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Originally Posted by Woodsy
ITD...
I am not as radical a AGW believer as you might think and I am certainly no tree hugger. But I try to apply some sense and logic to things. 7 BILLION people all consuming natural resources, and the majority of those people live in countries that have little or no environmental rules is going to have an effect on the global environment, and most certainly an effect on the global economy. I accept that I am going to pay higher and higher energy costs. I also know that if we start to effect a shift in our thinking now we can mitigate the damage to our economy. Without low cost energy an enconomy cannot thrive.
I really dont care if people want to debate the earth was warm once, and is warming naturally again... the reality is that it is warming. Is it doom and gloom for humans? Naa... we can adapt. Some species wont and will become extinct. However, we as species are consuming the earths natural resources at an ALARMING rate. This consumption will cause the failures of many economies, our own included if we don't find some energy balance!
For example... all of the AGW types tout their electric cars... yet the Prius has a HUGE carbon footprint. and where is all the electricity thats needed to power the new Chevy Volt?? I havent heard of a new powerplant being built? The national grid is outdated and teetering on collapse without some serious improvements! The funny thing is these same types dont want the Power Line project thats supposed to come down from quebec! LOL!
Woodsy
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Well, it takes energy to be productive, to produce things. People like to point out that we consume a quarter of the world's energy, but we also produce a quarter of the world's goods. Making stuff uses energy, being productive uses energy. I think about the cities like Lowell and Manchester and others, one of the factors of being near a river was the ability to exploit the river for power, now a thin wire comes in and gives us all we need. If electricity production had been perfected three hundred years ago this country would look much different than it does now.
I find it ironic the EPA now considers co2 a pollutant. The catalytic converter developed over the last 40 or so years because of EPA regulations, takes all those other nasty pollutants and turn them into....... you guessed it co2 and water among a few other things. I haven't looked up the numbers but I'm willing to bet that you would end up with a much larger reduction in CO2 just by requiring everyone saw off their converters rather than any cap and trade scheme. (No, I'm not advocating that be done.)
I hear the argument "..more public transportation", well tell me, how will that work out in NH (Lakes region for instance) or the rural areas of the 49 other states? I'll answer, it won't. It would be a disaster of epic proportions in waste of infrastructure, money and fuel. It would be impossible to economically cover the area that needs to be covered in this country.
The electric car actually has some appeal to me although not in the presently available models. Look at the Volt for instance. Right now it's batteries can store about 16kwh of energy, of which about 8 kwh is usable. With that power it can travel about 35 miles before the gas motor kicks in. Now I think that is actually pretty good for what it is, although it is still not that useful. This 8kwh of useful energy is stored in a 375 pound battery. If the battery can be made to store about 4 times that usable energy in the same 375 pounds I think the technology will start to give the IC engine a run for its money. As a comparison, a gallon of gas weighs about 6 pounds and stores about 36 kwhs of energy.
As far as the infrastructure for electric generation and distribution goes, I'm not sure how big of an issue that really is. As far as efficiency goes, large scale power plants are pretty efficient especially when compared to an IC motor that is probably best case 30% efficient at optimum usage.
Solar and wind are shams as far as I am concerned. They require huge, and I mean huge subsidies to break even compared to fossil fuels. We need huge advances in manufacturing and implementation for them to be competitive. I think the current tax credit/subsidies are actually holding these technologies back. All in the name of feel good politics to say we are doing something "green".
I was going to get into the dubiousness of AGW science and more importantly the proposed "solutions" to AGW but I'm tired of writing now so I'll stop. Maybe another day........