How Much Will Energy Prices Effect you and the Parks?

Jan,
Interesting article, thanks for the link

Stuey,
I'm not sure what the point of that article is, except for Carbon Dioxide is not a pollutant, so who cares about fuel effeciency. The author of the article also makes blanket accusations that these 'environmental crusaders' have no scientific basis for their findings.

Allow me to retort. Comparing the Toyota 4Runner and the Toyota Prius. This is assuming 12,500 miles driven per year.

1. Consumption. The Prius consumes 470 fewer gallons of gas. Conserves our resources, and limits our reliance on other countries in the middle east.

2. Cost. The difference in gas money is $940/year (assuming both are filled at $2.00/gallon). That's a couple extra coaster vacations, or (GASP) donating it to non-profit and charity organizations.

3. Pollutants. The Prius emits approximately 30% less Carbon Monoxide, 70% less Nitrogen Oxides, and 50% less Hydrocarbons.

Now, Carbon Dioxide does not directly affect human health but is the most significant greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming. The effects of global warming are uncertain, but they potentially include disruption of global weather patterns and ecosystems, flooding, severe storms and droughts. For me, the jury is still out on global warming.

This an other information can be found at: http://www.environmentaldefense.org/TailpipeTally/

So in review, by going with a more fuel effecient vehicle, we saved money for ourselves, or donated it to organizations serving a greater good. We've reduced air pollution, making for healthier bodies and clearer air. And, since we're using less gasoline, we are less dependent on other countries.

Class dismissed. *** Edited 3/22/2005 7:35:06 PM UTC by Danimales***

First of all, I agree with you regarding transportation alternatives etc..

I think his most important point was that American cars produce less than 5% of emissions globally. Also, his points about the rest of the developing world in the next paragraph is important.

---

stuey said:
1. We are leading the way in alternatives R&D.

---

I still think congress and the prez should be talking about developing alternatives instead of say, going to Mars or drilling the refuge. C'mon, show some real leadership. We're still strung out on oil from what I can tell.

---

2. One is capable of being, at present, pro oil exploration AND at the same time be very much in favor of alternatives R&D. Let's face it, right now we still need oil for the next several years until that research is successful. You have to be realistic.

---

Hey, I agree that we need oil. But why the rush to use up our resources? Why not save it for our kids? Heck, perhaps by the time they are around to it, they won't need to go poking holes up there.

---

3. Why is it that the Sierra Club and similar groups are the only people capable of being virtuous and true when it comes to this stuff and people on the other side are automatically considered villains. It's not wise to just automatically believe the environmentalists but then turn around and immediately dismiss anything that others have to say. That's what religious fanatics are always accused of doing by the left.

---

Sure, there are plenty of emotions from both sides. But this discussion really shouldn't go there. I don't think it's important.

Agreed...I'm running out of gas myself :)

Interesting discussion - reminds me a lot of the discussions we had in Germany in the 80ies when the Green party became big.

Looking over the Atlantic from Germany, the gashogging American SUV culture seems really retro. But when I lived there, in L.A., my perspective changed somewhat. Owning a comfy car with air condition is not a luxury but a required living utensil - it's almost as if homo californiensis is a species that is actually a CAR with a human inside. I oftentimes felt like a modern day caveman with a rolling cave.

The fun part is, L.A. used to have one of the best public railway systems anywhere on the planet - until it was bought by a car company and basically (and intentionally) run down in order to raise the need for cars. Then, the freeways were built. Today, it's practically impossible to get around in L.A. without hitting a freeway in a private vehicle.

It's the tyranny of capitalism: economic advantage and sense are not necessarily congruent. Another example for this is why the U.S. didn't sign the Kyoto protocol: Because it could be a disadvantage for the American economy.

If the "economy" could be made to build something to last the next 100 years instead of using up all its brainpower to survive the next economic year or quarter, things would maybe look different.

It has to be admitted though, that a system that is so aflame with the present as is the U.S. where everything has such a strong dynamic, is really impressive to watch and be part of.

Cars have only been popular for about 120 years or so now. We need a different transportation concept. What will the future of transportation look like?

