This makes a really, really bad assumption that the price of electricity will double in some unspecified time while the price of gasoline will somehow not. It assumes that no new additions to generating capacity or improvements to infrastructure will be made. It also asserts that an electric car is only cleaner than a gasoline powered one if the electricity source is renewable - which is false. Even a "coal powered" electric vehicle emits less carbon per mile than a decent (30MPG) gasoline automobile.
I know of people who installed solar panels on their homes and produce more than enough electricity to offset the additional use of charging their electric car. It's entirely possible to power every car in the USA with renewable energy. =Smidge=
Affordability depends on how much you drive. Savings on gasoline costs could reduce lease payments to something comparable to what you'd have for a less expensive car. Saving over $100/mo in fuel costs alone is not at all uncommon, which effectively makes a $350/mo lease a $250/mo lease . Affordability is about more than just sticker price.
The "where are you gonna plug it in" isn't really an issue NOW for most people. Unless your car is also your house, chances are you have someplace with electricity - a simple 120V outlet overnight will easily recharge most people's daily needs with room to spare. Here's one way to look at it: At 120V you get roughly 5-7 miles of additional range per hour of charging. 240V charging is slightly more than double that for various reasons. Since normal people sleep, finding the time to recharge 40+ miles of range each day is not a problem. =Smidge=
There's gotta be something you're not telling us here. Looking up residential electric rates for Alberta and I found numbers in the 11-13 cents/kWh range. Understandable that they probably add surcharges and other bullshit, but I can't see all that being twice as much as the rate itself.
Could you perhaps break down that bill a bit further? =Smidge=
If an American gets called at 2am to come into work and do their job on a last minute notice, there would be uproar. It'd be all over the news, all over the rest of the media, people would be on strike, etc.
No, there wouldn't. Do you really think nobody ever gets called to work at 2AM over an emergency?
The only way there would be an uproar or a strike is if the company refused to pay the workers overtime, or went to each worker's house and essentially abduct them to come to work - which is pretty much what Foxconn did. =Smidge=
"Real world" = happens in the general public. The two fires were both the result of laboratory testing: one explicitly trying to reproduce the conditions that caused the fire.
Basically, you'd have to slide sideways into a telephone pole at 40+MPH and have it strike dead center of the vehicle. Then you'd have to let the car sit for at least a week, maybe two or three weeks, without bothering to disable the battery or drain the battery coolant. After all that, you probably still need a little bit of luck for it to happen...
But there have not yet been any Volts bursting into flames in the wild. When (not if) it happens, I bet good money it'll be related to the gasoline engine or 12V lead-acid battery and not the traction battery. =Smidge=
If the battery pack is colder than that, then the gas engine will fire up to generate electricity to warm up the battery above that temperature threshold.
Actually, the Volt's plumbing is such that engine coolant is used to heat the battery pack... that's much more efficient considering close to 3/4 of the energy put out by the engine is heat!
A series hybrid such as the Volt has the advantage of being able to run the engine at peak efficiency constantly (if you take your foot off the accelerator, it can increase the battery charge current to take up the slack).
The Volt will never use the ICE to charge the battery. It will turn the engine off instead. It's true that the Volt's engine can be kept much closer to ideal operating speed and load, thus improve efficiency, but this is done through regulating the output and speed of the electric motor(s). Until the ICE clutches in directly to the drivetrain, anyway, then all bets are off. But that should only happen at favorable speeds anyway.
There is nothing to be gained by burning fuel at 25% efficiency, charging the battery at 85% efficiency, then drawing that out again at another 85% efficiency. Skip the charging step. =Smidge=
The latest generation of gas fired, combined-cycle power plants can get 60% efficiency. While a modern gasoline engine can achieve 25% efficiency, it can only do so under close to ideal conditions so it's not really a good way to go about comparing the two. By the time you work it all out, I think "double" would be an acceptable close approximation for conversation purposes.
