NationStates Jolt Archive

Whenever I see a TV show / read a newspaper article / see a web page / hear something on the radio about what individuals can do to help stop climate change, someone always mentions cars.
I know some cars pollute more than others, and imagine this is mainly dependent on size, but a lot of people also say that electric or hybrid cars are less polluting than those that run entirely on petrol or diesel.
But are they really?
Clearly they produce less pollution at the place where they are being driven, and this must haves some benefit on the local atmosphere, say, in a busy city, but you then go home and PLUG YOUR ELECTRIC CAR INTO THE MAINS. This electricity has, most likely, come from a coal, gas or oil-fired power station, which is emitting large amounts of greenhouse gases.
Ergo, there is no benefit to the global climate from driving an electric or hybrid car which is in other ways similar to the petrol / diesel car you would be driving otherwise.
Am I right?

Whenever I see a TV show / read a newspaper article / see a web page / hear something on the radio about what individuals can do to help stop climate change, someone always mentions cars.
I know some cars pollute more than others, and imagine this is mainly dependent on size, but a lot of people also say that electric or hybrid cars are less polluting than those that run entirely on petrol or diesel.
But are they really?
Clearly they produce less pollution at the place where they are being driven, and this must haves some benefit on the local atmosphere, say, in a busy city, but you then go home and PLUG YOUR ELECTRIC CAR INTO THE MAINS. This electricity has, most likely, come from a coal, gas or oil-fired power station, which is emitting large amounts of greenhouse gases.
Ergo, there is no benefit to the global climate from driving an electric or hybrid car which is in other ways similar to the petrol / diesel car you would be driving otherwise.
Am I right?

you're not wrong. but it's a well used argument against electric cars.

You're wrong, because of the scale involved. Even if electric cars were in widespread use, their individual drains on the power plants wouldn't equal the individual pollution put out by each gas or diesel powered vehicle. And most hybrids, unless they've been modified, aren't plugged in, so it's not even an issue.

Well a Hybrid car doesn't need to be plugged in. It generates it's own electricity through regenerative braking (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regenerative_braking). It is cleaner to operate than a standard gas powered car.

Hybrid cars generate their own electricity; the only fuel you put in is the petrol.

Edit: Damn slow forum.

you're not wrong. but it's a well used argument against electric cars.

it's not one i'd ever heard before, which is why i thought there might be a flaw in my reasoning

You're wrong, because of the scale involved. Even if electric cars were in widespread use, their individual drains on the power plants wouldn't equal the individual pollution put out by each gas or diesel powered vehicle. And most hybrids, unless they've been modified, aren't plugged in, so it's not even an issue.

can it really be more efficient to convert newly-"generated" energy into electricity first, rather than just using it?
the hybrids i had a feeling might charge whilst the petrol engine is being used, so they may be better

It really is a case where none of these systems are clean, just that some are cleaner than others. An electric car that's plugged into a grid powered by wind is far cleaner than one plugged into a coal-fired plant that's never been upgraded, but both are cleaner than your average semi-tractor trailer.

Interestingly enough, Virgin have now developed trains that use regenerative braking and so use 15% less electricity.

Whenever I see a TV show / read a newspaper article / see a web page / hear something on the radio about what individuals can do to help stop climate change, someone always mentions cars.
I know some cars pollute more than others, and imagine this is mainly dependent on size, but a lot of people also say that electric or hybrid cars are less polluting than those that run entirely on petrol or diesel.
But are they really?
Clearly they produce less pollution at the place where they are being driven, and this must haves some benefit on the local atmosphere, say, in a busy city, but you then go home and PLUG YOUR ELECTRIC CAR INTO THE MAINS. This electricity has, most likely, come from a coal, gas or oil-fired power station, which is emitting large amounts of greenhouse gases.
Ergo, there is no benefit to the global climate from driving an electric or hybrid car which is in other ways similar to the petrol / diesel car you would be driving otherwise.
Am I right?

Of course you are. Electric cars are no better than petroleum or natural gas powered ones - less so, if your local power producer uses coal power. The only exceptions are if your power comes from a solar or wind farm, a hydroelectric plant, or a nuclear power plant. Those four are the only types that do not increase global warming.

Hydrogen is actually worse, by the way. You not only have to use electricity to separate the Hydrogen and Oxygen, but you then must use energy transporting the stuff. So, it's even less efficient, and, unless supplied from one of the clean four, is responsible for even MORE greenhouse gas being released.

The situation gets even worse when you realise that solar farms aren't economically viable, wind farms only work in areas that get reasonably constant wind and take up huge areas that can better be used in other ways, and Hydro only works where you have a river that's convenient to dam and not too silty.

