Meanwhile Duke Nukem Forever is promised to be out shortly after the sun expands into a red giant and destroys the Earth and the entire population of gamers left on it.
Whenever there is an artical posted about any type of alternative energy there are about 400 trolls complaining that X energy isn't a good enough and that it is a complete waste of time and money to even try.
That's because people keep getting their hopes up about hydrogen power, and they shouldn't.
Hydrogen power pretty much is a waste of time and money because you lose net energy making it - that is, it costs more energy to make than you get from burning it. This is always going to be the case, whether the technology improves or not, and whether the infrastructure and the vehicles are there or not. If you were getting your energy from oil, and it you had to expend two barrels of oil for each barrel you extracted, you wouldn't bother, regardless of the market price of oil. (This will happen one day.) Hydrogen is good at carrying energy, but this energy is provided by existing fuel sources, mainly by electricity or biomass.
The "400 trolls" that complain about it because the general public thinks that advances in alternative energy sources are going to solve everyone's problems. Alternative energy is absolutely going to replace fossil fuel - it has to, because fossil fuel sources are, practically, going to run out one day - but the energy simply is not going to be there in the quantities we have now. The lifestyle we have in the western world, in everything from our homes to our workplaces to our neighbourhoods to our recreation, is very energy-intensive, and without the abundance of energy that we've had since the Industrial Revolution, that lifestyle cannot be sustained. Hydrogen doesn't solve this and it never will.
Alternative energy isn't inherently stupid. Solar power isn't stupid. Growing crops for alcohol fuel or biodiesel isn't stupid. Even hydrogen might not be entirely stupid: we may be able to furnish some transport with electric motors or fuel cells charged by solar power. The problem is that people take their lifestyles for granted - as if because, notwithstanding some superficial changes, the technology has always been there, and always will be there, making their lives better. Eventually, these people are going to find out how delusional this really is.
As for 340miles out of the gas tank, forget it, most mine did was 275, typicaly 200-220.
That figures. On Mazda's Australian web site, it says that an RX-8 gets 12.2L/100km and has a 61-litre fuel tank. By those numbers, the furthest it could go would be 500km (310 miles), and you'd have to drive conservatively or spend a lot of your time on the highway to get that. Even then, that's working on the assumption that they didn't have to shrink the petrol tank to add the hydrogen system.
I don't believe this for a second. The amount of drug money that is laundered through the US every year is way more than $100,000,000,000. I've heard figures as high as $600,000,000,000, and those figures are a couple of years old.
Firstly, for the purposes of combustion, biodiesel is a lot more like petrodiesel than ethanol is like unleaded petrol. It takes a lot of work to convert a petrol-powered car to run on ethanol without long-term engine damage, whereas diesel-powered cars can run on any mix of biodiesel and petrodiesel, which is why I prefer the biodiesel path to the bioethanol one.
(As an aside: here in Australia, diesel-powered small cars are quite new and are all pretty expensive. For the most part, "diesel-powered vehicle" means "truck".)
Secondly, bioethanol and biodiesel will probably have similar environmental impacts, if grown the same way and for the same energy return. Modern studies have put the respective EROEIs for both bioethanol and biodiesel well above 1.0, depending on the crop: IIRC, sugar beet is better for ethanol than sugar cane (EROEI of bioethanol from sugar beet is about 1.8), and soy beans are better for making biodiesel than corn. The good news is that all of these crops are edible, so you can make fuel from some and food from the rest, in whatever proportion is forecast to be required.
Thirdly, using water as a fuel is not "the holygrail of power systems". Water can hold a lot of energy, but it is not a fuel. You may be thinking of hydrogen power, but again, hydrogen isn't a fuel either. Whether you electrolyse water, or whether you react something with ethanol (I've heard of making hydrogen this way, but I don't know the details), it takes more energy to get the hydrogen out than you would get by burning the resulting hydrogen. Like water, it makes a good energy carrier, but it is not an energy source.
If you want to find out more about bioalcohols as fuels, you should try to find out how Brazil have fared. Every new petrol-powered car sold in Brazil must run on at least 22% ethanol - this has been the law for many years - and many cars run on straight alcohol. They're also ramping up their production of biofuel-capable crops, which will probably scare the living daylights out of countries like mine that are dragging their feet on biofuels.
I got the BitTorrent movie from The Pirate Bay. Just a screener, though, and the scenes seemed to be in random order, but it made sense in the end.