And if you're going to include transmission losses for electricity, let's include production and distribution losses for gasoline: According to the DOE, The overall efficiency of getting the oil out of the ground, refined and into your car is about 83%. That means for every gallon of gas delivered to your car, at 36.6kWh/gallon, you've used 7.5kWh of energy. You can drive just as far in an EV with 7.5kWh of electricity as you can in your average gasoline car with one gallon of gasoline. =Smidge=
The Volt will run the gasoline engine to provide heating for the cabin and battery if it decides it's more efficient that way, versus using electricity for heat and running the engine in charge sustain mode sooner. I'm also fairly sure that the Volt has pre-heating capability, so if you're still plugged in it'll warm up the battery (and cabin) before you get in, assuming you remembered to activate the feature. In short, I don't think extreme cold weather is going to be that big of a problem.
37MPG isn't exactly "atrocious" either... yeah, you can get that with much cheaper cars, but it's above average at least... =Smidge=
The hydrocarbons required to produce an electric car are arguably less than what is required to produce a gasoline powered car. At the absolute worst case, they are approximately equal, but I'd argue it's less. Just comparing the energy investment of an engine + transmission with an electric motor + lithium battery - all else being equal - an EV wins out.
And before anyone starts: No, you can't bring up the environmental impact of nickel mining and refining. Today's EVs don't use nickel based batteries. =Smidge=
If my comment was the most asinine, then yours is a contender for most ignorant.
For starters, your little story about a bait-and-switch also makes no sense - why not sell the Volt at $40K instead of a Cruze Eco for $17K? Usually dealers try to get you to spend more, not less.
The effective MPG of the Volt is highly variable, since you do get ~35 miles of all-electric driving assuming you've charged up when you got the chance. If your trip is under ~35 miles, then you will use zero gas* (See disclaimer below). The same ~35 miles driven in a Cruze Eco would have used just under a gallon.
From here you can do the math: For a trip of length X, how much gas will I use in a Volt and how much will I use in a Cruze Eco? Well, both the Cruze Eco and the Volt have the same 37MPG highway rating from the EPA. So guess what? The Volt will always use less gasoline than a Cruze Eco for any length trip.
But if you compare a Volt to, say, a Toyota Prius, then the Prius uses less fuel for trips over 153 miles. (at 48MPG EPA rating)
That said, it's not nearly as common for people to drive 100+ miles in a single trip as it is for people to drive under 35 miles. This is why GM picked that as a sort of magic number as a balance cost and electric range. As a machine, and as a plug-in hybrid, the Volt is pretty nice.
Marketing-wise, however, GM has completely fumbled. Their press releases and public comments are contradictory and opaque. The advertisements fail to touch upon any reason for actually buying the vehicle, and instead focus on people's confusion about how it uses both gasoline and electricity: "I thought this was an electric car why does it have a gas tank?" and nothing about the car itself. I think I've seen ONE ad that actually mentions things like top speed, excellent off-the-line torque and cheap operating costs, and they pulled it from circulation. That was also the only commercial you actually saw the car in motion, now that I think about it...
=Smidge= * "Zero gas" will be used not counting fuel burned in engine maintenance, fuel maintenance, and battery heating modes. The Volt will never not use gasoline - unless the tank is empty, not sure what'll happen then.
That's also a good option if possible. Butanol is used in a lot of non-fuel applications (from tires to paints to food additives) and is currently produces from fossil fuel sources.
The nutrients would be left over after processing, since all we're interested in is ethanol final product (containing only carbon, oxygen and hydrogen) all the other minerals, fixed nitrogen, proteins etc. would end up as a slurry with waste water. Dump that back into the ocean over the area you're harvesting as fertilizer. Very little would be lost.
My biggest concern is the ability to scale this method so it produces a worthwhile fraction of our energy needs and becomes economically viable. Ethanol is a fairly poor choice for motor fuel since it's so volatile and hygroscopic - it spoils quickly. It also has low energy density which is more of an inconvenience (need more to get the same output). I'd be much happier with biodiesel as an end product. =Smidge=
Besides the USA is Capitalism. Capitalism means to exploit the workers for the least amount possible. I don't know why people have such a hard time understanding that Capitalism working means the workers get screwed. it isn't useful to have happy employees.
