posted on June 3, 2002 06:50:48 AM new
Ref. N.Y.Times- In sharp contrast to it's earlier position of generalities and more research being necessary, the Bush administration now acknowledges specific and far-reaching effects of global warming and attributes the problem primarily to the burning of fossil fuels. This remarkable shift has ticked off both the energy/auto industries and environmentalists alike! The former have lobbied against any further investigation of what they deem a bogus issue and the latter are flabbergasted that the administration would finally acknowledge the problem but recommend "adaptation" to the inevitable heat waves, disappearance of mountain meadows and coastal marshes rather than any preventive measures.
IMHO- this is a half -assed attempt to regain environmental credibility after he failed to get approval for new Arctic oil-drilling to alleviate reliability on foreign sources(with which I agree, departing from my Democratic Senators).
posted on June 3, 2002 07:30:26 AM new
So why the big turnaround, do you think? And isnt it kinda like shutting the barn door after the horse is out? (Worrying about global warming, that is).
[ edited by hepburn101 on Jun 3, 2002 07:31 AM ]
posted on June 3, 2002 08:10:07 AM new
Worrying about something harmful that can still be alleviated is a good thing. There are many preventive measures that are well known, but the Bush administration does not seem to have an interest in really confronting the energy/auto industries. They would rather take the middle road of acknowledging an obvious problem to appease the environmentalists while not imposing any regulations on the energy/auto interests to appease them. They will succeed at neither.
posted on June 3, 2002 11:20:45 AM new
Alaska oil drilling, or any other oil drilling in the United States, will never solve our oil problems. There just is not that much oil left in this country that can be easily extracted. And not just parts of Alaska have been put off limits to drilling, but also big sections of other parts of the country, especially offshore California, Florida, etc. Oil drilling in my back yard? Oh no, can't be allowed!
As long as Americans continue to drive gasoline guzzling autos and trucks, the problem will remain. The tendency of Americans to each want their own (or multiple) vehicles, with gasoline efficiency very rarely the deciding factor on which vehicle to purchase, nothing will change. We presently import over half of the crude oil consumed in this country - Alaskan North Slope oil won't even put a dent in this ever increasing crude oil deficit.
The latest figures that I have seen say that about 80% of all crude oil consumed in the United States goes for transportation purposes. Home heating oil, plastics, chemicals, and other products would take up that other 20%. So as long as you keep driving your vehicles, the problem will never be solved.
I work for Halliburton, the company that Cheney headed before becoming VP. Having worked for 20+ years for this company, seeing many fellow employees laid off during the years of low oil prices (low oil prices = low to no investment in drilling new wells or servicing old wells by the oil companies), the constant harping by everyone that the oil companies run the show is a bunch of hogwash. It may fit your model of how you assume the world works, but it just is not fact. It is a simple supply and demand situation.
I have not owned an internal combustion engine since early 1997. I moved to The Netherlands at that time, and figured I could go by bicycle or public transport or foot if I needed to, and that worked out just fine. When I returned to the small Oklahoma city that I now live in, I continued to do without the personal auto. Not quite as convenient, but if a vehicle is needed for a trip out of town, I can always pick one up for a day or two from a car rental company. You learn to do without after a certain amount of time. I chose a place to live based upon proximity to where I would be working, instead of trying to find a place in the "nice part of town" - read that to be a part of town where I could be playing the "keep up with the Jone's" game.
The game of blaming every problem that exists on government may be fun, but in this case is simply not true. Any attempt by our government to regulate or reduce the supply of gasoline would immediately end that politician's stay in office. Just mention a couple penny rise in gasoline taxes, and watch the fur fly as all of you tear into which ever politician dared to suggest such a plan. Anderson's independent run for president in the early 1980s was going just great until he suggested one day a 5 cent a gallon increase in federal gas taxes was needed - end of his very promising presiential campaign (I still voted for him - I never vote Republican or Democrat always third party). You have the policy that you wanted - your personal convenience means more to you than anything else, including the present day environment and the future of the world. You have to change, you can't rely upon the government to do it for you. Set the example!
By the way, people everywhere are the same. While in Holland, I noticed the same tendencies as in this country. Gasoline was priced about four times higher there, with that increase in price due just to increased taxes. Even with the very high gas prices, the very expensive taxes on autos, quarterly "road taxes", almost non-existant parking, and huge traffic jams, and excellent public transportation, everyone, especially the young, dreamed of owning their own cars. It's human nature, with both the convenience and the prestige factors coming into play. I am sure it is the same the world over.
