HA, I have to share this....

I was in the back of my building doing a few tweaks to my race car Papa Smurf. Running it up and down, etc. (2.2 high compression 6 cyl engine, headers to megaphones...) Then I went over to the 69 911 and had to change the piece of cardboard underneath because it's soaked in oil (next project). I was on the phone with another guy regarding my street 914 "Huey" and the fact that it's running very rich and needs some carb adjustments....

So I come back to my computer and get a spam email asking "Are you Green? How is your Carbon Footprint?"



Uh....kind of like Bigfoot's....

Prior to my MBA class tonight I had to take an online exam to find out my carbon footprint. There was not an option for playing with old cars, so I suspect my score was artificially low.

Zach

The main issue I have with "Green" is that there's no real spec. I have a professor who was talking about how he was working with a plastics company to make a biodegradable product and, failing that, suggested they dye the film green. That passed the wal-mart standard.

Honestly, even though these cars run dirty as hell, if you look at the environmental cost of building a new vehicle we're probably ahead.

People suck at big picture though, My engineering program emphasizes sustainability, and we don't even know what the hell that is.

I'm not green, I'm red and sore.

Carbon footprint, schmarbon footprint. When I see large jets flying around in all directions every day, burning copious amounts of fossil fuels to get to their destinations, it only reinforces my view that I should not have to lower my standard of living for some nebulous "green" benefit when there are much larger "offenders" out there whose emissions would cancel out my yearly contribution in a matter of seconds.

I'd say my carbon footprint is tiny at the moment...I have 3 cars, 3 motorcycles a mower and 2-stroke string trimmer.

Only the mower has run regularly in the past few months...and it just died because the gas went bad.

So basically in the calculators I have a huge one, but in reality, if you don't drive/use gas/oil then your footprint isn't too big eh?

ummmmm @ 6mpgish whadda you think?

Click to view attachment

After seeing my score compaired with the other scores in my class, it is fair to say that I am not green.

Zach

ummm, big footprint that can be heard STOMPING its way toward you..............



I hear ya and I like it.


The next thing is my dad is a farmer and is being looked at for a positive by big companies. It's not the crops he produces; it's the green vegitation he grows. The government tries to balance the polution they allow companies to violate our atmosphere by purchasing "Carbon Credits". There are companies trying to buy or lease farm lands to create a "carbon credit" to balance out their polution. Meaing if a company is fined if they go over limit (illustrative purpose of 100), say to a level of 140, then they have to buy or create 40 "carbon credits" to bring their impact down to a 100 balance. How about they just cut back AND get their "carbon credits" to make it an advantage.

So with that, Where can I buy some "carbon Credits" due to my 914-6.

Carbon footprint? You bet.

My neighbor proudly displays his SmartCar for the world to see, and is interested in getting a second one. Good for him.

I guess he can wince when looks over the fence at our Class A motorhome, /6 twin plug race car, premium powered Acura RL, and surprisingly cruddy mileage getting 4Runner.

Honestly, I like the idea of 50 mpg but Prius drivers seem too driving in the left lane absorbed in their green o meters.

So lets see:
- 1971 914/6 2.7 liter pseudo race car/street car w/carbs that runs on premium, no smog anything, headers, etc.
- 1973 914/6 2.5 liter race car w/carbs and headers and straight pipe exhaust
- 1974 914/6 2.2 liter race car w/carbs, high compression race fuel only with headers and straight pipe exhaust
- 1969 911 that leaks oil faster than I can put it in, carbs, no smog prevention
- 1995 993 with cat bypass
- 2002 Chevy Tahoe

Yep, I have a carbon footprint, but it sure ain't green...

Oh, and they all are North Carolina emissions compliant. NC does not check emissions on cars older than 1996....

Since we are itemizing:

Daily drivers:
1994 Toyota Camry, subject to Maryland emissions testing, passes by wide margin
1988 Mercedes 420SEL, subject to Maryland emissions testing, passes by wide margin
Both are well within compliance with the law.

