[howd]

Wouldn't it be interesting to know what all the blow-hards at the summit, have projected as thier 'carbon out-put' to fly to there. 70 million tons a day? millions of years? Do I detect a pattern, here? Maybe summit shoulda been held in Montana. They coulda rode the AMTRAC train here, and see how hot we are. low tonight of -18 deg.

[handlewanker]

Hey Dynosor, question #1, do you go helicopter hunting on your 100 acre block in Alaska?
Question #2, does your real name begin Sarah......?
Question #3, did you have a go at being the top dog for mcCain lately?

I know who you are, you're .........darn it, my memory just failed me.

Am I to believe that now we have several classes of Nobel prize winners?

The first class ones that beieve in global warming as a very definite threat, and the second class ones that think global warming is a real threat but the threat to their livelihood is an even greater threat if they blow the whistle?

To quote Will Shakespear, "and they too are honourable men", some honour, some men(and women).

You Humanoids make me puke with your ideas of honour.
Ian.

[dynosor]

Hey Dynosor, question #1, do you go helicopter hunting on your 100 acre block in Alaska?
Question #2, does your real name begin Sarah......?
Question #3, did you have a go at being the top dog for mcCain lately?

My, HW but you are quick witted. Now here is a message for you in Inuit:
Hoekom gedra jy jou soos 'n skaap?

[handlewanker]

Oh Dynosor, (Sarah?), you are so far off course, that wheroff thou speaketh is not Inuit but some other foreign tongue of which I'm quite familiar, but as this is not a language bashing forum I decline to reply in like in case I offend the Boers back yonder.

Just as a matter of interpretation, it pays to dress like a sheep when a helicopter gunship is around.....LOL LOl, snigger.
Ian.

[dynosor]

Oh Dynosor, (Sarah?), you are so far off course, that wheroff thou speaketh is not Inuit but some other foreign tongue of which I'm quite familiar, but as this is not a language bashing forum I decline to reply in like in case I offend the Boers back yonder.

Ian, I knew you would understand the "Inuit"; that is why I used it.

As for me being a current resident of Alaska, that is a huge leap from what I said. I joked about buying beach front property there because its value is guaranteed to go up - a logical extension of the global warming we have been promised.

Before I mentioned Alaska, I gave away my location and my climate preference:
http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?p=533549&highlight=hate+cold#post53 3549

You climate preference is similar to mine, or as a Brit, you would not have chosen to live in South and South West Africa and now, Australia - warmer is better.

[CNCdavidFR]

I'm amazed to see such posts here that get really constructive and interesting. I never posted on CNC, but for once, I'm going to do.

I haven't been threw all the pages of this topic, and I guess all possible points of view have been written here. However, here's one from an European.

Most people believe, hope I should say, that people's mind is changing, that we are in the good way to protect our planet. This is completelly false, or false for 95% of the people on earth.

It is always money that is making the people's mind changing. In Europe, gas as always been expensive (1.0-1.5€ per liter), so we have always been looking for better mileage while buying a car.
If we look at the US, the milage has been a real plus for a car only since a few month, when gas price has increased. Before that, people just did not care. I remember driving in Minesotta a Tahoe that needed 5 times more gas than my car in Swiss, and that was costing me the exact same price in gas for the same amount of miles. I did not care about it. But I was drinving such car alone. So such a big car for a 140lbs guy to drive 2 miles to go to work. Whatever!

The Big3 have a nice name. As big as their car, and so late in development compared to other car manufacturers. The CEO, and all directors of these companies, are guilty of the current situation : if gas did not get really expensive, how long would we be driving our 140lbs 2 miles with a 15mpg car?

[Astonlee]

We all make jokes about climate change & global warming etc, and being a real petrol head I was the same as everyone else that was until a few weeks ago.
But what I now find really frightening, is when you stop to think that our whole economic system/life-style is based on burning fossil fuels, without fossil fuels we cannot even feed ourselves, and the alternative means of provide power we are only paying lip service to their development, talk about being lemming!
Luckly I will not be around long enough to worry about it, but my kids will!