And thankfully, there are laws which protect workers. Workers are entitled to a minimum wage, limits on working shifts, reasonably safe working conditions and/or appropriate training and equipment when working in unsafe conditions. Workers have the right to form unions.
Sorry if treating people humanely makes your trinkets more expensive. I guess it's easy to distract yourself from how the people who built your iPhone are literally driven to suicide from their working conditions when you have thousands of 99-cent app downloads and streaming movies anywhere you go. Such great value! =Smidge=
GM plays fast and loose with their numbers. They had set a goal of 10,000 vehicles sold in 2011, and when they fell short (selling only 7,600) they changed the claim to 10,000 produced rather than sold. They have been building more Volts than they are selling since last August or so and they have already been reducing production. Chances are, if your local dealer sells Volts, he's got one or two sitting on the lot waiting for a buyer. Sending a car to a dealer's lot counts as a sale, even if that car never ends up in someone's driveway.
The Volt as a vehicle is not that bad - a bit pricey for what you get but that's the early adopter premium you see with anything else. GM's marketing and PR departments have handled things so poorly it's impressive they sold as many as they did. They are completely unable to be honest about what the vehicle is and what it's capable of.
Basically what I'm saying is GM's executive branch is a bunch of compulsive liars, and I wouldn't be completely shocked if they are deliberately fumbling the Volt so they can drop the technology in a slightly less inflammatory way than they dropped the EV1. I remain cautiously optimistic that isn't the case, though.
Even if it isn't a concerted effort, their heart clearly isn't behind it. =Smidge=
If your point was "approximating a nonlinear relationship with a linear extrapolation makes you look like an idiot" then mission accomplished. All you did was multiply 72 by 12 which isn't even an extrapolation. Should I add "extrapolate" to the list of concepts I can't assume you're familiar with?
Did YOU read the link you sent me? I've read it, it doesn't explain why there is any use on equating 1 ton of methane emited today to 800 (800, 9500, whatever number you care to put here) tons of CO2 emited in 2100. Do you know any use for that number?
So sorry you had to click through one of the links to have that explicitly shoved in your face. Most people with a functional level of reading comprehension would have realized that the very first sentence of the section I linked directly to starts with the words "global warming potential" - a phrase I used repeatedly throughout - and would have thought to click those words to learn what that term means. =Smidge=
That's a long-winded way of saying "Sorry, I can't be bothered to click that link you provided."
In a 20-year span, 1 unit of Methane has as much warming potential as 72 units of CO2. In a 100 year span, 1 unit of Methane has as much warming potential as 25 units of CO2. In a 500 year span, 1 unit of Methane has as much warming potential as 7.6 units of CO2.
Numbers sourced from the Wikipedia article you clearly didn't even look at. Notice how completely non-linear it is. The only way to get 864 years is to assume the methane is there at full strength for exactly 12 years and then it all suddenly vanishes.
Assuming a power function fit (best fit I could come up with), 1 unit of Methane becomes equivalent to 1 unit of CO2 at ~9500 years. Yes, 1 ton of methane will turn into ~2.7 tons of CO2 (and 4.5 tons of water - if you need help with the chemistry don't be afraid to ask). That's part of why it has a much higher warming potential. While it is methane, it is capturing more heat and the average temperature of the atmosphere increases faster. As it transitions to CO2, the rate of heat capture decreases but the already trapped heat can't escape easily because now there's a new blanket of CO2 to help keep it in.
Imagine you have a bathtub with the tap running and drain unplugged. The amount of water in the tub represents the heat energy in the atmosphere, and by extension the depth of the water represents average temperature. Water pours in from the tap (heat energy pours in during the day) and water drains out through the drain (heat energy radiates out, mostly at night). The rate at which the amount of water (heat energy) increases is the difference between rate of water in (solar insulation) and rate of water out (radiative cooling), and the rate of water depth (average temperature) is directly related to the amount of water (heat energy) and the geometry of the tub (heat capacity of the atmosphere).
Increasing CO2 is like plugging up the drain a little bit. The rate which water enters is basically the same but it can't drain out as quickly, so the water level begins to rise. Adding methane to the atmosphere is like plugging up the drain a lot more then slowly clearing it out to almost where is was before... while the drain is plugged up the water level has been rising faster, but even after you've cleared out most of the blockage the water that's accumulated can't drain out fast enough to get you back to the depth you started at.