PS: Halliburton is not an oil company, but an energy services and construction company. The energy services section that I work for provides all the services that the energy companies need to drill and then produce their oil and gas wells. We do not own any oil or gas wells - that would compete with those companies that are our customers, so it just isn't done.
posted on June 3, 2002 01:21:57 PM new
Well, OSM, you are clearly entitled to your opinion as to how things work, just as everyone else who posts on here. You are partially right that it is the demand that drives oil consumption. However, you never gave your thoughts to some of these facts:
+ The gasoline engine first was about 7% efficient. In other words, for every 10 gallons of gasoline that passed through the engine, 9.3 gallons would be spewed out unburnt. Today's High Efficiency gasoline engines are about 25% efficient, spewing out 7.5 gallons of unburnt fuel into the environment per 10 gallons that it uses. The question OSM, is, WHY? In 125 years of the Internal Combustion Engine, has the efficiency only increased slightly, whereas we've increased out technology in a list that shows that we COULD increase engine efficiency to 70% or better. That change alone would more than make up for many of the problems. WHY doesn't it happen?
+ Alternative fuels have been around longer than the gasoline engine. For instance, farmers routinely mulch their own alcohol to create fuel. Alcohol is not as "explosive", meaning powerful as gasoline; yet, Alcohol when burnt becomes H2O - water, with NO other pollutants! Alcohol burns clean, keeping engines nice and free of debris. Alcohol is renewable and America can make as much of it as we need! The question is WHY do we still, after 125 years, why do we still not have a renewable, non-polluting fuel alternative? Not just alcohol, but there are many others. WHY?
+ I met a customer once who had converted his Audi to electric. He took me outside the store to show me under the hood. He had rigged 4 car batteries together and replaced the engine with a heavy-duty forklift motor. He told me that he recharges it once a day, that he got about 250 miles per charge, and that it had lots of power - which he was willing to demonstrate to me. He got into the vehicle, drove it to the edge of the parking lot, floored it and the tires screeched out for half a block as he jetted away! The question is WHY do automobile manufacturers present us with loathsome alternatives for electric cars? They get the same mileage per charge, take just as long to charge, but cost $20,000 every 15 years to replace! To top it off, they start off by DOUBLING the cost of a new vehicle! And before you say DEMAND, OSM, realize that consumers are STILL willing to pay extra for those cars! But none are available here! There were for a while, and they were sold months in advance -- even with the higher prices! WHY?
I could go on about this and would point out how Big Oil & the Automotive Industries have gone hand-in-hand to keep the status quo and keep us consuming polluting, expensive, foreign-dependant oil engines. However, I'll wait until you can make a reply to those questions I just posted.
posted on June 3, 2002 01:28:42 PM new
Another reason they don't "go after" the automotive segment is that the automotive sector has probably seen the biggest reduction in pollution of any. There is a limit to how clean you can be. Several years ago industrial sources exceeded automotive for pollution emmissions. 5% of vehicles generate 90% of the automotive pollution. But these vehicles are generally owned by "poor" people. It is not politically correct to go after poor people to force them to repair/retire a vehicle.
As to "not imposing" any regulations", the auto industry is one of the most highly regulated ones we have.
I would like to see the original article also. Somehow I think the words "contribute to" have been replaced by "caused by".
posted on June 3, 2002 02:39:03 PM new
It would also be very cost effective to retire the 5% of badly emitting autos by give ing an outright GRANT to poor people who had an unrepairable badly emitting car to buy a new one - instead of spending much more to force the tiny increases in cleanliness for the already clean ones - but the politics of envy won't allow that.
People are just terrified someone else might get something they don't - and the clean air they would breath is a very abstract thing to most of them.
I see cars VISABLY emitting a blue haze and the cops don't pull them over and ticket them - That really frosts my cookies.
posted on June 3, 2002 03:21:33 PM new
What REALLY frosts MY cookies is the gov is well aware of these facts yet forced NJ to spend hundreds of millions on state inspections with dynamometers to have me sit there for an hour and barely have the needles move on my '97. All to pretend to the whackos that they are doing something. In Sweden or Germany un-repaired smokers are seized.
A professor at the U of Arizona did a study and calculated that you could cut car pollution dramatically just by putting infrared spectrophotometers at say tollboths and having cops ticket gross polluters and require the vehicles to be made compliant.
