Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Bowling With Our Own
By John Leo
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, is very nervous about releasing his new research, and understandably so. His five-year study shows that immigration and ethnic diversity have a devastating short- and medium-term influence on the social capital, fabric of associations, trust, and neighborliness that create and sustain communities. He fears that his work on the surprisingly negative effects of diversity will become part of the immigration debate, even though he finds that in the long run, people do forge new communities and new ties.
Putnam’s study reveals that immigration and diversity not only reduce social capital between ethnic groups, but also within the groups themselves. Trust, even for members of one’s own race, is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friendships fewer. The problem isn’t ethnic conflict or troubled racial relations, but withdrawal and isolation. Putnam writes: “In colloquial language, people living in ethnically diverse settings appear to ‘hunker down’—that is, to pull in like a turtle.”
In the 41 sites Putnam studied in the U.S., he found that the more diverse the neighborhood, the less residents trust neighbors. This proved true in communities large and small, from big cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and Boston to tiny Yakima, Washington, rural South Dakota, and the mountains of West Virginia. In diverse San Francisco and Los Angeles, about 30 percent of people say that they trust neighbors a lot. In ethnically homogeneous communities in the Dakotas, the figure is 70 percent to 80 percent.
Diversity does not produce “bad race relations,” Putnam says. Rather, people in diverse communities tend “to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less, to agitate for social reform more, but have less faith that they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television.” Putnam adds a crushing footnote: his findings “may underestimate the real effect of diversity on social withdrawal.”
Neither age nor disparities of wealth explain this result. “Americans raised in the 1970s,” he writes, “seem fully as unnerved by diversity as those raised in the 1920s.” And the “hunkering down” occurred no matter whether the communities were relatively egalitarian or showed great differences in personal income. Even when communities are equally poor or rich, equally safe or crime-ridden, diversity correlates with less trust of neighbors, lower confidence in local politicians and news media, less charitable giving and volunteering, fewer close friends, and less happiness.
Putnam has long been aware that his findings could have a big effect on the immigration debate. Last October, he told the Financial Times that “he had delayed publishing his research until he could develop proposals to compensate for the negative effects of diversity.” He said it “would have been irresponsible to publish without that,” a quote that should raise eyebrows. Academics aren’t supposed to withhold negative data until they can suggest antidotes to their findings.
Nor has Putnam made details of his study available for examination by peers and the public. So far, he has published only an initial summary of his findings, from a speech he gave after winning an award in Sweden, in the June issue of Scandinavian Political Studies. His office said Putnam is in Britain, working on a religion project at the University of Manchester, and is currently too busy to grant an interview.
Putnam’s study does make two positive points: in the long run, increased immigration and diversity are inevitable and desirable, and successful immigrant societies “dampen the negative effects of diversity” by constructing new identities. Social psychologists have long favored the optimistic hypothesis that contact between different ethnic and racial groups increases tolerance and social solidarity.
For instance, white soldiers assigned to units with black soldiers after World War II were more relaxed about desegregation of the army than were soldiers in all-white units. But Putnam acknowledges that most empirical studies do not support the “contact hypothesis.” In general, they find that the more people are brought into contact with those of another race or ethnicity, the more they stick to their own, and the less they trust others. Putnam writes: “Across local areas in the United States, Australia, Sweden Canada and Britain, greater ethnic diversity is associated with lower social trust and, at least in some cases, lower investment in public goods.”
Though Putnam is wary of what right-wing politicians might do with his findings, the data might give pause to those on the left, and in the center as well. If he’s right, heavy immigration will inflict social deterioration for decades to come, harming immigrants as well as the native-born. Putnam is hopeful that eventually America will forge a new solidarity based on a “new, broader sense of we.” The problem is how to do that in an era of multiculturalism and disdain for assimilation.
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Prius Outdoes Hummer in Environmental Damage
Staff Writer
The Toyota Prius has become the flagship car for those in our society so environmentally conscious that they are willing to spend a premium to show the world how much they care. Unfortunately for them, their ultimate ‘green car’ is the source of some of the worst pollution in North America; it takes more combined energy per Prius to produce than a Hummer.
Before we delve into the seedy underworld of hybrids, you must first understand how a hybrid works. For this, we will use the most popular hybrid on the market, the Toyota Prius.