We can also try to play tricks by reducing the flow from the tap (increasing the planet's albedo) instead of clearing the drain (reducing the greenhouse effect), but so far workable solutions to do so significantly are scarce.
No analogy is perfect but that gets us pretty close... if you disagree with that analogy please be detailed and specific in your objections.
What you are missing is the difference between AVERAGE temperature (averaged over a century, or decades) and INSTANTANEOUS temperature. For discussing global warming, the first is nearly useless, yet everybody measures it because it is a nice number.
That is so perfectly backwards it's like you're doing it on purpose. "Instantaneous" temperature is called weather. So either you think global warming is a fraud because "it's cold outside" or you have absolutely no understanding of thermodynamics. Possibly both since nothing you've said indicates you understand how heat and temperature are related. =Smidge=
Are we really concerned about the total energy retained by the gases? Because last time I saw it, the actual concern was about the temperature, that depends on the ratio of change of that total energy, and care nothing about past greenhouse effects.
Uh... "temperature" is another way of saying "total heat retained" is it not? If I remember my high school physics, change in temperature equals change in heat energy divided by heat capacity of the substance. So yes - we ARE concerned about the total energy retained by the gasses.
It's also not hard to understand that you can retain more heat with a higher initial retention and fast decay than with a lower initial retention and slow decay, for any relevant time scale you choose. CO2 is a "thin" blanket compared to methane. The effect of methane fades away faster but is much more effective, which means it will contribute much more to the overall heating of the planet than CO2 will for any given time period. Doing a half-assed extrapolation of the data from that wiki page, it looks like one ton of methane will be contributing more to global warming than one ton of CO2 for about 9,500 years. Do you think 9,500 years is a relevant timescale to talk about climate change? =Smidge=
Methane has an atmospheric lifetime of about 12 years. However it is MUCH more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide, so over a 20 year period a ton of methane will cause the same amount of global warming as 72 tons of carbon dioxide. Consider that a ton of methane, burned, would produce about 3.7 tons of carbon dioxide, burning it is a valid approach to mitigating the impact on our climate.
Setting the plumes on fire is a big silly, though. We should trap the gas and use it to displace petroleum fuels. =Smidge=
Today's nuclear plants are ~35% or so thermal efficiency, which is not that bad. Upgrading the generating end to a closed cycle turbine loop and staging multiple loops can raise that efficiency a great deal - 50%+ is realized in some newer natural gas power plants. The nuclear part itself is not the limiting factor. =Smidge=
Article says they plan on installing gardens every 10 floors to help keep the air fresher. Otherwise ventilation shouldn't be all THAT bad in terms of energy: You can probably get a good natural convection system going to handle most of the circulation instead of relying on mechanical fans, and the cool/warm air flows could double as part of the HVAC system itself.
Keeping the water out is certainly a bigger problem, though...
Also, oblig:
Here's an interesting fact: you're not breathing real air. It's too expensive to pump this far down. We just take carbon dioxide out of a room, freshen it up a little, and pump it back in. So you'll be breathing the same room full of air for the rest of your life. I thought that was interesting.
It takes 7.5 kWh of energy to produce a gallon of gasoline. Put into an EV, that 7.5kWh is good for at least 22 miles of driving, and perhaps 45 miles or more in the hands of a skilled driver in favorable conditions. In other words, an EV can generally go as far on just the energy needed to make a gallon of gas as a traditional vehicle can go actually burning that same gallon. =Smidge=
Slashdot Mirror
This makes a really, really bad assumption that the price of electricity will double in some unspecified time while the price of gasoline will somehow not. It assumes that no new additions to generating capacity or improvements to infrastructure will be made. It also asserts that an electric car is only cleaner than a gasoline powered one if the electricity source is renewable - which is false. Even a "coal powered" electric vehicle emits less carbon per mile than a decent (30MPG) gasoline automobile.
I know of people who installed solar panels on their homes and produce more than enough electricity to offset the additional use of charging their electric car. It's entirely possible to power every car in the USA with renewable energy.
