M TYPE X

POLITIKS REWL! ... much agreed.

You say nuclear power is safe, but I don't trust Pennsylvania and Illinois to figure it out.
Michigan reactors have been very safe, but Three Mile Island and that one outside of Chicago ... Braidwood? ...

So ... now that I'm moving to Illinois, there is no way I am gonna keep the damn korn outta my kar. :ibIstartgrowingcornandaskforethanolsubsidies:

heyitsme

Yes,IGNORANCE REWLS!, its also very easy to believe you think things are real,when they are not even close as far as real world.

If you do any research at all into the matter of radioactive waste you will find that it effects EVERYONE, peoples goddamn drinking water.


So if you live in Washington, Tennessee, Ohio, South Carolina you better have you heads on straight cause the waste is coming to YOU. Let alone South Jersey with the dumping of VX NERVE GAS in the DELAWARE RIVER from the military to a Dupont plant at the Commodore Barry Bridge that could potentially kill ALL THE FISH IN the Delaware Bay( considering nutralized VX NERVE GAS [2006 material] is only as harmful as draino after processed ) in concentrated form, you know the fish said that was A OK as theY are eatin with these chemicals in their flesh AFTER THEY HAVE BEEN SWIMMING IN DRAINO INSTEAD OF FREASHWATER.

Maximized

Not really. Some are available, but not used together.

wackjum

Not only are solar cells very inefficient, something that many people are unaware of is that the production of solar cells releases lots of waste arsenic. If we were to start manufacturing enough solar cells to assume a significant amount of our energy needs, we would be screwed from the arsenic in our environment.

The mirror idea you mentioned is not that new. I remember it being installed back in the early 90's. It is a lot more efficient, but only for localized power generating. If we did go with solar, this would have to be the way.

goldmemberer

What MPG conscious buyer (and I mean conscious enough to adopt a brand new tech before everyone) cares about 300hp? Why not 150hp and atleast 80MPG?

Other than that, agreed on all counts.

GreenMonster

Ethanol can be sucessful, but it seems that alot of people don't want it to be...

Yes, Ethanol will give lower mpg per gallon:
You can do the math... (but the numbers will be skewed slightly due to the increased combustion efficiency of ethanol vs. gasoline).

But, when Ethanol is cheaper then gasoline (like it is in Brazil) that loss in gas mileage is made up with the decrease in price per gallon.... There is a reason why 50% of all vehicles are running on ethanol in brazil.

Brazil has some advantages that we don't have in the US. They have been working on getting ethanol in to the mainstream for 30 years (In 2005, the country’s Proálcool programme celebrated its 30th anniversary). Brazil is also a leading producer of sugar cane which can be converted into ethanol fairly inexpensively.

The US is 30 years behind Brazil in ethanol technology:

http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=6817

Ethanol is a renewable resource, so you can replant every year and continue to "grow" energy. Once an oil field is empty, it's done forever.

Ethanol isn't the only solution, just one of many options we have with decreasing out dependency on foreign oil.

Of course, we could just invest in oil stocks, and subsidize midwest farmers NOT to grow certain crops, and let unused corn and grain rot in silos...

Seems pretty silly not to exploit a readily available source of energy. Sure we need to catch up with the technology other countries have, but I do believe that there is a conspiracy in place to make ethanol look as unattractive to US consumers as possible.

I'm not going to even mention the current administations ties to oil. Everyone should know by now about Rice and Chevron, Cheney and Halliburton, etc, etc... (oops, I guess I did just mention it).

Bush has said that alternative fuels research sould be expanded, and then shuts down funding for gov't programs dedicated to alt. fuel research. See post #11 here: https://acurazine.com/forums/showthr...t=bush+ethanol

gavriil

But think about it. Even a Camry now makes 270HP. Yes, it's with the optional engine, but this says that 270HP is nothing special on a mainstream basis.

gavriil

Forget sugar canes. We are trying to find ways to make Ethanol from other sources. From crop that grows in the USA in larger numbers than sugar. And what about this cellulose method of producing Ethanol which sounds like to be the hype term these days?

GreenMonster

Never said we should use sugar cane. Sugar cane won't grow in the US anyways (that's why I listed it as one of the advantages Brazil has over us)... Corn, grain, etc, is the crop of choice in the midwest.

Sugar beets is one alternative crop that will grow up here. I know that they are growing sugar beets in CA to turn into fuel. Just got to get the midwesterners to grow 'em too..