Historic cars (no emissions testing required):
1977 Corvette, driven less than 6000 miles in the past 5 years
1970 Porsche, driven less than 10,000 miles in the past 6 years (estimated - broken odometer)
Both of these are also within compliance with the law.

Other stuff:
1970 John Deere, Kohler K321 14hp engine
MTD lawn mower, 5hp Briggs engine
Stihl 2-stroke brushcutter (think weedwhacker on steroids)
Briggs powered pressure washer, has not been run since I got it (a friend gave it to me)
Propane powered grill for cooking (burgers n' dogs)
Propane powered Cajun cooker for homebrewing (no fire, no homebrew)
Not covered by state emissions laws.

I could not realistically replace any of the lawn maintenance equipment with electric counterparts (although about 1/3 of my electricity comes from NUCLEAR POWER, which the greenies don't like even though it has a low "carbon footprint").

If I shut my 914 off at stop lights, put it in first gear and take off by using the starter motor, I'll be driving a hybrid right?

The beauty of it all is that all of your sins can be absolved by simply purchasing carbon credits with dirty old money.....

Carbon credits can be purchased by sending the money directly to:

"The Carbon Footprint Cleanup Fund" care of AlGoreEnterprises. Make all checks payable directly to Al's Swiss bank account.

All this money will be used wisely to green the planet by: paying for Al's big 100 foot houseboat, supporting the green movement by paying for huge "carbon credit income is coming" parties on his houseboat, paying for his 30k a year home electrical bills, paying for the purchase of carbon credits to offset the boat and electric bills, and purchasing "zinc credits" to offset the toxicity of his zinc mine.

funny you should mention "carbon credits"
Duke Power here in NC runs a lot of coal burning power plants - HUGE carbon footprint I suppose.

So, in order for them to be carbon compliant, they must purchase carbon credits - i.e. pay off the government for their emissions, but not actually do anything about them. The amount of credits they are going to have to pay for will then be passed on to their customers obviously.

They have estimated that each users power bill will increase 75% if the plan is imposed as currently stated.

That's one hell of a way to help and economic recovery. My electric bill in the summer months is already $300 +/- per month, so now they want to add another $225 to that? And do we get cleaner air AT ALL????

Nope....

Keep your eye on Maryland. The owner of the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant (2 operational reactors) is applying to build a third reactor. The outcome of this process may well presage whether or not we will have a nuclear power industry in this country in the future.

Sometimes that's the only way to get my car up the driveway.

Not sure if this is true but I have run into it a couple of times from different reports and different angles but they all essentially say the same;

Building a Toyota Prius causes more environmental damage than a Hummer that is on the road for three times longer than a Prius. As already noted, the Prius is partly driven by a battery which contains nickel. The nickel is mined and smelted at a plant in Sudbury, Ontario. This plant has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the dead zone around the plant to test moon rovers. The area around the plant is devoid of any life for miles.

The plant is the source of all the nickel found in a Prius battery and Toyota purchases 1,000 tons annually. Dubbed the Superstack, the plague-factory has spread sulfur dioxide across northern Ontario, becoming every environmentalist nightmare.

“The acid rain around Sudbury was so bad it destroyed all the plants and the soil slid down off the hillside, said Canadian Greenpeace energy-coordinator David Martin during an interview with Mail, a British-based newspaper.

All of this would be bad enough in and of itself; however, the journey to make a hybrid doesnt end there. The nickel produced by this disastrous plant is shipped via massive container ship to the largest nickel refinery in Europe. From there, the nickel hops over to China to produce nickel foam. From there, it goes to Japan. Finally, the completed batteries are shipped to the United States, finalizing the around-the-world trip required to produce a single Prius battery. Are these not sounding less and less like environmentally sound cars and more like a farce?

Wait, I haven't even got to the best part yet.

When you pool together all the combined energy it takes to drive and build a Toyota Prius, the flagship car of energy fanatics, it takes almost 50 percent more energy than a Hummer - the Prius arch nemesis.

Through a study by CNW Marketing called “Dust to Dust, the total combined energy is taken from all the electrical, fuel, transportation, materials (metal, plastic, etc) and hundreds of other factors over the expected lifetime of a vehicle. The Prius costs an average of $3.25 per mile driven over a lifetime of 100,000 miles - the expected lifespan of the Hybrid.