=Smidge=
The Leaf has over a 70 mile range. This has been proven "everywhere" and I'll actually provide owner testimony to prove it.
There's even a user-formed "100 mile club" for people who've driven the Leaf over 100 miles on a single charge.
=Smidge=
Affordability depends on how much you drive. Savings on gasoline costs could reduce lease payments to something comparable to what you'd have for a less expensive car. Saving over $100/mo in fuel costs alone is not at all uncommon, which effectively makes a $350/mo lease a $250/mo lease . Affordability is about more than just sticker price.
The "where are you gonna plug it in" isn't really an issue NOW for most people. Unless your car is also your house, chances are you have someplace with electricity - a simple 120V outlet overnight will easily recharge most people's daily needs with room to spare. Here's one way to look at it: At 120V you get roughly 5-7 miles of additional range per hour of charging. 240V charging is slightly more than double that for various reasons. Since normal people sleep, finding the time to recharge 40+ miles of range each day is not a problem.
=Smidge=
I was under the understanding that they would be manufacturing battery packs in Smyrna as well, with the electric motors being made in Decherd.
=Smidge=
There's gotta be something you're not telling us here. Looking up residential electric rates for Alberta and I found numbers in the 11-13 cents/kWh range. Understandable that they probably add surcharges and other bullshit, but I can't see all that being twice as much as the rate itself.
Could you perhaps break down that bill a bit further?
=Smidge=
If an American gets called at 2am to come into work and do their job on a last minute notice, there would be uproar. It'd be all over the news, all over the rest of the media, people would be on strike, etc.
No, there wouldn't. Do you really think nobody ever gets called to work at 2AM over an emergency?
The only way there would be an uproar or a strike is if the company refused to pay the workers overtime, or went to each worker's house and essentially abduct them to come to work - which is pretty much what Foxconn did.
=Smidge=
"Real world" = happens in the general public. The two fires were both the result of laboratory testing: one explicitly trying to reproduce the conditions that caused the fire.
Basically, you'd have to slide sideways into a telephone pole at 40+MPH and have it strike dead center of the vehicle. Then you'd have to let the car sit for at least a week, maybe two or three weeks, without bothering to disable the battery or drain the battery coolant. After all that, you probably still need a little bit of luck for it to happen...
But there have not yet been any Volts bursting into flames in the wild. When (not if) it happens, I bet good money it'll be related to the gasoline engine or 12V lead-acid battery and not the traction battery.
=Smidge=
If the battery pack is colder than that, then the gas engine will fire up to generate electricity to warm up the battery above that temperature threshold.
Actually, the Volt's plumbing is such that engine coolant is used to heat the battery pack... that's much more efficient considering close to 3/4 of the energy put out by the engine is heat!
=Smidge=
A series hybrid such as the Volt has the advantage of being able to run the engine at peak efficiency constantly (if you take your foot off the accelerator, it can increase the battery charge current to take up the slack).
The Volt will never use the ICE to charge the battery. It will turn the engine off instead. It's true that the Volt's engine can be kept much closer to ideal operating speed and load, thus improve efficiency, but this is done through regulating the output and speed of the electric motor(s). Until the ICE clutches in directly to the drivetrain, anyway, then all bets are off. But that should only happen at favorable speeds anyway.
There is nothing to be gained by burning fuel at 25% efficiency, charging the battery at 85% efficiency, then drawing that out again at another 85% efficiency. Skip the charging step.
=Smidge=
The latest generation of gas fired, combined-cycle power plants can get 60% efficiency. While a modern gasoline engine can achieve 25% efficiency, it can only do so under close to ideal conditions so it's not really a good way to go about comparing the two. By the time you work it all out, I think "double" would be an acceptable close approximation for conversation purposes.
And if you're going to include transmission losses for electricity, let's include production and distribution losses for gasoline: According to the DOE, The overall efficiency of getting the oil out of the ground, refined and into your car is about 83%. That means for every gallon of gas delivered to your car, at 36.6kWh/gallon, you've used 7.5kWh of energy. You can drive just as far in an EV with 7.5kWh of electricity as you can in your average gasoline car with one gallon of gasoline.