[handlewanker]

Hi Dynosor, give me heat lots of heat, 35 deg C and I thrive.

I don't know which way the climate is going to lean, but at the moment in OZ we are into the start of our Summer and the overnight temps are 13 deg C with daytime at 22 to 26 deg C.

The worry we have is the water shortage, with the dams around melbourne down to 30% of capacity.

The latest water initiative in melbourne is to get people to limit their water usage to 155 litres per day, gawds truth man, I pee more than that, must be oldtimers catching up on me.

It's on the cards that our water bills (Melbourne's) for 2009 will double to pay for the desalination and pipeline projects being planned.

I reckon if they made a bleeding great canal to bring water down from the North, when it floods with the monsoon rains, (it's downhill all the way), it would solve our problems nationwide, but that would take the Romans with their aquaduct building to even think about that.

As far as I can recollect, in the USA they built a canal to provide water to San Francisco which otherwise would still be a dry wasteland, so it definately is feasible.

BTW, where did you learn to praat "Inuit"? Do you like boerewors?

On the subject of enviro friendly cars, it's not the "greeness" of a car that matters but how long you intend to keep it before getting another just like it but newer.

The amount of energy, hence fossil fuel, raw material, consumption is accelerated every time you get a new car, whereas no matter how fuel guzzling the present model is, it pales into insignificence when you calculate the wast everytime a new car is produced.

That's why I don't feel guilty when I cruise about in my 2.8 litre 1980 Mercedes Benz running on unleaded, so it is quite eco friendly on that score.

Laugh for today, is the place where they design eco friendly cars called "Emission control" LOL.
Ian.

[handlewanker]

Astonlee, I wouldn't worry about our kids having problems with the shortage of fossil fuels, they won't have the need for them seeing as how they are going to be living without the ability to access them as freely as the present generation have.

If you go back 100 years, petrol pumps weren't invented, cars didn't exist (as a car can be defined), engines burning oil derivatives were rare, but nobody felt deprived.

The economy of most countries then varied with the whether, that is whether or not you were at war with any of your neighbours.

Go back another 100 years and shipping for imports were all wind driven, yet the economy was still as prosperous as ever.

Now we blame the cost of oil for our problems, so it would seem that if we ran out of oil overnight, problem solved, we'd be back a 100 years and the prosperity could become a reality once more.

Only fly in the jam jar is the excess population the Humanoids heve managed to accumulate, and they won't take kindly to being told that unfortunately due to circumstances beyond control, they are now classified as excess to requirement and would they kindly shuffle off the mortal coil asap.

Being Humanoids they have the impression that they have the right to be here, whereas they were not even a consideration when the bright star that spawned this mortal coil coughed up a ball of gassy debris and so history was made.

The Bible punchers have a different version, and so do the Flat Earth Society weirdos.
Ian.

[dynosor]

BTW, where did you learn to praat "Inuit"? Do you like boerewors?

1. At the source.
2. Ja

[dynosor]

On the subject of enviro friendly cars, it's not the "greeness" of a car that matters but how long you intend to keep it before getting another just like it but newer.

Good point about manufacturing energy and cost of new cars. The other thing is that MPG only matters if you drive a lot of miles. I use less gas commuting 5 miles at 25 MPG than my neigbor in their hybrid commuting 50 miles at 50 MPG.

If owning a hybrid buys you the moral highground, why don't I score popints for choosing to live in a moderate climate and working close to home? I only just fired up my cenral heating last night for the first time this season because it dropped below 50 F.

I propose a tax on everyone who lives in a place with average temperatures higher and lower than 80 and 50 F respectively - naturally that money should be paid to me for offsetting your bad choices...

[handlewanker]

Dynosor, Jy is seker 'n ou Kaapenaar of Transvaaler Ne'?

You're so right, the mileage is the deciding factor, yet I still see people commuting across the city for 30-50 Km each way on a daily basis.

I'd hate to do that in the Merc, I'd probably trade it in for a Morris Minor LOL.

