italktocats

it cant? what law of physics prevents this?

Grey.

It'll be around for as long as i'll be alive so I will probably keep driving my car all the same. Visiting the 'folks on a bicycle would be difficult.

genec

Gee the same attitude that CEOs take while they take that huge bonus and watch the workers walk out the door, as jobs go off to China.

Yup that same "got mine" attitude that made America great...

Grey.

I was being facetious. Like it or not, you need a vehicle to get around in this country and idealism isn't going to get me to the family Christmas party. I use what I have.

italktocats

do you also need to own it? have it parked in front of you house 24/7 and use gov subsidization, while running over and polluting your fellow countrymen?

corrado33

I'm sorry. I use REAL WORLD numbers. In the lab I can power my house with a few fuel cells. Lab does NOT equal real life. In the lab we've had fuel cells that are >90% efficient. In real life we can barely reach 50-60%. There are significant differences between what's feasible in the lab and what can really happen in real life.

Again, let's use real world examples. CAES doesn't exist yet. Moving mass or compressing a medium can be used to store energy, but it's inefficient. Pumped hydroelectric power, which we do already have, is only 70-80% efficient. Add that to the already piss-poor efficiency of solar and wind stated above and you're quickly getting into the realm of "not economically feasible" Not to mention those types of energy storage have VERY specific environmental conditions needed and truthfully there aren't enough of those around to make a difference. Not to mention that the energy usage difference between night and day isn't a huge amount. Do you plan to store as much energy as you use during the day to power everything at night? You may look at this stuff with rose tinted glasses, but in the real world if something is too expensive to do, the energy companies WON'T DO IT for the sake of the environment. The fact is, they have something WE need, energy.


Really? How...EXACTLY do you propose we STACK solar panels? Hm? The difference between a solar panel and a processor is that the solar panel depends on a light source that comes from a single direction (speaking from the perspective of the solar panel.) And, you realize that the larger the tower (for a windmill) the larger the base and support has to be right? You can't stick extremely tall windmills right next to each other.


You're going to rely on PEOPLE to stop using energy? Honestly? In this increasingly energy dependent society? Have you SEEN the electricity usage graphs for the US for the last 10 years? Have you noticed that it's going up at an exponential rate? Do you REALLY think that's going to start going DOWN any time soon or... ever? Good luck!

And did you REALLY just post a link to nuclear Fusion? A technology we've been trying to make successful for decades and have only JUST gotten a TINY bit of it to work with the help of MANY HUGELY powerful lasers? Are you an idiot? Do you REALLY think this is a viable technology for energy production in the next 2, 3, 4 decades? No. It is not. If you hadn't noticed, or didn't even bother to read the link you posted, the extremely expensive reactor is housed at the Max Planck institute, where they will do SCIENCE with it. They have no intentions of using it to produce power for people to use. In fact, I'd bet that it doesn't even produce enough power to be economically feasible.

You are the typical media swayed mass who doesn't know how to distinguish what they read online from real life. You think all of this wonderful stuff is possible when in reality it's not. As it turns out the media lies. They exaggerate things. They make technologies which seem cool and great for the environment look much better and closer to production than they actually are. There are MANY technologies out there which will produce energy from a previously untapped source, however unless it's CHEAP and EASY TO DO it's never going to happen. "Well if we spend enough research money on it and do mass production it'll make everything cheaper." Yeah, we've been trying that with fuel cells for decades now. It doesn't happen unless it NEEDS to happen. No company is going to take the leap and say "well if we produce a lot of these things it'll bring the costs down." No, that will never happen. Getting a new technology into common use takes many, many decades unless it saves people a ton of money, hence the economically feasible talk I've been using this whole time.

Your type of thinking reminds me of this technology that came around a few years ago. This kid found a way to make plastic from carbon in the air. Cool right? Taking CO2 out of the atmosphere is generally a good thing. What the media failed to mention was that his operation was carbon positive. Sure, he was taking carbon out of the air, but the energy he used to do that was putting far MORE carbon into the air.

genec

I was too, as we "users" really have little choice... except perhaps electrics or hybrids... both priced high. Or riding a bike, or using a high MPG vehicle....

But the facts are that decisions are being made on high regarding this stuff that are equally simplistic... even symbolically negative... such as Reagan removing the solar panels from the roof of the Whitehouse.

Equally symbolic were the chants during the 2008 GOP convention of "drill baby drill," again foisting upon us the short term "I got mine" attitude so readily taken up by some in this country.

genec

So the government and private companies are looking to the future, and are pumping tons of money into your research??

Grey.

Well I "need" to own it if I want to go anywhere that is more than 20 miles from my home, which in Indiana is pretty much everything. I don't park it in front of my house because I have a garage, and I have personally never run anyone over.

