courtesy of ThinkProgress Green.

 Note that figure is actually somewhat generous to incandescent bulbs as it uses 10 cents per kWh, which is nearly 20 percent lower than what the Energy Information Administration states was the average 2011 domestic price of electricity (11.8 cents per kWh).

What was the Post‘s reaction?  Revamping the graphic above to remove the error — and providing no indication in the online article nor at the new graphic of the error.

For whatever reason, as a (soon to no longer be due to mediocre journalism like this) loyal Washington Post subscriber, I decided to wait until Saturday morning’s paper to see how the Post handled this.  I wondered would there be a notable front page statement correcting the error and apologizing or would there be a semi-buried ‘fact’ correction on page 2.  Not to disappoint, The Post delivered neither.

Simply put, with this article, the idioctic error in the graphic, and its handling of that error, the Washington Post:

• Failed to demonstrate the most basic math capability and flunked that basic question “Are you smarter than a Fifth Grader?”
• Failed the most basic jounalistic ethical obligation to be honest with its readership and correct, rather than hide, its errors.
• Failed its readership by providing a skewed article and false information about an issue of vital national importance and relevance to its readership’s decisions about purchases for their own homes.

That graphics abysmal error and mispresentation helps masks the more serious issue.  There is a very serious issue in the whole realm of energy efficiency. Writ large (not 100% true but close enough), the more energy efficient option costs more upfront when comparing ‘same-to-same’.  We see this in refrigerators, cars, washington machines, homes, etc … Whether buying hybrid technology, extra insulation, or a more efficient light bulb, the core challenge: pay more upfront to control future costs.

America has developed a 99-cent shopping obsession that has turned Benjamin Franklin’s axiom “a penny saved is a penny earned” on its head. A price of $100 gives us pause, but a price of $99.99 seems like a bargain. Combined with easy access to revolving credit and our disposal culture, our focus on purchase price overshadows the total cost of many of our purchase decisions. We tend to focus on the “cost to buy” rather than the “cost to own.” More often than we care to admit, we are — to trot out another axiom that predates Franklin — “penny wise and pound foolish.”

In reporting on an “affordability prize” that seemed to flunk common sense, on first glance, The Washington Post had a chance to seriously discuss this issue. The $50 upfront cost could have been contrasted with the eventual $70+ in savings. The article already quotes retailers about the challenge of getting someone to buy a $50 bulb when there is something available next to it for $1.  This could have been expanded and examined. Do retailers see people shifting to cost-to-own mentality in some purchases? What do retailers think and researchers find about what payback times are expected? Etc …  There could have been a discussion what having a $50 LED bulb on the shelf might mean for sales of $17 LED bulbs. (Note: marketing research has shown that having super luxury items (lets say a $2500 barbecue) boost sales of the luxury item (a $500 barbecue) next to it because that item now seems like ‘a deal’ and a reasonable purchase.)

Thus, while The Washington Post made a stupid mathematical error and augmented the problem through its stupid handling of people discovering the error, the failure is more fundamental.  As per above, this article reads like a partisan hit job against the Department of Energy — attacking the L-Prize for producing a bulb that costs $50 to buy without discussing the energy (and other) savings the bulb will deliver — rather than a serious effort to inform the public from what used to be one of America’s most serious journalism outlets.

ADDITION: dadadata rightfully comments on the need to think more broadly and provide better/more information in the graphic. Perhaps, for example, CO2 implications. For example, even without considering all the additional travel to buy the additional incandescent bulbs, based on the rough average of 1 pound of Co2 per kilowatt hour of electricity in the United States, this one 60 watt socket would lead to 1800 lbs of CO2 emissions over 10 years and the LED about 300. If we take a social cost of carbon low-to-moderate valuation of $50 per ton ($100 might be more reasonable) with an assumption (hope) that that will eventually be in the cost of electricity, the LED would incur $7.50 of carbon charge while the incandescent bulbs would have $45 of charges. Hmmm … that alone pays for the difference in the bulb acquisition cost.

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In what will likely be one of the few truly bipartisan energy actions we’ll see this year, Democratic and Republican Senators are likely to join arms tomorrow in passing the New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions Act of 2011. Tomorrow’s vote, if it passes the bill, will send $10s of billions in subsidies to natural gas vehicles when there are more cost effective paths to improve the economy, reduce our oil demands, improve the safety and efficiency of American transportation, and help address our climate change challenges.

The legislation will enact multiple high-cost subsidies for natural gas transportation systems. Sadly, these subsidies have not been compared with other options using any number of viable and reasonable metrics which include

• Cost to the taxpayer per reduced ton of carbon dioxide pollution;
• Cost to the taxpayer for reduced mortality (e.g., cost per avoided premature death);
• Cost to the taxpayer to reduce per barrel of reduced U.S. daily oil demand.

