Originally Posted by 60plus.org

Hidden cost of driving a Prius

Totaling all the energy expended, from design to junkyard, a Hummer may be a better bargain.

By James L. Martin
. . .

Originally Posted by bwilson4web

Dear editor,

James Martin is free to hold any opinion he wishes but he has made a number of factual errors that you or any fact checker can test:

1) "On the perimeter of the [Sudbury Ontario] area, skeletons of trees and bushes stand like ghostly sentinels"

"In the late 1970s, private, public, and commercial interests combined to establish an unprecedented "regreening" effort. Lime was spread over the charred soil of the Sudbury region by hand and by aircraft. Seeds of wild grasses and other vegetation were also spread. In twenty years, over three million trees were planted. The ecology of the Sudbury region has recovered dramatically, due both to the regreening program and improved mining practices, and in 1992 the city was given the "Local Government Honours Award" by the United Nations, in honour of its innovative community-based strategies in environmental rehabilitation. More recently, the city has begun to rehabilitate the slag heaps that surround the Copper Cliff smelter area, with the planting of grass and trees." - Wikipedia

Better still, call the Sudbury Chamber of Commerce, 705-673-7133. For good measure, I'll forward Martin's piece and they may want to talk to your editors about 'fact checking.'

2) "Toyota buys about 1,000 tons of nickel from the facility each year, . . ."

". . . Production of nickel has remained relatively constant of the 1977-2003 period at between 200,000 and 250,000 tonnes per annum."

http://gsc.nrcan.gc.ca/mindep/hist/index_e.php

Toyota is using less than 0.5% of all nickel production with much larger amounts going to stainless steel and high temperature metals, like the turbines of jet engines and tooling needed to make the Hummers Martin makes a product placement claim about.

3) "A "Dust to Dust" study by CNW Marketing . . . "

This widely disputed study by a marketing firm makes an unsubstantiated claim that non-operational energy costs exceed operational cost. But every academic study, such as the Institute For Lifecycle Environmental Assessement, Carnegie Mellon University, reports that operational fuel use is over 75% of the total vehicle energy cost:

http://www.ilea.org/lcas/macleanlave1998.html

James Martin is entitled to believe anything he wants but the facts and data he claimed do not stand up to even the most casual fact checking.

Bob Wilson

Originally Posted by Tochatihu

Here's one rebuttal:

http://www.thecarconnection.com/Auto...2220.html?pg=1