• Electric cars 'pollute more than petrol or diesel'
    151 replies, posted
[QUOTE=Killer monkey;37927391]Hydrogen Fuel Cells, I don't understand why we don't use them. There clean, cheap and cool.[/QUOTE] We don't use them because there's no reason to. They're crazy expensive, and a normal gasoline engine produces no pollutants when run on that very same Hydrogen tank. And don't sit here and tell me "But TestE that H2 fueled ICE car isn't safe in a crash!! Use a fuel cell it's safer". The H2 tank is in the fuel cell car too. I literally see no reason to bother with fuel cells. Spark ignition engines will run as happily on hydrogen gas as they will on gasoline. You need a large H2 canister in the back of a fuel cell car just the same as you would an ICE car so the fuel cell option everyone has such a hardon for isn't any safer...not only that but H2 canisters are infinitely more durable than a thin sheet steel/plastic gasoline tank. Get in a crash bad enough to rupture an H2 canister and you're going to be too dead to give two shits about it. Oh, and the fuel cell powered compact is going to cost $40,000 and up, whereas an H2 fueled compact will cost maybe 2 or 3 thousand more than the gasoline fueled one. But alas, society doesn't want to take the simple, cheap and "We can build it right this second" approach. The hard way is the only way it seems. [QUOTE=koeniginator;37925819]Sounds like you're saying coal power plants are 100% safe and have never ever blown up or exploded[/QUOTE] Nice job inventing things in an attempt to slander me. Try picking something I actually said. It isn't hard, I say plenty of controversial stuff. You don't have to make anything up.
[QUOTE=The golden;37928343]My problem with solar and wind energy is the sheer size of land they require to be effective. Wind farms are FUCKING MASSIVE. Some of the get so big you cannot see the bloody end of them. That's a huge swath of land that has now been made inhabitable to birds and other wildlife. Not to mention you can't put any residential stuff anywhere near that land now. Solar power has a similar problem but to a smaller extent, and they're getting smaller due to effecentiy improvements.[/QUOTE] Solar power is best used on a personal scale. However, having everyone install solar panels on their house would be spending money most people don't have.
[QUOTE=chunkymonkey;37924851]You mean the metal mesh in the ceiling?[/QUOTE] [QUOTE]A newer method uses alternating strips of metal across the floor separated by insulating spacers, and no ceiling grid. The alternating strips carry the supply current, and the bumper cars are large enough so that the vehicle body can always cover at least two strips at any one time. An array of brushes under the car make random contact with whatever strip is below, and the voltage polarity on each contact is sorted out to always provide a correct and complete circuit to operate the vehicle.[/QUOTE] only seen these where I live
[QUOTE=latin_geek;37928604]only seen these where I live[/QUOTE] They have these wireless phone charger pad's that work pretty good. I remember hearing Samsung is making one that has a 6 meter range. I also remember seeing an experiment where they put the same device along roads to charge electric cars directly from the grid as they drive.
[QUOTE=Strider*;37924443]Clean coal, it's also currently our most abundantly feasible energy resource.[/QUOTE] Pretty sure that's natural gas brah
[QUOTE=Strider*;37924443]Clean coal, it's also currently our most abundantly feasible energy resource.[/QUOTE] You do know that Clean coal is a myth...right? Clean coal is just collecting the smoke in some drums and releasing it somewhere other than the powerplant. It's not fucking clean and is just a diversion. [editline]6th October 2012[/editline] And electric cars are awesome with the savings from gas. There's still the distance and charge time problem, but they're still being sorted out.
I had my opinion changed on hybrid/electric cars today. Yes, they may not look the best, but damn, when my friend nailed the throttle in his hybrid camry, i was put back in my seat. I can't believe i'm saying it, but... [I]i want one.[/I]
[QUOTE=matt.ant;37924972]They're actually making something like that in a UK city, it's essentially a tram but with wheels. So imagine if this had wheels and looked like a bus: [img]http://www.simplonpc.co.uk/Tram-Barcelona/Tram06-02-Diagonal.jpg[/img][/QUOTE] Yeah they exist in a lot of places - here they're called trolejbus ALso the benefit of electric cars lies elsewhere. In pure numbers and electric car might create more polution than a fossil fuel car, but it does it outside of the biggest habitation centers. It keeps cities relatively smog free.