Let’s take that last one for a quick ride …

While the proposal to support natural gas in transportation with (massive) federal subsidies should (could) be examined against a vast array of potential options to reduce oil demand  (here, pdf) from subsidizing telecommuting to mandating smart growth to promoting bicycling (such as via greenways) to alternative fuel development, let us just briefly consider three options:

1. Natural gas for truck transport;
2. Electrification of rail; and,
3. Installing dashboard feedback systems in all automobiles.

An analysis of these three resulted in the following cost per barrel reduction in daily US oil demand:

• Natural Gas for Truck Transport: $75k per barrel cut from daily oil demand + additional costs for natural gas + additional costs of refueling infrastructure + the cost of the alternative fuels’ credit + pollution impacts of drilling and natural gas burning + …
• Electrification of rail: $36k per barrel/day cut from oil use w/other benefits
• Feedback systems in cars: $10k per barrel cut from daily oil demand w/other benefits

To place these in consideration:

• Electrification of rail has the potential for reducing oil demand by some 2.5 million barrels a day by 2020, some 15 years faster than the 1.23 million barrels a day reduction that a Center for American Progress (CAP) report projects for that converting trucks to natural gas would achieve by 2035. Electrification of rail would, as well, significantly cut actual carbon emissions rather than simply lead to a reduction in carbon intensity per mile driven. It would also improve safety and reduce highway infrastructure costs due to reducing, significantly, the number of truck miles on America’s highways.
• Putting feedback systems in America’s car fleet is a program that could be executed in just a few years and could contribute to a reduction in US oil demand by some 1 million barrels per day. This would also foster actual carbon emissions and would improve safety (reduced highway fatalities, reduced accidents, reduced insurance costs, …) as feedback systems lead to safer driving habits. (Note: feedback systems in commercial fleets also contribute to improving fuel efficiency and vehicle safety though that benefit is not included in this figure.)

Let’s look at this a different way? What could $10 billion of Federal funding “buy” on each of these three paths?

• Natural Gas Transportation: Converting about 160,000 trucks to natural gas at the proposed $65,000 tax credit or less than ten percent of the nation’s tractor trailors. This would enable roughly 100,000 barrels a day in reduced demand or in the range of $100,000 Federal investment per barrel of reduced daily demand.
• Electrification of Rail: Roughly 10% of the total required Federal resources to transition 35,000 of America’s rail (the key rail lines) from diesel to electric while upgrading the lines for (somewhat) faster and more efficient service of both cargo and passenger uses.  E.g, in the range of $40,000 of taxpayer investment per barrel of daily reduced demand.
• Feedback systems in cars: Fully funding a program to put feedback systems in 100% of America’s (post-1996) light vehicle fleet and could be done in a few years resulting in somewhere between 500,000 to 1,000,000 reduction in daily US oil demand … again, by 2015 or sooner.  At that lower figure, occuring years earlier than NGV systems would have such impact, about $10-$20,000 of taxpayer investment per barrel of reduced daily demand.

Very simply, the natural gas option is higher cost, lower impact in reducing oil demand, takes longer to achieve its impact, and results in higher carbon emissions than these two other options. And, again, there are many, many other options out there that also look to be lower cost and higher positive impact across multiple domains than pursuing a “clean natural gas” transportation future.  Here are just a few of the pathways for reducing America’s dependence on oil:

• A Steel Interstate of Electrified Rail (with moving significant cargo off trucks onto electrified rail), high-speed rail, and various electrified public transit (subways, trams, etc);
• Greenways(and bicycles) and other ‘local’ individual transportation options;
• ‘Location efficiency’ in mortgage financing
• Home heating oil efficiency;
• Requirement for a flex-fuel standard for all future light-duty vehicles;
• Telecommuting, alternative work schedules, and other paths to enhance the work eperience for a good portion of Americans while cutting oil demand.
• Etc …

 The list of viable paths that are better than providing massive fossil foolish subsidies to natural gas vehicles to address U.S. oil demand, improve the economy, improve Americans’ health, reduce pollution loads (including greenhouse gas emissions), and otherwise achieve positive results for America and Americans can go on and on and …
 
While the failure to drive through the Keystone XL pipeline (which would raise gasoline prices in the Midwest while opening the doors for accelerated exploitation of highly polluting tar sands) has received merited praise, passage of the natural gas vehicle subsidies is not something to greet warmly.

Some relevant posts:

• Are Natural Gas Vehicles destined to be the next ‘ethanol’-like boondoggle?
• FRACK YOU, Mother Earth …
• CAP’s American Fuel: Contaminated on so many levels
• Senate Democratic Policy Committee (DPC) Cozying up With T Boone Pickens
• The Good, The Bad, The Ugly: T. Boone Pickens

The Washington Post editorial board has waged a campaign against electrification of the nation’s transportation system (especially cars), often using true facts in a fashion that creates untruthful truthiness. Today’s Charles Lane OPED celebrating a temporary closure of the Chevy Volt line provides multiple examples of truthiness-laden editoralizing.

Here are just a few examples of how Lane misleads …

Compare Apples to Apples

Any auto buyer knows that a BMW delivers a different vehicle — with a different price tag — than the typical KIA, a Lamborghini isn’t a Fiat, a …  When shopping for cars, amid the myriad of different options, a buyer will try to compare same to same.

