gas and food from the same place is a bad idea, just look at your grocery bill. we rely on corn as much as fossil fuels. now both food and gas from the same source!? we pay more and assholes some where get richer. things gotta break soon. hopefully the transition is smooth, whatever happens.

 

This is semi-off-topic, I know...


Biofuels are temporary. They will be gone in no more than 10 years, maybe sooner. Hopefully oil and gasoline will be gone as well.


The real future is all-electric cars with quick recharging connected to a grid supplied by solar/wind/nuclear power plants.


Ya know, stuff our government could easily invest in right now.. but wait, we got a war that has cost 520 BILLION dollars, and should hit a trillion before its over...

I bet a trillion dollars could've built a few productive solar/nuclear plants or a few thousand off-shore wind turbines, whatcha think?

 

Have you been watching the news at all? The world is in a starvation already. They are cutting back rice portions and all.

 

The war has very little to do with the lack of investment. oil lobbyist and some farming groups do.

 

My only point is... our tax dollars go SOMEWHERE.

The politicians make awful choices as to where those dollars go.... Get rid of oil altogether in the US (Brazil did it--in what--10 or 20 years?), and the middle east can blow each other up all day if they like.

I sometimes just feel that large-scale science and public works programs in the US are gone forever.... The Panama Canal, the Hoover Dam, the US Highway System, the development of the Atomic Bomb (the Atomic Age, really), and putting men on the moon... All those projects were done relatively quickly. The energy problem is certainly more complicated, requiring many technologies and changes over a broad scale, but completely within CURRENT human ability.

 

Don't forget that a lot of manufacturing processes require oil for production. Plastics, Rubber tires ....Etc. ...etc

We need more of a re-education of the masses so that our enviromental problems and dependency on oils can be halted quickly.

 

Naw, I don't think they should completly get rid of oil and gasoline. They should just add more alternative systems like electric cars, nuclear power, bio fuels, bio deisels... etc. Think about it. If only 25% of people use electrical cars, only 25% use bio deisel, and 25% of people use gasoline, and the rest of the 25% uses deisel#2 fuel. Wouldn't that drive demand down for all four category? But then at the same time, if you only stick to one category, you're practically screwed if there's a overnight price hike. LOL Nobody likes to be the sucker that pays the higher price of the four, that's for sure.

 

I considered much more than the 3 to 1 efficiency of the electric motor to ICE. That 4% pollution figure I quoted entails the actual renewable electric generation factor. Another factor lowering that 4% even more is that electricity, KW to HP is delivered to outlets more efficiently than liquid fuels are delivered to gas stations. A 6 pound gallon of fuel mixes with oxygen in the air, causing 19 pounds of carbon dioxide to form plus other pollutants. But considering the fuel NEEDED to transport fuel to gas stations, 1 gallon of fuel actually causes 28 pounds of carbon dioxide plus an equivilent increase in other pollutants.

A factor not considered often in the use of electricity to take over traditional jobs of ICE, is that KW to HP, gasoline tankers are replaced by transmission lines freeing up a bit of our over-congested highways.

AFTER all the above, THEN the 3 to 1 efficiency factor of the electric motor over the ICE comes into play.

May ICE die an economic death in favor of the electric motor that people will live free of the fine & nano particles produced & emitted by ICE. Only now are preliminary but devastating health studies beginning to show the tragic results on human bodies of the smallest particles emitted from ICE.

 

...says the guy who owns not one, but two cars. One of which is a spanky new gas guzzling Dodge Caliber.

You do realize everytime a forest fire occurs or a volcano erupts it puts many more particals into the atmosphere than every car in North America does in a year. Good luck with your partical free bubble dome idea.

 

Its funny and a little OT but today I heard that not only have the sea levels stopped rising lately, but the "AL GORE scientific supporters" are claiming that by 2015 we will be going into a global cooling. This just supports the fact that the climate and global pattern is an ebb and flow of temperature.

"All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA’s GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.
Meteorologist Anthony Watts compiled the results of all the sources. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C — a value large enough to erase nearly all the global warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year time. For all sources, it’s the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down."

 

When you include the emissions and CO2 from the machines that are nevcessary to produce E85 the ratio goes negative. Takes more than it saves.
Besides E85 is not useable in Fits; the high alcohol content ears gaskets alive. Its barely acceptable at 10%.
And of course when you consider the mpg is barely half that on gasoline the whole idea is a loser. There is no free lunch.

 

Yup very true. Why do you think that the 'Warmon' faith movement (a 'Warmon' is someone who practices Warmonism) has quietly changed from "global warming" to "climate change"? Hard to continue funding/grants to scientists that are studying the effects of 'warming' when we're 'cooling'.

Sounds like we're talking about the weather doesn't it? Yea right, we're talking about dollars.

--D

 

And did you know that the 3 sigma variation in the average temperature since the 1800's of the earth is +/- 4.2 degrees. Which means that any temperatures that fall in that range across the avaerage is not significant.
People whio try to design trends with 3s are simply playing games or trying to win free government money (grants) by predicting maydays.

 

Volcanos occur around the world. You must compare volcanos to all world wide man-made emissions covering all man-made activities. Just one man made emission, carbon dioxide, puts 30 billion tons per year (3 thousand thousand thousand thousand tons per century) into the atmosphere. Volcanos are a natural emission & the earth's balance of nature accounts for such. Volcanos output is 1% of the world man-made emissions of carbon dioxide.

The bubble dome is your idea. But we are in a bubble dome. Its called the atmosphere.

As for my cars: one is a 20 year old car which averaged 45MPG & is still going. The spanky new car you mention is nearly 2 years old & AVERAGES 31.4MPG, 4.4 MPG OVER the EPA highway MPG. Its average MPG is almost twice the average of the corporate MPG of vehicles on the road in America, not quite a gas guzzler. Some people's reports on their Honda Fits do NOT get as good MPG as my car.

Oh, & the CVT is smooth & elegant! If the American Fit had had a CVT(like they have in other countries), I would have bought the Fit.

 

As for my cars: one is a 20 year old car which averaged 45MPG & is still going. The spanky new car you mention is nearly 2 years old & AVERAGES 31.4MPG, 4.4 MPG OVER the EPA highway MPG. Its average MPG is almost twice the average of the corporate MPG of vehicles on the road in America, not quite a gas guzzler. Some people's reports on their Honda Fits do NOT get as good MPG as my car.


I give up; whats the point? I too have a 32 mpg family sedan with CVT & a Fit daily runabout. (yes I want the Fit CVT too)
I wonder how much Al Gore will reduce his carbon footprint compared to what he wants us to do. until you show Al baby you're just another political doofus. Lead, follow, or get out of the way.
As far as carbon dioxide is concerned would you like to compare the CO2 exhaled by the human and animal population compared to vehicles? And if we didn't have CO2 the trees and plant life would die.
I'm all for a clean environment but not at the expense of quality living. (despite what he says Al agrees with me)

 

As far as biological life on planet Earth, carbon dioxide emissions were in balance. Whatever carbon dioxide biological life ADDED to the atmosphere, biological life removed carbon dioxide. In the main, man made emissions via his machines are NOT being balanced.

 

I've never advocated anything except people increase their efficiency as technology leads, people should pick efficient technology, society should decrease waste & use the waste we create. In other words, people should emulate nature.

 

Population growing; plant life decreasing. Thats not balance.

 

Yes, why do you think I used the word 'were'. But the main contributor to out-of-wack emissions is NOT man's biological emissions, its man's mechanicals.

 

What do say about the scientist who developed the global warming model and got Nobel Prize for it now says the model says the earth is cooling ?