About this time last year some GM-funded cranks at an outfit called CNW Marketing Research released this bogus report entitled Dust to Dust automotive report(PDF) which alleges that a Prius is less efficient than an H2.

Now, this was of course loved by all sorts of types who like inversions, you know, those little facts that seem to contradict popular knowledge and allow one to sound oh-so-smart when casually discussed during cocktail hour. Inversions are enormously appealing to people, and that is a cause to be very careful of them, because they often turn out to be myths.

In this case the inversion is that a Hummer, or Chevy Tahoe, is actually more efficient than a Prius because the cost of the hybrid car in production costs, transport, recycling of materials etc., ends up being more than the bigger, supposedly energy-wasting vehicles.

However, even a cursory read of this report shows immediate flaws. First of all, it is the most schizophrenically written piece of garbage I've ever seen. Good writing that is scientific starts with an abstract, then an introduction, a description of methods, then results and discussion. This giant document is a hodgepodge of snippets of information, charts, data, discussion of results wacky conclusions and most egregious no description of its methods. It's like a kid with ADD assembled it by cutting and pasting and it bears absolutely no signs of ever having been edited (at over 400 pages it's about as coherent as the Unabomber's manifesto).

The data collection methods are not transparent. Their model is not described. They make false statements like Prius batteries are not recycled. There is essentially no way to verify how their analysis was done, and even very simple analyses of the data they do include show that they're fudging the math. For instance, if mileage is in the denominator of their little equation, it's clear the first gigantic flaw is that the Prius is only given 100,000 lifetime miles while the H2 is given 240,000. That's a nice fast route to making a car seem more efficient, just divide by 2. I remember when Jake at pure pedantry discussed this and the study was pulled to pieces in about a dozen comments. And CNW's response is a joke. They say that Prius drivers only drive 6k miles a year on average and that number was calculated by multiplying that number times 15 years. Now, since they hide their methodology it's hard to prove that isn't how they calculated this. But it would suggest that a H2 driver drives on average 12k miles a year. Really? And where did they get this data on the average miles driven by make and model of car? Find it for me, please. Not to mention that if they did have access to that info many cars on the list are being driven thousands of miles less per year than the average household drives per car, while cars like the H1 are listed as going 300k miles, or more than twice the national average per year. Prius drivers are apparently not driving these cars even half as far as the national average - cars marketed to save money on gas. Nothing adds up. Others have also shown the numbers are bogus.

Here's how you spot an assertion that is just clearly bunk. If the most basic math suggests that a Hybrid owner (or society in general I guess) spends 300,000 dollars in 100,000 miles on driving their car ($3 x 100k miles), where is this money coming from? I know hybrids are subsidized, but how do you explain a $20k sticker price car costing more per mile than a $60k car when maintenance, gas, etc. are more? Where is the $280k coming from? Who is paying this? My guess (since their methods are hidden) is that they're factoring in development costs, and the Prius, as a newly developed car is going to have this as recent spending, while the hummer developed a decade ago and not exactly a high-tech product, gets spared an equivalent economic cost.

I'm not going to waste any more time debunking a clear piece of industry-funded denialism. It's made it's rounds of the interwebs and the people who like quoting it don't give a damn about facts, data, peer-review, documenting methods, consistent analysis, who wrote the report etc., as long as it confirms their prejudices. What I am upset with is the fact that George Will decided to cite this BS report in his Op-Ed for the WaPo yesterday.

Speaking of Hummers, perhaps it is environmentally responsible to buy one and squash a Prius with it. The Prius hybrid is, of course, fuel-efficient. There are, however, environmental costs to mining and smelting (in Canada) 1,000 tons a year of zinc for the battery-powered second motor, and the shipping of the zinc 10,000 miles -- trailing a cloud of carbon dioxide -- to Wales for refining and then to China for turning it into the component that is then sent to a battery factory in Japan.

Opinions differ as to whether acid rain from the Canadian mining and smelting operation is killing vegetation that once absorbed carbon dioxide. But a report from CNW Marketing Research ("Dust to Dust: The Energy Cost of New Vehicles from Concept to Disposal") concludes that in "dollars per lifetime mile," a Prius (expected life: 109,000 miles) costs $3.25, compared with $1.95 for a Hummer H3 (expected life: 207,000 miles).

The CNW report states that a hybrid makes economic and environmental sense for a purchaser living in the Los Angeles basin, where fuel costs are high and smog is worrisome. But environmental costs of the hybrid are exported from the basin.

Actually what the CNW report shows, Mr. Will, is that you can't smell BS when it's right under your nose (or you don't care to). I wonder at the role of Mr. Will's editors in allowing him to publish this based on such clearly bogus research. Not that pundits are ever a source of a great deal of wisdom, but sheesh. Shame on Mr. Will.

For an example of real "dust to dust" analysis by a real research outfit - MIT - read this (PDF). Now that's how you write a damn scientific report. If you had any doubt that CNW are denialist cranks, just compare the formatting and you'll be convinced they're hacks. Also see studies from Argonne National Labs.

Labels: CNW Marketing Research, George Will, global warming denialism