---

Cars have only been popular for about 120 years or so now. We need a different transportation concept. What will the future of transportation look like?

---

With any luck, a rollercoaster. ;)

---

superman said:The fun part is, L.A. used to have one of the best public railway systems anywhere on the planet - until it was bought by a car company and basically (and intentionally) run down in order to raise the need for cars. Then, the freeways were built. Today, it's practically impossible to get around in L.A. without hitting a freeway in a private vehicle

---

For a dramatazation of this, see "Who Framed Roger Rabbit." Though it wasn't Judge Doom who bought up the "redcar," many of the details about the history of L.A. in that movie are accurate.

As for the discussion - all I can say is, I guess I picked a bad year to take two road trips. I usually fly everywhere...

One interesting bit I wonder about with hybrids. What happens in 10 years when all these battery packs are worn out. That's a LOT of nickel-metal hydride to dispose of, and that's NASTY stuff.

Two sides to the environmental argument...

(Note that I'm actually very left of center on environment and oppose opening ANWR for drilling,. I also just take a rather cynical view of hybrids. Less-polluting cars are a great goal, but hybrids don't really achieve that, they just shift the load. Hydrogen fuel cell based cars might be one answer, but then yo need to generate and store hydrogen. There are no pretty solutions here so long as the American consumer is so fixated on private automobiles instead of mass transit.

Very good point Sr. Leg.

I'd like to see wind-up cars myself (so long as the winder is fueled by wind-power using windmills strategically placed away from migratory bird flyways) ;)

Unfortunately, with the current layout of our urban and suburban centers, private transportation is probably here to stay.

*** Edited 3/22/2005 10:21:47 PM UTC by janfrederick***

That's the problem. Mass Transit really only works well in densly populated areas. Neo-traditional neighborhoods and urban redevelopment help but you're not gonna get everybody to do that. And even if most development took place along those lines you still have 50+ years of inefficient suburban sprawl to contend with. What would be really nice is pedestrian bridges over the roads so you don't have to get in the car and drive 5 miles just to get across the street!

I was lucky once. I had a job and a house 2 miles apart on a bike path with no road crossings. That wasn't an accident - it was an intentional decision so I wouldn't have to drive to work. But that job ended and now I commute 10 miles one way to the 'burbs and it drives me crazy. It's not so much the rise in gas prices I noticed but the fact that I actually had to start paying for gas to begin with!

freakylick: Don't be a jackass. I don't tell you what to do in your house, don't tell me what to do in mine.

An Indian guy I work with has been in the states for about three years and he's still stunned at the use of cars in our country. He has lived outside of New Delhi, in Bangkok, Tokyo and Chicago. Cleveland is his latest stop, and he can't believe how relatively useless our public transportation is here. He also sees the SUV thing as a pretentious status thing. I agree with him.

According to the feds (Dept. of Commerce), our fuel efficiency peaked in 1987 at 26.2 mpg, when vehicles classified as "light trucks" accounted for 28.1% of the market. In 2001, they accounted for 46.7% of the market and the fuel economy is down to 24.4 mpg.

The batteries in hybrids can be recycled, and frankly I wouldn't be surprised if there's already some program in place to facilitate that.

Hydrogen fuel cells sure would be a good idea, and we can get plenty of hydrogen in conjunction with the production of nuclear energy. Of course, people get in a stink about that because we don't recycle nuclear fuel, thanks to a Carter-era rule that says you can't (another reason for the French to laugh at us). Funny thing is that Bush proposed this in 2003, and hasn't funded it. Maybe it's because when he talked about "nucular" no one had any idea what he was talking about.

The whole opening up of ANWR for drilling just reeks of b.s.

They're playing the card that it will reduce our dependence on foreign oil. B.S., as Jeff already pointed out it will only account for roughly 2% of our yearly needs (assuming they remain constant). That isn't enough to relieve any pressure on our pocketbooks. And that also assumes that we wouldn't export any of it. Considering we already export oil from Alaska, I wouldn't expect them to change their ways. If it really is a crisis, why do we still export our oil? Because we can make more money selling it abroad and still buy it cheaper overseas ourselves. Doesn't sound like a huge energy crisis to me, at least in the way Washington does things.