I used to have four of them some years back, downsizing from a 1958 Plymouth to a 1958 Morris 1000 in 1963 when I got married, then to a 1954 Morris Minor in 1970 when I went back to UK, followed by another 1952 Morris side valve Minor which I converted to an overhead valve engine, and now in happy retirement in OZ, a 1980 Merc, seems like a U curve.

My daughter runs a 1967 Volkswagen Beetle, and you can't get much more economical than that.

Traffic flow Melbourne to Berwick, approx 45KM, between 7.0AM and 9.0AM Mon to Fri is chaos with travel times sometimes as long as two hours, and that's on the "freeway" LOL.

Try doing that each day, four hours travel time just to get to work and back.

My son worked in the city and did that trek for 6 years before he spat the dummy and did a complete about turn, worked local, new job, new career, new life.

The day is coming when the electric car, even with all it's present battery recycling problems will be the normal people mover, but untill they make one completely out of some plastic or other composite material (maybe a seaweed derivative) that just gets ground down and reconstituted to make a new body, all in one piece with inbuilt colour, they'll still be using valuable resources like steel etc, but I probably won't be around to see it.
Ian.

[dynosor]

Enough Inuit for the moment...

[Astonlee]

Handlewanker, I totally agree with your comment, and I am not a tree hugger or believe climate change is purely down to carbon dioxide, as methane is a far more deadly green house gas.
In fact cows fart more methane gas than all the carbon dioxide produce by cars, so we better going without the odd burger or steaks, and having fewer cows to reduce our greenhouse gases emissions. So yes you are right we can manage without oil.
But just over 150 years ago we totally relied on the sun to generate our food, Since we started burning fossil fuel to create steam, and then oil, we use this fossil burning technology to increase our food production, thus allowing the world population to increase from 1.2 billion to 6.7 billions!
The challenge for engineering is to clean up our act, and to create the technology advancement we need to feed the world, without burning fossil fuels.

[NinerSevenTango]

Your energy consumption is your standard of living. 100 years ago people didn't feel deprived as they chopped wood or choked on coal smoke and shoveled some into the furnace in the morning after it went out, and were very happy to have gas piped in for light if they were lucky enough to live where it was available so they wouldn't have to burn kerosene or oil to see by. The lamplighter was as happy as the icemen who sawed up ice in the lakes in the winter and stored it in straw for sale during the summer so milk and meat might last more that a few hours. And people had meat because the newly invented railroads brought refrigerated meat to the cities. The street cleaners didn't feel deprived, they were happy to have a job cleaning up pollution -- horse poop all over the place. My grandmother was born in 1886 and lived to be 98 years old. She talked to me at length about what it was like. The reason they didn't feel deprived is because they had the attitude that they were thankful for everything they could get that made life better. They knew that they were an illness or accident away from starving or freezing. They knew that it is a life or death question, they never took anything for granted. Especially after the Depression.

The only way you can make people go back to that is at the point of a gun, and that seems to be the plan.

Electric cars are not the wave of the future, unless you want to force it at the point of a gun. That seems to be the plan. If you just left people alone, they wouldn't use them unless they made sense, which they do in limited circumstances. Otherwise, they cost more, they waste a ton of energy, they take more energy to produce, so they are more expensive. They make more pollution, it's just out of sight, in someone else's back yard. The economy of internal combustion leads people to use them because they are more efficient -- they cost less and give better utility. You can't wave a wand and make electricity more economical. But you can wave a gun.

They still make VW beetles in Mexico, or at least they did a few years back when I was astonished to see brand new ones driving around. Here in the Land Of The Free, we can't have them. They pollute too much, and don't pass Department of Transportation Regulations. Too bad. I wanted one for a toy. That's also the same reason we can't have the 50 MPG diesel cars produced and sold in Europe. Too much pollution. In fact, every car on the road loses 3 to 5 mpg due to pollution regulations that prevent ''lean cruise'. Aussies have it in GM cars, the U.S. computers don't. Your government -- always there to help you.

I always wondered how global warming could cause an ice age, while global cooling could cause an ice age. Is that how we can have global warming even as everything freezes over?

