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So where does 85-90% of the pollution come from?

I'm assuming the impurities in the snow, except for the odd volcanic eruption, are black carbon emissions. This chart suggests Europe, China and the US are equally responsible. China and the US emit the most carbon dioxide which, since it is also emitted when burning fossil fuel, is a good second indicator of where the black carbon is coming from. The second graph seems to blame the US and China more then any individual European country but the EU still has their part to play.

China is burning more coal than the US, CN 65% - US 37%. However, they are also using more renewable energy sources then the US, ~28% vs 12% (US). Both China and the US are expanding their nuclear sectors to double capacity, currently China has 1% vs the US 19%. Worth to note is that the US uses a lot more natural gas then China does (%-wise) which adds to their CO2 emissions but not black carbon. Values for China and for the US.

Point is: everyone's to blame. Besides, Europe and the US have had 100 years to develop their industries so they should already have gotten past the 40 year old upstarts problems, right?

Mod parent up. This is a silly idea. Yes, the Non-OECD growth in carbon emmissions is growing enormously. But the non-OECD still has LESS CO per unit of production than the OECD. In other words, a carbon tax would benefit China production from the start. Plus, over time, China's already investing a lot more in CO free energy (as a percentage of GDP) than the OECD is. http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/i.... Trade agreements don't allow WTO members to apply rules specifically against a certain member, they apply to all members, and the West still produces more CO per capita

Obesity too is increasing in China. But if you tax obesity, you aren't going to advantage western countries. .

And thank you for playing.
Less than 1% of the electricity generated in the US is from oil. Solar and Wind only generate electricity.
So well under 1% of all oil is used to generate electrical power. It was less the 2% of all oil in 2004 and has gone down to under 1% of the oil used in the US.

http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/...

And you just flunked your skeptic and critical thinking test.
1. You assumed you knew the truth.
2. You failed to question the truth.
3. spouted off without doing any research.
4. You trusted without question those that told you that Solar and Wind would reduce our dependence on foreign oil when it is less than 1% of our oil use.
5. I am willing to bet that you are proud of your critical thinking skills and consider yourself an enlightened skeptic yet you showed none of those skills.

BTW Solar and Wind compete more with coal which is a good thing.

Where you erred:

1) As you noted (but didn't factor into your figures) maintenance difference is hardly just oil changes. In reality, electric drivetrains have a tenth as many moving parts. They don't even have a transmission, for crying out loud, have you priced what it costs to replace a transmission? Just replacing a timing belt can cost a fortune. One can't so readily discount maintenance, it's a huge portion of operating costs.

2) If you drive the car until you totally run it into the ground, the average car will be driven a lot more than 250k miles (we're just going to go with your above erroneous figure - more on that in a second). If you sell it, you're selling a more expensive vehicle. And beyond that, as vehicles age, generally the most important aspect as to how well it holds its value is what it costs to operate it (energy costs + maintenance). Once all the luxury is gone, cars come down to simply how much does it cost to get you from point A to point B.

3) 37 cents per kilowatt hour is an absurd electricity price. The US national average residential rate in 2013 was $0.1226/kwh. 37 cents per kilowatt hour is even over double the *California* average rate. Beyond that, EVs can sometimes get even cheaper power due to off-peak rates.

4) The audi a6 quatro isn't even close to the performance of the Tesla Model S (depending on the details, more on that below).

5) The MSRP on a new TDI quattro (the one that gets nearly 30MPG - the gasoline ones don't) is $57.5k. The base Model S is $59.9k, roughly the same price - *before* incentives. And has a slightly better 0-60. But the performance Model S, which blows the Quattro out of the water with practically supercar-level acceleration plus has a bigger battery pack, is only about $10k more (again, not counting tax incentives/rebates/etc). Beyond all this, I'd argue that the Model S is simply a nicer car, period, all issues of driving/efficiency aside.

I think you have vastly overestimated US electricity consumption. According to this file, the sum of all electricity generated in the US in 2012 amounted to about 4000 TWh, not 30000 TWh. So you should really divide your numbers by eight.

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” -- Joseph Goebbels

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...

http://mazamascience.com/OilEx...