ETHANOL’S POTENTIAL: Looking Beyond Corn:

http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/2005/Update49.htm

Examples of ethanol production by country:

http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/...ate49_data.htm

mrdeeno

in that case, it seems we are fukked anyway, so might as well go nuclear and kill everyone more quickly.

swift22

Diesel is making a come back. In 2007.

diesels are getting worse gas mileage than than they should because of the EPA making them have EGR systems(except that this actually hinders a diesel and how it operates) but because of newer technology such as 23 pinhole injectors vs the normal 10-18, higher pressures, better machining, and now better ECU tuning we will see them getting even better and run cleaner than some gas engine. Also diesel SHOULD be less expensive because it hasnt been as processed as GAS....yet for some reason it costs quiet a bit too..

Fibonacci

An a related subject, I never thought a book about corn would be entertaining - but this one's compelling:

The Omnivore's Dilemma A Natural History of Four Meals Michael Pollan

TSX Hokie

fixed

Davediego

ethanol from corn is not a viable solution, as its been pointed out many times in this thread, making ethanol from corn is a NET LOSS in energy. any serious attempt to change our energy policy has to actually save us energy.
heres yet another article about the lunacy of ethanol
http://www.coe.berkeley.edu/labnotes/0305/patzek.html

GreenMonster

I guess you missed the "Looking beyond corn" link

There are other crops that can be just as efficiently converted to ethanol as sugar cane... Sugar beets is one of those crops.

Instead of having grain and corn rot in silos, it would be a much better idea to have farmers grow "ethanol viable" crops.

Even if corn/grain isn't a cost effective solution, using it to covert to ethanol or bio-diesel is better then letting it rot...

03typeS6spd

does anyone remember the article on here about camless engine technology, with computerized timing of air/fuel mixtures? I can't find it

03typeS6spd

nm, found it link

this seems to fit your timeline gav if it hasn't been bought and stifled by someone... at least another piece of the puzzle (technology driven savings without killing performance)

might put small repair shops out of business, but thats the way massive production of anything seems to be headed anyway

fast-tl

BTW, "defty" is not a word.. It's "'deathly' afraid" as in, scared to death. The reason people don't like nuclear power (for those who don't watch 60 Minutes) is because of the waste produced from the nuclear process.

My belief if that we need to encourage conventional and biodiesel while working to further clean up their emissions.

fast-tl

And how would we transport it to Jupiter? That sounds like an expensive trip to me...plus we have oodles of nuclear waste left over from the cold war. It hardly seems "completely" under our control since Uncle Sam is still looking for ways to dispose of it all; now you're talking about making MORE waste?

mrdeeno

60 Minutes is a terrible program...it should be on the E! channel.


Nuclear power produces waste after the nuclear fuel is spent, true. But his nuclear "waste" is localized and can be contained and put in a big deep hole where it'll sit until the end of mankind.

fossil fuels also produce waste, but this waste is released right into the atmosphere where it mixes with the ambient air and disperses throughout the world, slowly choking plants and animals of the planet. but since it's so slow, people care less about it.

I would rather have waste that I know i can collect and shove into a hole forever, rather than waste that's gonna float around the world where many billions of people can breath it.

It's the same reason that after 9/11, after the deaths of several thousand people, the government enacted and enforced laws that caused an inconvenience to the millions of people the laws were deemed to protect.

Last time I looked, drunk driving has caused many many many times more deaths, yet I can still walk into a gas station (in some states such as TX) and pick up a 20oz can of Busch from the cooler, pay, and get back into my car and drive away while i crack open the can of beer.

The death eventually comes, but it's much slower so people are more likely to turn a blind eye even if the overall results are much more dire.

mrdeeno

the jupiter solution isn't going to work, especially for those poor people on jupiter, what will they do?

But anyway, the reason they have so much trouble disposing of this crap is because no one wants it in their backyard, especially after watching that made-for-TV movie on CBS.

Shit, if they show me scientific / techincal / engineering evidence that the disposal process is safe and won't fail, they can dig a hole in my backyard and shove that crap down there if they want then.

fast-tl

I readily admit that 60 Minutes is WAY LEFT, but the gov't official they were interviewing, who is building one disposal facility, was pretty much agreeing that handling tehe waste is a big, ugly problem. What you fail to realized is that there are only so many holes to dig, then people will have to evetually build over those holes, which creates its own problem. However we know that trees scrub the environment and produce oxygen as a by-product which can help offset the effects of exhaust gases. What is the natural offset to radioactive nuclear waste?

biker

One thing that would have avoided the great run up in prices this spring is the elimination of all the different formulas for gas. The EPA should just stick to one formula for the whole year and across the whole country so everyone gets the same stuff everywhere. All of these different formulas and switching during the year just messes everything up.

biker

Oh, BTW, ADM profit went up by 29% because of ethanol demand.

mrdeeno

Well, trees scrub only ONE of the many components in exhaust gas...unfortunately they aren't growing in fast enough numbers to offset the increasing numbers of exhaust pipes to take care of this one component.

