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Originally posted by Obliv_au
one thing i always wondered.
why do we need +1.5 tonne of car to transport an 80kg human?
Originally posted by zappafan1
The main people responsible for the death of the electric car were the environmentalists (Luddites.) The same people now curtailing the plans for a wind farm in a couple of states (California for one).
Do the math: a land based oil rig takes an area of about 100 feet by 100 feet.
For a solar or wind farm to produce the same amount of energy, would be right around 40,000 acres.
For those who prefer the Prius: from the time it was designed to the time it hits the scrap yard, Prius pollutes more than a mid-sized Hummer.
Originally posted by StellarX
Hi Zap, I have some questions and, hopefully constructive, commentary...
Originally posted by zappafan1
The main people responsible for the death of the electric car were the environmentalists (Luddites.) The same people now curtailing the plans for a wind farm in a couple of states (California for one).
My first question is simply this, where did the environmentalist ( the real one's, not the oil/coal lobbies trying to crush nuclear and other energy tapping infrastructure) get the political clout to do this sort of thing? Are they more powerful than the recent auto manufacturers groups that managed to crush the EV-1 and other similer cars because they lasted so long and completely undermined their after sales cash generation, due to maintenance, capacities?
REPLY: Environmentalists have been around since before the first electric car was produced. They have had money behind their lobbies for quite some time. That's my point; it was the environmentalists that killed the EV-1. There's been a couple of books written about it.
As for the wind farms i can easily agree that some people want electricity but just do not seem to accept the fact that however we do it it needs to be in SOMEONE's back yard. This sort of arrogance, or the protection of this or that specific butterfly species, drives me quite mad.
REPLY: I agree.
Do the math: a land based oil rig takes an area of about 100 feet by 100 feet.
For a solar or wind farm to produce the same amount of energy, would be right around 40,000 acres.
The processing of the oil into usable fuels, to say nothing of coal mining and the like for electricity, takes much more space than that and the resulting ground water and general ground pollution , to say nothing of air pollution, spreads to a few magnitudes of that figure. To maintain non polluting wind farms not only creates sustainable work but can be quite silent and utterly non polluting. Admittedly thee wind turbines needs to be built somewhere, and that process is likely polluting, but at least it's much nearer to a once off cost than constant refining of oil is. Once one starts calculating what it costs to take other people's oil/gas ( Iraq) ( Afghanistan) in terms of the pollution of those countries and the loss of life on both sides wind farms and hydro electric schemes starts seeming not only cheap but also the only morally acceptable choice. I still do not think wind and solar farms are good ways to 'generate' electricity but still beats something as ridiculous as oil as 'power source' hands down. If it wasn't for the oil monopoly's a century ago we would not only have started with electric cars , as we did, but would have kept right on using them resulting in the needed investment in electricity tapping technologies.
REPLY: I have to disagree. We're still 20+ years away from a solar cell that equals or beats the cost of using oil/gas as a fuel. We do not "take" oil from Iraq or Afghanistan. We purchase it like everyone else does. Both wars have nothing to do with oil. The space required to refine petroleum is much less than the space required to use wind or solar. Even a Nuke plant only requires 20 acres and usually less.
For those who prefer the Prius: from the time it was designed to the time it hits the scrap yard, Prius pollutes more than a mid-sized Hummer.
And that you must at some level understand to be a utterly ridiculous claim. I don't know who you are copying it from but perhaps you would like a chance to elaborate as to how building or later incinerating a prius ( or rather a true electric car) is in your mind more polluting on the various levels of creation and use.
REPLY: Much of the nickel for the batteries is mined in Canada or Alaska (and the area around those mines looks like the surface of the moon.) That nickel is then placed in cargo ships that burn one gallon of diesel fuel every 80 yards, and shipped to Europe. It's partially processed, then loaded again onto those cargo ships and shipped to Korea or China to be further refined and transformed into a foam-like substance. Then it's back onto
more cargo ships and shipped to America for production into batteries. Then we have coal, gas or oil-fired power plants to generate the electricity to charge those batteries. Those batteries might last 3 or 4 years, then have to be processed into it component parts; some of it able to be re-used. The rest goes into landfills. What most people don't realize is that there's only so much nickel, of which the workld will run out of in as little as 30 years.
Either way i think the question of pollution is terribly misunderstood as there is no industry under the sun that actually needs to 'pollute'. Pollution is thus just the externalization of cleanup cost by industry onto society; you the taxpayer or you the sorry fool who still gets your drinking water downstream from the oil processing plant.
REPLY: Capitalism is the one ideal that generates enough wealth to allow the companies to clean up after themselves. The air in America is cleaner now than it was before the industrial revolution. IE: most everyone used coal or wood to heat their homes and cook their food, etc. New refining and burning techniques of oil and coal produce very little pollution.
Stellar
edit on 28-9-2010 by StellarX because: Spelling and content
Originally posted by zappafan1
REPLY: Environmentalists have been around since before the first electric car was produced. They have had money behind their lobbies for quite some time. That's my point; it was the environmentalists that killed the EV-1. There's been a couple of books written about it.
REPLY: I have to disagree. We're still 20+ years away from a solar cell that equals or beats the cost of using oil/gas as a fuel.
REPLY: Much of the nickel for the batteries is mined in Canada or Alaska (and the area around those mines looks like the surface of the moon.) That nickel is then placed in cargo ships that burn one gallon of diesel fuel every 80 yards, and shipped to Europe. It's partially processed, then loaded again onto those cargo ships and shipped to Korea or China to be further refined and transformed into a foam-like substance. Then it's back onto
more cargo ships and shipped to America for production into batteries. Then we have coal, gas or oil-fired power plants to generate the electricity to charge those batteries. Those batteries might last 3 or 4 years, then have to be processed into it component parts; some of it able to be re-used. The rest goes into landfills. What most people don't realize is that there's only so much nickel, of which the workld will run out of in as little as 30 years.
REPLY: Capitalism is the one ideal that generates enough wealth to allow the companies to clean up after themselves.
The air in America is cleaner now than it was before the industrial revolution. IE: most everyone used coal or wood to heat their homes and cook their food, etc. New refining and burning techniques of oil and coal produce very little pollution.