'Oil production on Alaska's North Slope, which has been declining since 1988 when average annual production peaked at 2.0 million barrels per day, is transported to market through the TransAlaska Pipeline System (TAPS). Because TAPS needs to maintain throughput above a minimum threshold level to remain operational'
http://www.eia.gov/todayinener...

Or do we need more perspective? For those who prefer the typical journalistic approach to understanding numbers, it's a reduction from 872'000 Olympic pools to just under 37'200 Olympic pools.

For an even better perspective: It's a reduction from what the US consumes in 2 years, to what the US consumes in 1 month. [1]

Whichever estimate holds, one should probably start considering alternatives.

Exactly. This is in California? It's less likely to be recoverable than ANWAR, if only because the greenies would never let it be tapped because of NIMBY.

It is already being tapped. California produces more oil than any other state except Texas and North Dakota. It is even slightly ahead of Alaska. Here's the data.

But that wont happen because they'll ban the thing over irrational fear before the technology reach the point it can print a cup of earl grey.

Okay, let's say you want to make a cup of earl grey tea from energy alone. For simplicity's sake, let's pretend you are providing the cup and the only thing you need to create is 250 mL (~8 fl oz for those of us in the benighted US) of pure water at 100 C. I chose 0.95835 g/cm3 as the density of H2O @ 100 C.

Synthesizing that water from pure energy in a 100% efficient process that magically created only the appropriate molecules would require approximately 6,000 gigawatt-hours of energy, aka 2.15E16 J (hooray for e=m*c^2 being on-topic for once in forever). FWIW, the absolute minimum amount of energy required is equivalent to over 5 megatons of TNT .

For reference, the generating capacity of the entire United States is approximately 1,000 gigawatts . So, uh, in some mythical 100% efficient conversion of electricity to matter it would require the entire generating capacity of the United States for over 6 hours (line losses, oh my!) to produce the water for one cup of earl grey. If you want to stay true to concept, let's say your tea needs to be ready in 5 seconds. Okay, that represents 4.3 petawatts .

So, no, I doubt a ban will be what stands in the way of you getting your replicated earl grey.

Besides, anything that created that much power would be instantly weaponized.

I have put in driveway snowmelt systems and a typically driveway needs at a minimum ~100 kbtu/hr boiler to keep the driveway clear. Scaling that up to a road way and it would be astronomical.

That was my thought as well. Phase change is a bitch, so I anticipated this was a marketing gimmick. I decided to run some quick calculations to determine how much snow could be melted by a 1 m^2 solar heating roadway plate thing.

Solar Roadways is in Idaho, so I decided to use their location for stats. I decided to use an average insolation value of 2 kWh/day in December in Idaho. I disregarded the fact that these plates won't be tilted to compensate for latitude, which will give the roadway an artificially improved performance stat. I used an enthalpy of fusion for water as 334 kJ/kg. I used a 50 kg/m^3 value for the density of freshly-fallen snow. Finally, I decided to let the road panel have a 15% PV efficiency as well as a 100% solar panel coverage (neither of which is likely to be realistic for a road tile thing, but again this is in favor of the roadway panel).

So, how much snow can this melt per day? Call it 6.5 cm. In practice, I'm guessing the answer is closer to "0", because the instant the panel is covered by snow it will cease generating energy. Also, snowstorms are not known to occur during bright, bright, sunshiny days. It seems Solar Roadways expects their panels to be hooked to the grid and pull power to melt snow.

Therefore, this exercise devolves to "why haven't we installed electric radiant heat in our existing roadways to melt snow?"

Well, if we have a four lane standard US highway (12 ft lanes) and we need to melt that same 6.5 cm of freshly fallen snow, it would require 4.4 MWh (yes, megawatt-hours). In Idaho, it looks like an average wholesale rate for 1 MWh of electricity is approximately $150. So... call it $600 per km to melt a few cm of snow... once? And this is for light, fluffy, happy snow, not the slushy sleety shit that has the density of neutronium and gives grandpa a heart attack when he tries to shovel it.

Unless I dropped a few orders of magnitude here (please let me know if I did), it seems the answer to this is "just use the fucking salt instead, like we have been doing." In conclusion, perhaps the LED roadway is useful, but the snow melting bit really seems to be a gimmick.