=Smidge=
The Volt will run the gasoline engine to provide heating for the cabin and battery if it decides it's more efficient that way, versus using electricity for heat and running the engine in charge sustain mode sooner. I'm also fairly sure that the Volt has pre-heating capability, so if you're still plugged in it'll warm up the battery (and cabin) before you get in, assuming you remembered to activate the feature. In short, I don't think extreme cold weather is going to be that big of a problem.
37MPG isn't exactly "atrocious" either... yeah, you can get that with much cheaper cars, but it's above average at least...
=Smidge=
The hydrocarbons required to produce an electric car are arguably less than what is required to produce a gasoline powered car. At the absolute worst case, they are approximately equal, but I'd argue it's less. Just comparing the energy investment of an engine + transmission with an electric motor + lithium battery - all else being equal - an EV wins out.
And before anyone starts: No, you can't bring up the environmental impact of nickel mining and refining. Today's EVs don't use nickel based batteries.
=Smidge=
If my comment was the most asinine, then yours is a contender for most ignorant.
For starters, your little story about a bait-and-switch also makes no sense - why not sell the Volt at $40K instead of a Cruze Eco for $17K? Usually dealers try to get you to spend more, not less.
The effective MPG of the Volt is highly variable, since you do get ~35 miles of all-electric driving assuming you've charged up when you got the chance. If your trip is under ~35 miles, then you will use zero gas* (See disclaimer below). The same ~35 miles driven in a Cruze Eco would have used just under a gallon.
From here you can do the math: For a trip of length X, how much gas will I use in a Volt and how much will I use in a Cruze Eco? Well, both the Cruze Eco and the Volt have the same 37MPG highway rating from the EPA. So guess what? The Volt will always use less gasoline than a Cruze Eco for any length trip.
But if you compare a Volt to, say, a Toyota Prius, then the Prius uses less fuel for trips over 153 miles. (at 48MPG EPA rating)
That said, it's not nearly as common for people to drive 100+ miles in a single trip as it is for people to drive under 35 miles. This is why GM picked that as a sort of magic number as a balance cost and electric range. As a machine, and as a plug-in hybrid, the Volt is pretty nice.
Marketing-wise, however, GM has completely fumbled. Their press releases and public comments are contradictory and opaque. The advertisements fail to touch upon any reason for actually buying the vehicle, and instead focus on people's confusion about how it uses both gasoline and electricity: "I thought this was an electric car why does it have a gas tank?" and nothing about the car itself. I think I've seen ONE ad that actually mentions things like top speed, excellent off-the-line torque and cheap operating costs, and they pulled it from circulation. That was also the only commercial you actually saw the car in motion, now that I think about it...
=Smidge=
* "Zero gas" will be used not counting fuel burned in engine maintenance, fuel maintenance, and battery heating modes. The Volt will never not use gasoline - unless the tank is empty, not sure what'll happen then.
That's also a good option if possible. Butanol is used in a lot of non-fuel applications (from tires to paints to food additives) and is currently produces from fossil fuel sources.
=Smidge=
The nutrients would be left over after processing, since all we're interested in is ethanol final product (containing only carbon, oxygen and hydrogen) all the other minerals, fixed nitrogen, proteins etc. would end up as a slurry with waste water. Dump that back into the ocean over the area you're harvesting as fertilizer. Very little would be lost.
My biggest concern is the ability to scale this method so it produces a worthwhile fraction of our energy needs and becomes economically viable. Ethanol is a fairly poor choice for motor fuel since it's so volatile and hygroscopic - it spoils quickly. It also has low energy density which is more of an inconvenience (need more to get the same output). I'd be much happier with biodiesel as an end product.
=Smidge=
Besides the USA is Capitalism. Capitalism means to exploit the workers for the least amount possible. I don't know why people have such a hard time understanding that Capitalism working means the workers get screwed. it isn't useful to have happy employees.
And thankfully, there are laws which protect workers. Workers are entitled to a minimum wage, limits on working shifts, reasonably safe working conditions and/or appropriate training and equipment when working in unsafe conditions. Workers have the right to form unions.