Another reason that this whole thing stinks is the unwillingness of this administration to raise the fuel efficiency of our vehicles. Again, if we are in such a crisis that we need to open up ANWR, shouldn't a component to battle this crisis be the government imposing higher fuel efficiency. Doing this alone would save more fuel than ANWR could ever produce. So why hasn't this been done, or at least initiated?

I loved how W's constituents gloated about W proposing to spend a billion dollars for hydrogen fuel cell technology. Was that ever even payed? But my point is that the number is a pittance. Ford spent more money developing the Taurus. So again, for something so important to us and our government, their actions just don't follow reality.

My favorite has to be the tax breaks. Sure there are tax breaks for people who buy hybrids and alternative fuel automobiles. But there are also deductions for people buying the biggest SUV's on the market. Isn't it great when the government encourages people to be as wastefull as they can.

This talking out of both sides of the mouth shows their true intentions. Do a little bit in an attempt to appease the environmentalists, but more importantly doing enough to prove to their cronies that they are doing more than enough for the environment and calling those not satisfied environmentalist wackos. But it's all about the money. Prove that it isn't and I'll buy you a cookie.

Here is something to consider...

An automobile is a difficult machine to construct, as it must be able to carry the fuel it consumes, it must convert that fuel to kinetic energy on demand, and when the fuel is depleted, it must be able to reload in a very short period of time.

That pretty much rules out most power plants. About the only practical alternative to the combustion engine is an electric drive...but even at that, it is only practical if the vehicle generates its own electricity. From a practical standpoint, that means that we're going to be burning gasoline, diesel fuel, alcohol, oil, propane, natural gas or hydrogen. The alternative is some kind of fuel cell, which converts hydrogen to electricity. Of those fuels, we know the problems with petroleum. We don't have enough farmland to produce enough grain alcohol to burn that by itself, and natural gas is a lousy choice because supplies are already stretched producing heat and electricity. Propane is a by-product of natural gas production. That leaves hydrogen.

Ever wonder why the emphasis for hydrogen is on fuel cells to convert hydrogen into electricity? Why not simply burn the hydrogen in an internal combustion engine? That would work, the emissions would be nearly zero, and after all, if it can power the Space Shuttle it ought to be able to power the family sedan.

The answer is simple. While hydrogen is plentiful in the Universe, it has a nasty habit of combining with other elements and producing other things. Guess what, folks: When your car runs on a hydrogen fuel cell, you're most likely going to get that hydrogen by dumping in gasoline or diesel fuel, which contain lots of hydrocarbons meaning they contain lots of hydrogen. And that's the problem with the technology today: right now, if you install a fuel cell and power it with gasoline, you won't get as much energy out of it as you'd get from simply burning the gas.

Of course, we could avoid a lot of this if we had an infrastructure in place for extracting hydrogen and running our cars on that. Heck, if we could do that we could skip the fuel cells entirely and run hydrogen-fueled internal combustion engines. The technology exists, and it is simple. And the only thing we need to break down tap water and collect the hydrogen is...electricity.

Uh-oh. That's where the whole system breaks down, isn't it? Electric power is what we really need. Right now it costs too much in electric to produce the hydrogen.

Now if you want to solve that issue, there is really only one practical way to get us the amount of electrical power we really need in this country. Unfortunately, nuclear power, no matter how you pronounce it, is politically unviable. We have to get over our collective fear of nuclear power. Wind and water are great, but for the kind of volume we need, particularly if we're going to use the electric power grid (if only indirectly) to power our cars, we need the power density of a nuclear reactor.

Now who wants to take on THAT challenge?

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

---

Jeff said:
Nonsense. I drove a little Dodge Cirrus up the side of Mt. Hood in 1998 and my little Corolla has to deal with weather you don't get in West Virginia, ever. People got along without SUV's for decades and you still don't need one to take the kids to soccer practice or buy groceries.