1) OK, but how much lighter? If we're talking one or two percent, who cares? I realize we're talking about several hundred pounds, so it is significant. But you ignored the issue of bulk. Battery packs and gas tanks can be shaped to fit efficiently within the vehicle. Tesla keeps its batteries under the car, resulting in a very lower center of gravity, improving safety and handling. Hydrogen tanks must be cylindrical, which will present challenges and compromises in car design. Not the end of the world, but certainly not a factor to be ignored. I'm looking forward to seeing how Toyota deals with it.

2) Power losses on the grid are estimated at 6%, so I'd say we've tackled that issue. Hydrogen doesn't deliver itself, and keep in mind that a 50-mile delivery trip also requires a 50-mile return trip. I do agree it would be great to have a bunch of nukes safely located in the middle of nowhere cracking hydrogen, but as you alluded, that's not happening any time soon.

"To live outside the law you must be honest" The coal industry may not be outside the law, but the same principle applies. You may lie to others about your business, that's business as usual. But when you begin to believe your own lies that's insanity, and leads to bad ends. Even excluding any climate effects, the externalized costs of the coal industry make it more expensive to society than any power source which has NOT been exempted from EPA regs, including all the renewables. These guys who get their income from the coal industry are, pure and simple, on the dole. http://solar.gwu.edu/index_fil... http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/aeo/el... http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com... http://www.cleanair.org/Downwi... http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com... http://www.aeaweb.org/articles... http://apo.org.au/sites/defaul... http://www.eea.europa.eu/press...

The amount of power electric cars use is not that much. We might need to build a few more power plants and the current distribution grid can handle it with reasonable upkeep.

Check my math:
0.4 kwh/mile This is what we get with our Tesla. Most people get better mileage but I live in a climate that causes poor economy.
0.470588235 kwh/mile Adjusted 85% for charging loss
2.125 miles per kwh This is much cheaper than gas by the way
24.8 average new car mpg average fuel economy http://www.greencarreports.com...
365 million gallons of gas per day consumed in the US http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/...
14717741.94 miles driven per day in US
613239.2473 miles driven per hour in US
1635304.659 kwh per hour electric car equivalent

14.3 billion kwh per year electric car equivalent - this is an estimate of how much electricity we would use if all cars were Teslas

11.8 billion kwh per year - average nuclear power plant generates this http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/...

The amount of power electric cars use is not that much. We might need to build a few more power plants and the current distribution grid can handle it with reasonable upkeep.

Check my math:
0.4 kwh/mile This is what we get with our Tesla. Most people get better mileage but I live in a climate that causes poor economy.
0.470588235 kwh/mile Adjusted 85% for charging loss
2.125 miles per kwh This is much cheaper than gas by the way
24.8 average new car mpg average fuel economy http://www.greencarreports.com...
365 million gallons of gas per day consumed in the US http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/...
14717741.94 miles driven per day in US
613239.2473 miles driven per hour in US
1635304.659 kwh per hour electric car equivalent

14.3 billion kwh per year electric car equivalent - this is an estimate of how much electricity we would use if all cars were Teslas

11.8 billion kwh per year - average nuclear power plant generates this http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/...

Oil isn't really about energy, it's about mobile energy. According to the US government, petroleum was about 1% of electrical power production in the US in 2012. Coal was 37% and natural gas 30%, so we're still primarily using fossil fuels.

Coal production in the US isn't expected to decline for more than 25 years according to http://www.eia.gov/coal/ The only likely change to that would be if the government takes some legal action to end it. You argue that it's an astute move, but your cart is way before the horse. And, while the stock market operates on a forward looking basis, it rarely projects beyond the next year. By the same rational you used, it would have been smart to get out of oil, and yet the oil companies continue to show record profits.

Cherry picking data again.

2005 is 9 years ago. What has happened? We started producing in the oil tar sands and shale and guess what? Huge increase in oil production.

168,837 Thousand barrels a month in Jan 2005,
248,149 Thousand barrels a month in Jan 2005.