The hypocrisy of "the parent post"
on
Chinese Eco-Cities
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Anything "sustainable" (or "organic") is guaranteed to be expensive. In other words, poor people can't afford it. [...] "Sustainable" won't help those people one iota because they can't afford to pay for it.
I guess the heavily industrialised ways in which we're doing things now are guaranteed not to be expensive, right? Is that what you're implying?
Everything we do today is about growth, by which we measure economic strength against all better judgement. In modern times, growth is based on the abundance of cheap energy and cheap materials, all of which will run out because we can't have sustainable growth (and, because of peaks in the production of oil and natural gas, we'll feel this sooner rather than later). The ballooning costs that come with resource depletion and scarcity are going to wipe out any disadvantage you would care to spout about sustainability.
If you want to talk about "hypocrisy", try reading that sentence in your post about "class-warfare rhetoric". In a way, you're a "rich liberal" as well, by the very premise that you're here. The difference is that some of us really are wondering about the poor people, instead of about the rich.
Hybrid cars are not environmentally friendly. It already takes many years' worth of driving to use as much energy in fuel as is used to produce a car, and this is probably worse for hybrids because there are more parts to produce. Buying a new car is one of the worst things you can do to the environment. Companies like Toyota and Smart have the right idea here, in that many parts of the cars are recyclable or reusable with little treatment.
Your caveat - "if you have to drive" - would make sense for, well, just about everyone, but most people complain about the costs. Especially as the price of petrol continues to rise, you will probably save the difference sooner rather than later.
I think a better solution would be to switch to bioalcohols and biodiesel, which are obviously renewable, which can be used in existing cars, and which can be grown to give an EROEI. Of course, much of this latter claim depends on the crop and the agricultural techniques used to cultivate and harvest. That said, they've been doing this in Brazil for ages now, and it's working out okay for them.
I agree that hybrid cars are far superior environmentally than conventional cars and that I would rather shell out for a Prius or a hybrid Civic than their conventional, petrol-only counterparts. (They're sweet to drive as well.) However, I think biofuel is a better solution in the long term. If you need a car at all, that is.
Takes a 9v battery, two pieces of pencil lead, and two wires. REAL EXPENSIVE!
You're forgetting two things.
Firstly, science class doesn't really generate much hydrogen, certainly not enough to run any kind of device even so energy-intensive as a pinwheel. The sort of machines that are commercially available for this are large and energy-intensive to manufacture, and aren't available in large quantities.
Secondly, you have to get these machines into the homes of billions of people. you would need billions, if not trillions, of these machines.
Please often ask me, a Slashdotter from the future who owns a plethora of electronic gadgets powered by hydrogen fuel cells, how you fill one of these cells up when it's empty. Where does the hydrogen come from?
Well, some people have their own hydrogen-generating machines. Of course, these run on electricity; see, the generation of hydrogen costs more energy than the hydrogen contains - that is, it has an EROEI (energy returned on energy invested) less than one. Whatever you're processing to make hydrogen, you have to use up energy to get the reaction happening. Even if you wanted to do this, every home in the industrialised world would need a hydrogen-generating machine that ran on electricity - the manufacturing of which would cost enormous amounts of energy and materials, even if it worked at generating energy.
In some places, hydrogen is generated in big power plants and delivered "on tap" to your home or office. This might sound dangerous, but then again, people had gas stoves once, until natural gas production peaked and the price tripled overnight. Again, you'd need to retro-fit an enormous amount of infrastructure in which to deliver the hydrogen - the laying of which would cost enormous amounts of energy and materials, even if it worked at generating energy.
In any case, we need to do something. I mean, we've got all these gadgets - the manufacturing of which cost us enormous amounts of energy and materials - and they're all powered by billions of hydrogen fuel cells - the manufacturing of which cost us enormous amounts of energy and materials. Even though the average electronic device consumes ten times its weight in fossil fuels during its manufacture, and even though the generation of hydrogen costs twice as much energy as the resulting hydrogen contains, people still bought into this sham in droves, believing that it's better for the environment.
In reality, it's made the problem more widespread because we demand more energy than ever before, and it hasn't solved anything because we haven't really found a new source of energy with which to replace fossil fuels. Made me think twice about buying that hybrid car, too.
You try telling people this was a bad idea, though. They'll look up from their plates of raw vegetables and mugs of rain water, and tell you to keep your big mouth shut.