The Hummer, on the other hand, costs a more fiscal $1.95 per mile to put on the road over an expected lifetime of 300,000 miles. That means the Hummer will last three times longer than a Prius and use less combined energy doing it.

Don't know whether that's true, but it sounds good... I think the comparison would be even more favorable if the Prius were compared to a car that gets decent gas mileage, like a Camry or Accord, rather than comparing a Prius to a Hummer.

I am very green. I pee over the balcony to save water. You would think my neighbors below would appreciate this gesture for their kids future but they don't

I wonder whats gonna happen when these batteries in these cars when need to be replaced and the owners can't afford them? I also wonder who will take the old batteries?

In reference to the Hummer being cleaner than a Prius start to finish, Top Gear made a similar statement about a study that said driving a Range Rover SUV was better for the environment overall. May have been an extension of the same study tho'.

Anybody that owns a Prius is a fricken moron. Hopefully that ends that We would be much better off to have turbo diesels with particulate cats and use the already existing ULS diesel. Get 50mpg in a larger, nicer AWD car like a Subaru Outback than that lame-ass Prius and after we move to nuclear energy (which, if ever even possible, will take this country probably 50yrs v. the 30 yrs hoped for... keep in mind 30yrs!! if we start tomorrow and get on a real schedule to better energy generation) consider electric cars that plug into the wall.

Just like to take a minute to thank all the stupid, stupid, clueless f'ers that are buying electric cars right now or in the near future. Energy is already becoming an issue with the influx of people (population growth in large cities like LA for example) and they are talking rolling brown-outs within just a couple of years in those large cities, and now idiot fuchs want to plug their car in while they are at it. And burn coal BTW to get the electricity (50% of US electricity is produced from coal).

Problem is that Americans need a cause. The tool that owns that jackass smart car probably jerks off to Al Gore movies while both attesting we should free Tibet one day and the next protest the current war.... so just exactly how should we free Tibet? Oh yeah, aren't people in Ethopia still starving? Remember the big hullabaloo over that back in the late 80s, early 90s. Then it was South Africa. Then it is Rwanda. After a few years the next bandwagon comes along. This one just hasn't seemed to die out yet, sadly because there is truly a possibility we need to be greener but how we do it is absolute bandwagon/sheep herding.

BTW, Mars is also experiencing global warming right now... must be all the pickup trucks and fossil fuels. Stupid Martians, we better launch some Priuses over there

Am I against being green? HELL NO, as long as it is truly moving towards green. I would love to have a 50mpg turbo diesel suby. Not a VW, those things are junk after about 60K miles when all the handles start falling off of them, etc. I am actually considering the Jetta for my fiancee but hate VW and would prefer an AWD option for her here in CO. If the price of solar roof stuff ever comes within reason I am all over that too, tho' with the threat of rolling brown outs, having a solar setup with on-site battery backup may be nearly a requirement (back to batts again!).

Don't hold back, please tell us how you really feel, byndbad914. It's not good to keep it all inside...

Amen.

Thankfully Obama and the dems will save us. with a grassroots campaign to revitalize America without new taxes and fix all those bad things the evil dictator Bush did so we can become happy people again..

Seriously though.. you notice that the news doesn't call it "global warming" anymore? Its now called "climate change". You don't want to lose the hysteria when the earth starts cooling off again.

yeah, this stuff gets me a bit fired up because it is so much blind leading the blind. There is a not-so-simple but easily defined path to being truly green within the next 30-50yrs but shitheads like Al Gore and that under-educated Leo DiCaprio have everyone believing we have to do it in 10yrs... so everyone works into a frenzy and runs out and buys into shitbox hybrids that get maybe 40mpg if you just drive 'em v. hyper-mileage pussy footing (I do have to get to work at some point in the AM) and are killing the environment with the batt production - out of sight, out of mind irrationality.

