2008 Mazda Tribute Hybrid: Greener than Your SUV
Despite the updated 2008 EPA tests for fuel mileage this new 2008 Mazda Tribute Hybrid gets 29 mpg in the city and 34 on the highway. That's a real-world average of over 30 mpg. It's not quick, with a 155 horsepower drivetrain using a 2.3-liter four-cylinder engine and an electric motor that can move the car up to 25 mph without burning any fuel (if you go easy on the throttle). The CVT tranny doesn't add to this SUV's sportiness, with a high-pitched whine at take-off that had me checking for cops until I got used to the distant siren song. Handling isn't superb by modern SUV/crossover standards, either. Not surprising considering the body-on-frame design circa 2001.
After driving it last night I can confirm it's not quick, nimble or even as stylish as any other current Mazda product (despite exterior upgrades for 2008). But it still offers nearly 30 cubic feet of storage space behind the second-row seat, and up to 66 cubic feet of storage when you fold that seat down. It has a comfortable ride, sufficient secod-row seating space, dual-zone climate control, a 110-volt power outlet and a kickin' audio system with auxiliary input. In other words, it's clearly not a penalty box and is hard to truly fault (though I'd like less Ford-esque hard plastic on the dash and door panels). And did I mention it gets over 30 mpg?
I'm betting that better mileage than whatever SUV or crossover you're currently driving, right? I've already mentioned the Ford Escape Hybrid in previous posts regarding Enviro-Hyprocritism, so this one (along with the Mercury Mariner) fall into the same category. Essentially, if you claim to be interested in "doing your part to save the planet" you could do a lot worse than driving a 30-plus mpg SUV with enough power, space and luxury for 90-plus percent of current SUV/crossover drivers.
Go ahead, start listing reasons why this one won't satisfy your needs. Every excuse makes that neon "Enviro-Hypocrite" sign above you head glow a little brighter (which is yet another waste of energy).
BTW, if you don't claim to be riding on the latest Green Bandwagon you are free to drive whatever you want, no excuses necessary.
Posted by Karl Nov 7, 2007 7:00 am
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Categories: Mazda | Fuel Efficiency | Hybrid Vehicles
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But Carlisimo the absorption phenomenon and our outpacing can not be established.
The actual amount of CO2 increase is minimal. As a percentage of the atmosphere it is microscopic. So even if you "increase" the CO2 there is little to no proof that it really has a demonstrable impact.
The ONLY evidence of rising temperature and their cause is rising temperatures. I do believe that many "scientists" are seeing the "correlation" and jumping to the conclusion of a "cause."
We can post article after article, but no one as been able to isolate a cause because the climate is too amorphous and complex to model in a computer and too diverse to postulate with any certainty.
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Noticing correlations and trying to explain them is how science works! Look at dark matter, its existence is postulated only because it would explain some observations, astrophysicists have been struggling to find any harder evidence for years. The shape of South American and Africa led to the theory of plate tectonics. All accepted theories seem to have started out that way.
As for CO2, look at Mars. Run the blackbody equation to get the theoretical temperature of Mars based on solar input, frequency of the light it outputs, and its albedo, and you get a temperature that's lower than reality. The only factor that isn't captured in the blackbody equation is the greenhouse effect... and Mars's atmosphere is mostly CO2 and also really, really thin. That's what convinced me that CO2 is an effective greenhouse gas, anyway. Its concentration on earth has almost doubled over a century, I'd hardly call that insignificant.
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mnorm1
- Nov 12, 2007 4:51 pm
(#65 Total: 82)
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"Its concentration on earth has almost doubled over a century,"
This article from 2002 doesn't agree with that.
http://www-das.uwyo.edu/~geerts/cwx/notes/chap01/icecore.html
They show an increase of about 20% over 400 years. They also had this to say: ... during times of cooling the CO2 changed after the temperature change, by up to 1000 years. This order of events is not what one would expect from the enhanced greenhouse effect.
NOAA says CO2 concentration has increased 36% since about 1800.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2005/s2412.htm.
Each of these 2 sources agree CO2 has increased, neither supports doubling in a century. NOAA does finger human activities for the increase since 1800.
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My bad, I knew we were at ~380ppm now, and remembered that in recent history (<100,000yrs) it'd been as low as 180ppm, but we were at ~260-280ppm before the industrial revolution and I was still thinking of that 180ppm number. I should've said 36% =]. I don't see where your 20% is coming from though.
As for the 1000yr lag, I don't see it (or anything else in that ice core article) going against global warming. The usual explanations for ice age causes are Milankovitch cycles and continental distribution, factors much larger than atmospheric content. It seems natural to me to think that CO2 concentrations would then drop in response: cooler oceans can hold more CO2 (eg. soda). The equilibrium point for atmospheric CO2 would drop as temperature dropped, so more of it would be absorbed into other sinks (like the Siberian soil that Gore's spoken about recently).
If accurate, the 1000yr lag would only suggest that those ice ages weren't caused by a drop in atmospheric CO2, but by something else. (Could be the case even now, but the evidence that there's another driver is even less well developed than the "it's our fault" theories.)
Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if the CO2 increase we've caused didn't have much of an effect for another 1000 years. All I'm convinced of is that it will, at some point.
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mnorm1
- Nov 12, 2007 8:43 pm
(#67 Total: 82)
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"As for the 1000yr lag, I don't see it (or anything else in that ice core article) going against global warming." The authors noted it as unexpected. I didn't site the article as support "for or against" global warming; only for CO2 concentration.
There are other studies that show CO2 concentration levels over a span of hundreds of thousands of years doubling, then falling back on roughly a 150,000 year cycle. These swings could not have been man made.
