Not Spaghetti

Just out of curiosity, could the MPG reduction during the winter be related to the presence of ice and snow? It is true that people drive more slowly in such weather (or should!). but it also requires more time to cover the same distance and detours are often more unpredictable. Snow and ice can also accumulate on the car and add more weight.

She also believes that overall sensitivity is probably low, and specifically assert that a Charney sensitivity well below 2C is plausible.

In a recent thread at Kloor's I pointed out that recent deep-time paleo work strongly argued against this, and her response was to point me to a recent review paper (Hegerl co-auth) she said agreed with her. I looked and... no, it didn't. This kind of sloppiness is very hard to excuse.

This

http://www.skepticalscience.com/increasing-Antarctic-Southern-sea-ice.htm

has a mention of the 1992 Manabe et.al. work that indicated that Antarctic sea ice barely changed even under 2XCO2.

Heh, my sister just bought one because her company moved her office from about 10 miles away to a gruesome 35 mile one way commute in stop 'n go traffic (I had a slightly longer version of the same commute, end point a few miles farther up the same boulevard). One of the reasons she got the Prius instead of the competitors was because she could fit her stand up bass in the thing. Talk about rear legroom! Overall, Toyota has done a great job of packaging the car.

About your mileage. You would be surprised about the differences in rolling resistance of tires. If you got tires which have good winter traction -- M+S rated -- they will have higher rolling resistance. I believe that Toyota had some special OEM tires with very low rolling resistance designed for the Prius, so this could well be the reason for the decreased mileage.

Me, I'm kind of a leadfoot and I like the feel of G's when I put my boot into it. That and sharp cornering performance. My favorite car for this was my heavily modified Mazda Miata. 0-60 was around 6 seconds and it would pull close to 1g in the corners. Fun, fun, fun, and I still got around 25mpg in mixed driving, over 30 on the highway. Moving to a place with snow on the ground for close to 6 months of the year (last year it was October to May, a long winter by anyone's definition) moved me to sell my baby and just use the Subaru. It sill gets 25mpg in mixed driving with my leadfoot and 33 -35 on the highway. I hope Suby has a hybrid by the time my current one dies, but that is years in the future.

Arthur,

I have an Excel spreadsheet but I haven't entered the data from the pen-and-paper record that I keep in my car for about a year. Let me get it up-to-date and then I'll send it to you.

KLOOR is the one who is obsessive in comparison to Romm? LOL!

Great post, I've been looking for something to help me with my old lighting setup in my grandma's old house.

I'm also considering putting down underfloor heating - would you be able to do a walkthrough for that? ^_^ Also what supplier would you recommend? I was considering Floor Heating Online... What do you think?

Let me join the chorus of approbation - but add that this is part of a general trend of a general type of blogs/venues. Collide-a-Scape is right in the middle of them.

kkloor writes:

Here's the thing Arthur: it's really hard to take this seriously when you open this way:
Keith Kloor is a free-lance writer who reportedly now teaches journalism at NYU; during 2008-2009 he was on some sort of fellowship in Colorado.

The rest of your post is supposedly some sort of detailed deconstruction of my supposed pattern of deception. You obviously put a lot of work in it. So why couldn't you be bothered to actually check out that I do teach at NYU--and have since the mid 2000s (see the upcoming Fall semester page for undergraduate course listings, look under "Advanced Reporting") and that I was on a journalism fellowship during the 2008/2009 academic year at the University of Colorado's Center for Environmental Journalism. All you have to do is read the About page at my blog to learn this stuff, btw.

Why is it hard to take the criticisms seriously because of that opening? Arthur reported accurately, the facts seem to be in order- you essentially are agreeing with him.

I understand how nitpicking might give you the opportunity to avoid the substance of his post, but at least find some nits to pick!

Arthur,

I've had my Prius since June of 2004 and have also kept track. Here in Rochester, the seasonal cycle in the MPG is even more pronounced. It may be due to more than just the heater...I think the engine also has to run a certain amount to warm up in order to satisfy the stringent SULEV (or whatever it is) emissions standard. And, I have heard it suggested that the batteries are less efficient in the cold and even claims that the increased air density & resulting drag makes a difference.

By the way, I recommend also recording the average MPG as computed by the Prius screen each time you fill up. I think this number is actually much more precise than what you get by calculating the MPG yourself (because of the variability in the amount of gas you can get into the tank...which is probably even worse for the Prius than most cars because of that bladder thing in the gas tank). As a result, you should get a much less noisy curve using that number even without having to average over multiple fillups. (The value for the amount of gas used in computing that average MPG is apparently calculated by integrating the amount of time that the fuel injectors fire, which I have read should indeed give very good precision...although its accuracy may be a little off, i.e., there may tend to be a small offset relating to variability in the injectors relative to specs. In my experience, the offset over the long run in comparison to the direct calculational method is that the screen MPG is high by about 1.2 mpg, or ~2.5%. Of course, I don't even know to what accuracy the gas pumps at gas stations can be trusted to.)

I have also seen a decline in MPG with time; however, mine seems to have been sort of a step function that occurred when last spring/summer my MPG failed to recover nearly as well as it had in previous years. I got new tires that spring, so that's the prime suspect...although I am surprised that the difference is that dramatic (about 5-6 mpg drop in the summer compared to previous summers) and the tires that I got (Uniroyal Tiger Paw) were rated well for rolling resistance. I was also wondering if there was a change in gas formulation, particularly with the use of more ethanol in the mix, that could account for it. Or, maybe something with the car aging or getting out-of-tune. Of course, it is the funny thing about owning a Prius that one finds little sympathy from people when you tell them how your gas mileage sucks because you used to get in the low 50s in the summer and now it is down around 45-47 mpg!

I agree with you that the Prius is a great car. People are always surprised by the ample rear leg room and the very decent luggage space. And, the hatch is long enough that I can put my bike in (with the seats down, of course) without taking off either of the wheels. A few minor annoyances, as with any car, but I am generally very happy with it.

Did Kloor really just refuse to read the article because the first sentence used the word "reportedly" for something which is indeed true?

I don't know how to react to that, other than to say 'WTF'?

Brickbats Prove Worth. . .

These brickbats are actually a complement to Kloor's contribution to climate reporting.

quoting Kloor:

> "So your first sentence is quite lazy and obviously meant to be disparaging. If you can't play fair there, why would I think you're playing fair in the rest of your post?"

One might suggest *actually reading it*, Kloor, and not swooning after only one sentence. I chuckle because this is exactly one of the of Kloor's faults Smith documents. I remember when Kloor was being accurately accused of lazily using the "he said/she said" narrative -- Kloor, without irony, pleaded that because he got some rude replies from "deniers" *and* "warmists", he really must be on to something! If I wanted Kloor to fall down a manhole, I would put up a "Watch Your Step" sign nearby and criticize his eyesight, then wait a few seconds for the tumble.

Kloor attracts high quality commentators. I was very impressed with Kloor highlighting Jonathan Gilligan's comment by making it a full post. http://www.collide-a-scape.com/2010/06/20/ I recommend following Kloor only from second hand reports of the competent.

I am not surprised Kloor is a journalism teacher - he is a wild bag full of every modern journalistic shortcut combined with self-importance combined with good intentions. He is thus a stereotypical journalism professor. At NYU, if Kloor bumped into Jay Rosen in the halls, both worthies would explode at the speed of light from the interactions of particles and anti-particles. (This is a snarky way of saying Kloor would benefit from critical self-examination.)

But climate disruption reporting is most definitely enhanced by having Kieth Kloor participate. Proven by the interest displayed here.