The trend is up, my friend, no peak oil in the numbers:

http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hi...
  2005 168,837 154,044 173,522 166,920 173,357 163,254 162,824 161,061 126,343 141,054 145,528 154,455
    2006 157,648 140,738 155,790 152,397 159,650 154,796 157,881 156,177 150,902 158,338 151,923 160,793
    2007 158,222 143,614 158,480 155,234 161,345 152,168 156,148 154,557 147,074 156,681 151,236 158,362
    2008 158,430 149,491 160,948 154,625 159,430 154,091 160,497 155,257 119,394 146,815 152,515 158,404
    2009 159,389 146,836 161,726 158,551 166,830 158,266 167,369 166,587 166,834 171,056 161,610 168,964
    2010 167,469 155,314 170,888 161,764 167,239 161,089 164,325 168,200 167,656 172,908 166,757 173,179
    2011 169,932 150,800 173,686 166,613 174,181 167,599 168,031 175,100 167,835 182,172 180,307 186,881
    2012 190,211 180,920 194,978 188,570 196,188 187,260 197,720 195,176 196,860 214,959 211,144 219,321
    2013 217,732 199,448 222,043 219,733 225,139 216,507 231,106 231,304 232,664 239,067 238,441 244,972
    2014 248,149 224,916

Get real. That chart comes directly from the Report of the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). But you know more than they do, right? How about the OpenEI Transparent Cost Database? They reach the same qualitative conclusion. How about the UK 2010 estimates? The French 2011 estimates? The Analysis from different sources? They are all right there on my referenced page, complete with citations of the original sources.

Give up the starry-eyed stuff.

10 kw is an interesting number for another reason, too -- 10 kwh is about the size of the average US home electrical draw.

For stationary residential use, you could run the thing on cheap natural gas (rather than expensive gasoline) and use the waste heat to warm your house. It would be personalized cogeneration.

Disclaimer: Yes, I realize that outside North America, natural gas isn't cheap.

10 kw is an interesting number for another reason, too -- 10 kwh is about the size of the average US home electrical draw. An hour of run time, some storage... assuming 10 kw is the output of these things, and various efficiencies, etc. Still, it's an interesting number. Sure seems like you could make an interesting power source from them.

We are already far above 30% ....

Who are you talking about? Certainly not the USA. We're somewhere around 10% renewable. Germany may be near 30% (which is great) but that's not even remotely close to 100%.

I don't get what you want to say with that line "Solar and wind are unpredictable sources of power on time scales shorter than months".

Simple. I can hand you a stack of coal of any arbitrary size and you can tell me exactly how long it will burn and the amount of energy that will be released almost down to the BTU. Does not matter when you burn it because it will always be the same. However no one can tell you exactly how much wind will be available next Tuesday. I can tell you the average amount that will probably be available over the next few weeks, and once you get to month to year long time frames the averages become pretty predictable for both solar and wind. But nobody can tell how much precisely will be available more than a few hours hours in advance. This means you MUST have standby power available for when the wind doesn't blow and when the sun isn't so shiny. Over long periods of time, wind and solar are fairly predictable. I can tell you to within a few days how many days are likely to be sunny where I live but I can't tell you which days those will be.

Germany has the same geothermal sources as any one else (except the gifts some have with hot springs etc.) however geothermal is more suited for heating than for power generation, again: what is your point?

Germany does not have the geothermal resources of Iceland or any other country with significant volcanic activity. I'm talking grid scale power generation allowing you to take fossil fuel plants out of the equation en-mass. Something that will account for a large percent of the power grid. Germany's geothermal resources are modest at best. Same is true for most of the rest of the world.

We have the _technology_ since decades. It is only a question of installation of plants (and upgrading the grid), sigh.

Explain to me how you are planning to get airplanes to fly with renewable energy? How about marine vessels? Virtually all of those are dependent on fossil fuels which by definition are not renewable. (and no, ethanol/methanol are not renewable because they require fossil fuels to make and appear be a net loss of energy or at best roughly breakeven - biofuels might get there one day but they aren't there now) How exactly do you propose to generate base load power in sufficient quantity with renewable sources? It cannot be done with wind/solar/hydro/geo-therm given the current state of those technologies. We can do a LOT of renewable energy but 100% is simply not possible right now unless you are using some weird definition of renewable that twists the term beyond all rational sense.

US Energy Information Administration good enough for you?