Let's see if they have the balls to try to impose all this brainless economy-killing eco crap right in the teeth of a worldwide Depression of their own creation. The torches and pitchforks are being readied.

--97T--

[handlewanker]

97T, I can agree on your point that in days of yore when toilet paper wasn't a comodity and newspaper had yet to be available, it was tough to get your daily bread.

In 150 years from now, they'll think we had it rough, that is if the standing room hasn't been allocated to the favoured few and the rest are culled.

All the same though, I can't see the internal combustion engine being a significent factor in daily lives, unless that is, when oil becomes too dear to refine then vegy oil or methanol becomes the fuel of choice.

You can make vegy oil and alcohol from natural processes, even if it costs more than the "free" from the ground fossil derived oil, it just depends on your resources or how much of your future pay packet you want to devote to private transport.

I think the underlying cause of the government's reluctance to go full bore at an alternative electric solution is the fact that if you make it too simple then they'll have one devil of a job to apply revenue, much like the case with printer makers making the ink cartridges almost as dear as the original price of the printer, and giving dire warnings in case you decided to use generic ink refills.

It is a fact that if you had an electric car, you would be free to charge the batteries whichever way you want, whereas a petrol car is taxed from the first drop of fuel you use (and you can't make the stuff in your back yard) and that goes for every time you mow your lawn too, you have paid the tax up front without the tax collectors getting out of bed to collect it.

I like the fact that with the electric car you have power from the word go without waiting for the engine to warm up, and waiting at traffic lights is not a waste of fuel.

It's going to take many millions of dollars to get that .01% extra economy and range from the electric set-up, but that's what it took to get to the present power package you expect with the latest petrol/diesel users.

You only have to set a target for the race to be on.

The Tesla car is an example of this.

It's got looks, range and performance, and the sales figures are enviable.

Inch by inch someone somewhere will push the envelope untill before you know it the problem is solved and if you're in at the beginning you rule the roost.

It only needs a trend to decide which direction the race will go, after that you'll be buying shares in the company instead of owning it.
Ian.

[dynosor]

I think the underlying cause of the government's reluctance to go full bore at an alternative electric solution is the fact that if you make it too simple then they'll have one devil of a job to apply revenue,

It is a fact that if you had an electric car, you would be free to charge the batteries whichever way you want, whereas a petrol car is taxed from the first drop of fuel you use

you have paid the tax up front without the tax collectors getting out of bed to collect it.
.

Now you are onto something. Despite the tree-hugger call to arms that renewable energy will save us because sunlight and wind are free (even if the cost of collecting it is not), it is not in the best interest of business or government to sell cheap energy because both profit and tax revenues are reduced.

Besides, if the cost of living lives of ease went down for everyone, people will just breed like flies and take up the slack until there was a shortage again. No, my friend, the UN and their environmental allies want to control your access to energy with all this talk of CO2 reductions – all forms of energy.

They don't actually want anyone to come up with power that is "too cheap to meter." That would remove their ability to regulate all aspects of our lives; and that is what they are really after. Saving the planet or its people is just an excuse.

Show me a wind turbine factory powered by wind turbines. Now show me wind turbines that are do not depend on tax breaks – you can plot the number of wind turbines erected in California against the tax policy over time and see a direct correlation. Unfortunately you can't give these tax breaks to everyone because then you have to pay the full cost yourself.

[handlewanker]

Dynosor, there are more far reaching issues at stake than just tree hugging/felling/woodchipping etc.

If it was just a revenue collecting exercise, the government could make all roads into toll roads and just meter the traffic that used them, like as in pay as you go, the more you go the more you pay, that way you could also score "frequent flyer points" to get a rebate for using the roads more.

The real fly in the jam is vested interests.

Could anyone, with interests in any aspect of the petrol engine industry, get really enthusiastic about a one moving part, silent, totally emission free, doesn't require a trained and highly skilled mechanic to look at it, motor? Not very manly at all.

Killowatts do not really envisage a power factor status, as when you state HORSEPOWER, yeah!

The boy becomes a man merely by just turning the ignition sequence key and flooring the accelerator a bit.