If we want to get serious about global warming, we'll build lots of nuclear power plants. We really have no other choice.

can it really be more efficient to convert newly-"generated" energy into electricity first, rather than just using it?
the hybrids i had a feeling might charge whilst the petrol engine is being used, so they may be better
Again--it's a matter of scale. Power plants are far more efficient at producing energy than individual units are. They get more energy out of each unit of fuel than individual cars do, and that more than makes up the difference.

If you are going to compare the transportation costs of the fuel itself, then you also have to take into account the amount of fuel that the oil industry used getting your fuel to your car.

If you are going to compare the transportation costs of the fuel itself, then you also have to take into account the amount of fuel that the oil industry used getting your fuel to your car.

Yes. But on a per-unit basis, that is far less for petroleum than Hydrogen, as Petroleum does not need to be kept under pressure and refrigerated.

You're wrong, because of the scale involved. Even if electric cars were in widespread use, their individual drains on the power plants wouldn't equal the individual pollution put out by each gas or diesel powered vehicle. And most hybrids, unless they've been modified, aren't plugged in, so it's not even an issue.

what he said, plus cars produce a lot more (as a proportion) harmful substances for the ozone and free radicals in their combustion of fossil fuels than power plants tend to do, iirc.

Even if your electricity comes from a renewable source, that doesn't really help the issue.
If you weren't using the electricity to fuel your car, someone else could be using it to cook dinner, thus increasing the number of households that a wind farm etc could serve, and reducing the overall need for fossil fuel power stations.

Even if your electricity comes from a renewable source, that doesn't really help the issue.
If you weren't using the electricity to fuel your car, someone else could be using it to cook dinner, thus increasing the number of households that a wind farm etc could serve, and reducing the overall need for fossil fuel power stations.

Our civilization runs on "on-demand" power consumption. No system that provides less than that will be tolerated by our populace and businesses.

As it relates to the consumer, hybrid cars burn less fuel, but that is separate from their environmental impact.

The Law of Conservation of Energy means that even a 100% electric car has to get the energy to move from somewhere. A car with regenerative braking has to get its energy from somewhere. Regenerative braking only allows the car to "recycle" some of what would otherwise be waste heat energy from the braking system. It still has to move in the first place, abnd that takes energy.

Have you considered what the environmental impact is from the manufacture of automotive batteries? You'd flip your wig. All that chemistry, plastic, acid, etc. Not to mention the energy required to produce the battery in the first place.

No, my friends. Electric cars aren't the eco-friendly supercars people make them out to be. They just do most of their environmental damage behind the scenes when they're built.

Sure, on average they probably do overall less to the Environment than gasoline powered cars (even hybrids) but that ignores the huge strides gained over the last 30 years in automotive emmissions.

Did you know that if a car ran with 100% emmission efficiency, the only waste produced would be CO2, H2O, and trace amounts of O2.
(Source: My own knowledge. Former ASE Certified Master Auto Tech here, with specialy training in automotive emmissions.)

Just like your lungs.

Not that we've achieved that, mind you... but we're getting closer every year. Cars are only the biggest source of CO2 because of sheer volume. If you really want to know where the crap in the air is coming from, look at coal-burning power plants.

Did you know: the average coal burning electric power plant releases more radioactive material into the atmosphere in one year than all of the nuclear plants in history? (Including TMI, excluding Chernobyl) The reason is that ground coal is naturally radioactive. It's not regulated by the AEC because it's naturally occurring. On the other hand, massive regulations on Nuclear plants, including Uranium mining, produce a very clean energy source.

(Source: Interview with a former employee of a Nuclear Power plant)

How does that electric car look now?

Even if your electricity comes from a renewable source, that doesn't really help the issue.
If you weren't using the electricity to fuel your car, someone else could be using it to cook dinner, thus increasing the number of households that a wind farm etc could serve, and reducing the overall need for fossil fuel power stations.

The problem with wind power is that it requires vast amounts of real estate that just can't be had near major cities, it's only good when it's windy, and in some cases, more energy is required simply to manufacture the wind towers than they can be expected to produce in their useful lifetime.

I know of someone who has an electric car. On his home is a complete solar panel array. He gets the power to run his car from the solar panel array on his home. He is, I believe a very rare exception in the world.

Batteries? Blame Chevron Texxaco. NiMH batteries suitable for automobile use have an average life expentency of two hundred thousand miles. Unfortunately only the Toyota Hybrids are allowed to use them.