Sorry if treating people humanely makes your trinkets more expensive. I guess it's easy to distract yourself from how the people who built your iPhone are literally driven to suicide from their working conditions when you have thousands of 99-cent app downloads and streaming movies anywhere you go. Such great value!
=Smidge=
GM plays fast and loose with their numbers. They had set a goal of 10,000 vehicles sold in 2011, and when they fell short (selling only 7,600) they changed the claim to 10,000 produced rather than sold. They have been building more Volts than they are selling since last August or so and they have already been reducing production. Chances are, if your local dealer sells Volts, he's got one or two sitting on the lot waiting for a buyer. Sending a car to a dealer's lot counts as a sale, even if that car never ends up in someone's driveway.
The Volt as a vehicle is not that bad - a bit pricey for what you get but that's the early adopter premium you see with anything else. GM's marketing and PR departments have handled things so poorly it's impressive they sold as many as they did. They are completely unable to be honest about what the vehicle is and what it's capable of.
Basically what I'm saying is GM's executive branch is a bunch of compulsive liars, and I wouldn't be completely shocked if they are deliberately fumbling the Volt so they can drop the technology in a slightly less inflammatory way than they dropped the EV1. I remain cautiously optimistic that isn't the case, though.
Even if it isn't a concerted effort, their heart clearly isn't behind it.
=Smidge=
On average, there is another car fire in the United States every 109 seconds. (PDF warning)
Not all of them are the result of accidents. Food for thought.
=Smidge=
I approximated it to a linear to make a point
If your point was "approximating a nonlinear relationship with a linear extrapolation makes you look like an idiot" then mission accomplished. All you did was multiply 72 by 12 which isn't even an extrapolation. Should I add "extrapolate" to the list of concepts I can't assume you're familiar with?
Did YOU read the link you sent me? I've read it, it doesn't explain why there is any use on equating 1 ton of methane emited today to 800 (800, 9500, whatever number you care to put here) tons of CO2 emited in 2100. Do you know any use for that number?
"Under the Kyoto Protocol, the Conference of the Parties decided (decision 2/CP.3) that the values of GWP calculated for the IPCC Second Assessment Report are to be used for converting the various greenhouse gas emissions into comparable CO2 equivalents when computing overall sources and sinks."
So sorry you had to click through one of the links to have that explicitly shoved in your face. Most people with a functional level of reading comprehension would have realized that the very first sentence of the section I linked directly to starts with the words "global warming potential" - a phrase I used repeatedly throughout - and would have thought to click those words to learn what that term means.
=Smidge=
That's a long-winded way of saying "Sorry, I can't be bothered to click that link you provided."
In a 20-year span, 1 unit of Methane has as much warming potential as 72 units of CO2.
In a 100 year span, 1 unit of Methane has as much warming potential as 25 units of CO2.
In a 500 year span, 1 unit of Methane has as much warming potential as 7.6 units of CO2.
Numbers sourced from the Wikipedia article you clearly didn't even look at. Notice how completely non-linear it is. The only way to get 864 years is to assume the methane is there at full strength for exactly 12 years and then it all suddenly vanishes.
Assuming a power function fit (best fit I could come up with), 1 unit of Methane becomes equivalent to 1 unit of CO2 at ~9500 years. Yes, 1 ton of methane will turn into ~2.7 tons of CO2 (and 4.5 tons of water - if you need help with the chemistry don't be afraid to ask). That's part of why it has a much higher warming potential. While it is methane, it is capturing more heat and the average temperature of the atmosphere increases faster. As it transitions to CO2, the rate of heat capture decreases but the already trapped heat can't escape easily because now there's a new blanket of CO2 to help keep it in.
Imagine you have a bathtub with the tap running and drain unplugged. The amount of water in the tub represents the heat energy in the atmosphere, and by extension the depth of the water represents average temperature. Water pours in from the tap (heat energy pours in during the day) and water drains out through the drain (heat energy radiates out, mostly at night). The rate at which the amount of water (heat energy) increases is the difference between rate of water in (solar insulation) and rate of water out (radiative cooling), and the rate of water depth (average temperature) is directly related to the amount of water (heat energy) and the geometry of the tub (heat capacity of the atmosphere).