The government, apart from devising ways to screw the last dollar ot of the public, also has the car industry up their rectums, pulling the strings, which amounts to a huge infrastructure to replace if the present auto industry went electric.

I can't imagine a hot rod shop selling "hotted" up electric motors with any enthusiasm, unless of course it came with an audio system that made vroom vroom sounds for the juveniles that like that sort of thing.

What would you do with your left hand, (or right hand if you drive on the wrong side of the road LOL), seeing as how the gear lever would no longer be a feature of manly power.

There's more to it than just revenue collecting, it almost strikes at the soul of "behind the wheel itus" that a man gets when he "takes possesion" of his power house on wheels, a sort of committing to a pact with connotations of control that even the very nerdiest of nerds are able to achieve with a loud exhaust and screeching tires.

As for me, I would welcome the ability to go out on a freezing cold morning and be on the road within seconds without having to create noxious fumes for five minutes or so to just get the beast to tick over reliably without dribbling condensate that stains the floor, and petrol/diesel engines do drip oil, no argument.

Apart from that, wind turbines are going to come, as well as solar panels, water wheels, wave power stations, geo thermal and anything else that is able to generate a watt or two.

Only the most practical will be the most profitable, not the ones that produce the most power, that's the law of nature.

Here's an example of the state of the art techno gadgets that are practical.
I just bought a torch on Ebay for $4 including postage from Hong Kong, that has a lever on the side that you pump for 30 seconds and you get 30 minutes of continuous light, by way of the fact that the light emitting source is made from high luminosity LED's.

My mate bought the solar powered one, very snazzy, with hi and lo light output and FM radio built in, the only problem was when the light went out one night as he was fiddling under the bonnet of his car the torch was dead, totally bu*gered, without a doubt a piece of sh!t, and at that moment just as usefull.

I roflmao when they said that in Africa someone had made a wind up radio for areas where no power or batteries existed, how wrong when now it's state of the art, even to recharge mobil phones for that must make emergency call with a flat battery.

If the oil derivatives suddenly stopped flowing overnight, then I can bet that nobody would be walking very far when there is an electric vehicle to provide the transport, no matter if it cost more, the competition to provide would bring the price down eventually.
Ian.

[dufas]

Just as a point of interest (maybe ???)

My grandfather fueled his Model T Ford and a small sawmill on a combination of alcohol and pine oil both of which he refined himself. One of the problems with many fuel alternatives is that most of them can be made in one's back yard or bath room. This eliminates the government's ability to tax and control. Home brewed alcohol was stopped by the Internal Revenue Bureau, [IRS today...] or revinuers as they were commonly called. It wasn't until the 50s that one could distill their own alcohol but only in limited quantities.

Hydrogen gas can be made at home. The problem with hydrogen is that it not only presents an explosive hazard, it's use will eventually destroy engines through a process called hydrogen embrittlement. Metal parts that are exposed to hydrogen under heat and pressure become extremely hard and brittle and will begin to disintegrate. So far, the only thing found that will stand up to hydrogen is ceramic or a ceramic coating. Expensive!!!.

Vegetable or bio-mass oils can be homemade but it would take a huge garden or garbage supply to be feasible. As soon as people start using oils from restaurants in any meaningful amount, instead of getting it for free, it will become another commodity to be bought and sold. The same goes for methane. Some agency in Briton has levied a yearly fee of $2,500.00 on a few vegetable oil fueled vehicles, the Franchise Tax Board did the same to a fellow in LA, California.

Natural gas or propane is a good choice. Houses that are heated with these gasses can also supply fuel for vehicles until the government finds out. I have seen huge taxes and fines levied on people that fuel their vehicles on gasses intended to heat the home and cook their food. Most of these people have been farmers that power their equipment with propane.

Farmers that fuel their farm equipment with gasoline or diesel have to use a specially colored fuel. If their road vehicles are found to have fuel that is dyed the wrong color, huge fines are levied and the possible the loss of being able to purchase farm only fuels...