2010. That's when the pattent expires. Only three more years to go!

As for "your lungs" note that all processing of nitrogen waste is done through the kidneys. So that mostly leaves nothing but carbon, hydrogen and oxygen.

Of course you are. Electric cars are no better than petroleum or natural gas powered ones - less so, if your local power producer uses coal power. The only exceptions are if your power comes from a solar or wind farm, a hydroelectric plant, or a nuclear power plant. Those four are the only types that do not increase global warming.

Hydrogen is actually worse, by the way. You not only have to use electricity to separate the Hydrogen and Oxygen, but you then must use energy transporting the stuff. So, it's even less efficient, and, unless supplied from one of the clean four, is responsible for even MORE greenhouse gas being released.

The situation gets even worse when you realise that solar farms aren't economically viable, wind farms only work in areas that get reasonably constant wind and take up huge areas that can better be used in other ways, and Hydro only works where you have a river that's convenient to dam and not too silty.

If we want to get serious about global warming, we'll build lots of nuclear power plants. We really have no other choice.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_power

http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/425827/764966
http://www.niwascience.co.nz/pubs/mr/archive/2003-11-13-1

snip

and that's why coal power plants need to be replaced with something cleaner.

You're wrong, because of the scale involved. Even if electric cars were in widespread use, their individual drains on the power plants wouldn't equal the individual pollution put out by each gas or diesel powered vehicle. And most hybrids, unless they've been modified, aren't plugged in, so it's not even an issue.

Do you have numbers on that? That's the complete opposite of what I've heard and seems to defy logic. No matter what you still have to move the same poundage the same distance through the same terrain so it would seem much more efficient to produce the energy in the car than to produce it tens or hundreds of miles away through an inefficient energy grid. Also, and this is just what I heard in my environmental science class so I don't have a source to post, electricity is far less efficient in transforming the energy it has into mechanical energy than liquid fuel is. If I remember correctly, electricity is about 7% efficient while gasoline is about 30% - all the rest gets radiated as heat or pollution.

I have some support for Hydrogen Cars here:

Tareq Abu-Hamed, now at the University of Minnesota, and colleagues at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, have devised a scheme that gets round these problems. By reacting water with the element boron, their system produces hydrogen that can be burnt in an internal combustion engine or fed to a fuel cell to generate electricity. "The aim is to produce the hydrogen on-board at a rate matching the demand of the car engine," says Abu-Hamed. "We want to use the boron to save transporting and storing the hydrogen." The only by-product is boron oxide, which can be removed from the car, turned back into boron, and used again. What's more, Abu-Hamed envisages doing this in a solar-powered plant that is completely emission-free.

Simple chemistry
The team calculates that a car would have to carry just 18 kilograms of boron and 45 litres of water to produce 5 kilograms of hydrogen, which has the same energy content as a 40-litre tank of conventional fuel. An Israeli company has begun designing a prototype engine that works in the same way, and the Japanese company Samsung has built a prototype scooter based on a similar idea.

The hydrogen-on-demand approach is based on some simple high-school chemistry. Elements like sodium and potassium are well known for their violent reactions with water, tearing hydrogen from its stable union with oxygen. Boron does the same, but at a more manageable pace. It requires no special containment, and atom for atom it's a light material. When all the boron is used up, the boron oxide that remains can be reprocessed and recycled.

(From issue 2562 of New Scientist magazine, 01 August 2006, page 35-37)

You can find it online at the New Scientist website but you'll need to have a registered subscription to view the whole article.

I have some support for Hydrogen Cars here:



(From issue 2562 of New Scientist magazine, 01 August 2006, page 35-37)

You can find it online at the New Scientist website but you'll need to have a registered subscription to view the whole article.

Well, I have to say that carrying the hydrogen around and producing it in the first place were the biggest reasons I am so skeptical about hydrogen. I'll follow this to see if it pans out. My first though is I'd like to know how abundant Boron is. If it's exceedingly rare then this is not going to work.

Well, I have to say that carrying the hydrogen around and producing it in the first place were the biggest reasons I am so skeptical about hydrogen. I'll follow this to see if it pans out. My first though is I'd like to know how abundant Boron is. If it's exceedingly rare then this is not going to work.

You know I'm not sure how exactly how common it is, but having some background in engineering and steel manufacturing I can tell you that Boron-Steel is a common enough construction material. I'll have a squint around the net and see if I can find out. Even so, the boron used in the cars can apparently be recycled which is good.

I know of someone who has an electric car. On his home is a complete solar panel array. He gets the power to run his car from the solar panel array on his home. He is, I believe a very rare exception in the world.