Did you know that paper is harvested exclusively from trees grown FOR THE PURPOSE OF PAPER?
So, what happens when we start using up paper products faster than we can grow said trees? An economist might not think there are limits to these sorts of things, but, well, they're wrong.
Next, it cost more money, and more energy to recycle everything EXCEPT metals.
Recycling plastic and glass can be as simple as cleaning it - in fact, that's one of the reasons we use so much of it. With a bit of imagination, it's actually much easier to recycle them than paper or metal.
If you want proof on these "ridiculous accusations" pick up a copy of Penn and Teller's Bullshit.
I like Penn and Teller as much as the next guy, but I consider them entertaining more than encyclopaedic.
Here are some figures from the Australian government's Green Vehicle Guide. These are the results of a standard test and are shown on a sticker on the windscreen on new cars in Australia.
The Toyota Prius HSD uses 4.4 litres per 100 kilometres travelled, which translates to 53.46 miles per gallon, and expels 106 grams of CO2 per kilometre travelled.
Toyota Echo models with manual transmission consume about 5.8L/100km, or 40.55MPG, and expel CO2 at a rate of 138g/km. Automatic models consume about 6.5L/100km, or 36.17MPG, and expel CO2 at a rate of 156g/km. (I listed both, since you didn't specify whether your car was a manual or an auto; in general, autos use more fuel than manuals.)
By those figures, your Echo is using up between 31% and 48% more fuel than a Prius, and spitting out 30%-48% more CO2.
However, most Prius owners don't attain the fuel consumption level on the sticker. Courtesy of http://www.greenhybrid.com/, it's more realistic to say that the Prius gets about 4.9L/100km, or 48MPG. Furthermore, the CO2 emissions scale steadily with the amount of fuel used up, so it's probably emitting closer to 120g/km of CO2. This makes the comparison a bit better for the Echo, but it still uses 18%-33% more fuel and emits 15%-30% more CO2 - and it's a much smaller car than the Prius.
Though people don't achieve the standard measurement of fuel consumption on average, a conservative driver can beat the fuel consumption measurement on the sticker in just about any car. I have a Nissan Pulsar that was listed at 7.4L/100km (just under 32MPG), but I consistently get around 6.7L/100km (just over 35MPG) - about 10% better than the sticker.
Petrol-electric hybrids aren't a bust, as such, and the technology is improving. Daihatsu have a hybrid in the works that goes 60-70km on a litre of petrol - up to 1.4L/100km, or 170MPG. For the moment, hybrid cars are still superficial: they make a statement about the environment and about the future, but they're hideously expensive and they don't pay for themselves. You'd be better off buying a small car with decent fuel economy, and joining a tree-planting campaign.
Consider this, though: it is estimated that the construction of a typical car consumes 25-50 barrels of oil and pollutes 120,000 gallons (450,000 litres) of water. If you were really concerned about the environment, you probably wouldn't have a car at all.
Slashdot Mirror
Hydrogen power pretty much is a waste of time and money because you lose net energy making it - that is, it costs more energy to make than you get from burning it. This is always going to be the case, whether the technology improves or not, and whether the infrastructure and the vehicles are there or not. If you were getting your energy from oil, and it you had to expend two barrels of oil for each barrel you extracted, you wouldn't bother, regardless of the market price of oil. (This will happen one day.) Hydrogen is good at carrying energy, but this energy is provided by existing fuel sources, mainly by electricity or biomass.
The "400 trolls" that complain about it because the general public thinks that advances in alternative energy sources are going to solve everyone's problems. Alternative energy is absolutely going to replace fossil fuel - it has to, because fossil fuel sources are, practically, going to run out one day - but the energy simply is not going to be there in the quantities we have now. The lifestyle we have in the western world, in everything from our homes to our workplaces to our neighbourhoods to our recreation, is very energy-intensive, and without the abundance of energy that we've had since the Industrial Revolution, that lifestyle cannot be sustained. Hydrogen doesn't solve this and it never will.
Alternative energy isn't inherently stupid. Solar power isn't stupid. Growing crops for alcohol fuel or biodiesel isn't stupid. Even hydrogen might not be entirely stupid: we may be able to furnish some transport with electric motors or fuel cells charged by solar power. The problem is that people take their lifestyles for granted - as if because, notwithstanding some superficial changes, the technology has always been there, and always will be there, making their lives better. Eventually, these people are going to find out how delusional this really is.