On average demand peaks at ~1900. Overall power demand starts ramping up at 0500, reaches a relatively stable level at 0800 which lasts to 1700, peaks at 1900 and drops rapidly thereafter.

BTW, I DID go looking for actual household measurements, haven't found them yet.

You forgot about peaks and how the infrastructure costs are determined by maximum expected load on a piece of infrastructure.

Nope, just glossed over it a bit - that's what I meant by '100% of the capacity per house'. Energy saving appliances reduce the capacity need per house. Solar CAN reduce the capacity need per house, but the formula for that becomes complicated and depend on use scenarios for the area(IE can't necessarily be counted on). Other than some modifications mostly in switching yards* to properly handle backfed power you shouldn't need to scale up residential transmission lines at all unless the occupants of those houses get stupid about their solar installs; becoming a big NET producer of power, as opposed to a consumer.

When it comes down to it most industry operates in daylight so that's when you need extra electricity, and most people live near where they work so rooftop solar doesn't have to go far to be consumed.

Do you live in the USA? Land of the 1 hour commutes to work? Still, there's a reason I only figured on a ~10% transmission loss, and a slightly higher loss rate for the power company. Though checking EIA I should probably drop that to 3-5%, as average for the country is 7%.

Throw in the wonderful bonus that it's nice clean semiconductor rectified waveforms timed however people in transmission control rooms want it and suddenly the expense of load factor correction gets absorbed by all those nice people that paid to put photovolatics on their roofs.

I'm not sure this will help... Though if a business puts solar on their roof it might...

*Which I'm sure you'll need to get it from a residential area to a business/industry area...

http://www.eia.gov/

also the IEA(not to be confused with the eia above))

https://www.iea.org/co2highlig...

Take the study BS a step further.Here is the hockey stick. You will note that from the time of christ, where it was around low 600s, by 1800, it was low 700's. All of that was the great nations that had large populations and GDP: Basically, China and Europe. By 1900, it was 800. And yet, that was when America was JUST taking off. China, and Europe still remained night and day above America in consumption. America's hey day really was from around 1950-2007. Since 2007, America has dropped our emissions. We are at 5 nillion tonnes in 2012.
Here is a chart of 2008 CO2 emissions. You will see that China is at a minimum 23% of the world's emission, while US is at 19%.

In 2012, you will see that the world emitted slightly more than 30 billion tonnes, with China emitting ~10B tonnes, America at ~5B tonnes, and western europe at ~4B tonnes. That means that China is at about 1/3 of the emissions in 2012, with America at about 1/6, and western Europe at about 1/8 (note that does NOT include eastern europe, which is where they offshored the dirty stuff). And this is un-normalized emissions.

And now, America has CO2/$GDP that is about the same as Europe's. OTOH, China's is at the bottom of the list. China is rapidly approaching 1/2 of the world's emissions (expected in 2-3 years). OTOH, America's will be below Europe since Europe is moving back to Coal, while America is destroying our coal plants.

"The average age of U.S. commercial reactors is about 33 years. The oldest operating reactors are Oyster Creek in New Jersey, and Nine Mile Point 1 in New York. Both entered commercial service on December 1, 1969. The last newly built reactor to enter service was Watts Bar 1 in Tennessee, in 1996" from http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/...

Considering that large fossil fuel powered electric generators have efficiency in the 30-40% range, this 80% efficient electric vehicle of yours apparently creates energy at the wheel.

Yes, I've heard the 6 kWh figure too. Assuming it's true, I suspect it's the cost to refine a volume of crude oil which yields a gallon of gasoline. So the 6 kWh would actually need to be amortized over the other petroleum products too, not just the gasoline. The EIA says a barrel (42 gallons) of crude oil yields about 19 gallons of gasoline. So if I'm right, only 2.7 kWh is attributable to the gasoline. (This isn't strictly correct because I believe 42 gallons of crude oil yields more than 42 gallons of product - such are the pitfalls of working in volume instead of mass.)

The 300 Wh is also the electrical energy stored in the battery (the Tesla S has an 85 kWh battery rated at 300 miles, so that works out to 283 Wh/mile). If you're going to factor in production costs of gasoline, you also need to factor in production costs of electricity. Charging the battery is about 75% efficient. Transmission to the home is about 98% efficient. And coal plants are about 45% efficient. So to produce the 300 Wh/mile the EV uses, the power company actually has to burn 300/(.75*.98*.45) = 907 Wh/mile. Factor in coal mining and transport costs and you're probably up around 1 kW/mile.