I was just pricing a solar roof yet again last weekend since I heard legislation was passed to increase the amount that can be written off out of fed income taxes this year - used to cap at $2K, which was stupid, so that has been lifted - a good thing the Obama admin has done IMHO so that is 1 for him Even with what I figured would be close to a $10K income tax write-off I am still somewhere in the 15yr break-even on cost (~$10K out of pocket for a roof that provides about half my summer useage, double for a complete system, no backup batts, still locked into grid for night juice) I am pretty juice friendly and even with the air on last summer my peak cost for elect was ~$120 in August, and last year we set records for consecutive days above 90deg that month.

so if I get ALL my juice from solar somehow, and was ALWAYS at peak which is not true, $20K/$120 = 167 months break-even (or 14yrs!!!). So it is clear that our gov't has no real desire to promote truly green ideas... only what appears green to get elected/re-elected.

If the gov't really meant biz it would stop taking our tax dollars and giving it to people to loan to us or sell back to us essentially (how is paying interest on my tax dollars helping me again??) and instead make solar roofing a 5-7yr break-even to match the current expectancy for occupancy...

I would rather the $1 trillion they were printing were simply divided evenly among ALL tax paying adults and they just sent us all a check for ~$7K... and that assumes HALF the US population is tax-paying adults BTW... and see how stoked the economy gets when the have-nots finally have for once. Ford/GM/Chrysler couldn't keep up with the demand for new cars if working families got $14K. I would buy a solar roof tomorrow if 75% of the cost were covered that way.

Silly taxpayers, Trix are for government!

Correct. Only your 'hybrid' power will come partially from your gas motor, partially from the diesel motor in the towtruck that helps you get home after your starter gives up.

I am all for having a "green home". As a kid I grew up in a solar powered house. We got our heat, electric and hot water from panels on top of the house and in the back yard. This was in the 80s and it didn't work so well. Obviously we still have to be on the grid. 20 years later I went to Kansas and the house is still there with updated solar power and is pretty state of the art.

I really am all for conserving energy. I even installed energy conservative devices all around my apartment. I have timers on the hot water heater and on the ac.

Where I draw the line is if someone comes along and tells me I cannot have a 427 big block motor in a sports car. Or worse someone idiot in congress tried to push a bill banning high performance tires in the US. Amazing what these guys think is ok to do on capitol hill. Tell me I cannot drive down the street on hoosiers if I want.

Dunno... might just be fair to say you're honest...

Hmm, I wonder if my 914 rotary engine conversion is green. It burns your eyes standing 15 feet behind it. But it's fun being in the cockpit!

Oblivious owners will just continue to drive them, as non-hybrids, getting 20 MPG because of the ballast that they are carrying.

Top Gear did a test... they put the Stig in a Prius, and had him run laps around the test track. Jeremy followed in an M3. IIRC, the Prius got 19 MPG during the flogging, and the comparatively leisurely pace for the M3 netted 24 MPG.

Haha, I do the same thing, but I try to hit my neighbors

well I do have a sailboat that I use A L O T...does that count?....but wait 1/2 the time Bmore is in the wrong direction from the true wind so I motor.....LOL

I'm not, but my underwear is ....................

I ride my bicycle to and from work, not to be green, but as an attempt to loose the gut, but it still counts right? Plus it's exiting riding a bike on public streets, my little brother says I have road rage even on my bike, I get a little loud with the f and c words he he.
Then there's the '96 Tahoe, 15 mpg if I'm lucky, 9-10 mpg if towing my 5500 lb toy hauler.
The '73 914 w. Chevy 283, you actually start crying when sitting in trafic he he.
And a multitude of 2-stroke model plane gas engines ranging from 100cc twins to 300cc flat fours, swinging 24" to 36" props, but I only run 80/1 mixture oil.
byndbad914 hit it right on the head when mentioning Mars. Earth changes its climate, it has all through history. Any person thinking we, the people, are a significant factor in what's happening with the climate is a fool. Algie in the oceans puke out more CO2 than we would if all of China and India were motorized like Americans.
The posts about the energy cost or "carbon footprint" of the hybrids make me feel really good about NOT owning one.