How to clean up this place

[firedog23 0]

Alright this kind of got started on another thread but I am curious on how people think we can stop trashing the earth, global warming and so on.

 

Myself would love to see the major auto companies (other than Honda) take alternative fuels more seriously. Yes they are making headway but it gets frustrating as a person when major auto companies tell us (America) that flex fuel vehicles are not practical when in places like Brazil, flex fuel vehicles are Ford/GM's biggest sellers. I know autos are just a small thing in the whole scheme of things but it has to start somewhere.

 

I also get sick of politicians (Sen Kennedy)telling us that wind/solar power is a way to power communities but when a major wind farm is designed to be built of the Cape Cod coast they are up in arms because it is in their backyard and not some poorer area.

 

I for one would love to have a wind/solar powered house with a car that gets 50 miles per gallon of water.

 

Just my 2 cents.

 

Sorry Kumapix, I was not trying to get dirty I just get wound up when all fingers point to the U.S. although I know we deserve what we sew.

[soubriquet 0]

I don`t have any solutions, but if you are interested in some very competent engineers` opinions on hydrogen fuel, you can check this out.

 

http://forums.autosport.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=88619

 

An opinion and historic perspective on ethanol here:

 

http://forums.autosport.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=88707

 

Ethanol is coming, no doubt. There`s plenty of serious research being done on converting plant waste to fuel.

 

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Producing_Bio_Ethanol_From_Agricultural_Waste_A_Step_Closer.html

 

Most modern vehicles can burn ethanol without problems or with minor modifications.

 

Nuclear fission power plants will have to fill the gap before we get fusion power, although the industry is tainted by suspicion.

 

As an aside, the US Government chose to control fuel consumption of vehicles by imposing a "corporate average" fuel consumption on the ranges of private cars sold by any manufacturer and available in the US. Cars were squeezed downsize. Trucks are commercial vehicles, and are exempt, so heavy metal enthusiasts have migrated en masse to bigger and heavier and thirstier vehicles.

 

Some might argue that increasing the price of fuel would have achieved a more rational response.

[sanjo 2]

How much would you have to increase it for people to use less I wonder.

[Kumapix 0]

no worries Firedog. I do agree that blaming Bush isn't really doing anything helpful.

 

(I do however hold him responsible for increasing prices in japan by about 40 yen, which pisses me right off everytime I fill up my car.)

[soubriquet 0]

I don't have any figures, but I'd guess that the majority of cars in existence have 4 cylinder engines of less than 2 litres capacity. 130 Yen/litre seems to discourage people from driving V8s.

 

If you are really interested, here are a couple of links (both long papers).

http://www.radford.edu/~wkovarik/papers/fuel.html

 

"By the late 1830s, alcohol blends had replaced increasingly expensive whale oil in most parts of the country. It "easily took the lead as the illuminant" because it was "a decided improvement on other oils then in use," (especially lard oils) according to a lamp manufacturer's "History of Light." By 1860, thousands of distilleries churned out at least 90 million gallons of alcohol per year for lighting. In the 1850s, camphene (at $.50 per gallon) was cheaper than whale oil ($1.30 to $2.50 per gallon) and lard oil (90 cents per gallon). It was about the same price as coal oil, which was the product first marketed as "kerosene" (literally "sun fuel").

 

Kerosene from petroleum was a good fuel when it arrived in the 1860s: it was usually not too volatile, it burned brightly and it was fairly cheap. A gradual shift from camphene to kerosene might have occurred, but instead, a $2.08 per gallon tax on alcohol was imposed in stages between 1862 and 1864 as part of the Internal Revenue Act to pay for the Civil War. "The imposition of the internal-revenue tax on distilled spirits ... increased the cost of this 'burning fluid' beyond the possibility of using it in competition with kerosene..," said Rufus F. Herrick, an engineer with the Edison Electric Testing Laboratory who wrote one of the first books on the use of alcohol fuel.

 

While a gradual shift from burning fluid (or spirit lamps) to kerosine did occur in Europe during the last half of the 19th century, the American alcohol tax meant that kerosene became the primary fuel virtually overnight, and the distilleries making lamp fuel lost their markets. The tax "had the effect of upsetting [the distilleries] and in some cases destroying them," said IRS commissioner David A. Wells in 1872. "The manufacture of burning fluid for lighting suddenly ceased; happily, it was replaced by petroleum, which was about to be discovered." Similarly, C.J. Zintheo, of the US Department of Agriculture, said that 90 million gallons of alcohol per year were used for lighting, cooking, and industry before the tax was imposed. Meanwhile, use of oil shot up from almost nothing in 1860 to over 200 million gallons in 1870. "The effect was disastrous to great industries, which, if [they were to be] saved from ruin, had to be rapidly revolutionized," according to Irish engineer Robert N. Tweedy.

 

Thus, the growth of the petroleum industry in the 1860s was greatly aided by the heavy federal tax on its primary competitor. The myth that petroleum was at first a dramatic deliverance from the darkness, and then the only important fuel for the horseless carriage, indicates the extent to which oil industry historians have been influenced by the rhetoric of the technological sublime. In fact, early automotive inventors resorted to both petroleum and alcohol spirit lamp fuels as readily available energy sources."

 

This one's on GM, oil companies and lead. Kitman is a lawyer and an excellent journalist.

 

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20000320/kitman