So the energy cost to refine gasoline is probably more likely enough to drive the EV only 2-3 miles.

The two biggest forms of biomass are wood, and methane reclaimed from landfills. They are considered renewable because it's "new" carbon and so is considered carbon-neutral. As opposed to the "old" carbon locked up in fossil fuels which is released when burned. This ignores the pollutants it releases into the atmosphere other than CO2.

Of the electricity generated in the U.S., 7% comes from hydro, 3.5% from wind, 1.4% from biomass, 0.4% from geothermal, and 0.1% from solar. So it's actually the third-biggest form of renewable electricity in the U.S. For overall energy used (i.e. including wood burned for heating), it is the biggest form of renewable energy, accounting for almost half of renewable energy produced in the U.S.

So take the stats saying "we're getting x% of our energy from renewable sources" with a grain of salt. It may not be as clean as you think it is.

The two biggest forms of biomass are wood, and methane reclaimed from landfills. They are considered renewable because it's "new" carbon and so is considered carbon-neutral. As opposed to the "old" carbon locked up in fossil fuels which is released when burned. This ignores the pollutants it releases into the atmosphere other than CO2.

Of the electricity generated in the U.S., 7% comes from hydro, 3.5% from wind, 1.4% from biomass, 0.4% from geothermal, and 0.1% from solar. So it's actually the third-biggest form of renewable electricity in the U.S. For overall energy used (i.e. including wood burned for heating), it is the biggest form of renewable energy, accounting for almost half of renewable energy produced in the U.S.

So take the stats saying "we're getting x% of our energy from renewable sources" with a grain of salt. It may not be as clean as you think it is.

The US consumes 1/5 the energy in the world:
http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/...

Oil specifically, the US consumers 18.8 million bbl a day with 313 M population. The EU comes in a distant second with 12.8 million bbl a day with a population of 507 M.

For the US, that means an expenditure of 2.5 gallons oil per person per day. For the EU, that means an expenditure of 1.1 gallons oil per person per day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

One of the largest coal miners in the US (e.g. Arch Coal) has annual revenues of just under $5B and they claim to supply 17% of the US' domestic energy supply. Their Black Thunder mine produces around 115 Mt per year.

To put that into context, the US mines approximately 1 Gt of coal per year. At around 66 USD/t, you couldn't even buy all the coal the US produces in one year, let alone the companies that produce it for $50 billion!

The costs of purchasing a mine, then shutting it down in a socially and environmentally sustainable manner, are astronomical. The cost to acquire a SINGLE COAL PROPERTY (not even the company that owns it) can easily hit $0.5 - $1 billion, then you have to PAY to close it down and do something with the THOUSAND people who work there. Then you have to repeat this with every single mine, and who is going to do the phase out work and what are you going to pay them with?

The life of a mine may be 50 to 100 years and a lot of the costs for "close out" are reduced to their "net present value". As an oversimplified example, if it will cost $100 to build a fence in 100 years, and you get 2.5% return on every dollar you save for the purposes of building that fence, then you need to put in just under $9 today to pay for that fence in 100 years time. Regulations vary depending on the state / province / territory, but in many cases the company will need to pay the NPV of all their closure costs up front. If you prematurely close out the mine, you better hope you have enough money to cover the lost 20, 50, or 100 years of additional investment and interest, or you may go to jail.

+1 for peaking my curiosity.

I found this: http://www.eia.gov/state/maps.... [which is surprisingly decent]

According to a US Energy Information Administration report, the capital cost per kW of a 2236 MW nuclear plant in 2010 is $5,335, for a total of $11.9 billion dollars. So your $50B could buy four nuke plants and you'd still have $2 billion and change for walkin' around money.

Most jet fuel supplied to large municipal airports is piped in directly from refineries so the cost is much lower, about half of your $6. Source: http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pe... [eia.gov]

Uhmm, not necessarily true. YVR, the second busiest airport in Canada, has all of its jet fuel trucked in from the Cherry Point refinery in Washington State. There is a proposal to lay a pipeline, but NIMBY is proving a pain to overcome. I'm sure this is the case for many other airports as well.