But we can't do that. No big contracts, nobody getting paid to examine the situation and worst of all, no big media splash.
(1) In regards to gasoline engine efficiency: The 25% efficiency rating that you note is correct, but your understanding of what the "efficiency" means is not. The actual oxidation of the fuel in the engine is pretty efficient, with the exhaust mostly consisting of carbon dioxide and water vapor, as well as nitrogen. Some incompletely oxidized fuel will remain, but much much less than the 75% you claim. Other byproducts present in small amounts include nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide. Catalytic converters are placed on autos to eliminate most of the hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides, and carbon monoxide that are present and prevent their introduction to the atmosphere.
The following link gives a very good discussion on catalytic converters.
(Someone please make this a clickable link for me if I wasn't successful)
Anyway, the point I am trying to make is that 75% of the fuel you pump into your gas tank does not get spit out your tailpipe. The great majority of the fuel is actually burned efficiently as long as your auto is tuned correctly. The efficiency of the engine instead relates the amount of theoretical energy present in the fuel that is actually used to produce mechanical energy that is used by the engine. The remaining unused portion of the energy is mainly generated as heat that then must be dissipated by the cooling system. That is where the other 75% goes.
Since I am not an engineer, I checked with several of the engineers that I have as co-workers. One stated that even the most efficient natural gas turbines used to generate electricity, which are the most efficient engines in existence, only have an efficiency of about 40%. There is just too much wasted heat.
(2) In regards to the burning of alcohol: The alcohol that you refer to is ethanol. The chemical formula for ethanol is CH3-CH2O. In this chemical formula, C = Carbon, H = Hydrogen, and O = Oxygen. When this hydrocarbon is burned, it will also produce carbon dioxide and water vapor as by-products as long as the oxidation is complete.
Ethanol does not eliminate the production of carbon dioxide, it just eliminates crude oil as the source of the carbon dioxide produced by the engine. Since it is not as efficient a fuel source as gasoline, you will actually produce more carbon dioxide as a result. Ethanol was pushed as a possible alternative fuel source in the late 1970s and early 1980s when the price of oil skyrocketed, but the ethanol producers just could not get the price down to the point that it was competitive with fuel produced from crude oil. Ethanol still can't be produced to compete price-wise with gasoline.
(3) Production of alternative energy vehicles: If your friend's car was so efficient, why didn't you immediately build one yourself (or have someone do it for you)? I have a feeling that his claims were a bit overstated.
I don't buy into the conspiracy theory in regards to the non-production of highly efficient vehicles because this is not just a USA problem. There are numerous countries that would love to be more energy efficient that have an even greater reliance on foreign oil supplies than we do. Most European countries, for instance. Japan, Korea, Taiwan, to name a few more. The US auto/oil/government complex that is out to prevent the introduction of such vehicles into the USA market does not dictate what happens in those economies - they are going to do what is best for themselves and tell us to take a flying leap if we work against their best interests. After having lived in Holland for a couple of years, I can tell you that the Dutch would certain welcome with open arms such an option, as would the Dutch government. The reason it isn't happening is that the efficiencies still aren't there. From reading articles presently appearing on the web, it looks like they are coming soon. I believe that California has a regulation on the books that a certain percentage of new vehicles must be alternative fuel or non-emitting. California will probably force the issue on this and spur the development of the best alternatives possible.
----------------
I hope that this satisfies your curiosity, Borillar. You made a lot of statements that were totally false. I hope you weren't serious with the statements that you claimed were "truths".
posted on June 3, 2002 07:57:23 PM new
I wonder if the Bush clan has fully comprehended what they are talking about "adapting" to?
We are talking about the potential rise in sea level that will eliminate about half of the state of Florida.
How many TRILLIONS of dollars of roads and homes and infrastructure that can not just be put behind a sea wall or dike. First moderate hurrican will overwhelm any such system.
Also major chunks of Texas - Louisiana and Mississippi.
Bengladesh will disappear.
Most Pacific island - gone or so reduced in area as to not support current populations.
Farming areas and crops will shift. Wheat will be grown North in Canada. Citrus will again be grown in Tennessee as it once was in Colonial times. Areas of desert will expand into the midwest.
Areas once marginally survivable will be a totally artificial environment - unlivable without airconditioning. Power outages will be deadly.
posted on June 3, 2002 11:20:25 PM new"You made a lot of statements that were totally false."