Increasing CO2 is like plugging up the drain a little bit. The rate which water enters is basically the same but it can't drain out as quickly, so the water level begins to rise. Adding methane to the atmosphere is like plugging up the drain a lot more then slowly clearing it out to almost where is was before... while the drain is plugged up the water level has been rising faster, but even after you've cleared out most of the blockage the water that's accumulated can't drain out fast enough to get you back to the depth you started at.
We can also try to play tricks by reducing the flow from the tap (increasing the planet's albedo) instead of clearing the drain (reducing the greenhouse effect), but so far workable solutions to do so significantly are scarce.
No analogy is perfect but that gets us pretty close... if you disagree with that analogy please be detailed and specific in your objections.
What you are missing is the difference between AVERAGE temperature (averaged over a century, or decades) and INSTANTANEOUS temperature. For discussing global warming, the first is nearly useless, yet everybody measures it because it is a nice number.
That is so perfectly backwards it's like you're doing it on purpose. "Instantaneous" temperature is called weather. So either you think global warming is a fraud because "it's cold outside" or you have absolutely no understanding of thermodynamics. Possibly both since nothing you've said indicates you understand how heat and temperature are related.
=Smidge=
Are we really concerned about the total energy retained by the gases? Because last time I saw it, the actual concern was about the temperature, that depends on the ratio of change of that total energy, and care nothing about past greenhouse effects.
Uh... "temperature" is another way of saying "total heat retained" is it not? If I remember my high school physics, change in temperature equals change in heat energy divided by heat capacity of the substance. So yes - we ARE concerned about the total energy retained by the gasses.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_lifetime#Atmospheric_lifetime
It's also not hard to understand that you can retain more heat with a higher initial retention and fast decay than with a lower initial retention and slow decay, for any relevant time scale you choose. CO2 is a "thin" blanket compared to methane. The effect of methane fades away faster but is much more effective, which means it will contribute much more to the overall heating of the planet than CO2 will for any given time period. Doing a half-assed extrapolation of the data from that wiki page, it looks like one ton of methane will be contributing more to global warming than one ton of CO2 for about 9,500 years. Do you think 9,500 years is a relevant timescale to talk about climate change?
=Smidge=
That link doesn't exist.
Methane has an atmospheric lifetime of about 12 years. However it is MUCH more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide, so over a 20 year period a ton of methane will cause the same amount of global warming as 72 tons of carbon dioxide. Consider that a ton of methane, burned, would produce about 3.7 tons of carbon dioxide, burning it is a valid approach to mitigating the impact on our climate.
Setting the plumes on fire is a big silly, though. We should trap the gas and use it to displace petroleum fuels.
=Smidge=
Today's nuclear plants are ~35% or so thermal efficiency, which is not that bad. Upgrading the generating end to a closed cycle turbine loop and staging multiple loops can raise that efficiency a great deal - 50%+ is realized in some newer natural gas power plants. The nuclear part itself is not the limiting factor.
=Smidge=
Article says they plan on installing gardens every 10 floors to help keep the air fresher. Otherwise ventilation shouldn't be all THAT bad in terms of energy: You can probably get a good natural convection system going to handle most of the circulation instead of relying on mechanical fans, and the cool/warm air flows could double as part of the HVAC system itself.
Keeping the water out is certainly a bigger problem, though...
Also, oblig:
Here's an interesting fact: you're not breathing real air. It's too expensive to pump this far down. We just take carbon dioxide out of a room, freshen it up a little, and pump it back in. So you'll be breathing the same room full of air for the rest of your life. I thought that was interesting.
=Smidge=
It takes 7.5 kWh of energy to produce a gallon of gasoline. Put into an EV, that 7.5kWh is good for at least 22 miles of driving, and perhaps 45 miles or more in the hands of a skilled driver in favorable conditions. In other words, an EV can generally go as far on just the energy needed to make a gallon of gas as a traditional vehicle can go actually burning that same gallon.
=Smidge=