Toyota Hybrid Sales Top 500000 Worldwide

Cumulative worldwide sales of Toyota hybrids have topped the 500,000 mark, with approximately 513,000 units sold worldwide by the end of October this year. The majority of those sales (426,800, or 83%) come from the Prius.

Toyota launched the Prius - the world's first mass-produced hybrid vehicle - in Japan in 1997 and began selling it in North America, Europe and elsewhere in 2000. In 2003, Toyota introduced in the second-generation Prius a new-generation hybrid system. In 2005, it expanded use of this system to SUVs in the form of the Lexus RX400h (Harrier Hybrid in Japan) and the Highlander Hybrid (Kluger Hybrid in Japan).

Peak Oil on Australia ABC TV

abc.net.au, peakoil.com :

Real Oil Crisis
24 November 2005

Jonica Newby [reporter]: ... it's not just that 90% of our transportation is fuelled by oil. This shopping centre is literally full of petroleum products. Look: the fabric in these clothes - petroleum based. These plastics, petroleum based. It takes on average 6 barrels of oil just to bring one cow to market.

Jeremy Leggett [geologist/author]: The last time we discovered a whole new province was the North Sea in the early 1970's. We're using 84 million barrels a day. The last year we discovered more oil than we consumed was 1981.

Narration: All oil fields follow the same pattern of rise, peak, then fall - even if they encompass an entire nation. The US hit peak oil in 1971. The UK with its North Sea oil peaked in 1999. Australia peaked in 2000. So when will Planet Earth reach peak oil? That depends on what's really happening here. The place that provides a quarter of the world's oil - the Middle East.

Narration: The dissident geologists went back to original surveys to estimate total Middle East oil. They added world known reserves, and projections of all future oil to be discovered. That's how they calculated the world will reach peak oil in the next 3 years - if we're not there already.

Narration: ... Petroleum giant Chevron is now running these startling advertisements. And here in Australia, some surprising people have come out in the early peak camp. Earlier this year, Eric Streitberg asked an extraordinary question at the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association conference.

Eric Streitberg [Managing Director, ARC Energy]: I asked them to put up their hands if they thought that we had reached peak oil. Fifty percent of the people in the audience put up their hand saying that they believe we're at peak oil and these are practicing petroleum industry professionals ...

(2005-11-26 10:09:19 SGT) [Energy] Permalink

China : another poisoned river

smh.com.au, redorbit.com, news.yahoo.com :

Another chemical plant has exploded in China, spewing toxic benzene into the water supply of a central region as authorities in the country's north-east struggle to protect millions of people from an earlier spill.

The blast on Thursday at the Yingte Chemical Co in Dianjiang, part of the huge Chongqing municipality straddling the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, killed one worker and forced the evacuation of 6000 nearby residents and the closure of schools. People in the area were warned not to drink water from the local river, a tributary of the Yangtze, because of concern that carcinogenic benzene had spilled.

(2005-11-26 00:33:54 SGT) [Env] Permalink

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