The Prius is powered by not one, but two engines: a standard 76 horsepower, 1.5-liter gas engine found in most cars today and a battery- powered engine that deals out 67 horsepower and a whooping 295ft/lbs of torque, below 2000 revolutions per minute. Essentially, the Toyota Synergy Drive system, as it is so called, propels the car from a dead stop to up to 30mph. This is where the largest percent of gas is consumed. As any physics major can tell you, it takes more energy to get an object moving than to keep it moving. The battery is recharged through the braking system, as well as when the gasoline engine takes over anywhere north of 30mph. It seems like a great energy efficient and environmentally sound car, right?
You would be right if you went by the old government EPA estimates, which netted the Prius an incredible 60 miles per gallon in the city and 51 miles per gallon on the highway. Unfortunately for Toyota, the government realized how unrealistic their EPA tests were, which consisted of highway speeds limited to 55mph and acceleration of only 3.3 mph per second. The new tests which affect all 2008 models give a much more realistic rating with highway speeds of 80mph and acceleration of 8mph per second. This has dropped the Prius’s EPA down by 25 percent to an average of 45mpg. This now puts the Toyota within spitting distance of cars like the Chevy Aveo, which costs less then half what the Prius costs.
However, if that was the only issue with the Prius, I wouldn’t be writing this article. It gets much worse.
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’s 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 doesn’t 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’s 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.
So, if you are really an environmentalist - ditch the Prius. Instead, buy one of the most economical cars available - a Toyota Scion xB. The Scion only costs a paltry $0.48 per mile to put on the road. If you are still obsessed over gas mileage - buy a Chevy Aveo and fix that lead foot.
One last fun fact for you: it takes five years to offset the premium price of a Prius. Meaning, you have to wait 60 months to save any money over a non-hybrid car because of lower gas expenses.
source: http://clubs.ccsu.edu/recorder/editorial/editorial_item.asp?NewsID=188
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Antarctic temperatures disagree with climate model predictions
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-02/osu-atd021207.php
This comes soon after the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that strongly supports the conclusion that the Earth's climate as a whole is warming, largely due to human activity.
It also follows a similar finding from last summer by the same research group that showed no increase in precipitation over Antarctica in the last 50 years. Most models predict that both precipitation and temperature will increase over Antarctica with a warming of the planet.
David Bromwich, professor of professor of atmospheric sciences in the Department of Geography, and researcher with the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University, reported on this work at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science at San Francisco.
"It's hard to see a global warming signal from the mainland of Antarctica right now," he said. "Part of the reason is that there is a lot of variability there. It's very hard in these polar latitudes to demonstrate a global warming signal. This is in marked contrast to the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula that is one of the most rapidly warming parts of the Earth."
Bromwich says that the problem rises from several complications. The continent is vast, as large as the United States and Mexico combined. Only a small amount of detailed data is available – there are perhaps only 100 weather stations on that continent compared to the thousands spread across the U.S. and Europe . And the records that we have only date back a half-century.
"The best we can say right now is that the climate models are somewhat inconsistent with the evidence that we have for the last 50 years from continental Antarctica .
"We're looking for a small signal that represents the impact of human activity and it is hard to find it at the moment," he said.
Last year, Bromwich's research group reported in the journal Science that Antarctic snowfall hadn't increased in the last 50 years. "What we see now is that the temperature regime is broadly similar to what we saw before with snowfall. In the last decade or so, both have gone down," he said.
In addition to the new temperature records and earlier precipitation records, Bromwich's team also looked at the behavior of the circumpolar westerlies, the broad system of winds that surround the Antarctic continent.
"The westerlies have intensified over the last four decades of so, increasing in strength by as much as perhaps 10 to 20 percent," he said. "This is a huge amount of ocean north of Antarctica and we're only now understanding just how important the winds are for things like mixing in the Southern Ocean." The ocean mixing both dissipates heat and absorbs carbon dioxide, one of the key greenhouse gases linked to global warming.
Some researchers are suggesting that the strengthening of the westerlies may be playing a role in the collapse of ice shelves along the Antarctic Peninsula.
"The peninsula is the most northern point of Antarctica and it sticks out into the westerlies," Bromwich says. "If there is an increase in the westerly winds, it will have a warming impact on that part of the continent, thus helping to break up the ice shelves, he said.
"Farther south, the impact would be modest, or even non-existent."
