Did You Know ?

It's politics (Liberals) that is creating the problem.

 

I have that power. I decided humanity could go fuck itself a long time ago.

 

We will bury them all in an old canal in Buffalo and build a subdivision on top of it.

 

Late night musings.

Just for fun, lets play with some numbers. Real numbers, not something that some butt hole pulled out of a hat.

Your "average family car". I personally own a good example, a Ford Escape, sold worldwide so not a bad example.
My Escape, driven sanely, uses 8.6l/100km. It says so on the instrument panel, that's the average over several years.
For the benefit of my American friends I'll do the conversion for you: 100/8.6 x .625 x 3.8 = 27.6 miles/US Gallon.

Call it 25 for those with a lead foot.

Let's say we want to cut automotive greenhouse gas emissions by 75%. This would be a monumental achievement and make a meaningful dent in the global warming scenario. So we want 100 mpg fleet average.

This can be achieved by simply mandating it. We already do, it's just the number is significantly lower than 100 mpg.
All it takes is the political will to do it.

Impossible? Nope, the technology already exists. My Escape would be the perfect sacrificial lamb. It already has some of what we need. Make it a hybrid. Take a small (about 1/4 the size of a full electric car's) lithium ion battery, make it the floor of the rear hatch cargo area. Add an electric motor on each front axle and the rear driveshaft. Then you add something called KERS. (Kinetic Energy Recovery System). The gas engine is only required when you need to charge the battery, accelerate hard, pull a trailer or climb a mountain, the rest of the time the electric motors do the work. Where does the KERS come in? When you slow down or "brake", the motors reverse polarity, slowing the car down and converting the kinetic energy of the vehicle into electrons that recharge the battery instead of wasting it as heat from the brake discs.
This has been used on racing cars for 20 years, it's proven technology.

There's another one, a bit more sophisticated. ERS is a system that recovers waste energy from the turbocharger and uses it to charge the battery. (Escapes just happen to be turbocharged).

While we're at it, let's apply some common sense. If you buy an electric car, you can't charge it, unless you buy and have installed a charger for your garage or driveway etc. Screw that. Mandate that the charger has to be part of the car. In other words, drive home and plug car into standard 120 volt outlet overnight. It will be charged in the morning with minimal load on the electric grid or your wallet.

So, given all that, in your normal driving, just how much do you think that gasoline engine is going to need to run at all?

100 mpg, easy. 75% less pollution and you don't need to dig up half the planet.

 

Late night musings, part deux.

You don't need lithium batteries to store electrons. They're practical for portable devices (cars, laptops, phones etc), keep them for that, the lithium will last longer and bi-polar people will thank you.

If you have renewable energy sources - wind, solar, tidal, etc - you can covert the electricity generated into hydrogen and store it in tanks. Convert it back into electrons when needed or simply use the hydrogen as fuel. The Faroe islands generate so much surplus electrons they store the hydrogen, pump it into tankers, ship it to Europe and convert it back to electrons, it's already being done.
Or you can use gravity. Build a reservoir (water tower?) and use the electricity you generate to pump water up into it. Water flowing down from it turns a turbine to generate hydro power. This yields a constant current to feed into the grid regardless of whether the sun is shining or not.
You can use focused mirrors to heat a pressure vessel containing water into steam to power a turbine. There's a big one in Spain.

All it takes is the political will.

 

I know.

For the benefit of those unfamiliar with what Brutus and I are referring to, Google "Love Canal, Niagara Falls, NY".

He is quite right about the risks involved, but we could dedicate an entire other forum to that topic alone.