That's good advice. As a reminder, I've just SMS-ed that to myself.
Don't worry, even Microsoft doesn't know what .NET is yet.
In the meantime, you can still get the genetic layouts of other animals on eDonkey. (groan)
I comment my code pretty heavily, and I use one-liners all the time:
// A Buddhist at a hot dog stand said, "make me one with everything".
// If being a mother were easy, fathers would do it.
// I knew I was dyslexic when I went to a toga party dressed as a goat.
public static void main (String[] args) {
System.out.println ("Hello, world!");
for (int i = 0; i < args.length; i++)
System.out.println ("Hello, " + args[i] + "!");
}
}
etc.
I don't believe this for a second. The amount of drug money that is laundered through the US every year is way more than $100,000,000,000. I've heard figures as high as $600,000,000,000, and those figures are a couple of years old.
Firstly, for the purposes of combustion, biodiesel is a lot more like petrodiesel than ethanol is like unleaded petrol. It takes a lot of work to convert a petrol-powered car to run on ethanol without long-term engine damage, whereas diesel-powered cars can run on any mix of biodiesel and petrodiesel, which is why I prefer the biodiesel path to the bioethanol one.
(As an aside: here in Australia, diesel-powered small cars are quite new and are all pretty expensive. For the most part, "diesel-powered vehicle" means "truck".)
Secondly, bioethanol and biodiesel will probably have similar environmental impacts, if grown the same way and for the same energy return. Modern studies have put the respective EROEIs for both bioethanol and biodiesel well above 1.0, depending on the crop: IIRC, sugar beet is better for ethanol than sugar cane (EROEI of bioethanol from sugar beet is about 1.8), and soy beans are better for making biodiesel than corn. The good news is that all of these crops are edible, so you can make fuel from some and food from the rest, in whatever proportion is forecast to be required.
Thirdly, using water as a fuel is not "the holygrail of power systems". Water can hold a lot of energy, but it is not a fuel. You may be thinking of hydrogen power, but again, hydrogen isn't a fuel either. Whether you electrolyse water, or whether you react something with ethanol (I've heard of making hydrogen this way, but I don't know the details), it takes more energy to get the hydrogen out than you would get by burning the resulting hydrogen. Like water, it makes a good energy carrier, but it is not an energy source.
If you want to find out more about bioalcohols as fuels, you should try to find out how Brazil have fared. Every new petrol-powered car sold in Brazil must run on at least 22% ethanol - this has been the law for many years - and many cars run on straight alcohol. They're also ramping up their production of biofuel-capable crops, which will probably scare the living daylights out of countries like mine that are dragging their feet on biofuels.
I guess the heavily industrialised ways in which we're doing things now are guaranteed not to be expensive, right? Is that what you're implying?
Everything we do today is about growth, by which we measure economic strength against all better judgement. In modern times, growth is based on the abundance of cheap energy and cheap materials, all of which will run out because we can't have sustainable growth (and, because of peaks in the production of oil and natural gas, we'll feel this sooner rather than later). The ballooning costs that come with resource depletion and scarcity are going to wipe out any disadvantage you would care to spout about sustainability.
If you want to talk about "hypocrisy", try reading that sentence in your post about "class-warfare rhetoric". In a way, you're a "rich liberal" as well, by the very premise that you're here. The difference is that some of us really are wondering about the poor people, instead of about the rich.
Your caveat - "if you have to drive" - would make sense for, well, just about everyone, but most people complain about the costs. Especially as the price of petrol continues to rise, you will probably save the difference sooner rather than later.
I think a better solution would be to switch to bioalcohols and biodiesel, which are obviously renewable, which can be used in existing cars, and which can be grown to give an EROEI. Of course, much of this latter claim depends on the crop and the agricultural techniques used to cultivate and harvest. That said, they've been doing this in Brazil for ages now, and it's working out okay for them.
I agree that hybrid cars are far superior environmentally than conventional cars and that I would rather shell out for a Prius or a hybrid Civic than their conventional, petrol-only counterparts. (They're sweet to drive as well.) However, I think biofuel is a better solution in the long term. If you need a car at all, that is.
Firstly, science class doesn't really generate much hydrogen, certainly not enough to run any kind of device even so energy-intensive as a pinwheel. The sort of machines that are commercially available for this are large and energy-intensive to manufacture, and aren't available in large quantities.