For now, electric cars are getting a free ride. Yet,Oregon is working on a scheme that everybody will pay so much per mile no matter what propels the vehicle. It doesn't matter if it gets 100 miles per gallon or 10 miles per gallon or if it runs on sunlight or air. Everyone pays the same. Oregon does not want to loose any revenue for any reason. California is thinking of creating toll roads for the same reason.

No matter what is eventually used to power vehicles, heat homes, cook food, or power an economy will be taxed and regulated so the governments won't loose anything.....

[NinerSevenTango]

The reason people are shelling out $100,000 for Tesla cars is because the designers focused on performance and looks. And I applaud them for that. Instead of crowing about the benefits of electric propulsion and trying to wave a gun to make it happen, they put their money where their mouth is and went out and built them for sale.

Still, the thermodynamics dictate that there will be losses in taking whatever fuel you use to make motive power to turn a generator. There will be losses in the generator. There will be transmission costs. There will be losses in the charging circuit. There will be losses in the batteries themselves as they get charged. There will be some losses from the battery if the charge is stored for any amount of time. And finally, there will be some losses in turning the charge back into motive power again.

The losses between the original motive power turning the generator and the shaft being turned by the motor in the car will always be there. They are the reason for carrying a heavy motor around and applying the motive power directly to the shaft with as short a drivetrain as possible. The only way you can break even between the two is to have a wildly more efficient motor driving the generator. You can get that with hydropower or nuclear, wind or waves. But with those, you substitute the cost of fuel for the costs of scale and plant -- they are hugely expensive, have limited lifetimes, and the cost per kilowatt hour is determined by construction and maintenance costs divided by the power output over the lifetime. Plus the construction and maintenance costs of transmission, which is an appreciable fraction of the cost of electricity, and which would need to be scaled up radically to make a dent in transportation energy usage.

After you solve those little problems, you have to fix the weight problem, the exotic toxic materials problem, the disposal/recycling problem and the energy problem - electric propulsions systems take a lot more energy to produce from raw materials.

Only then can you start worrying about safety factors, range, and utility. And designing a heater for cold mornings.

I'm behind Tesla all the way for their spirit and what they are doing. But they will sell for reasons other than economy, just like my 450 HP Camaro. And that's all right.

If the cost of oil and gasoline goes wild again (and I predict it will within the next few years as the insane central banks try to print their way out of the mess they created by printing too much money), the costs of every other form of energy will more or less rise to keep parity. People switch over to alternate forms of energy when the price difference is big enough, but when demand for the other energy rises, so does the price. The price of limited supplies of anything goes up to the point where the lowest bidders drop out and go without. When oil goes up so does everything else, even firewood. And eventually the cost of everything, everywhere, goes up too because everything you touch or eat is made primarily from energy. Lots of energy.

Bottom line, when you lose access to reasonably priced energy, your standard of living is going to drop to the misery level. I have nothing but contempt for those who seek to do that to us, and for those who cheerlead the movement.

If anyone wants to claim that electric cars will be more economical than internal combustion engines, they are free to design and show off a concept car that proves the point. Otherwise, they might be better off heating their home with all that hot air.

LP gas might be a true alternative someday. There are huge untapped reserves around the world, and right now the only barrier is lack of infrastructure (yeah, they say that about hydrogen, but hydrogen won't be a fuel until someone finds a hydrogen well). If oil became scarce somehow, we have that as a fall-back, and that's what would probably happen. If you believe in thermodynamics. The belief in which is optional these days, as energy seems to be on the same philosophical smorgasbord as religion - just believe anything you want and it's OK if you heard someone say it on TV.

Anyway, the advancement of civilization is the advancement towards privacy. Privacy brought by property ownership, single-family homes that have energy and water piped in and sewers piped out. Privacy in transportation. Freedom from your neighbors, pick-pockets, thieves, and bullies. I don't want to be forced to ride a bus around here any more than I want to huddle in a cave with my neighbors for warmth and safety, with everybody using a far corner as a toilet. I know that will disappoint the socialists, and I'm very sorry for that, but I really don't want to have to listen to them or smell them either.

--97T--