That doesn't make his electric car any greener than anyone else's (though the solar panels make his lifestyle as a whole greener).
If he didn't use the electricity to power the car, he could use it to power his home (which he may already do) and sell the rest to the national grid, thus reducing the need for fossil fuel power stations (as above).

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boron


Turkey and the United States are the world's largest producers of boron. Turkey has almost 63% of the world’s boron potential and boron reserves.[2] Boron does not appear in nature in elemental form but is found combined in borax, boric acid, colemanite, kernite, ulexite and borates. Boric acid is sometimes found in volcanic spring waters. Ulexite is a borate mineral that naturally has properties of fiber optics.


Borax crystalsEconomically important sources are from the ore rasorite (kernite) and tincal (borax ore) which are both found in the Mojave Desert of California, with borax being the most important source there. The largest borax deposits are found in Central and Western Turkey including the provinces of Eskişehir, Kütahya and Balıkesir.

Even a boron-containing natural antibiotic, boromycin, isolated from streptomyces, is known.[3][4]

Pure elemental boron is not easy to prepare. The earliest methods used involve reduction of boric oxide with metals such as magnesium or aluminium. However the product is almost always contaminated with metal borides. (The reaction is quite spectacular though). Pure boron can be prepared by reducing volatile boron halogenides with hydrogen at high temperatures. The highly pure boron, for the use in semiconductor industry, is produced by the decomposition of diborane at high temperatures and then further purified with the Czochralski process.

In 1997 crystalline boron (99% pure) cost about US$5 per gram and amorphous boron cost about US$2 per gram.


Seems to me like its pretty common.

Gahh..the cost though: 18kg of amorphous boron would be 36,000 dollars. Still the idea has potential and humans are quite ingenious.

You know I'm not sure how exactly how common it is, but having some background in engineering and steel manufacturing I can tell you that Boron-Steel is a common enough construction material. I'll have a squint around the net and see if I can find out. Even so, the boron used in the cars can apparently be recycled which is good.

Yeah. The devil is in the details, as they say. I'd like to know more about the entire process from start to finish. How they get the boron, how they recycle it. What chemicals are necessary in the recycling process, etc...

I'm reminded of the guy who made that car that runs on HO. Sounds great until you read about the enormous amount of electricity needed to produce the HO. In this case it sounds like the energy is generated internally and the only external inputs are the boron and the water, but how you get and recycle the boron may be the measure of its plausibility. Also, how you get the water may be a stumbling block in coming years. Will we have to decide between having enough water to drink and to drive around? I like what I read in the paragraphs you posted, but I'm curious about the details.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boron



Seems to me like its pretty common.

Gahh..the cost though: 18kg of amorphous boron would be 36,000 dollars. Still the idea has potential and humans are quite ingenious.

That quote doesn't say anything about how common the mineral is, just where it is produced. It sounds to me like just the oposite because it basically says there are only two places in the world that produce it unlike, say, iron that is all over the world. This last bit has some warning flags:

Pure elemental boron is not easy to prepare. The earliest methods used involve reduction of boric oxide with metals such as magnesium or aluminium. However the product is almost always contaminated with metal borides. (The reaction is quite spectacular though). Pure boron can be prepared by reducing volatile boron halogenides with hydrogen at high temperatures. The highly pure boron, for the use in semiconductor industry, is produced by the decomposition of diborane at high temperatures and then further purified with the Czochralski process.

In 1997 crystalline boron (99% pure) cost about US$5 per gram and amorphous boron cost about US$2 per gram.

How do we get the energy and materials necessary to produce boron at sufficient purity levels for, say, 700,000,000 cars?

How do we generate the heat to purify it? Usually this means fossil fuels.

And the cost as you pointed out.

It doesn't sound promising.

We somehow need to create energy from nothing, that's only possible if you have a junior physics class and / or some useless equipment.

Yes yes, I quite agree. I still think it has potential though. That is -potential- not "behold the future of automotivation" :)

Cars are not even all that polluting – it is just the most obvious source of pollution that everyone sees on a day-to-day basis.

If you want to reduce pollution, the number one source, by a substantial margin, is coal.

Yet, despite practical rationality, most of the money spent on reducing emissions and cleaning things up is on automobiles. It would be a much better use of funds to ignore vehicle emissions and just focus on coal for a while. Look at what the biggest polluter is, and where each dollar has the best marginal return – that is where the money should be spent.

Coal is primarily used for power generation. It goes into the national power-grid. You can reduce pollution from coal in 3 basic ways.