EV-opponents all too often slip in a comparison that violates this rule when they are seeking paths to dismiss the value of hybrids (HEVs), plug-in hybrids (PHEVs), and all-electric vehicles (EVs).  Thus, in today’s OPED, Charles Lane compares the Chevy Volt to the Chevy Cruze.  Simply put, these two are not in the same league.

The Chevy Cruze is a compact — nicely built, with good gas mileage, compact. Comparison shop against the Honda Civic, Toyota Corolla and Ford Focus.

The Chevy Volt is a mid-size car — with higher end interior, more bells and whistles, along with being a PHEV. In addition to the Nissan Leaf (EV) and Prius (HEV) comparison, look to the Lexus HS250H as something to consider against the Volt.

I’ve had the chance to test drive both the Cruze and the Volt.  There is no driver out there who would assert that the Volt is not more luxurious and a better drive (even as there might be reasons a buyer would choose a Cruze over a Volt … for example, the Volt is a four seater while the Cruze seats five).

To compare the Volt to the Cruze is a game that ignores that these are different vehicles, with different handling characteristics, different comfort packages, different ‘wow’ / prestige factors, different values …

To compare the Volt to the Cruze, without highlighting these differences, is to abandon truthful discussion for truthiness deception.

EVs provide many value streams

Even when truly comparing similar comfort levels (apples to apples), when compared to traditional gasoline engines, EVs/HEVs/PHEVs provide many value streams. For example, what price do I place on being able to listen to birds when coasting in my Prius (since the gas motor isn’t running, being able to drive in a garage without belching exhaust, having the (perhaps mistaken) status symbol of an ‘earth-friendly’ car (as if this isn’t an oxymoronic concept), or having to do about 1/3rd fewer stops at gas stations?  There is a reason why automobile reviewers don’t diss the concept of people paying extra for spoilers or racing stripes or particular paint jobs — there are many value streams that car buyers place in their decisions, from esthetics to family size to financials.

And, for the overall society, the EV offers some quite interesting values from reduced ground level pollutants (fewer cancer causing chemicals spewing out into pedestrians’ faces) to the ‘Smart Grid’ opportunity to stabilize the grid via V2G (Vehicle-to-Grid) technology allowing use of car batteries as distributed power storage devices.

When it comes to EV discussions, anti-EV polemics typically ignore all other elements and stove-pipe into the narrowest of comparisons.  Charles Lane is no exception.

Gas savings on the Volt would take nine years at $5 per gallon to offset its higher price over the Cruze

Again, comparing the high-end Volt so casually the Cruze is deliberate editorial deception, but this necking down to solely gasoline prices is to ignore all the other legitimate value streams meriting consideration and illumination in policy debates over transportation technologies and futures.

Electric Vehicles Maintain Value

A number of years ago, I had the chance to see a Toyota RAV4 EV.  For a car with 100,000+ miles, looking under the hood was astounding — it appeared near brand-new compared to an internal combustion engine. (Another EV value stream: greatly reduced maintenance costs, by the way.)  And, talking to the owner, he said that he regularly had unsolicited purchase offers above what it had cost him. Okay, the resale above purchase value is a bit unusual but take a look at used Toyota Prius prices according to MotorTrend:  a 2004 Prius is at nearly $11,000 or more than half the original sticker price which, by the way, is right in line with the Honda Accord resale record.

EV opponents spin webs to assert that EV/PHEV/HEVs lose value more rapidly than other cars.

Oh, how are you supposed to resell your electric vehicle once you’ve driven it five years and the battery is depleted?

According to Charles Lane, that 8-year old Prius should have zero value.

An Individual Can Have a Say on Their Electricity’s Carbon Load

Something to consider:

• With every passing day, the U.S. liquid fuel supply is becoming dirtier due to oil from ever-deeper rigs, increasing tar sands supplies, and otherwise.
• With every passing day, the U.S. electricity grid is becoming cleaner with reduced (and slightly less polluting) coal electricity (often replaced with natural gas) and increased renewable energy supplies

In addition, the ‘average’ car owner has little option over the ‘cleanliness’ of their fuel supply (what choice do you have at the gas station?) while most home owners have options to ‘clean’ their electricity (whether through putting solar on the roof, switching to a clean electricity provider, or buying renewable energy credits to cover their demand).

EV opponents often try to demean the PHEVs/EVs by stating that moving from gasoline to electricity is simply a move from one fossil foolish path to another. As Lane put it,

another fact about electric vehicles is that their juice comes from the fossil-fuel-burning grid in the first place

Putting aside the fact that analysis shows that electric vehicles are less polluting, even when operated off a fully coal-powered electricity system (when coal is less than 45% of U.S. electricity and declining), this ignores the truth that an EV driver has paths to assure a low-to-non fossil fuel electricity supply.

NOTE:  Some relevant discussions, 

• Myths and Facts About Electric Cars
• Wash. Post Pulls Rug From Under New Electric Cars