Most jet fuel supplied to large municipal airports is piped in directly from refineries so the cost is much lower, about half of your $6. Source: http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_refoth_dcu_nus_m.htm

Small airports that cater to private planes, charter airlines and private jets have more expensive fuel as they have the fuel trucked in.

We don't need no stinking CA tar sand oil.
You sure about that? Take a look at how much oil the US imports from canada.
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pe...

You're missing the point. If you want to get down to money, you have to talk about TCO (Total Cost of Ownership). My electric company charges $0.11/kWh. Now, that's on the low side, so let's guess $0.13 is a good national average (if a bit high). If an 85kWh battery can get me 265 miles, and we assume 85% charger efficiency, that means I need to spend $13 on electricity to get me 265 miles. The Chevy Camaro ZL1 has an EPA rating of 12/18 MPG. Lets assume all highway driving to make it even more stacked against me. The current average gas price for Premium (as of 02/24/14) is $3.78/gal, as per http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pe... . To go 265 miles in that Camaro, I need to spend $55.65 in gas. If I travel 1060 miles per month (to make the math easy), that means the Camaro costs me $170.60/month more than the Tesla does in gas. That's a $2047.20 difference per year. The Camaro costs $60,555 for the base model. The Model S costs $72,400 for the normal 85kWh or $85,900 for the high performance option. The standard 85kWh would just about pay for the difference over the 5 year period of the loan, meaning the difference is basically a wash if you're financing with a low interests rate (which, let's face it, you probably are). The high performance version would still have a $12k delta or so, but the Tesla is a LOT more practical for daily commuting, and that balances it out for me.

... that electric cars are no greener than what the energy company uses to generate and transport electricity.

What's funny is it would take someone only a few seconds to look up the relevant facts, but they never do. If someone is opposed to "green technology," they just let their confirmation bias decide that statements that align with their beliefs are obviously true. ICE engines are incredibly inefficient. All that noise that requires a muffler is wasted energy. All that heat that requires a radiator is wasted energy.Power plants are fairly efficient, as are electric motors. Don't believe me? Run the numbers:

Using the magical power of the internet, we can find out that a power plant burning petroleum produces 12.7 kWh per gallon. Tesla recently drove two Model S cars across the country (3,464.5 miles). The total energy consumed by both cars was 1197.8 kWh. It would take a power plant 94.3 gallons of gasoline (1197.8 kWh / 12.7 kWh / gallon) to generate the electricity used by both cars, so each car drove 3,464.5 miles on the equivalent of less than 48 gallons of gasoline. That's 72 MPG. What 5 seater, high performance, luxury hybrid gets 72 MPG?. It doesn't matter if the power plant is burring coal, power plants and electric motors are so freakin' efficient they blow everything else out of the water. Furthermore, it's much easier to scrub the exhaust of a power plant, than of a car.

And guess what, the US produces energy using all sorts of fuels: coal, natural gas, hydro, nuclear, wind and solar. Hybrids only burn gas, no alternative. Electric cars are green, get over it and stop spreading FUD to people too lazy to google reliable sources and perform simple math.

based on 1197.8 kWh it took to drive, you can figure that out here: http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/... or
1281 lbs of coal, or
1197800 cubic feet of natural gas, or
95 gallons of residential fule oil.

Just to keep things in perspecitve for the tree huggers.

Funny, you didn't do the conversation to gasoline which the same source provides. The 1197.8 kWh, was total for both cars. That's 3,464.5 miles on 46.1 gallons of gasoline (1197.8 kWh / 2 cars / 13 kWh per gallon of gasoline) based on the source you provided. In other words, a big, heavy, powerful, luxury car went 3,464.5 miles on the energy that could be produced with 46.1 gallons gasoline. That's 75.1 MPG, in the dead of winter.

EV's are way more efficient than ICEs, even when the power is generated with fossil fuels. And EVs have the potential of being powered by nuclear, solar, wind, and hydro. Can an ICE do that?