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L.A. CA United States of America |
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I believe volcanic activity is one of the sources for CO2 swings that were/are obviously not "man made." My understanding is that everytime a "Mt. St. Helens" type of volcanic eruption occurs it is a MASSIVE CO2 release on an order that dwarfs human activity. That's EACH TIME a volcano erupts, not all volcanic activity as a whole.
All volcanic activity as a whole in a given decade or two simply dwarfs all man-made CO2 activity SINCE THE START OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION. This basically goes back to what Brett said -- in the area of CO2 production, man's activity versus nature's activity in any given time frame is like the paramecium under the microscope.
Or to put it another way, if EVERY automobile disappeared off the planet TOMORROW the change in total CO2 output wouldn't be a drop in the bucket, it would be an H2O molecule in an olympic-sized swimming pool.
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The CO2 cycles are pretty well documented up to 800,000 years ago, and they match the temperature cycles. I would say that external factors (Milankovitch cycles and continental positions) were responsible for the temperature changes, and those forced the changes in CO2 concentration. I think it only reinforces the idea that CO2 is related to atmospheric temperature.
What would convince me is if CO2 in the atmospheres on Mars and Venus could be shown not to have affected the temperatures of those planets at all (especially Mars, it's a simpler case).
*edit* Karl, I can't find anything supporting the volcano idea. The atmospheric CO2 charts that started in the '50s don't show any spikes representing eruptions, and google search result consensus is that volcanos contribute 150-220 million tons a year, compared to 22-26 billion for humans.
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L.A. CA United States of America |
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So at the very least, you're sources suggest we have approximately 1/10 the impact of Volcanos alone (not accounting for any of the other natural sources of CO2 -- of which there are many).
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mnorm1
- Nov 13, 2007 11:32 am
(#71 Total: 82)
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Karl,
I think you misread the numbers. Using carlisiomo's numbers, man contributes over 100 times more than volcanos.
This web site says man contributes 130 time more than volcanos.
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Hazards/What/VolGas/volgas.html
Regardless, that still doesn't change my view; we are in the warming portion of a cycle. Man does not control this cycle; man's impact on this cycle is minor if there is any impact at all.
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I also think man contributes much more CO2 than volcanoes. how many active volcanoes are there? And how much can a few volcanoes emit? Meanwhile we have many, many industrial plants that run non-stop and car that emit lots of CO2.
Mnorm, man'n impact on the cycle is far from minor!
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It took me a couple of seconds on Google to find out that there are over 1500 active volcanoes in the world.
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mnorm1
- Nov 13, 2007 6:22 pm
(#74 Total: 82)
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http://carto.eu.org/article2481.html
This link will show temperature and co2 concentrations for the last 400,000 years. About 325,000 years ago co2 spiked to about 300 ppm, temperatures had increased about 11 degrees from the previous bottom of the cycle. Then over about 75,000 years co2 levels had decreased to around 190 ppm.
Please explain to me how this was man made.
Over the course of the last 400,000 years this cycle has happened 4 times, and we are currently in the phase of the cycle for increasing co2 levels.
Who thinks this and other natural cycles will end because they are inconvenient for man?
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mnorm1, man is natural, anything we do is natural.
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No one's disputing that CO2 concentrations don't fluctuate naturally. But they've kept below 300ppm for the last 400,000 years, now they're up to 380ppm, and I thought it was pretty well established that we spiked it up to that level. The dispute is whether or not the temperature vs. CO2 correlation will continue, now that CO2 concentrations are unusually high.
If you really need those old fluctuations to be man made, then all I can say is... cavemen farted big, and suffered massive depopulation every time they did.
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technetium99, are all those 1500 volcanoes emitting lava or CO2 at the moment? If so, do they emit more than a typical fossil fuel plant?
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Blackadder, I have no idea. I am a health care professional, not a vulcanologist. But I believe that by the very definition of "active" that they are producing at least some gas. Probably a lot of methane, CO2, sulphates, and phosphates and smaller amounts of more exotic stuff.
The question I have is why is the "worldwide consensus of scientists" not looking at any other potential causes of CO2 spikes other than simple pollution. In particular, if there are spikes during the time of the industrial revolution and in the twentieth century, what other common causes could their be? How about deforestation? In the industrial revolution pretty much all of Europe was deforested. In the twentieth century some parts of North America and huge areas of Central and South America were deforested. What effect would the loss of all the CO2 scrubbing plants have on the environment?
To try to bring this back on subject, I like Mazda, and I have always liked the Tribute and I would consider one of these hybrids, if they were sold in the southeast. But since they are only sold in California, that kind of tells you that all Mazda (through their masters at Ford) is doing is trying to placate the greenie wackos. (Please note: This does not mean that I think everyone who cares about the environment is a wacko. Only those idiots without functioning brains who seem to be controlling the public perception of environmentalism. I respect Ed Begley because he actually practices what he preaches, but Al Gore is nothing but a big fat hypocrite.)
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mnorm1
- Nov 14, 2007 7:51 am
(#79 Total: 82)
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moparbad,
man is natural, anything we do is natural.
I agree. I blame women.
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I think there's some legal reason to sell a few hybrids in California. Some law was passed some years ago requiring automakers to sell so many zero emissions vehicles by around now (you can tell I don't know the details) and hybrids were allowed to count towards that, just in case real ZEVs weren't technically feasible in time.
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Technetium99, I think the major reason why the focus is so unfairly on the auto industry is that politicians see that as a quick way to score political points.....as autos are the most visible pollutants to the public. But then they neglect other pollution sources and issues like deforestation. (It also appears that deforestation isn't a problem in the US and that's probably why you don't hear about it. In Africa, deforestation was a big deal.)
Guys, you might like to check this out: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7092614.stm. Very interesting!
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mnorm1
- Nov 20, 2007 10:06 am
(#82 Total: 82)
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