1) Clean up coal. Carbon sequestration technologies are one way of doing this. Personally I find the concept to be overly complex and expensive. It is a possible solution, but a fairly foolish one.

2) Replace coal burning power plants with other power generation types. Building more nuclear power stations would be a great way, albeit very expensive, to generate the same power without the pollution. Solar and wind can help a bit, but do not produce a consistent and reliable power generation, nor is it capable of doing so in sufficient quantities.

3) and this is the one I think is probably best for a vast multitude of reasons – reduce power consumption so the dirtiest plants can be simply phased out as the demand drops. Look around you, power consumption can be drastically cut with minimal disruption.
Most appliances can be made to be much more efficient. Lights could be turned off at night – it really annoys me when I drive past a school at 3am that is lit up like daylight, office buildings with lights on in all the empty offices. People could throw on a sweater rather than keep their home hot during the winter (my ex used to complain that it was cold in my place – she would just wear bra and panties in the middle of winter, damn right she was cold). Appliances could be more energy efficient. Switch to LED (or even fluorescent) lights rather than incandescent. Countless ways to save bits of power. Tally all these savings up across the nation, and you can get rid of a few coal burning power plants right away.

2) Replace coal burning power plants with other power generation types. Building more nuclear power stations would be a great way, albeit very expensive, to generate the same power without the pollution. Solar and wind can help a bit, but do not produce a consistent and reliable power generation, nor is it capable of doing so in sufficient quantities.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_mountain

Cars are not even all that polluting – it is just the most obvious source of pollution that everyone sees on a day-to-day basis.

Even when you multiply the emissions of one car by the number of cars?

Yes yes, I quite agree. I still think it has potential though. That is -potential- not "behold the future of automotivation" :)

If they can come up with a more plentiful, easier to produce catalyst...

No matter how you slice itm you still come up with mass transit, redeploying ourselves in the ladnscape so we don't live miles and miles away from where we get our food and where we work, energy conservation. These things cost far less and are much easier to achieve and give you far more bang for your buck in terms of energy conservation than any other answer.

No matter how you slice itm you still come up with mass transit, redeploying ourselves in the ladnscape so we don't live miles and miles away from where we get our food and where we work, energy conservation. These things cost far less and are much easier to achieve and give you far more bang for your buck in terms of energy conservation than any other answer.

Sounds like a nice idea...
... arrange ourselves into small communities, with a doctor, school, office, some farmers

Unfortunately, it would be very difficult to make work in practice.

Electric cars at this time use lead acid storage batterys. Durring thier discharge they release lead into the atmosphear. Not so good a thing. Just thought you would like to know.

Sounds like a nice idea...
... arrange ourselves into small communities, with a doctor, school, office, some farmers

Unfortunately, it would be very difficult to make work in practice.

Yeah, I didn't have Mayberry in mind. I know people who drive their Hummers from Augura to work with me everyday in Hollywood. That's about 120 miles driven everyday in an Army vehicle to your job and it's not unique, it's not even uncommon. Everyday the Golden State corridor is over filled with traffic making the same journey and it's stupid, bad city planning. That's uneccessary and not only needs to change, it's going to change whether we like it or not. Might as well plan for it in advance so we can ease our transition.

Even when you multiply the emissions of one car by the number of cars?Depends entirely on the pollutants. Cars will obviously create more particulate matter in areas where humans live and can breathe them in, but that will happen independently of fuel since most of it comes from tires and asphalt due to friction.

Yeah, I didn't have Mayberry in mind. I know people who drive their Hummers from Augura to work with me everyday in Hollywood. That's about 120 miles driven everyday in an Army vehicle to your job and it's not unique, it's not even uncommon. Everyday the Golden State corridor is over filled with traffic making the same journey and it's stupid, bad city planning. That's uneccessary and not only needs to change, it's going to change whether we like it or not. Might as well plan for it in advance so we can ease our transition.

Surely they can't like doing that?

Better public transport would go some way to a solution, but you've also got to convince people to use it.
One of the main problems I can see is that people don't like the idea of other people using the same seat they used. They might be more willing if a scheme were to be set up whereby they could buy a seat on a coach, bus, train or tram at the time they wanted to travel, and it would be used by them alone. Then you have "rented" seats for occasional journeys (effectively the same as a normal ticket).
Again, not particularly practical, but out of nonsense a solution will come.

Electric cars at this time use lead acid storage batterys. Durring thier discharge they release lead into the atmosphear. Not so good a thing. Just thought you would like to know.Prove that please.

Even when you multiply the emissions of one car by the number of cars?