Just to keep things in perspective for people that have the numbers directly in front of themselves but choose not to do the math.

nice thing about W's admin is that he changed laws that implemented mercury controls to 2016. Combine that, with nat gas cheap prices and utilities are walking away from coal plants (cheaper to switch to nat gas, then to add more pollution control).
So, coal is now 35% and going down. Here is 2012.

based on 1197.8 kWh it took to drive, you can figure that out here: http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/... or

1281 lbs of coal, or
1197800 cubic feet of natural gas, or
95 gallons of residential fule oil.

Just to keep things in perspecitve for the tree huggers.

Here is the direct link proving you wrong http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pe... You can see for yourself that refinery capacity has increased. Stop spreading your FUD here.

You are not correct. Please check the numbers for yourself. It is true that some refineries were closed down (outdated equipment, higher maintainance cost, etc). However, there were are are new refineries being built and existing refineries are having their capacity increased. The refinery capacity of the US has increased in the past 5 years, not decreased. http://inflationdata.com/artic... http://www.eia.gov/petroleum/r...

They claim it is to be able to push it to the refineries, but if that was true, why not build some refineries on or near the USA / Canadian boarder?

Because there are huge regulatory obstacles to building refineries. In the US there have only been a small handful of refineries built in the past few decades since the advent of the EPA. According to here there have been 15 refineries built in the US since the EPA was founded in 1970 and a total of 143 in existence. Two small new refineries in North Dakota are under construction.

Glancing at the Wikipedia page on the Keystone XL Pipeline, it's expected to have a maximum flow of around 600k barrels per day. In comparison, the US consumes somewhat shy of 40 million barrels of various petroleum products per day.

Even if that oil was refined, the resulting products would still need to be moved to where they'll be consumed.

They claim it is to be able to push it to the refineries, but if that was true, why not build some refineries on or near the USA / Canadian boarder?

Because there are huge regulatory obstacles to building refineries. In the US there have only been a small handful of refineries built in the past few decades since the advent of the EPA. According to here there have been 15 refineries built in the US since the EPA was founded in 1970 and a total of 143 in existence. Two small new refineries in North Dakota are under construction.

Glancing at the Wikipedia page on the Keystone XL Pipeline, it's expected to have a maximum flow of around 600k barrels per day. In comparison, the US consumes somewhat shy of 40 million barrels of various petroleum products per day.

Even if that oil was refined, the resulting products would still need to be moved to where they'll be consumed.

Meanwhile, in reality, you ignored the following tiny caveats:
* the average price of a 16kW solar PV rig will be around $72480
* 1/10 of that will buy you around 1812 gallons of gas (at $4/gallon)
* a good, fuel-efficient gasoline car with around 50 mpg will drive approximately 90600 miles on that
* at the average of 15000 miles driven per year this will last you around 6 years
* 72 months is easily above the average amount of time that owners hold on to cars (somewhere around 60 months)
Oh and lest we forget, during the day, when your solar rig is producing the most power, is also when you're most like to be out with your car, i.e. not charging it. This effect will be least problematic during the summer (longest day, lowest energy consumption by car), and most problematic during the winter (highest energy consumption by car, and a day most probably too short to get any sunlight on the panels while the car's in the driveway).

Well, it's a good thing it's not a widespread problem

No, the cheapest electricity is geothermal.

Depends on whose estimates you're looking at, and what country. DOE claims Natural Gas is much cheaper, when you look at 30-years costs including the cost of the power plants. Solar and off-shore wind are ridiculously expensive.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#US_Department_of_Energy_estimates
http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/er/electricity_generation.cfm

You provide an interesting perspective.

I bought 96 bulbs for $75. a lifetime supply for me

Why is it preferable to store 96 bulbs and periodically replace them than to buy one that lasts forever?

I don't care about a trivial power cost.

The power cost of each individual bulb is trivial, but when you add up all the bulbs in the house it is not. According to The US Energy Information Adminsitration, 13% to 17% of household energy use is lighting.

I need the heat. Doesn't matter if it comes from a bulb or natural gas.

Electricity is an expensive way to get heat. That is why most houses are not heated by electricity.

You can pry my incandescents from my cold dead hands!

lol. This made me look at your comment history to make sure you weren't trolling. But you even claim to be a grumpy old man! :-)