Bromwich said that the increase in the ozone hole above the central Antarctic continent may also be affecting temperatures on the mainland. "If you have less ozone, there's less absorption of the ultraviolet light and the stratosphere doesn't warm as much."
That would mean that winter-like conditions would remain later in the spring than normal, lowering temperatures.
"In some sense, we might have competing effects going on in Antarctica where there is low-level CO2 warming but that may be swamped by the effects of ozone depletion," he said. "The year 2006 was the all-time maximum for ozone depletion over the Antarctic."
Bromwich said the disagreement between climate model predictions and the snowfall and temperature records doesn't necessarily mean that the models are wrong.
"It isn't surprising that these models are not doing as well in these remote parts of the world. These are global models and shouldn't be expected to be equally exact for all locations," he said.
Contact: David Bromwich (614) 292-6692; Bromwich.1@osu.edu
Monday, May 16, 2005
Obfuscation Doesn't Change the Facts: Rail Transit Is Unreasonably Expensive
In a recent Wall Street Journal column, P.J. O’Rourke described the great expense and ineffectiveness of mass transit.[1] In the process, he referred to Heritage Foundation research on the exorbitant costs of urban rail (light rail, subways, and commuter rail).[2] Specifically, O’Rourke compared the cost of new rail systems to the cost of leasing riders luxury SUVs and found transit wanting. Transit advocates have challenged this point, but it still holds true.
For proof of the proposition, start by looking in almost any daily newspaper. The Newark Star-Ledger, for example, recentlycarried an advertisement for a new BMW X-5 luxury SUV, available for lease at an annual cost of less than $6,300.
Then compare that to the cost of rail. For example, the Federal Transit Administration reported in 2000 that each new trip on the Hiawatha light rail line in Minneapolis would cost a projected $18.57—and this was before the cost of the line escalated more than 50 percent. Using the pre-escalation number, the cost for each new annual commuter using the line two ways each work day (for 450 trips each year) would be approximately $8,400—or about $2,100 more than the cost to lease a BMW luxury SUV for the year. If that’s not clear enough, see Chart 1 for a graphical comparison.
Responding to the O’Rourke column, Mr. Janek Kozlowski of Alexandria, Virginia, wrote a letter, which the Journal published, disputing the transit/luxury car comparison. Mr. Kozlowski bases his argument on the new Hiawatha line. His detailed calculations include the cost of leasing cars for all riders of the Hiawatha system, most of whom were previously bus riders, not drivers. Kozlowski adds in the cost of operating the cars—that is, gasoline and maintenance—and building new highway capacity—on the specious assumption that, without light rail, more highway capacity would be necessary. But if one thing is clear from the U.S. experience in light rail, it is that new rail systems have a minimal impact on traffic congestion. For example, Portland’s expensive new light rail system has been accompanied by one of the largest increases in traffic congestion in a major urban area.
Mr. Kozlowski, like some other transit funding advocates before him, mistakes the transit/luxury car comparison as an actual policy alternative to building urban rail. But it is a rhetorical point, not a policy proposal. More often than not, the most prominent justification for building new rail systems is alleviation of traffic congestion, which requires getting drivers out of their cars. It is difficult to imagine a more absurd public policy approach than to spend more money to get a driver out of a car than to lease him or her a new one. Urban rail is an unreasonably expensive way to get cars off the road.
Mr. Kozlowski is not alone in attempting to refute the cost comparison. The same tactic has been used before in transit industry reports, perhaps to cloud the issue—and for good reason: transit’s extravagant expense should be an embarrassment.
If, for example, the people of Minneapolis and St. Paul were to invest the same amount of money per driver—$8,400, as described above—to attract all drivers in the area to transit, they would have to spend $13 billion per year, almost as much as Minnesota’s total tax revenue. Obviously, no urban area could afford such an expensive congestion reduction strategy.
And if the people of Minneapolis-St. Paul were to invest the same amount per daily trip to attract all trips from cars to transit, the cost would approach the gross personal income of the metropolitan area. If there were a Nobel Prize for irrational public policy, reducing traffic congestion with light rail would be the winner.
Of course, projections based on planning reports tend to be overly optimistic. In some cases, virtually no net transfer of ridership from cars to urban rail systems occurs at all. For example, the most recent expansions of the Dallas area DART light rail system have been accompanied by a reduction in transit ridership. Similarly, rail ridership is now lower after the doubling of the length of the St. Louis light rail line.
