Our Environment!

[Brandy]

Nissan Leaf will be $35,000 before rebates. This model year will have only the slow home charger, fast charger 2012. Range is about 100 miles and yes it is freeway capable.

http://www.nissanusa.com/leaf-electric- ... -car/index

[Big and Bashful]

In good weather and quiet traffic that would get me to the nearest big shopping centre and back, but in winter with a heater, headlights and wipers going, or in hot weather with air conditioning working hard, I would need to have a fossil fuel powered generator in the boot to recharge on the hoof! It's not as if you can splash and dash to complete your journey!
Or you could plug in and camp while electric crawls back into the depleted batteries.
I see the future of motoring being electric things for those who don't need to go anywhere more than across a city. Hybrids or fuel cell powered machines for longer distances so that you can instantly boost your power reserves.
OK, so fuel cells are still a few years off being affordable, but give it time. If, as I just read somewhere else on the net, solar energy can be used to crack water in useable quantities then it really will be cheap fuel!

[Stevie D]

My lawnmower's pretty green. It runs on two cups of tea an hour.

[Kris]

In good weather and quiet traffic that would get me to the nearest big shopping centre and back, but in winter with a heater, headlights and wipers going, or in hot weather with air conditioning working hard, I would need to have a fossil fuel powered generator in the boot to recharge on the hoof! It's not as if you can splash and dash to complete your journey!
Or you could plug in and camp while electric crawls back into the depleted batteries.
I see the future of motoring being electric things for those who don't need to go anywhere more than across a city. Hybrids or fuel cell powered machines for longer distances so that you can instantly boost your power reserves.
OK, so fuel cells are still a few years off being affordable, but give it time. If, as I just read somewhere else on the net, solar energy can be used to crack water in useable quantities then it really will be cheap fuel!

I suspect that for quite some time the market will go to the plug-in electric/gas hybrid, like the Chevy Volt. The Volt is supposed to go about 40 miles on electricity alone before the gasoline engine kicks in to keep the batteries charged, but later models will have better batteries that extend the range. It can be recharged from a 220v outlet in about 4 hours, like those used in the US for electric clothes dryers or electric ranges.

The gasoline (or diesel) engine in such a hybrid can be very efficient, since it can be designed to run at pretty much constant rpm and load. It's only powering the generator to recharge the batteries, not powering the car wheels as in the current generation hybrids like the Prius. (I've been a proponent of this type of hybrid for, oh, 35 years, but it's taken that long for thr technology, principally batteries, to catch up.)

I expect not many folks will buy a pure electric vehicle, even one with a 100 mile range. They will view the risk of being stranded with a discharged battery as just too great.

Kris

[Kris]

My lawnmower's pretty green. It runs on two cups of tea an hour.

Good on you, Stevie! Human power is the best choice of all.

Kris

[ChrisM]

I am an engineer and I have put "mere" in front of "engineering problem."

Of course, this gets quoted back to me at every Quarterly Review by the team of Engineers who are trying to develop my "mere" system - LOL!

But more to the point: I have actually designed and engineered hydrogen powered vehicles, and I have written fairly extensively on the engineering challenges inherent in producing greener transportation. Suffice it to say that in my research I have found zero conspiracies, zero attempts to make the problem harder than it is, and many many attempts by very clever people to actually solve this very hard task.

My contacts in this field include environmentalists and oil company personnel, and every body in between (vehicle owners, operators, passengers, ...)

Now, if you want an interesting aside, one or two of you may wish to ponder the fact that almost all the energy that we use is solar in origin: fossil fuels, hydro power, wind, etc.

Further, to varying extents all of that solar energy comes from the past: fossil fuel is solar energy captured millions of years ago, wind power is solar radiation captured yesterday by heating the earth's surface...

So what? Well, if we are going to talk about sustainability, we should first find out what our budget is: If I am going to live sustainably in terms of economics, that would mean living within my income. So how much really IS our solar income? Or are we like kids who inherited a million from a forebear, and are gleefully buying Lamborghinis and vacations in Rio, with no attempt to make future deposits?

CBM

PS: The exception to energy being solar in origin is geothermal power. And, if you think about that, then you will realize that ALL the power is nuclear in origin, using either (a) the heat of atomic decay stored in the earth's core, or (b) a very large fusion reactor safely located 93 Million miles from My Back Yard, using beamed power transmission.

[Since1982]

Or are we like kids who inherited a million from a forebear, and are gleefully buying Lamborghinis and vacations in Rio, with no attempt to make future deposits?

I think ONE Lamborghini is about a million, without multiples of them or any vacations anywhere added. A million just don't buy what it used to.