Yup – a quick google didn’t turn up anything useful, but I seem to recall that all vehicle contributions to air pollution was only around 22% globally, which was around half of power generation. I’m not entirely certain though, and do not want to spend the time looking.

Surely they can't like doing that?

Better public transport would go some way to a solution, but you've also got to convince people to use it.
One of the main problems I can see is that people don't like the idea of other people using the same seat they used. They might be more willing if a scheme were to be set up whereby they could buy a seat on a coach, bus, train or tram at the time they wanted to travel, and it would be used by them alone. Then you have "rented" seats for occasional journeys (effectively the same as a normal ticket).
Again, not particularly practical, but out of nonsense a solution will come.

The the problem is that these communities were built at a time when energy was so cheap because of fossil fuels that the gas needed to drive to work wasn't a consideration. All people cared about was how the house looked and what the neighborhood was like. It's going to be, soon. As far as mass transit, every pace in the world that has a good mass transit system has people who use it. Before the mass motoringization of the suburbs after WWII most people used mass transit. I fell in love with the train the first time I took it and would use it everyday if there was a stop early enough to get me to work on time. We're going to need it in the future because, even if you don't believe that we're close to or at Peak Oil there are still no optimistic figures out there that explain how we're going to ramp up world oil prodcution to the 100 million barrels/day we need in teh next 8 yeras nor are there answer as to how we're going to completely revamp our transportation infrastructure to include hydrogen refueling stations or produce enough ethanol/biodeisel to replace the needed petroleum anytime soon. Mass transit works now on existing technology. Moving closer to where you work works now. Conservation works now. Better to face these realities than to wait for the fuel farie to bring us our new, magic elixer.

Surely they can't like doing that?

Better public transport would go some way to a solution, but you've also got to convince people to use it.
One of the main problems I can see is that people don't like the idea of other people using the same seat they used. They might be more willing if a scheme were to be set up whereby they could buy a seat on a coach, bus, train or tram at the time they wanted to travel, and it would be used by them alone. Then you have "rented" seats for occasional journeys (effectively the same as a normal ticket).
Again, not particularly practical, but out of nonsense a solution will come.

People do not take public transportation for two very simple reasons.

Number one: it is generally very inconvenient. Public transportation is typically a pain in the ass – the only time I would take it is if the bus came at times I liked and went to where I am going.

Scheduling my life around the public transportation schedule is not something in which I am interested. If I want to go out to happy hour after work, I want to be able to do it and not worry about missing the bus home.

Second problem: it is not so much that other people have sat in that seat (which is ridiculous, if that were the case there wouldnt be any public place to sit) but who you sit next to - a urine soaked homeless guy, sometimes a mental patient who can’t stop muttering and occasionally screams incoherently, quite often next to someone who smells like they bathed in nothing but tobacco juice for a week… While a majority of the time it is ok, all it takes is the occasional incident on an already inconvenient waste of my time to discourage me from taking the bus. And yes, I have had the pleasure of such company on buses.

If I lived downtown, damn right I would get rid of my car and use public transportation, everything would be fairly close at hand. Living in the suburbs makes it too inconvenient. Schedules are a pain, and it takes forever to get anywhere.

Now, were sprawling suburbs to be replaced with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanate, then life would be much easier.

*snip*

Or we could get a little more realistic (http://www.newurbanism.org/) about our future.

Where I live, the electricity comes from hydro-power.

PsychoticDan, as an architect, I can tell you that new urbanism is a terrible idea. It is difficult to work with such little room, it is expesnive, and people have little room. It's like townhouses. Really, that's new urbanism. Townhomes all over the place. Instead of having an apartment or living in the suburbs in your own home you'd live in a unit (1 of 2-4 but usually 3) with other people on either side (unless you get an end unit).

The same problems are present with archologies as proposed by Entropic Creation. I admit I have considered archologies before but only in the center of a city; it would still have a suburban or even rural area developed around it in my vision.

High population density leads to high crime rates. The only way around this is a pervasive police force in inner cities. I consider that unacceptable.

Back to the topic that started this thread; No, Vernasia, you are not the first person to notice this. As has been stated by others already, there are few true clean sources of energy, only one of which is reliable and cheap enough by comparison to the others to be "worth it". But there are always other solutions. I have proposed on this very forum more than once a facility that would run on coal but not emit anything and create lots of food, bio-fuels, and misc industrial materials. Eventually they could be turned into giant scrubbers that spit out food after the coal is used up and they're switched over to another power source.