All of this demonstrates that it is extremely expensive to build urban rail systems. And more importantly, even the most grandiose systems have little or no impact on traffic congestion. That is because, whether in the United States or Western Europe, transit principally serves core urban areas and is not an affordable way to serve the non-core and suburban markets that represent the bulk of travel demand. This fact is well understood, if not readily admitted, by transit and urban planners, who blather on about transit and its ability to reduce traffic congestion. However, their actions speak louder than their words: no regional transportation plan anticipates transit improvements that would materially reduce automobile use. Case closed.
Wendell Cox is a Visiting Fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris.
Sunday, April 29, 2001
Bush loves ecology --at home
Here is article in the Chicago Tribune by Rob Sullivan. Apparenlty, the President Bush is very much an evironmentalist. Not those type who cries for and hugs the tree. Instead, the practices the environmentalism unlike the Former Vice President Al Gore, who has 20 room and 8 bathroom house that burns 221,000 kWh per year, the 20 times the average. by Rob Sullivan |
| The 4,000-square-foot house is a model of environmental rectitude. Geothermal heat pumps located in a central closet circulate water through pipes buried 300 feet deep in the ground where the temperature is a constant 67 degrees; the water heats the house in the winter and cools it in the summer. Systems such as the one in this "eco-friendly" dwelling use about 25% of the electricity that traditional heating and cooling systems utilize. A 25,000-gallon underground cistern collects rainwater gathered from roof runs; wastewater from sinks, toilets and showers goes into underground purifying tanks and is also funneled into the cistern. The water from the cistern is used to irrigate the landscaping surrounding the four-bedroom home. Plants and flowers native to the high prairie area blend the structure into the surrounding ecosystem. No, this is not the home of some eccentrically wealthy eco-freak trying to shame his fellow citizens into following the pristineness of his self-righteous example. And no, it is not the wilderness retreat of the Sierra Club or the Natural Resources Defense Council, a haven where tree-huggers plot political strategy. This is President George W. Bush's "Texas White House" outside the small town of Crawford. Yes, the same George W. who believes arsenic and drinking water might not be such a bad combo, the same man who reneged on his campaign promise to lower carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, the same man who is doing everything in his power to fling open the Alaskan Natural Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. How does the President reconcile an eco-friendly abode for his own family with his persistent stand against anything that smacks of an environmentally friendly agenda for the nation as a whole? The answer to that perplexing question is a real mystery. Perhaps sound ecological practices are only for those who can afford them: as a self-proclaimed strict constructionist of the U.S. Constitution, Bush must be aware that clean air and clean water are not guaranteed in that glorious document. Perhaps in Bush's Brave New Corporate World, clean natural resources are merely commodities in a free-market economy: if you can pay for them, fine; if not, tough. The rest of us will just have to put up with more toxic dumps and more public lands being turned over to logging, mining and oil companies. According to David Heymann, the house's architect and associate dean of the University of Texas architecture department, Heymann designed the house so that "every room has a relationship with something in the landscape that's different from the room next door. Each of the rooms feels like a slightly different place." In a USA Today interview, Heymann said, "There's a great grove of oak trees to the west that protects it from the late afternoon sun. Then there is a view out to the north looking at hills, and to the east out over a lake, and the view to the south . . . out to beautiful hills." I suppose in George W.'s architectural world only the rich and powerful have views; vistas that the public owns as part of its shared heritage are up for lease and sale. Heymann also termed the house "stunningly small." Really? Would it be stunningly small for a single mother in South Central Los Angeles? How stunningly small would it be for an immigrant Latino family in San Antonio Maybe in the rarified heights where second homes are the norm, 4,000 square feet is small and on a stunning scale as well, but in Main Street America that much elbow room is pretty big for the first and only home. But then most of us can't reconcile what might at first glance appear to be inherently irreconcilable. Maybe some day, like our noble president, we will be able to make that kind of staggering mental feat. That is, if we ever stop misunderestimating ourselves. Rob Sullivan is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles. Sources: the President Bush's Environmentalism: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=0510480A-802A-23AD-401C-E362782CE790 Al Gore Carbon Footprint: http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/NussbaumOnDesign/archives/2007/02/gores_carbon_fo.html |