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HA HA HA
Wheels magazine’s John Carey reviews (no link available) Green Travel and Transport, by SBS presenter and internationally recognised sustainable living advocate Tanya Ha:
Much of the content in the early part of the book seemed to bear little relevance to its title, like the page devoted to a discussion of shawls made from the hair of an endangered Tibetan antelope. Truly ...
But mild annoyance turned to head-shaking disbelief when I finally reached the chapter titled Buying a New Car. After a lame description of hydrogen’s potential and problems, and why you can’t buy a car fuelled with the stuff right now, Ha moves on to hybrids.
What follows, and there’s no polite way to put this, is utter gibberish.
Ha writes: “One solution is the electric hybrid, which combines a fuel cell with the traditional petrol engine.” No, Tanya, it doesn’t. A hybrid drivetrain is an internal combustion engine teamed with an electric motor/generator unit and battery. There ain’t no fuel cell.
Next sentence: “While the car is running on unleaded petrol, hydrogen is produced as a byproduct.” Pardon? Burn a hydrocarbon fuel like petrol and the products of combustion are almost entirely carbon dioxide and water vapour.
Then: “This hydrogen becomes the fuel for the fuel cell, so the battery recharges while the car is running on petrol.” So, hydrogen that isn’t produced by the petrol engine is used by a fuel cell that isn’t there?
Naturally, this is another quality publication from the geniuses at Melbourne University Press. Incidentally, Ha has a Bachelor in Science degree from that university; keep your children away. More from Carey:
Remember Honda’s quite awful Insight Hybrid? ... All of 45 of the tiny, slow, skittish, noisy, ill-handling dungers were sold [in Australia] over a four-year period from 2001, the very last in January 2004. Yet almost four years later, Green Travel and Transport includes the Insight among a list of the hybrids you could buy today.
Melbourne University Press is among publishers seeking the rights to David Hicks’ life story. He should sign with them. They won’t check anything.
#3—Better narrow it down, son. That could be any of them.
Saw one arschloch Friday with a big BIODIESEL sticker on his black Hummer. Parked in a handicap spot, of course.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2008 02 03 at 10:54 AM • permalinkThis is ridiculous - there are enough geeks out there to have accurate knowledge of this kind of stuff, and we still have to be misled by someone who is ignorant?
Green design is wonderful and there are people who actually know how things work!
It’s very disappointing.People who don’t check their facts make the rest of us work much more than we have to.
Tanya Ha also wrote Greeniology. Don’t know if it had mechanical/electric info in it.
On the bright side of electric car development, google Shai Agassi and his project with Nissan and Renault to introduce electric cars to Israel. This may help them survive beyond the need of Arab oil.
And what an appealing visage…
Posted by carpefraise on 2008 02 03 at 11:08 AM • permalinkAs long as we talking Green, I have a question.
It occurs to me I’ve been propping up a Bush for eight years. Can I get carbon credits for that?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2008 02 03 at 11:33 AM • permalinkSo, hydrogen that isn’t produced by the petrol engine is used by a fuel cell that isn’t there?
Reminds me of the best ever line I remember from my software days. We wrote some code for a clien’ts website, and we’re going through a review of the code with the geeks in Atlanta. They were saying ‘this is wrong’ and many things like it. After about 15 minutes of this, the top guy on our team (growing more annoyed as this review was happening) finally says: ‘so, the problem is that our code doesn’t conform to a nonexistent spec’. That basically ended the code review.
Posted by RogerBournival on 2008 02 03 at 11:51 AM • permalinkWhat follows, and there’s no polite way to put this, is utter gibberish.
I dunno - that’s pretty polite to me.
I would have said “complete and utter BULLSHIT.”
Posted by Barbara Skolaut on 2008 02 03 at 12:01 PM • permalinkMuch like the industry of journalism, if the business of education doesn’t figure out some way to police itself, soon, it will end up being policed by others, harshly.
Ms. Hu stands as an example of what idiocy is allowable in the talking head profession, and what degrees of ignorance can survive the college education process.
Louise Adler, CEO and chief chucklehead of Melbourne University Press was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the 2008 Australia Day Honours List.
It was for “service to literature as a publisher, through support for and the promotion of emerging authors, to tertiary education, and to the community.”
Previous service to literature, included printing Loewenstein’s book. Another masterpiece of fact-checking.
See kids? Breathtaking incompetence does pay!
Dave S
Are you sure your Johnson rod was not at fault? It may have been lacking in girth, or was installed at the wrong temperature.Or was it a fuchsia reactor.
Cheers
Posted by J.M. Heinrichs on 2008 02 03 at 05:53 PM • permalinkJohn Carey doesn’t seem to be much of a big brain either, and one has to wonder whether he and Ha oughtn’t team up as the the Hydrogen and Benzene clowns.
After ridiculing Ha for saying Hybrid cars generate Hydrogen, Carey says “Burn a hydrocarbon fuel like petrol and the products of combustion are almost entirely carbon dioxide and water vapour”. Oops, forgot to mention Benzene, Nitrogen Oxides, Carbon Monoxide, and 1-3 Butadiene, all of which go towards polluting the atmosphere and creating smog.
I guess air pollution is another myth.
Laugh at the pretensions of others by all means, but get the basic facts straight (if you can).
Or as they used to sing
Poison Ivy comes a creepin’ all around
Measles make MUmPy
MUmPs’ll make you lumpy Chicken pox will make you jump and twitch.Posted by stackja1945 on 2008 02 03 at 07:58 PM • permalink#23—That’s why the word “almost” is in there, Bryla.
Posted by Evil Pundit on 2008 02 03 at 08:03 PM • permalinkPerhaps bryla would care to include the percentages (by weight, please) of the other constituents? Probably not. That would require actual knowledge.
Posted by JorgXMcKie on 2008 02 03 at 10:04 PM • permalink#14, check the oscillation overthruster, too.
Posted by Steve Skubinna on 2008 02 03 at 11:11 PM • permalink#14—AND REVERSE THE POLARITY OF THE NEUTRON FLOW!
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2008 02 03 at 11:53 PM • permalinkWhy does it seem to appear that the people who hate cars the most know the least about them?
#23 What happened to good old fashioned pollution? When did we cross that line that made CO2 more scary than CO?
#14 Hilarious.Posted by Dame Penelope on 2008 02 04 at 02:08 AM • permalink
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Oh dear. If I recall rightly, this isn’t the first time Ha hasn’t even attempted to check her facts.