SocraticGadfly: ‘Wired’ green roundup – ‘Onion’ parody as reality

May 24, 2008

‘Wired’ green roundup – ‘Onion’ parody as reality

Not all ‘top 10’ green cars are actually green
Starting your list of your top 10 “green cars” with an E85 Viper burning NON-green corn ethanol shoots your green cred in the foot right off the bat.

Car No. 3? Hydrogen powered. May or may not be eco-friendly, though fuel cells on any smaller scale than an office building probably aren’t. And, infrastructure issues are obviously being ignored.

Car No. 4? A diesel-powered Audi is NOT eco-friendly if a fuel-only engine is generating 650hp.

But, why stop there?
Atmospheric tinkering overlooks recent research
Wired then pulls the old “salvific technologism” out of its bunghole. On global warming, it says we can prevent it by, among other things, seeding the atmosphere with aerosols.

Not. Recent research has shown that if you use some aerosols, you could start new havoc on the ozone layer. Oops.

As for giant mirrors in orbit, I doubt that’s been fully priced out, just like oil prices for the U.S. don’t include our military in the Middle East.
Finally, set up the straw man
Another Wired article mentions all the technologies and partial solutions for global warming that greens allegedly oppose.

Nuclear power? I’m OK with it, actually, as are many other people, if we address the nuclear waste issue and don’t subsidize power plant construction out the ass.

Urban density? The schmuck who wrote this blog post (anonymously) has obviously never heard of New Urbanism and its environmental angles.

If you follow the link to the whole list of “green heresies,” it’s like Wired deliberately hired some ax-grinding libertarian to write this up. That includes suggesting buying a 1994 49hp car over a new Prius.

As for all the stories/blog posts in total, they sum up the worst of Wired on this issue.

With a self-alleged eco-friend like this, who needs enemies?

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