ocean conditions are changing due to Rapid Global Climate Shift

"The only difference is where you place the CO2(and other noxious gases) exhaust pipe, on the car or on the other end of the charger cord."

.....not only true, but in fact they use more carbon fuels to produce and run than a simple small engine that is more than enough for a shopping cart.

While we have no alternative that is more economical and energy efficient, we all need to think about smaller and lighter, it is all power to weight, the old VW and Morris etc had 25 to 30 hp engines and really that is all we still need for 99% of all travel.

 

Well said,
If you consider that a steam generator is less efficient than a diesel, factor in the losses in transmission lines, and then in battery storage. The end result of an electric car is perhaps a doubling of CO2 emmissions.

 

For 2011, the electricity in Sweden was produced the following way:
Hydroelectrical 45%
Nuclear 40%
combined heat and power plants 11%
Wind 4%

"Combined heat and power" means burning stuff to generate electricity and use the excess heat for heating homes or to be used in industrial processes. Only part of the fuel is fossile fuel, and that part is decreasing in favour of garbage, bio mass etc. The wind percentage is also increasing rapidly.

Be careful when you claim that electricity necessarily means burning fossile fuel. Not every country has access to the hydroelectricity the way Sweden has, but none but yourselves are stopping you from producing electricity with nuclear power or wind. I don't see any major problem to have 0% of the electricity in Sweden generated by non-fossile means.

Erik

 

Where does Sweden dump its nuclear waste?

 

The long term storage for nuclear waste is to first encapsulate it in something that is supposed to last for a very long time. The encapsuled waste is then stored a couple of hundred meters below ground, in one of the parts of Sweden where the rock is particularly stable.

Before the long term storage, the waste is stored in an intermediate storage above ground for many years. One of the reasons is to let the short term isotopes decay. Another reason is to delay the commitment to long term storage as long as possible to allow more research and testing on the long term encapsulation.

Of course there has been much debate on the method for long term storage. Is the encapsualtion stable enough? Is the rock stable enough? Is it better to store the waste more accessible in case a better idea how to handle the waste comes up?

In real life there isn't any activity without drawbacks, and we will never have all the facts when we need to make decisions. From my point of view it's very clear that burning fossile fuel dump CO2 in the atmosphere and the global warming most likely caused by it most likely will have severe consequences. The consequences of accidents with nuclear energy, both during production and with the waste, are much more limited. Furthermore, the risks are mostly due to sloppy human behaviour which is within our own hands to control.

Nothing is 100% safe. It's just that nuclear energy is safer than most alternatives.

Erik

 

Nonsense. Electricity is generated at a plant. This plant can be made to operate at high efficiency ,with all the best pollution and transmissiom technology and be constantly monitored , upgraded.

Automobiles running internal combustion engines never operate at efficiency and are answerable to no one.

12hp electric to cummute or American style v8...tell me which is more friendly to the city enviroment.

 

The Guardian | Global worming: how worms are accelerating climate change

 

Science Daily | Fault Lines in Views On Climate Change Revealed: Divided by Cause, United by Effect

 

USA Today | Report: Climate change could devastate agriculture

 

Agree.
I think the long approach to energy in society is of interest- centralized vs dispersed applications is a exercise in fit of available technology and to some degree social engineering.
My instinct is that technologies will be developed where the application tends towards the dispersed model with centralized manufacturing of the energy package analogous to the battery we have today.
That, or the production apparatus will be small enough to site in houses or in micro distribution networks.
We need that next step in technology now but will have it soon enough as these things go.

It was a great leap forward when electricity was developed and all the accompanying production and distribution networks.
The future I believe will see a reversal of this trend.

On autos- I don't imagine that cities of the future will be the congested network of automobile roads we have now.

 

What do you expect the cities of the future to look like?

 

If we keep the same mentality then it will get even worse. At present my small city has so many cars parked on city streets that I can no longer use my bicycle . I cant stop my bike and get onto the sidewalk anymore. Im ending upcycling 1 km past my destination just to find a gap big enough between parked car to allow me to get off the dam street. A mother with a child in a stroller faces the same...not to mention the poor person in a wheelchair.
Locally the newspaper is full of proposals to end this car encroachment on city life.

The experiment in London with road pricing has been successful and should be studied. A city road pricing scheme that penalizes big cars and allows micro electric city cars free access is the only way to go.

Unfortunately Americans are yet again slow to wake up and find solutions.

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Nonsense, eh? You cannot eliminate CO2 as a by-product of combustion. Electric cars in Florida are almost entirely charged from thermal energy. v8 because it is more efficient, carries a bigger payload and gets out of town faster and farther than the overweight soda pop can can.

 

I don't know- somehow we must fit the social engineering aspects of discrete people movers with the efficiency of "mass transport".

Roads have a long history- at what point do they become a social artifact in urban centers?

I don't like cities much- mass transport even less...
To me my very survival seems threatened by sitting on a train with masses of people.

 

I don't care if you think it is nonsense. Calling orange purple doesn't make it so.