People are stupid
Not you, obviously. The mere fact that you are reading here demonstrates your immense intelligence and sensitivity and immediately elevates you into the vanishingly small percentage of the population with taste, style etc. Whatever.
Now we’ve established that we aren’t talking about YOU, let’s move on. Do people believe what is true, or what they find most comfortable to believe? The latter, of course. Why would anyone wish to expend thought and effort on anything so peripheral and insubstantial as their beliefs? What about an example, I hear you cry (go on, cry it). OK, here goes.
Global warming is pretty much an established fact. You can argue endlessly about it’s degree, the extent of Mans’ contribution vs natural processes and the long term effects, but I think the bare fact of it’s existence is pretty well established. It is also generally agreed that in an ideal world we should look after our environment, if for no better reason that no-one wants to live next to huge toxic wastelands.
It’s amusing (to me, anyway) when allegedly “green” practices are shown to be less clean than the environ-mental-ists wanted to assume, witness a recent study of the Toyota Prius (note to the sceptical - I don’t know who “CNW Marketing” are, or who paid for the study, so I can’t totally discount it being a hatchet job, but since it’s ridiculing official figures, and pointing out that the already-shaky rationale for the “hybrid engine” model has hidden costs, I’m inclined to give it some credit).
The main points are
1) US mandatory fuel consumption calculations are laughable (as indeed are equivalent European standards - has anyone, ever, actually achieved the amazingly unrealistic driving conditions that are specified in such tests?). New EPA provided figures reduce the apparent fuel efficiency by about 25%, much closer to more traditional power plants
2) A Prius has a design life of just 100,000 miles, which means you’ll need to build 3 of them to match the design life of, say a Hummer. With 3 times the manufacturing overheads (a very dirty phase in any cars life) for a given performance, the Prius’ environmental impact is already climbing rapidly
3) Why do environmental nuts not seem to be able to grasp that batteries aren’t terribly green? Does the power that is used to reharge them appear magically from the air? Or is it generated in either dirty, filthy fossil-fuelled power stations or even *gasp* nuclear powered ones? Or is it assumed that only lovely, green power from renewable sources gets used to top up the batteries? Note that the US produced less that 10% of it’s electricity from renewable sources in 2006, and without incentives to drive the adoption of cleaner technologies, that is expected to DROP to 9% by 2030 (enviro-rag citation here)
4) Quite aside from the power argument, the production of Prius batteries uses lots of nickel. Whilst nickel isn’t a dreaded “heavy metal”, it’s refining is quite energy intensive, and produces some pretty vile by-products. The specifics of the life cycle of Prius batteries looks like this.
Mined in Canada, shipped to Europe for refining, then on to China for processing, then to Japan where the actual batteries are produced. The completed batteries are then finally shipped back to the United States. A Prius battery has already been around the world once, and used several kWh of electricity with all the implications that has for the destruction of the planet before it can save a drop of refined petroleum product.
To quote a snippet from the report
The Prius averaged $3.25 per mile. Meanwhile, the Hummer, which is excoriated as a Goliath of wasteful extravagance, costs only $1.95 per mile over a lifetime of 300,000 miles.
Again, I’ve not independently checked those figures, but even if the case is overstated, it would take some major miscalculations even to move the Prius and Hummer back to parity.
So, what’s the point of all this? Well, back when it was launched, the Prius was heralded as the automotive saviour of the planet. Obviously, any vehicle with a reduced reliance on the internal combustion of Evil Petrol must be a good thing, right? Well, maybe not, it seems. A lot of the flaws of the concept seem to have been overlooked in the rush to support ANY alternative to the Manifest Evil of Big Oil (you get a LOT of Capitalisation in environmental issues, don’t you?), without anyone apparently paying too much attention to the facts - like, is a Prius really better for the planet than, say a small, modern city car?
Too often, people allow their beliefs to colour and inform their opinions, without letting facts get in the way. Attitutdes to Google are another example, in my opinion. Historically, Google were seen as plucky underdogs, fighting back against the evil forces of Big Business (notably Yahoo and even AltaVista, at the time), with their “Don’t be Evil” tagline, and the Grateful Deads’ chef serving up in the subsidised staff cafeteria.
Then, somehow, they became a $150bn PLC, with a history of anti-trust investigations in the US and Europe, accusations of human rights infringements in China, even outright collaboration with the oppressive Chinese regime and further legal entanglements with the US DoJ for refusing to co-operate with ongoing investigations.
