Creating a green baloney detection kit for green claims made in the CNW report : Dust to Dust : the energy cost of new vehicles : from concept to disposal

In order to assess the veracity of a green claim made by CNW marketing research Inc., I created a green baloney detection kit. It will serve as a guiding post by which anyone can assess the potential environmental impact of any action taken on the basis of the claims made by CNW in their dust to dust report. In their report they state that after doing an extensive life cycle analysis of several cars sold in the United States in 2005, they found that high fuel economy did not necessarily correlate to a smaller environmental impact, but rather the biggest contribution to the environmental impact of automobiles is in their end-of-life disposal. My green baloney detection kit will be an adaptation of Carl Sagan's original baloney detection kit, which is a series of probes which serve as a pillar for detecting fallacious arguments or claims. My enquiries show that the Dust to Dust report does not pass the green baloney detection kit and with it nontechnical environmentally conscious automotive consumers can determine that the claims made by CNW are not scientifically sound and so their decisions should be based on those claims.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2008

Author dc:creator

• Azu, Irina Mateko

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Tim Gutowski.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/45787

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/45787