[QUOTE=trotskygrad;37925966]no, your semantics is off "clean" means relatively little impact, not no net impact. wind and solar both can be considered "clean"[/QUOTE] Wind power when used on a very large scale has been shown to alter wind patterns which can drastically affect the enviornments and the circulation of natural air flow over a large area. It's bad in the same way that using dams has drawbacks in the ecosystem surrounding the dam and how much water supply gets down to the lower ends of a river Of course you need large farms spanning many many many acres for this to take effect. But that's what would be required for wind power to become a primary power source for an entire state, let alone a country. It's great for smaller towns, cities, etc though, because then you still need a lot of windmills but not so much where its this massive operation. [editline]6th October 2012[/editline] [QUOTE=DesolateGrun;37927798]this article makes no sense, electric is infinitely more efficient than gas, and the coal used to produce that electricity is 1000's of times more efficient than a diesel engine.[/QUOTE] The idea behind the article is that for the lifetime of the car, the pollution coal has, in addition to the much higher pollution required to build an electric car (and keep its battery maintained accross its lifetime) would outweigh the pollution cost of building+maintaining+running a fuel efficent diesel or gasoline engine. AKA if the whole world drove electric in the current conditions and used coal power plants to charge them, then the pollution impact wouldn't be much better than using standard gasoline cars Coal is a very inefficent powersource believe it or not. You need high quality coal for it to burn efficiently, and most coal (at least in the US) is of average-grade, since high purity coal is hard to come by. That said simply the fact that most developed countries use a combonation of many power sources (nuclear, coal, wind, hydro, etc) kind of debunks this.
[QUOTE=trotskygrad;37924700]what's a better energy storage technology then?[/QUOTE] petrol
LTFR's in every car. Totally safe.
[QUOTE=Chernarus;37930039]LTFR's in every car. Totally safe.[/QUOTE] Not gonna lie i'd like a LTFR in my car assuming I can be adiquately protected from radiation Imagine being able to drive [I]Forever[/I]
[QUOTE=KorJax;37930056]Not gonna lie i'd like a LTFR in my car assuming I can be adiquately protected from radiation Imagine being able to drive [I]Forever[/I][/QUOTE] Would suck if your car flipped over.
[QUOTE=Chernarus;37924392]Isn't it clear by now that we need to use and advance clean nuclear energy?[/QUOTE] If nuclear energy was so advanced, we wouldn't have had more than a dozen nuclear disasters that had world wide negative implications of all types of life. We also wouldn't be looking for places to bury the hazardous spent fuel rods and associated waste for 100,000+ years for it to be safe to be within 100 miles of. Nuclear energy isn't advanced, and it isn't safe. It's experimental at best and Chernobyl and Fukushima have shown us this more than enough to stop trying to use it. There are far less dangerous alternatives to it. [QUOTE=MightyMax;37924402]Romney saying he supports "clean coal" is just another way of saying fuck future generations lets burn out the planet now.[/QUOTE] Coal is millions of times cleaner than nuclear energy, even though it is a finite resource. When properly burned, coal creates carbon rich soot and mostly carbon dioxide; Both of which are naturally recycled by plants. It's hilarious you think burning coal is fucking future generations. While it may cause minor problems for the near future, 100 millenia from now, people might not even remember why half the planet is uninhabitable due to nuclear waste potentially escaping and contaminating everything.
