I'm trying to get my diary legs back. I've been lurking for awhile because...well, just because. I like this site, I like the large majority of people here, at least from their diaries/comments. But jumping into the fray can be scary sometimes, even here.
So I wanted to start on something fairly non-controversial.
Torture?...Nope.
Obama-Love?...Maybe after a few tries.
Meta?...I don't even know what that means.
Let me start with Obama's new CAFE standards that by 2016 the average fuel economy will be 35.5 mpg (miles per gallon)
Anyway, the new CAFE standards are great. This was quietly rammed through in short order because the main opponents. Well...maybe rammed through is a little harsh, but it was the 'Perfect Storm' to bring disparate parties together to talk. Don't get me wrong, I think this is great. But it is a drop in the bucket. Technologically speaking, this could have be done 20 years ago.
I was listening to NPR this evening (5/19/09 ~6 pm EST, I can find the audio link, but I have real trouble navigating the NPR site), and they had a very interesting piece on how the auto industry plans to comply with the new standards. What I heard first wasn't so shocking, Ford is introducing a turbo-charged engine which will make a V6 perform similar to a V8 in power. Same thing for smaller engines. This really didn't surprise me too much, except for the fact that turbo-charged engines have been around for at least 15 years, maybe more. What followed shocked me.
The Chevy Volt is slated for release in the next year. What the reporter stated shocked me. He essentially said that GM doesn't understand aerodynamics. What. The. Fuck? To paraphrase, when GM put the Volt concept car in the wind tunnel, they found that the car was much more efficient when they put it in backwards. Substantially better. He didn't quote a number but it was good enough that GM went back to the drawing board to redesign the shell of the car. In the 21st century that means epic fail. The pressure has been on the auto industry to understand aerodynamics to reduce mpg standards. Hell, I remember watching TV commercials showing cars in a wind tunnel in the 1980's. I naively assumed (probably like most Americans) that since the car was in the wind tunnel they were doing more than shooting commercials. I guess I was wrong.
I'm sorry for not having a link to the NPR broadcast. If someone could help I'll edit it in. But let's talk about my bigger beef: plug-in-hybrids.
The problem, which I haven't seen addressed adequately anywhere, is that:
- The electricity to recharge these cars comes from a hydrocarbon source. Period. The exception is for those in the country who get their power from a nuclear source. It's effectively a zero-sum game. Either you burn hydrocarbons in your car or you burn it at the power generation plant.
- The national electrical grid can't support the addition of major electrical drains. How do I know this? You know this, how many of you have been subject to rolling blackouts? How many of you remember the North East blackout in 2003 because of a "ripple" in the electrical grid? Our grid is fragile and can't support the increase in demand provided by electric cars.
So, if you've made it this far, you're thinking 'What do you suggest, Dr. Cynic'.
The only real answer, IMHO, is hydrogen. We're not really close to be able to extract hydrogen from natural sources. But hydrogen, by far, is the most abundant substance on Earth. It's the most abundant element in the universe (it's what's fueling the sun). Its combustion is completely clean on the Earth, here is the reaction:
2H2 + O2 --> 2H2O
It makes water. Not CO2. Water. Let me just end with this. We don't have the technology to make H2 an abundant source of energy, and we don't have the infrastructure to effectively distribute H2. My real beef is this: FUCK YOU ENERGY!!! If I had 30+ billion dollars in profit(i.e. oil companies) I would invest every single nickel (I like to keep the pennies, I'm originally from IL) in new energy technology. And then patent it, and become the sole source of it. Bottom line, CEO's of energy companies aren't looking out for the future of the company, they're looking out for themselves. Otherwise we'd have H2 cars now. And that is my diary.