What happened? Did Google change? I don’t think so, not really. It’s more or less the same people in charge as have been since it mattered. The company is bigger now, but is noted for it’s relatively flat, open corporate structure. What changed is peoples’ perception of them.
The thing is, people are stupid, en masse. Despite the fact we all KNEW that Google has long been a for-profit corporation, the perception grew up that they were a near-mystical group of heroic figures labouring solely for the love of Information Retrieval, and on-site Segways. Now the backlash has started, the perception is growing up that “Do no evil” was always a cynical marketing ploy, and that the company would sell their collective families for an extra $0.01 average CPC on their revenue products, can’t be bothered to communicate with webmasters any more (and after all we did for them!) and is more interested in selling out Chinese dissidents than providing quality search results.
Neither view is particularly accurate, of course, but people wanted to believe that a plucky underdog could dominate the world, because it validated their own dreams of riches beyond avarice, and then wanted to believe that “Google had it in for them” when their thin affiliate sites and MFA networks got torched when Google finally realised they were in fact adding nothing to the quality of the WWW experience.
No-one WANTS to think “Hmmm, my sites are mostly piles of steaming cow leavings, devoid of original thought or user value. Maybe that’s why my SE performance is faltering. I shall go now, and create value!”. What they want to think is <whine> “Matt Cutts hates me because I left a snidey remark about his cat on his blog once. He MUST have manually banned all my sites. There’s no other possible explanation” </whine>
But, people are stupid. Tooth-grindingly, achingly, hysterically stupid. Individuals can be smart, driven aware people, but put ‘em in a group (especially an online one) and they revert to a room-temperature IQ, knuckle-dragging type. Accept it, learn to work it, and remember… sometimes, you’re stupid, too.
I hate to point out who the moron is, but if you believe that any hummer is going to last 300,000 miles, it’s you. Nevermind that the rich and privilaged (read: the only dickheads who buy the damned things) don’t own any cars long enough for them to hit 100,000 miles, let alone 300,000. There’s also the argument that coal and nuclear (the primary sources of the “extra” energy for the production of the Prius batteries) are far cleaner and more prolific than oil (because they are), and that a shift to smaller cars, hybrid or otherwise, is a step toward conservation of energy and thus, in the right direction. Thanks for giving mouth-breathing conservative assholes an excuse to buy the dangerous and consumptive Hummer.
And google, far be it for the average man to like a company that provides FREE services with no hidden fees to average joe while making it’s $150b from advertizers and other companies that DO exploit their employees and their customers.
I guess you’re right, even bloggers believe what they want to believe.
Comment by TheStripe — March 29, 2008 @ 1:19 pm
Well, Stripe, thanks for the comment, but it’d be nice if you’d read the damn post properly. Or if you were capable of consistent thinking. Either would be nice. Firstly, I’d like to deal with some of the points you make explicitly, and then address some of the implicit ones
>> if you believe that any hummer is going to last 300,000 miles
Well, it’s largely based on old, refined technology, and it’s likely to be owned by rich people who will have it well serviced. I see no reason to doubt that number per se, although clearly, as with any machine, only long term real world data is of any real value, ultimately, which we won’t have for either vehicle for several years
>> don’t own any cars long enough for them to hit 100,000 miles
So, you also think that NOT driving cars is bad? No matter how inefficient a vehicle is, if it never moves, it can’t pollute…
>> There’s also the argument that coal and nuclear (the primary sources of the “extra” energy for the production of the Prius batteries) are far cleaner and more prolific than oil (because they are)
Um, last time I looked coal is still a fossil fuel (granted, marginally cleaner than oil, but still…), and nuclear power has it’s own issues, although CO2 isn’t one of them, at least. Mostly, I wanted to mention that I wasn’t really talking about energy usage during the production of the batteries, but energy used during actually driving. A standard Prius uses power from the engine and braking to keep the battery topped up to a given minimum charge.