The biggest problem with electric cars is that until recently they could only have 2 of the following 3: speed, range, or towing power. Tesla Motors claims to have a new luxury car that meets all 3 but it comes at a hefty price of $100,000. Until that price and the charging time drop without dragging down performance along with electric cars for all will be the thing of hippy pipe dreams.

If we want to get serious about global warming, we'll build lots of nuclear power plants. We really have no other choice.

Unfortunatley, there are two main obstacles facing Nuclear power.

1.Public support. The public is incredibly ignorant on how safe Nuclear Power is, and relate it to Three Mile Island and Chernobyl quite a bit, citing them as the dangers of Nuclear Power. However, these instances are so incredibly rare, and improbably, that they truly are a non-issue. The waste produced, if disposed properly, poses no true threat to the environment, and the energy produced is not only massive, it is safe.

2.Cost. The cost to build and maintain a plant is massive, with profits not likely to be seen in the long term. This alone puts private investors off, and even removes a great deal of public support for them, as it costs a great deal of money to build one.

So really, with Public ignorance and cost combined, it is quite hard to get a power plant up and running.

Unfortunatley, there are two main obstacles facing Nuclear power.

1.Public support. The public is incredibly ignorant on how safe Nuclear Power is, and relate it to Three Mile Island and Chernobyl quite a bit, citing them as the dangers of Nuclear Power. However, these instances are so incredibly rare, and improbably, that they truly are a non-issue. The waste produced, if disposed properly, poses no true threat to the environment, and the energy produced is not only massive, it is safe.
I agree that the public is very ignorant of nuclear power but I do have to ask "what waste"? What you call waste I call fuel. It just needs to take another run through a centirfuge. Really, if it's hot enough to pose a significant enough risk that it has to be stored inside a mountain than it is hot enough to be reprocessed and reused in a reactor.

Almost anything can be recycled if you really want to bother.

Unfortunatley, there are two main obstacles facing Nuclear power.

1.Public support. The public is incredibly ignorant on how safe Nuclear Power is, and relate it to Three Mile Island and Chernobyl quite a bit, citing them as the dangers of Nuclear Power. However, these instances are so incredibly rare, and improbably, that they truly are a non-issue. The waste produced, if disposed properly, poses no true threat to the environment, and the energy produced is not only massive, it is safe.

Both your reasons are extremely valid.

I would think, though, that public support could be garnered. Run some commercials. Educate people. Have a unit on it in school curriculum. Something can be done.

People have been afraid of nuclear power for too long; I think that if the government really wanted to use nuclear power, then they would have made strides in eradicating the fear in the public.

Whenever I see a TV show / read a newspaper article / see a web page / hear something on the radio about what individuals can do to help stop climate change, someone always mentions cars.
I know some cars pollute more than others, and imagine this is mainly dependent on size, but a lot of people also say that electric or hybrid cars are less polluting than those that run entirely on petrol or diesel.
But are they really?
Clearly they produce less pollution at the place where they are being driven, and this must haves some benefit on the local atmosphere, say, in a busy city, but you then go home and PLUG YOUR ELECTRIC CAR INTO THE MAINS. This electricity has, most likely, come from a coal, gas or oil-fired power station, which is emitting large amounts of greenhouse gases.
Ergo, there is no benefit to the global climate from driving an electric or hybrid car which is in other ways similar to the petrol / diesel car you would be driving otherwise.
Am I right?
Most of the power in my country is produced through nuclear or hydroelectric generation, so yes in those cases, hybrid cars would be better for the environment.

Both your reasons are extremely valid.

I would think, though, that public support could be garnered. Run some commercials. Educate people. Have a unit on it in school curriculum. Something can be done.

People have been afraid of nuclear power for too long; I think that if the government really wanted to use nuclear power, then they would have made strides in eradicating the fear in the public.

You're quite correct. But we'd have to overcome GREENPEACE and a lot of other organizations, many of whom have no qualms about lying outright to support their cause (GREENPEACE, to their credit, have cleaned up their act on this, but many other groups - ESPECIALLY the NIMBYs - have actually gotten worse). We'd have serious protests outside schools teaching the truth, and attempts to prevent TV stations from airing the truth on their broadcasts.
This is why the government HASN'T acted. But soon, we will have no choice, and the fight will have to be fought.

Oh, and thank you for the links, Nevered. I'm sure wave and tidal power (where it's viable) will help greatly, but I have to stand by my above statements - nuclear power is the only currently viable solution.