Some of the information is likely to be inaccurate. I am not a mechanical engineer or a chemist - I depend upon what I read, using the best sources I can find at the time. For instance, I can not state that it is ethanol, as I do not recall which alcohol it was that they were referring to, but you are liekly right. The article on it that I read stated that the exhaust was pure water with no other pollutants. We're on here to learn where we're wrong.
As far as the gentleman and his electric car - this I saw with my own eyes. Why did I not go convert my own automobile? I kicked myself in the ass for a long time, wishing I had been more attentive and had asked him WHERE he got the electric motor from. I recall that he opened the hood to show me what was under it and it wasn't very big; perhaps a yard long by about 8 inches to 12 inches in diameter. Furthermore, I am not mechanically inclined and could not convernt any car by myself. Why not pay others to do it? I have thought about going a step further and thought of opening up a conversion garage, but only if I could hire the right mechanics and could get the parts. It seems to far above me for such an enterprise.
Also, too, that while the exact deatils of the efficiency of an engine may be related to work - energy used in locomotion versus that converted into heat, it still points out to a necessity to produce an engine that is much more efficient. The local High School that takes an old Volkwagon Beetle and fixes it up to get 102 miles to the gallon, for example. Who hasn't heard of such things? That fact of the matter is that gasoline engines are woefully inefficient and there is little to no incentive for autombolie companies to make them more fuel efficient.
That gets us to the Oil Folks. I suppose, since you blame it all on consumers, that you'd say that if a cheap, clean alternative fuel were to come about that would put Oil Companies out of business, they'd woop and hollar and toss their cowboy hats into the air in celebration at being run out of business! I have yet to see any well established business not try to control the market and Big Oil is no different. It doesn't take a madman creating wild tales to the average person to make them think that something is wrong. The more oil that a vehicle uses, the more that the oil industry sells, the more money that they make. Common sense. Would they go so far as to manipulate their market and Congress in order to keep the status quo? You say NO, and that's your right to do so. However, don't expect everyone to think that.
posted on June 4, 2002 02:56:17 AM new
Actually DeSquirrel there is quite a bit of evidence that climate swings in the past have been very abrupt. You have a lot of very little understood things like the stability of dissolved gases in deep ocean waters and a critical equilibriam point can be reached which results in a massive roll over and release of the gas. We have seen some miniature examples of such an event in deep lakes although we have not seen such an event in a huge ocean area.
An example - Back in the 60's there was an African lake - fairly cold and deep and a small town on it. One day there was no communication from the town and when people went to see what the matter was everyone in town was dead. Reconstructing it the deep water had a huge load of carbon dioxide and
when some instability caused it to roll over and come to the surface it lost it all like a glass of soda fizzing. The cload of gas took long enough to disperse that everyone on the shore smothered.
There are similar deposits of carbon diaoxide and methane held in the ocean large enough to change the composition of the atmosphere in a matter of a couple months. An unusual burp in solar activity or volcanic activity can push us over the edge to rapid change because the earth is a system already trending that direction. You are just nudging a massive system that already has some momentum that direction. It would really be difficult to do the opposite - reverse the trend. Our recorded history is really not long enough to have recorded changes that would allow us to understand the cusps of stability in either direction.
posted on June 4, 2002 06:08:54 AM new
4 car batteries for 250 miles! Impossible! Not enough power. I remember seeing designs that would do what you describe but it took a trunk load of car batteries.
A for the efficiency of the internal combustion engine O-S-man is basically correct, but also, today engine are capable of extremely efficient operation with little modification. However, the adjustments and fine tuning would have to be so precise that it only lasts a very short time before the engine quit. Gasoline is not absolutely pure whcih will muck it up, the engine heat changes the adjustments and the engine vibration throws them off. The efficiency of today engines are merely compromises for efficiency and durability.
There are only 10 types of people in the world
Those who understand binary and those who don't
posted on June 4, 2002 11:19:44 AM new
There are designs that can get better mileage .
For example one old racer made an engine that was almost all ceramics. The cylinders were made of silicon carbide which is usuall a material you use to make grinding stones. It ran with no cooling system because part of the design was to operate at a temperature closer to that of a jet engine. However the expense was huge and the switchover would be the total scapping of all the production facilities they already have. Almost none of the mechanics out there today would be qualified to work on it, and there is no history of what sort of service life you could expect from it. It has safety issues also. I hate to think about a wreck where the engine is a huge mass of red hot ceramic that would shatter on impact.
posted on June 4, 2002 01:26:31 PM new
Yes, yes, if not Alcohol, then there are many other alternative fuels, many just waiting to be tried out. Even if you can't take a 25mpg car and keep it at 102mpg, at least doubling it to 50mpg seems a reasonable goal -- doesn't it? Why isn't it being done? Because Oil prices are kept so cheap that there is little incentive to change or to upgrade.