Now, last time I looked, internal combustion engines are typically 2 to 3 times less efficient than large scale power plants at extracting useful work from their fuel, as their relatively small size, and competing design demands rapidly parasitise their efficiency. Since pretty much all the power flowing through the electric drive system is ultimately being provided by the petrol engine (even that recovered from regenerative braking is ultimately sourced from the energy used to propel the car to the higher speed in the first place), you’re advocating that a complex, inefficient burner of fossil fuels is the saviour of the climate? Gimme a break. However, note that the new EDrive system which allows use of grid power to recharge the car at home will improve matters - not only is the impact of grid kWhs lower, but there’s a percentage of renewable energy in there already, and could (given wide adoption) allow an increase in the system-wide efficiency of the power distribution grid by helping to even out peak/trough demand differences.
Unless my reading comprehension skills have completely deserted me, I didn’t think I was saying that the Hummer is a great idea, and we should all be issued one immediately, due to it’s impressive green credentials - clearly, it’s a big, heavy vehicle. A general shift to smaller, more efficient vehicles would be a good thing, absolutely. The point I thought I’d made was that the gap between the impact of the two vehicles in question here may not be anything like as big as some of the more aggressive enviro-activists would like you to believe.
Unfortunately, doing a true comparison of any vehicles is fraught with problems, as it’s so hard to get reliable data on the the true energy input required for manufacturing any vehicle, since many of the most important bits of data are commercially sensitive. Also, official mpg figures aren’t very reliable, since pretty much all the testing bodies worldwide use methodologies that are at best questionable to derive the numbers. You can at least compare apples to apples, since all cars go through the SAME unrealisitc tests, but it still doesn’t necessarily bear much relation to reality.
Personally, I think it would be a good idea for industrialised nations to massively improve the quality and capacity of public transport systems. Most people are happy to use them, where they are reasonably priced, reliable, and you’re not subject to mugging / massive overcrowding and, probably most importantly, they actually serve peoples real transport needs. The reduced pressure on road grids would allow for substantial improvements in the fuel efficiency of all vehicles. Since the infrastructure projects required to allow this are typically expensive, and normally last beyond the end of a legislative term, there’s little political will to make them happen proactively though.
Now, Google…
>> far be it for the average man to like a company that provides FREE services with no hidden fees
Your comments show a profound ignorance of the issues I am talking about. I agree that from a search users point of view, there is no direct financial cost to using Googles services, but if you think that there are NO costs whatsoever, then you are a fool. Google have become the new Mammon, with many commercial webmasters spending more time, effort and thought on placating the Googleborg than is ever spent on users. The WWW is now awash with advertising, and sites built solely to exploit users for income, rather than serve them. Whilst Google has doubtless done lots of good for the WWW, and the world, they are still a for-profit corporation, with a legal duty to maximise shareholder value, which in the long run means commercialising the WWW, and not necessarily in a good way.
It’s not hard to imagine a future Google exercise considerable editorial influence over most of the WWW. Consider a world where Larry, Sergey and Eric all die in the Googleplane, and new leadership decides to flex it’s commercial muscles. Google have shown that they can selectively filter content in the organic results (the lack of Nazi-related material in the German index, for instance) and it’s childs play to manipulate bid prices in the PPC part of the business, if they were so inclined. You already see Google effectively dictating to webmasters how they may and may not link to each other - what if they start saying what kind of content you can carry?
What if a new board were more politically active? I don’t think there’s any doubt that the support of Google could make a measurable difference to the outcome of elections, at least in the Western world. Control of the media during election periods is quite well regulated in more traditional channels. In the UK at least, during a General Election campaign, strict laws govern the allotment of TV airtime, and newspaper / billboard / other display advertsing is closely scrutinised. No regulations at all apply to search engines.
In the US, if a Democrat leaning board were to suppress the performance of Republican sites, or to favour one candidate in a primary over another, it could really affect peoples choices. The WWW is more and more becoming a source of information and news for people. In this contest, if Google had chosen to promote stories and sites favouring Hillary Clinton, it’s not unreasonable to expect that the opinions of Google users may have swung a point or two her way. Since Googles’ users are younger than the national average, and Barack Obamas’ support is strong among the younger voters, it’s likely that there’s more crossover between his support and Googles user base - so a point or two of swing in the vote may have had a disproportianate effect on his support. With as close a race as this one is, it could make a real difference. It may only be a delegate here and there, but if just 72 delegates (of those declared) switched sides, Hillary would be leading. That’s less than 2% of the vote…
Comment by TallTroll — March 31, 2008 @ 12:53 am
owned VVVVV
Comment by n00b_ctrl — April 2, 2008 @ 1:53 am