Whenever I see a TV show / read a newspaper article / see a web page / hear something on the radio about what individuals can do to help stop climate change, someone always mentions cars.
I know some cars pollute more than others, and imagine this is mainly dependent on size, but a lot of people also say that electric or hybrid cars are less polluting than those that run entirely on petrol or diesel.
But are they really?
Clearly they produce less pollution at the place where they are being driven, and this must haves some benefit on the local atmosphere, say, in a busy city, but you then go home and PLUG YOUR ELECTRIC CAR INTO THE MAINS. This electricity has, most likely, come from a coal, gas or oil-fired power station, which is emitting large amounts of greenhouse gases.
Ergo, there is no benefit to the global climate from driving an electric or hybrid car which is in other ways similar to the petrol / diesel car you would be driving otherwise.
Am I right?People say that all the time but there are a signif number of places that get electricty without fossil fuel and those that do are looking for new renewable power if possible.

Unfortunatley, there are two main obstacles facing Nuclear power.

1.Public support. The public is incredibly ignorant on how safe Nuclear Power is, and relate it to Three Mile Island and Chernobyl quite a bit, citing them as the dangers of Nuclear Power. However, these instances are so incredibly rare, and improbably, that they truly are a non-issue. The waste produced, if disposed properly, poses no true threat to the environment, and the energy produced is not only massive, it is safe.

2.Cost. The cost to build and maintain a plant is massive, with profits not likely to be seen in the long term. This alone puts private investors off, and even removes a great deal of public support for them, as it costs a great deal of money to build one.

So really, with Public ignorance and cost combined, it is quite hard to get a power plant up and running.

So all the stuff we get told about how nuclear waste has to be stored for thoudsands of years is untrue?

So all the stuff we get told about how nuclear waste has to be stored for thoudsands of years is untrue?

Some is, some isn't. A lot of that stuff can actually be put into breeder reactors and reprocessed as nuclear fuel. And the stuff that's left varies in half-life quite widely, from stuff that will be reasonably safe in a few decades to a certain amount that will, in fact, need very long term storage.

But even that isn't much of an obstacle. While this "Yucca Mountain Facility" seems to be a classic case of government mismanagement, appropriate and safe storage of nuclear waste isn't rocket science. All you need is a geologically stable area with eith no major water table or appropriately liquid resistant rock either above or below said table. Various technologies exist to embed the waste into solid blocks (most nuclear waste isn't liquid anyway), and you simply make a big cavern and store the waste there. One facility per continent should be able to handle the situation for the forseeable future.

The highly radioactive materials which will be hot for centuries can be reprocessed into fuel – that power is exactly what is needed to produce electricity. Current regulations in the US make in infeasible, but with a little common sense rather than politicians voting because they are scared environmentalists will cause them to loose votes, that can be changed.

The remaining waste can then be processed to remove most of the material and reduce the rest to an inert glass. So you have a small solid block of matter that will be radioactive for a while, no bid deal. You store it in the desert and it stays there for a couple hundred years. That really isn't that long of a time, nor are we talking about massive quantities that will require huge areas of land.

Now if you want to use pebble bed reactors (which I think is probably the way to go) it is much more difficult to process the waste, but still not beyond reason to recycle it.

Nuclear is definitely the way to go, no questions asked. Wind and solar will never be able to produce much. Though I will say it would help a lot, especially in rural areas, and we should be implementing them but you could never power a city on renewables.

And for those talking about tidal generators – shame on you. You try being all environmentally friendly and then go suggest something like that. Do you have any idea what that does to coastal ecosystems? Next thing you are going to say is that 3 gorges is a great environmental triumph – ok… given the horrid nature of Chinese power generation burning coal so dirty it is banned from use in the US (so they pick it up cheap) it probably does have a net positive effect… but the long term effects of drastically changing the weather pattern has yet to be fully modeled.

One thing I found somewhat interesting was that Germany, as much as it likes to advertise how green it is and is at the forefront of wind technology, despite massive subsidized wind-farm building programs, is still building coal burning power plants.
Additionally, I was rather surprised to see that for every cluster of 6 or 7 turbines at least one is not working. Why do they have such a high incidence of problems?

Am I really stupid, or the only person who's noticed this?
Do you really want people to answer that?

can it really be more efficient to convert newly-"generated" energy into electricity first, rather than just using it?
the hybrids i had a feeling might charge whilst the petrol engine is being used, so they may be better
Yes. Much more efficient, actually. The energy used for regenerative breaking is what would otherwise be given off as heat. Heat is the least efficient form of energy. By transforming the waste energy into electricity, you can actually do something with it, rather than just make stuff hot. Heat alone actually acomplishes very little

Has anyone conidered the inefficency of the power station producing electricity for the car?