Secondly, you have to get these machines into the homes of billions of people. you would need billions, if not trillions, of these machines.
Well, some people have their own hydrogen-generating machines. Of course, these run on electricity; see, the generation of hydrogen costs more energy than the hydrogen contains - that is, it has an EROEI (energy returned on energy invested) less than one. Whatever you're processing to make hydrogen, you have to use up energy to get the reaction happening. Even if you wanted to do this, every home in the industrialised world would need a hydrogen-generating machine that ran on electricity - the manufacturing of which would cost enormous amounts of energy and materials, even if it worked at generating energy.
In some places, hydrogen is generated in big power plants and delivered "on tap" to your home or office. This might sound dangerous, but then again, people had gas stoves once, until natural gas production peaked and the price tripled overnight. Again, you'd need to retro-fit an enormous amount of infrastructure in which to deliver the hydrogen - the laying of which would cost enormous amounts of energy and materials, even if it worked at generating energy.
In any case, we need to do something. I mean, we've got all these gadgets - the manufacturing of which cost us enormous amounts of energy and materials - and they're all powered by billions of hydrogen fuel cells - the manufacturing of which cost us enormous amounts of energy and materials. Even though the average electronic device consumes ten times its weight in fossil fuels during its manufacture, and even though the generation of hydrogen costs twice as much energy as the resulting hydrogen contains, people still bought into this sham in droves, believing that it's better for the environment.
In reality, it's made the problem more widespread because we demand more energy than ever before, and it hasn't solved anything because we haven't really found a new source of energy with which to replace fossil fuels. Made me think twice about buying that hybrid car, too.
You try telling people this was a bad idea, though. They'll look up from their plates of raw vegetables and mugs of rain water, and tell you to keep your big mouth shut.
May 19, 1998
:)
Fever gone but itchy.
Hungry and eat doggy food.
Itchy itchy Scott came.
Ugly face so killed him.
Tasty. Itchy. Tasty.
I hope somebody gets the reference.
Now that I think of it, though, my boss has two of them on his desk and two more in boxes on the floor. Talk about compensating...
Unfortunately for Amazon, the USPTO wouldn't have to look far for prior instances of pricks.
Q. How many people work at Your Government Department?
A. About a third.
The Toyota Prius HSD uses 4.4 litres per 100 kilometres travelled, which translates to 53.46 miles per gallon, and expels 106 grams of CO2 per kilometre travelled.
Toyota Echo models with manual transmission consume about 5.8L/100km, or 40.55MPG, and expel CO2 at a rate of 138g/km. Automatic models consume about 6.5L/100km, or 36.17MPG, and expel CO2 at a rate of 156g/km. (I listed both, since you didn't specify whether your car was a manual or an auto; in general, autos use more fuel than manuals.)
By those figures, your Echo is using up between 31% and 48% more fuel than a Prius, and spitting out 30%-48% more CO2.
However, most Prius owners don't attain the fuel consumption level on the sticker. Courtesy of http://www.greenhybrid.com/, it's more realistic to say that the Prius gets about 4.9L/100km, or 48MPG. Furthermore, the CO2 emissions scale steadily with the amount of fuel used up, so it's probably emitting closer to 120g/km of CO2. This makes the comparison a bit better for the Echo, but it still uses 18%-33% more fuel and emits 15%-30% more CO2 - and it's a much smaller car than the Prius.
Though people don't achieve the standard measurement of fuel consumption on average, a conservative driver can beat the fuel consumption measurement on the sticker in just about any car. I have a Nissan Pulsar that was listed at 7.4L/100km (just under 32MPG), but I consistently get around 6.7L/100km (just over 35MPG) - about 10% better than the sticker.
Petrol-electric hybrids aren't a bust, as such, and the technology is improving. Daihatsu have a hybrid in the works that goes 60-70km on a litre of petrol - up to 1.4L/100km, or 170MPG. For the moment, hybrid cars are still superficial: they make a statement about the environment and about the future, but they're hideously expensive and they don't pay for themselves. You'd be better off buying a small car with decent fuel economy, and joining a tree-planting campaign.
Consider this, though: it is estimated that the construction of a typical car consumes 25-50 barrels of oil and pollutes 120,000 gallons (450,000 litres) of water. If you were really concerned about the environment, you probably wouldn't have a car at all.
Unprecedented.
Unprecedented.