Assumptions: the power to deceive?

My friend John Sedgwick (sadly I can't link to his blog because he doesn't have one! yet ;-)), pointed me to a great story in The Globe and Mail - one of my favourite newspapers - has a great story about how Hummers are actually more environmentally friendly that hybrid cars like the Prius. You can read the story here. It is also worth clicking through to read the comments - there are some very interesting points of view raised. One comment in particular made me laugh. The author wrote about hybrids

...Not to mention being responsible for the huge clouds of smug hanging over major urban centres

that is simply too good a phrase to go unplagiarized ;-)

I don't actually know whether the total life cycle cost model, which they are using, is valid. However, challenging our assumptions about what 'Green' really means is an excellent idea. I wrote a little bit about this question back here