Interesting article about how "green" we really are with this technology. I put the line above in bold only because coal is still a main source of energy in the U.S. Are we wasting our time with electric cars, or does our power generation infrastructure need to get caught up with the times?
You have to start somewhere, and the Electric car is a great place to start, we can always build more Nuclear reactors. DD
Whereas I am a proponent of nuclear energy, they will never solve our automotive fuel problem. Electric cars, trains and boats will become truly feasible when we are able to put up giant solar collectors in space and microwave electricity directly to parked and moving vehicles.
I'm a big fan of the direction things are going with electric cars, but the technology is still probably at least a few years away. Electric motors are getting better and better as are ways to store the electricity. Give it 10 years and we'll probably have some pretty awesome electric cars, hopefully solar tech advances as well.
Electric cars are cool for the single person driving a few miles back and forth in a major city with recharging stations on every block. The electric car needs to transcend to SUVs for families and eventually tractor trailers and passenger airplanes before it truly becomes an option over today's transportation. We're nowhere close to that now unfortunately...probably won't be in our lifetimes.
That doesn't even take into account the toxic pollution from the batteries. Until some major advances take place, electric cars are a novelty for the rich. Subsidizing them is incredibly foolish. It makes cash for clunkers look like a genius move in comparison.
are the people on here decrying electric cars speaking against coal fired generation or against XL and tar sand exploitation?
Nuclear energy is underutilized in the states. And perhaps we if actually invested in developing Fusion instead of letting other countries pioneer the technology, we might be able to make electric vehicles a reality. One thing is for sure, if people didn't buy electric vehicles today, the technology wouldn't develop to be better in the future. The contribution of buying such a vehicle is about supporting a direction vs. today's reality.
They are decrying anything that isn't good ole American petro products as hairbrained liberal pseudo science not to be trusted because god didn't intend for us to build things they can't comprehend.
Yes, electric cars are greener. So, a lot of the power produced today is from coal, but if yall haven't noticed we're kinda experiencing a sea change right now on our generation infrastructure. Coal plants are mostly terribly old and close to retirement, they've lost most of their cost advantage against natural gas, they aren't as nimble as natural gas plants, and they're getting hit left and right with environmental regulations to put them into the grave. And that's not even including the additional impact of renewable generation. The only advantage coal plants still hold is that they are more reliable stand-alone units than gas in a crisis because they don't rely on a pipeline infrastructure (the construction of co-located gas storage, and/or grid batteries would mitigate the deficiency for a gas-dominated generation market though). And there's something to be said for keeping coal from a fuel-diversity point of view (but at what environmental cost?). We're slated for a lot of coal plant retirements for the next few years which are known, and I expect much more to come. In a couple of decades, coal generation will be a rarity. So, shouldn't we be growing our electic car capabilities at the same time knowing that the electricity that will charge them is going to be getting a lot cleaner?
its much easier to clean up a few large exhaust sources than millions of small tailpipes... battery manufacturing is environmentally costly however, I hope there are efforts to curtail the collateral damage at the Lithium mines
The inference of the thread is that electric cars are heavy contributors to CO2 because they use coal generated electricity, that gasoline cars are better. Taking that position should align you against coal generation and obtaining gasoline from the very CO2 intensive tar sands production and the XL pipeline that would expedite that production. But we need to be advancing the technology of electric cars, and alternative, less polluting types of generation together. An electric car running off of wind generated electricity would be ideal, but if you don't develop electric cars you can't do that. -philosophical/logical consistency-
One Co2 molecule is not pollution. Too much C02 is toxic to the environment. Just like a little iron in your diet is necessary for you to function, but just a little too much can make you sick.
Big trouble is the pollution from that is fixed. So when some rich guy buys it as a novelty weekend car with a 15K tax credit he has to drive it or the pollution will be for nothing.
pollute pol·lute (pə-lo͞ot′) tr.v. pol·lut·ed, pol·lut·ing, pol·lutes 1. To make unfit for or harmful to living things, especially by the addition of waste matter. See Synonyms at contaminate. 2. To make less suitable for an activity, especially by the introduction of unwanted factors: The stadium lights polluted the sky around the observatory. 3. To render impure or morally harmful; corrupt: felt that the minds of young people were hopelessly polluted by television ads. GREENHOUSE EFFECT : warming of the surface and lower atmosphere of a planet (as Earth or Venus) that is caused by conversion of solar radiation into heat in a process involving selective transmission of short wave solar radiation by the atmosphere, its absorption by the planet's surface, and reradiation as infrared which is absorbed and partly reradiated back to the surface by atmospheric gases greenhouse effect noun (Concise Encyclopedia) Warming of the Earth's surface and lower atmosphere caused by water vapour, carbon dioxide, and other trace gases in the atmosphere. Visible light from the Sun heats the Earth's surface. Part of this energy is radiated back into the atmosphere in the form of infrared radiation, much of which is absorbed by molecules of carbon dioxide and water vapour in the atmosphere and reradiated toward the surface as more heat. (Despite the name, the greenhouse effect is different from the warming in a greenhouse, where panes of glass allow the passage of visible light but hold heat inside the building by trapping warmed air.) The absorption of infrared radiation causes the Earth's surface and lower atmosphere to warm more than they otherwise would, making the Earth's surface habitable. An increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide caused by widespread combustion of fossil fuels may intensify the greenhouse effect and cause long-term climatic changes. Likewise, an increase in atmospheric concentrations of other trace greenhouse gases such as chlorofluorocarbons, nitrous oxide, and methane resulting from human activities may also intensify the greenhouse effect. From the beginning of the Industrial Revolution through the end of the 20th century, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased 30% and the amount of methane more than doubled. It is also estimated that the U.S. is responsible for about one-fifth of all human-produced greenhouse-gas emissions. See also global warming CO2 levels in atmosphere rising at dramatically faster rate, U.N. report warns http://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...2277d2-378d-11e4-bdfb-de4104544a37_story.html .....Natural carbon dioxide is an essential ingredient for life on Earth, enabling green plants to convert sunlight into energy. But at excessive levels it acts as a heat trap, causing the planet to warm. Scientists say that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been rising since the start of the Industrial Revolution and that the increase has accelerated since the 1990s. The WMO’s data for 2013 shows the global average level of atmospheric carbon at just under 400 parts per million, about 40 percent higher than in pre-industrial times and higher than in any other period in at least 800,000 years. The symbolically important threshold of 400 parts per million — described by scientists as the level at which more dramatic climactic impacts become likely — will probably be crossed in the next two years, the report said. “It’s the level that climate scientists have identified as the beginning of the danger zone,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a Princeton University professor of geosciences who was not involved in the WMO report. “It means we’re probably getting to the point where we’re looking at the ‘safe zone’ in the rearview mirror, even as we’re stepping on the gas.”
The author has apparently been a laughing stock in the scientific community .... Long history of Seth..