---

So when were you out my drive way to be able to back your statement up? Seriously, you're talking out of an orifice that shouldn't be talked out of and don't know what you're sayin here. I'd love to see you drive that lil Dodge out my driveway, which isn't going up any hill what so ever. It wouldn't make it. Period. Which is why I got something that sat up higher.

Every car we've had has scraped or just wouldn't make it out the drive, so now we have 3 vehicles that can. And it has nothing to do with weather.

I agree that people buy SUVs just because, but here in the middle of the mountains, it really is something you need. Before SUVs, all you ever saw here were big trucks, which aren't very good when you have a large family.

Don't go saying I'm speaking nonsense if you've never seen where I live, never driven out my driveway, or never lived my life, Jeff. *** Edited 3/23/2005 5:00:30 AM UTC by TeknoScorpion***

I'll say whatever I want my friend. I don't believe you.

RideMan: well said.

I suspect that hydrogen will only become viable as the cost of fossils rises enough to make H extraction pay. Of course, by the time that happens, it may well be too late to build all the other cruft you need to produce and distribute it, becuase that is an enormously capital-intensive venture, with (at present) a very uncertain payoff. It will be interesting to see if governments are willing and able to invest in the *huge* capital infrastructure needed to make H a reality.

I also agree that, eventually, nuclear power will be back. It is already well-accepted in several European countries (where environmental causes tend to get more attention, too). One can transition to nuclear power without need for the massive distribution network required for hydrogen, so you can deploy it incrementally--a huge practical benefit. Finally, and I say this as a dyed-in-the-wool, way-left-of-center, tree-hugging, spotted-owl-loving liberal, we're going to either need some new technology that no one has even thought of yet, we're going to have to radically reduce our amazing thirst for electricity, or we're going to have to start splitting atoms on a large scale.

The thing about nuclear energy is that it can be produced with almost no significant waste product at all... if you recycle the fuel. Even the hippiest of tree huggers are starting to see that if you lift that ban on recycling, you don't have to worry about burying it in the ground for a million years. You just use it until it no longer exists. (In case you're wondering, the ban on recycling the fuel comes with the irrational fear that you can refine the fuel into weapon material, which is absurd considering the regulation and accountability for the materials, let alone the unlikelihood that John Q. Terrorist has even a fraction of the resources to refine the stuff.)

I don't understand all of the physics and chemistry, but getting hydrogen out of the production of electricity from nuclear plants is supposedly inexpensive in the long run, and you can produce enough of it to fuel much of our current fleet. I admit I'm not as up to speed on that as I'd like to be.

---

TeknoScorpion said:

I agree that people buy SUVs just because, but here in the middle of the mountains, it really is something you need.

---

That is a load of crap. I've been going to the mountains - tall mountains with more snow than you will ever get - in regular passenger cars for many years. Never, not once, no matter where I went, did I feel like I needed an SUV. Matter of fact, driving my VW Jetta with four snow tires, I can leave most SUVs in the dust in a snow storm.

Many people buy SUVs because the are inept drivers and think a 4 wheel drive SUV can save their ass. I've reached that conclusion by observing a large number of SUVs crawling along the highway in a snow storm, and then sliding off the road a few miles down.

Give me any car, from a fast luxury sports sedan to a small econobox, and I challenge anyone in a SUV to go somewhere on public roads or driveways where I can't. You won't win.

So funny to hear lefties talking about nuclear power that way, but I have to agree with Jeff and Rideman (not to accuse him of being a lefty).

By the way, on my ride home yesterday I realized that I was wrong about sprawl making mass transit impossible. The funny thing is that LA's sprawl was created by the mass transit/real estate developers. They would throw a line out to a new tract of land and develop it. That's why LA had the largest public transit on earth for a while.

Then along came a tire maker and couple of oil folks who thought they weren't selling enough product and whammo.

But now we are used to the convenience of personal transportation. I think we'll find ourselves a happy medium like electronically controlled expressways where speeds are high and following distances are very close (but safe because drivers are not involved). Then drivers can drive themselves around streets.

Granted I'm a bit uncomfortable giving up control to a computer having worked in software QA, but it might be our only home to avoid gridlock and still have the freedom to go where we want when we want.

I'm a lefty....in more ways than one! :)