[DALederle]

Wow!
All these posts!
A lot of discusion how to do it and who is right or wrong. But the point of my first post was simply that we HAVE to clean-up our air and water (which in turn will clean-up everything else).
For our own sakes! For our tomorrows because if we don't there will be no tomorrows for this planet. It won't happen overnight but somewhere along the line it will happen.
Our longevity rate has been going up over the years but with younger people begining breathing problems earlier and breathing problems doctors haven't seen so soon, before, the rate could begin to slip backward. I hate the thought that I could outlive one or more of my children.
Exactly how we do is up in the air, since no real leadership has come forward to show the way. Each side seems to fall apart in their attempts to do anything since in the end they all look for what they can get out of it. This may be just glory but sometimes it is for real profit too.
I don't begrudge the profit motive but just hope some pureror motives are there too.
DALederle

[AMM]

... But the point of my first post was simply that we HAVE to clean-up our air and water (which in turn will clean-up everything else).
For our own sakes! For our tomorrows because if we don't there will be no tomorrows for this planet. It won't happen overnight but somewhere along the line it will happen....

OK, here's some topic drift that I think is closer to a tangent than some of the other posts.

Last night, at the Contra dance, I was talking with someone who explained her infrequent attendance by saying she was an environmental scientist on a job in New Orleans. She described the BP "oil slick" as being 18 inches (50 cm) thick, which gave me a whole different perspective on the magnitude of the disaster.

I decided to do a back-of-the-envelope calculation of how wide the effect could be.

Based on the Wikipedia article, the spill rate could be as high as 16 million liters/day, or 16 x 10^3 m^3. Assuming that it will go on 4 months (120 days), I get about
2 x 10^6 m^3 of oil all told. I then assumed the North Atlantic is roughly (5,000 km)^2 or 2.5 x 10^13 m^2. This would mean it could cover the entire North Atlantic with a layer 1/10 mm thick. Not quite as bad as I had first fantasized, but 1/10 mm is probably enough to seriously screw up the ocean, such as virtually eliminating O2 and CO2 transfer, changing wave characteristics, not to mention making beaches pretty yucky. And I don't know what a hurricane would do with oil-covered water, but I can imagine all sorts of awful things: e.g., will we start having to deal with petroleum rain?

[Uncle Al]

According to an 'ecologist' I heard on the radio earlier this week,
a hurricane would potentially help with the oil spill.
Provided that

1) since hurricanes rotate in a counter-clockwise direction, we would
need one in the Gulf of Mexico headed towards the south-western
part of Florida. This would 'direct' the flow of the spill around the
southern part of Florida, out into the Atlantic.

2) if the hurricane headed towards the Texas Gulf Coast, then the oil
spill would be 'directed' towards the coast of Alabama, Mississippi,
Louisiana and the Florida panhandle.

The latter would cause more damage however, since crude oil is
bio-degradable, the crude oil would be broken down and absorbed
into the eco-system.

The 'experts', discussing a previous 'spill', worried that the
eco-system would take 10-15 years to recover. These same
'experts' found that the eco-system recovered in about 18 months.

So much for the 'experts' theories.

Personally, I think the media is blowing things way out of proportion
as they typically do. The Shock value concept

Anyway, that's my $.02 worth

Uncle Al

[Since1982]

1) since hurricanes rotate in a counter-clockwise direction, we would
need one in the Gulf of Mexico headed towards the south-western
part of Florida. This would 'direct' the flow of the spill around the
southern part of Florida, out into the Atlantic.

Thanks AL, but I don't think South Florida's multi-billion dollar tourist industry needs more regulations concerning oil no one has seen yet, like the immense NO FISHING BAN that went into effect last week in the gin clear waters of the Keys and Dry Tortugas where there is no oil, just people with regulatory jobs passing laws. As I've said more than once with anger, what is the job of a "lawmaker"? To make laws of course, if there's no laws to make lawmakers get fired...sooooo they think up more laws to pass, whether they are needed or not.

Please, go after BP, not Floridians who haven't been adversely affected by the spill beyond stupid lawmakers YET...if we get that crap down here, we'll handle it, let's not force it on us.

[DALederle]

Skip:
Part of this entire problem is that the media and their hand picked, anointed, public officials screw-up the truth about the problem we face and any kind of actual solutions that are out there. Th media thinks of ratings and public officials think of voters. How will people vote if I do this or that! So they try to appeal to everyone and thereby screw-up everything.
What are we, as citizens, going to have to sacrifice in our lives because of these two groups?
Do we have to give up gasoline powered cars, etc. Do we give up our TVs, DVDs, computers, etc. and do without electricity?
Remember, there was serious air polution in major cities long before cars came along. All the coal and wood being burned in every home. In fact I read that a large portion of our air polution comes from our home chimineys, more than autos and factories combined. So what do we do? I'm not going to spend cold winters in Chicago freezing and catching pneumonia!
I have no answers, just questions.
DALederle

[Since1982]

Do we have to give up gasoline powered cars, etc

Maybe looking at what's happening in the North Gulf of Mexico right now, maybe we SHOULD give up oil powered anythings, including gasoline (an oil derivitive) and anything else made from oil. I know going back to horses and boats with oars would slow everything down, and switching to arrows and spears from oil run war machines would slow warfare down, but would also leave a lot of people living longer. Slowing life in general down is not such a terrible idea, is it?

[hydroman47]

Slowing down is certainly what I'm trying to do. It's time to stop and smell the roses. We have some work which we must do each and every day. I try to take a short break every afternoon. Perhaps I can create a new habit.