As for the other components, they're regulated by an ineffective political machine anyway.

ASSID RAYNE REWLS!

There's no process available short of a wind or solar farm that will give us "free" and clean energy. the only difference between nuclear and fossil energy is that I think nuclear waste is more "managable", although more difficult to handle and dispose of.

What I mean by "managable" is that it is only produced by the nuclear plant (easy to regulate and monitor), it is localized, and it can be contained and stored safely. I agree these tasks are difficult, but it is more managable and controllable. But then again, most americans shy away from difficult tasks nowadays due to political implications and actually having to think for a change.

As for exhaust gases, these are produced by our cars, power plants, factories, lawnmowers, motorcycles, etc. The waste produced in each instance may be small, but on a collective scale it is a massive amount. And the waste is just spewed into the environment. Car manufacturers are coming out with new ways to lower emmissions but how many 10+ year old cars do you see driving around spewing out crap everyday? new cars may have lower emmissions, but there are MORE of them put on the roads everyday.

My point is that in both processes, there are waste by-products. The difference between them is that nuclear waste is just that...waste, which can be contained and disposed of safely, save for any catastrophic accident or leaky storage container. But fossil fuel is not only a waste, it is also "pollution" which we freely allow to disperse into the environment with NO effort made to contain it.

Anyway, the ONLY alternative that we humans have to balance nature again is to go back to nature and hunt and gather (and club women over the head) for a living and therefore consuming just enough of what we need to survive. But this will piss off the hummer and escalade owners.

Davediego

it would be better to stop paying farmers to grow uneeded crops in the first place IMO. while other crops may have higher yields of ethanol than corn, there is still the problem that ethanol cannot be put into our gas distribution system, and instead has to be trucked around the country. unless I missed it, the "looking beyond corn" article doesnt really address this cost of using ethanol.

Ruski

what about locust?

biker

I've seen many ethanol related stories on the news in the last couple of days - none of them point out the negatives - including the biggest one that it takes more enegy to make it than it produces.

Fibonacci

By Tony Cox July 23 (Bloomberg)

LuvMyTSX

^^ Effing fantastic.

Moog-Type-S

I still can't believe that the federal gov't and this administration is pushing so hard for ethanol.

If only they would push as hard for hydrogen.

LuvMyTSX

I know. It's unbelievable. Even after all the evidence against it, they are pushing it as the answer to everyone's troubles. And the sad thing is, the naive public believes it, for the most part.

Brandon24pdx

The automakers need to get back to work on pure electric. Battery tech has been improving rapidly, and they can damn near build one that will go as far as a tank of gas on a single charge. Not to mention there are plenty of clean/renewable ways to generate commercial quantities of it. The cars are clean and quiet on top of all that.

Rent "who killed the electric car?" next movie night. Kind of pisses you off actually...too many greedy agendas being pandered to right now for any rapid improvement. Tsk tsk.

swift22

we just need f-ing anti-gravity to be found

fsttyms1

And Where does that power come from? Can i charge my car in the time it would take me to fill my tank? im not waiting for it to take a few hours. Electric cars aren't the answer

Python2121

Yes they are, if you want to go far you can make a small sacrifice and take a train.

fsttyms1

No they arent. Not in the immediate future. Trains?? There are no trains here. I typically have to fill up daily. FOR WORK. i cant take any other form of transportation. I need a car/truck. I also need to be able to fill up and get back on the road. And i can bet the vast majority of people who drive would be unwilling to have to "Wait" to fill up or have to take the "Train" Oh, and Where is this Electricity coming from to charge your batteries???

Ruski

Here ya go

Moog-Type-S

...and what happens to the batteries when the car is no longer used?
...and who kiled the EV1? The market demand (or lack thereof) did.

Brandon24pdx

There was plenty of demand for the EV-1. Beauracracy killed it. And keep in mind that car was designed back in the mid nineties. They can make even better ones now.

Good question about the old batteries. I have no idea if they can be recycled or what kind of waste they leave behind.