Washington Times Watch

Washington Times editorialist Bob Parks reprints a common story as if it were fact, without comment:

Now we know that making a Prius causes more environmental damage than manufacturing a Hummer.

AutoblogGreen lists a few places where that has been debunked. This isn't controversial - many people blindly repeat this, but I've never seen a defense of the original 'study'. Lascelles Linton has hypertext links to more detailed information in the original paragraph, if you click through.

A few comments to my posts on the hybrid in the Knight Rider TV movie, said things like like "spare me." Yes, the Knight Rider TV movie is a remake of a cheesy '80s TV show, but it might inspire Ford to make a hybrid Mustang. Boston Legal's 10 million viewers probably believed the statements about hybrid batteries. My point is: Culture matters. It's probably more important than things like politics, technology, brand or anything. It really does not matter that the hybrid Hummer/Prius study has been discredited (many, many times) or that this argument is just stupid for the simple reason that batteries are recycled by law. If it's repeated on shows like Boston Legal, it's "fact."