[QUOTE=bohb;37930282][B]If nuclear energy was so advanced, we wouldn't have had more than a dozen nuclear disasters that had world wide negative implications of all types of life. We also wouldn't be looking for places to bury the hazardous spent fuel rods and associated waste for 100,000+ years for it to be safe to be within 100 miles of.[/B] Nuclear energy isn't advanced, and it isn't safe. It's experimental at best and Chernobyl and Fukushima have shown us this more than enough to stop trying to use it. There are far less dangerous alternatives to it. Coal is millions of times cleaner than nuclear energy, even though it is a finite resource. When properly burned, coal creates carbon rich soot and mostly carbon dioxide; Both of which are naturally recycled by plants. It's hilarious you think burning coal is fucking future generations. While it may cause minor problems for the near future, 100 millenia from now, people might not even remember why half the planet is uninhabitable due to nuclear waste potentially escaping and contaminating everything.[/QUOTE] Those are very poor examples. Check out LTFR's, they're tons safer. Nuclear energy is the future.
Coal's clean, it's just a coincidence that everything around the immediate area turns black and the air is hard to breathe.
[QUOTE=Chernarus;37930299]Those are very poor examples. Check out LTFR's, they're tons safer. Nuclear energy is the future.[/QUOTE] still produces waste, still worse than coal. if you do it right the absolute worst thing it might do is raise the global temperatures a degree or two over the next few thousand years.
Ash from coal is also radioactive, so if you're going to use coal as an alternative for nuclear you're not exactly doing much difference. You're just spreading the nuclear radiation around.
[QUOTE=bohb;37930282]If nuclear energy was so advanced, we wouldn't have had more than a dozen nuclear disasters that had world wide negative implications of all types of life. We also wouldn't be looking for places to bury the hazardous spent fuel rods and associated waste for 100,000+ years for it to be safe to be within 100 miles of.[/QUOTE] Check out Thorium reactors. Also, can you list these "more than a dozen" nuclear incidents that have had "world-wide" environmental impacts? [QUOTE=bohb;37930282] Nuclear energy isn't advanced, and it isn't safe. It's experimental at best and Chernobyl and Fukushima have shown us this more than enough to stop trying to use it. There are far less dangerous alternatives to it.[/QUOTE] Those were both old plants (or at least the designs are ancient now) run completely wrong or in the worst situations.
[quote]In a 1978 paper for Science, J. P. McBride at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and his colleagues looked at the uranium and thorium content of fly ash from coal-fired power plants in Tennessee and Alabama. To answer the question of just how harmful leaching could be, the scientists estimated radiation exposure around the coal plants and compared it with exposure levels around boiling-water reactor and pressurized-water nuclear power plants. The result: estimated radiation doses ingested by people living near the coal plants were equal to or higher than doses for people living around the nuclear facilities. At one extreme, the scientists estimated fly ash radiation in individuals' bones at around 18 millirems (thousandths of a rem, a unit for measuring doses of ionizing radiation) a year. Doses for the two nuclear plants, by contrast, ranged from between three and six millirems for the same period. And when all food was grown in the area, radiation doses were 50 to 200 percent higher around the coal plants.[/quote]
I'd rather have nuclear waste buried in a desert then black shit that makes it hard to breath.
i don't see why we don't shoot off nuclear waste into the depths of space, surely a million dollar rocket is better than a billion dollar facility and containment vessels.
[QUOTE=OvB;37930325]Ash from coal is also radioactive, so if you're going to use coal as an alternative for nuclear you're not exactly doing much difference. You're just spreading the nuclear radiation around.[/QUOTE] coal ash is about as radioactive as an old radium glow-in-the-dark watch. I wouldn't put that stuff anywhere near my balls but I certainly wouldn't hesitate to wear one
[QUOTE=MightyMax;37930400]i don't see why we don't shoot off nuclear waste into the depths of space, surely a million dollar rocket is better than a billion dollar facility and containment vessels.[/QUOTE] We don't do that because we couldn't be sure what would happen to it after, or during. We don't want to, for example, accidentally end up dumping it on Mars or something after we have a base set up there. Not to mention that we'd look pretty dumb to any other intelligent life out there that sees it. Or, you know, if it explodes on the launchpad...
