Study errs in report of clean-air gains in Portland
Portland and Multnomah County officials were jubilant two months ago when a Portland city agency indicated that carbon dioxide emissions in 2004 had nudged just below 1990 figures. It's believed to be the first time a major U.S. urban area has documented such a decrease.
I believe their exact "jubilant" words were: "See, our little socialist experiment in trying to force everyone out of their cars really did work! We just thought we were being anti-capitalist but clean air is a bonus!"
But after an inquiry into the source of the numbers by a Portland think tank, a city official spotted a mistake in the report: Instead of a 0.1 percent decrease of emissions compared to 1990, there actually had been a .77 percent increase.
So instead of going down it went up. Oooops. This is simlair to the error in which Oregonlive.com, (home of the Fishwrapper, land of the cowards) cuts this story off after a "this doesn't really mean anything" rebuttle from a taxpayer funded tree hugger.
The article does finish with a public official doing the Dan Rather: "We know that the test was flawed but we still believe the results."
Read the analysis by the Cascade Policy Institute.
2 comments:
This should be a HUGE story. We blogged on that study a month ago when the NYTimes ran an editorial going ga ga over Portland because of that report.
I have a friend that is a local planner and really tied in to the transportation field in Portland.
He provided some awsome analysis for us back then.
Now I am waiting for the the NYT to run an "oops we were wrong" editorial.
This story really does infuriate me. It proves that the money spent (not "invested") on public transportation was a huge waste, the urban planners are all idiots, and the endless efforts to make driving inconvenient have only one effect: making people angry.
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