Reducing Gasoline Usage
Over at The Reality Based Community, Michael O’Hare has a post about fossil-fuel usage and why electric or hydrogen fueled cars aren’t a solution to the problem:
I don’t know where to start with this stuff. Hydrogen is not a fuel, and neither is electricity. There’s no mine for either of them; if people start plugging in cars into the wall, power plants of all kinds will just rev up faster and longer, and the marginal electricity is made from natural gas, a fossil fuel that’s only somewhat less greenhousy than oil, though a lot less than coal. These cars have to haul an enormous stack of heavy batteries around, and half the energy that goes into the power plant is lost in the transmission and generation system anyway. “Clean coal” doesn’t mean “coal that doesn’t cause global warming,” it means less pollution of every other kind: coal, clean or not, is the worst greenhouse fuel until we figure out how to capture all the stack gas and put it somewhere (this is called carbon sequestration, and it’s a very long-term, daunting, technological road at this point).
The eventual conclusion is that the solution to this problem is, apparently, to live in small, tightly-packed communities, but I can’t help thinking there’s another solution, one that I’ve mentioned before, proposed by Varifrank. Encourage companies to allow their employees to telecommute as much as possible. That’s not a solution that would work for everyone, obviously, but it would help.
The solution is ethanol. Look at Brazil’s Ethanol program and tell me why we can’t make enough sugar cane to do the same exact thing.
http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/powersystems/futuregen/
And all of this is still based on the idea that global warming is real. For every study that says so, there is one that says it isn’t proven.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel
So lets see it reduces our dependence on oil and makes us more environment friendly. I don’t think a lot of people realize how much E10 is already being used in this country. I was watching a documentary on it the other day, which by the way makes me an expert, and it was talking about how Brazil became foreign oil independent 2 years ago. For all the people that like to cry so much about the environment and high gas prices tell me how this is not a solution that we are working towards. It is a reusable resource in that we can plant corn and sugar cane anywhere. It is already catching on and being sold in a lot of places. Car companies have already been producing ethanol friendly cars. So why is the foreign oil talking point still hanging around? Its not like overnight our fuel consumption is going to change, look how long it took Brazil.
I think too many people watch stupid crap like “Syriana”.
Stop that. I’m trying to make a case for why telecommuting should be mandatory, and you’re shooting it down with facts!
It all doesnt make sense! Zero emmission power plants are a reality. Clean Coal technology is real! Its just expensive. A car can run very efficiently on Hydrogen and the byproduct is H2O. So tell me, why cant we change and cut our thurst for Oil? Cause even the change to any of these would be an expensive nightmare! The oil barron’s pockets are deep and can grease the hands of any Politician. This will keep any government support on the talking table for years. I am a coal miner, I live in West Virgina. Coal is the future of this country. Coal will keep the lights on in Washington DC alot longer than the oil will burning in Riyadh! Ethanol is the future for at the pump. We should convert to these two types of energy. It the american way, strive ahead, be self efficient. It will take a lot of public support and protesting to our elected officials to get the support we need. We cant sit back and let the oil companies get rich at our expense. I understand the reasons why, oil is so expensive. Its because china is industrializing and so is India. But we as Americians need to secure our future and our economy. So, in the end whe have to rely on ourselves and that is up to coal miners and corn farmers to stand up and provide the energy that we need. The energy to get to work, heat and light our homes and yes even surf the web.