[QUOTE=MightyMax;37930400]i don't see why we don't shoot off nuclear waste into the depths of space, surely a million dollar rocket is better than a billion dollar facility and containment vessels.[/QUOTE] Uranium is heavy as fuck. You would only be able to get a small bit into one rocket.
Electric cars get greener as the infrastructure that powers them gets cleaner. So down the road, when we have solar panels, wind turbines, LFTR reactors and maybe down the road fusion (hey, we're at 1:1 now!) all our stuff will be making less greenhouse gas emissions.
I always find these studies kinda strange, they include processing/distribution/costs/pollution/etc. when comparing electric cars, but not when comparing gasoline production (I've seen people claim hydrogen is bad because you have to ship it from the production facility to gas stations, which apparently doesn't happen for petrol, etc.) Do they think all the drilling/refining process for gasoline is pollution free? etc. [QUOTE=RobbL;37926486]Well solar wind is basically a huge mass of charged particles[/QUOTE] It's a "huge mass" compared to a vacuum, in reality it's very very sparse (<10 atoms per cubic centimetre)
[QUOTE=Neo Kabuto;37930432]We don't do that because we couldn't be sure what would happen to it after, or during. We don't want to, for example, accidentally end up dumping it on Mars or something after we have a base set up there. Not to mention that we'd look pretty dumb to any other intelligent life out there that sees it. Or, you know, if it explodes on the launchpad...[/QUOTE] It sounds like the start of some sort of sci-fi movie.
[QUOTE=Neo Kabuto;37930333]Check out Thorium reactors. Also, can you list these "more than a dozen" nuclear incidents that have had "world-wide" environmental impacts?[/QUOTE] Thorium reactors are [I]still experimental[/I], just like every other nuclear power technology. And even though Thorium reactors theoretically create less of the extreme hazardous waste that lasts for a hundred millenia, it still creates it, as well as nuclear waste that's toxic for hundreds of years. And just because the technology is available, there are extremely few countries that use it. Everyone is more interested in the far more dangerous uranium or plutonium mega reactors and continue building those since they're cheaper overall to build and run. As for nuclear incidents that have caused world wide environmental impact, since 1948 there have been 2000+ nuclear detonations by various countries. [url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9lquok4Pdk[/url] Many of these bomb tests have resulted in situations similar to Chernobyl, where in some cases a hundred square miles of land is uninhabitable due to radioactive material spread everywhere. The Tzar bomba from the U.S.S.R. did this, and spread radioactive material over much of eastern Europe. The bomb tests at Bikini Atoll made the entire Atoll plus at least 50 miles around it uninhabitable, forcing all of the indigenous people to be permanently relocated elsewhere and forced to live off U.S. food subsidies (since they can't get enough food where they must live now, and the Government has given them more than enough grief over the years about giving them enough food to survive.) There are several places in the western U.S. where you receive the equivalent radiation to a full chest Xray I think it was for every few days that you stayed within at least 10 miles of the test site. It was far worse in the past before the area was bulldozed and a concrete and lead coffin constructed to shield some of the more dangerous radioactive contamination. Many of the other bomb tests have released levels of radioactive Iodine deemed hazardous by health professionals all over the world. And this radioactive iodine isn't just concentrated in a few areas, it's been registered in varying amounts all over the planet. [QUOTE=Neo Kabuto;37930333]Those were both old plants (or at least the designs are ancient now) run completely wrong or in the worst situations.[/QUOTE] If the government is completely ignorant to security around and in nuclear facilities (remember the three old farts that easily broke into a nuclear facility just a week ago?) What is going to stop incidents like this again? It's ignorant and stupid to say that one gross violation of policy or one meltdown is going to prevent all future disasters. This doesn't even take into account the forces of nature or climate change that would present new dangers to old reactor locations previously thought safe.
[QUOTE=bohb;37930949] As for nuclear incidents that have caused world wide environmental impact, since 1948 there have been 2000+ nuclear detonations by various countries. [/QUOTE] Sorry, I should have been more specific. Nuclear [B]power[/B] incidents. Of course weapons testing is going to be destructive. That's part of why it doesn't happen anymore.
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