I've read time and time again about those claims of unusual car milage, not meaning the super-tweaking in High Schools. The description of every device seems to point towards one factor. In order for these gadgets to work their magic, all that they do is to pre-vaporize and/or air-mix the gasoline before it enters the cylinder. The old automobiles used to squirt fuel directly into the cylinders, while the fuel injectors these days spray it in. This would actually cause it to become a vapor.
With that design, it takes only a minute amount of fuel to burn to get the same energy release. With the way things are now, a lot of the fuel leaves the chamber unburnt - wasted.
The Conspiracy part comes in when the claim is made that all of these devices are patented and owned by the Oil or Automobile companies. Whether that's true or not, I don't know.
I say that the efficiency of the gasoline engine could get better results. What about taking the heat generated and converting it to electrical energy to operate an electric motor?
As far as the guy with the electirc car thingie, he opened the hood and I saw the four car batteries that he mentioned. He may have exaggerated on his claims of how far the car could go between charges, but we have no sure way to know for sure. [b]IF]/b] it were true that he got about 250miles per charge on hhis design . . . what does this mean? And if he got, say, only 100 miles per charge - what about that? If 4 batteries gives 100 miles, then 10 car batteries gives 250 miles. Right? And to replace 10 car batteries is much cheaper than the proposed $15,000 electric battery proposed by the automobile companies!
You're talking about Smokey Yunick's "adiabatic" engine. Before that was Wally Minto's freon engine. Like you said, not practical.
Borillar
You absolutely don't have a clue with anything that deviates from a personal opinion or philosophy. No, you don't just spray it real fine and come up with nirvana. That was done a long long time ago. Ditto with electronic engine management. That's why you get more than 1 HP/cubic inch and the mileage you do today.
Let's go over a simple concept. A gallon of gas has a certain BTU content, If you switch to a alcohol that has half that energy content, it takes twice as much fuel. This is called physics.
I know you think you or your buddy with the 4 car batteries have gotten things pretty much figured out. Please trust me when I tell you there is nothing you or he can reveal to Ford, Honda, or anyone else.
Hey, I got a great idea! Why don't you have him whip you up one of those and you can report on it each month here. If all goes well you can give us his name. In a few short months, you'll be millionaires.
posted on June 4, 2002 02:09:45 PM new
When gasoline was rationed during the war my Uncle and some other young fellows owned a Whippet automobile. They ran it on an alternative fuel - kerosene! They wrapped the exhaust and intake manifolds together in asbestos cloth so that the intake manifold ran at a dull red heat.
They kept a squirt can of gas in the car and would give a couple squirts down the carb to start it then sit running it real rough at a fast idle until the manifold heated up. Once hot it ran like gangbusters on straight kerosene. He said it did not have quite as much power as on gas but it was not rationed so they could go where they wanted.
Some of these problems are not very new.
Sometime I'll show you my perpetual motion magnetic motor. He he he.
posted on June 4, 2002 03:59:23 PM new
DeSquirrel, as usual, your posts are not worth responding to. Your derisive comments only show that you once again didn't read through, or comprehend what was said, you merely decided to jump ahead and criticize.
As usual you side step when caught in the goo of icky scientific stuff.
Here's a freebie:
When that guy sells you the car, mount a windmill on the trunk. When you go down the road the windmill can turn a generator and charge the batteries! THINK OF IT! Unlimited range and no cost. A true gift to the masses.
posted on June 7, 2002 12:23:35 AM new
stusi, I can't see why Bush would do a 180 on the environment, other than his popularity has been worrying him again. He needs to invade another country and real soon in order to take the voter's minds off of him and his jackass job that he's doing. But if someone digs deep into the real reasons why he's reversing himself (rolling himself back), they are bound to find skullduggery somewhere, as he doesn't do a dmaned thing that doesn't enrich himself and his buddies. Americans have the right to be suspicious.
posted on June 7, 2002 04:18:11 AM new
There is money to be made in any situation. Maybe he envisions building a big sea wall all around the continent.
Maybe he will put a big mylar roof over the cities - like my foil hat everyone makes fun of.
I wonder what a quart of strawberries will cost if they are grown in an airconditioned warehouse?