I'm a realist. I like to travel, I like to go camping and kayaking, I like to visit my family and friends and having a vehicle makes all of that possible. One of my favorite campsites is 85 miles from here, and doing that on my bicycle with all of my gear just isn't gonna happen, bicycle highway or not. That's within this state, forget about trying to go to Colorado.

erig007

The world is full of businesses that haven't seen the change coming. I get that you're skeptical but we're talking about the future right?
What happen in labs usually give a good idea of what to expect (sometimes not)

Aware of the limitation of CAES, solar panels and sunlight. Regarding stacking solar panels i can think of several ways to circumvent the problem, one being to use materials with different level of reflectivity (which is already the case in some way with multijunction solar cells).

90% efficiency using trains to store energy doesn't look that bad to me.
Using Trains to Store Energy
Regarding windmills the example given by skycrapers shows that skycrapers keep getting taller and taller while the surface on the ground doesn't necessarily follow. Also there is a matter of materials and materials evolve as time goes by.

Regarding fusion, again here we're talking about the future. The fact that they have been trying for decades doesn't tell much about the future. There is no science that says that it's impossible for what i know.

Regarding cheap and easy. Nothing new here.

To sum up. There is nothing that you said in your post #56 that i didn't know already.

I-Like-To-Bike

Do you share the same alleged "CEO attitude" that you scorn?
How do YOU normally visit the 'folks, friends, or relatives that live out of town? Are all of your trips out of town by bicycle, foot, or public transportation?

genec

Public transportation when possible... or bike, if close. I also use multiple passenger shuttle services. We own one car, and we rent when and if there is no other alternative.

But what you are really missing is the issue of attitude... as expressed by the poster to whom I originally responded, with regard to oil... "It'll be around for as long as i'll be alive..." It was the attitude that I criticized. I wonder if the poster plans on leaving any Earth left for their children.... or just take this opinion: "It'll be around for as long as i'll be alive..."

And yeah, I plan my trips to keep my fuel use low and I extensively recycle.

What about you farmboy? Do you care about the planet, or simply use it as if "It'll be around for as long as i'll be alive...."

It is that lack of forward thinking that I am criticizing... as exemplified by so many CEOs who seek to make a profit this quarter... while driving the company into the ground... short term thinking.

Ekdog

+1 Thanks for knocking the troll off of his high horse.

KLiNCK

The future is going to be awesome!

hollywoodeskimo

I ride my bike for recreation/exercise. To the extent that that offsets other more polluting forms of recreation, the environment benefits from my bike riding. To the extent that I sometimes put my bike on the rack on my car to get to places where I want to ride, the offset is offset. To the extent that the bike and it's maintenance relies on fossil fuels, the offset is further offset.

Commuting by bike or mass transit is for all practical purposes impossible for me. I live in the most densely populated state in the nation. If our nation's infrastructure can not support cleaner forms of transport for most of the people in its most densely populated and 3rd smallest state, how far in the future are we glimpsing?

As long as the nation's politics are dominated by the notions that government is bad, that public programs are bad, that taxes are bad, that regulation is bad, and that rights come with no responsibility, we are doomed to spinning our wheels to little practical effect.

I-Like-To-Bike

I own one car and drive it when I leave town if it is most suitable. It is available when my wife and I need it, 24/7. Just like you. I do not share YOUR (and other Holy Roller's) attitude that it is appropriate project the wicked ways of of greedy tycoons and money grabbers on to any/every poster who doesn't toe the same environmental purity line as yourself.

corrado33

Ok, I'm glad we've (particularity me) have calmed down. Here's my issue with the above bolded statement. Labs often use precious and rare materials to produce the numbers you see in the media. The 90% efficient fuel cell was probably made using expensive materials with even more expensive manufacturing practices. They probably used gold (and I'm talking about 99.9999% pure gold) and platinum wires to connect their cell. The fact is, most of the time those types of things are simply not possible to replicate on the large scale. I'm positive that the high efficiency solar cells you speak of follow the same trend. Eventually research will be completed that reduce the price of those materials and techniques, but that takes many decades.

Agreed! It looks great. It IS still a concept that hasn't, in any way, shape, or form, been tested. Again, unfortunately there aren't THAT many trains around to store the energy. The amount of energy they can store is well.. negligible compared to the energy demands of the nation. What are we doing to build train tracks and trains simply to store energy? Seems like a waste of money.

Fusion is certainly possible! It's happening every day in the heart of every star in the universe! Although I suppose that's not what you meant. I believe that one day we MAY be able to use fusion as a power source, however we are many decades away from that. We've yet to come up with a working fusion reactor that's net energy positive! Placing stake in that for future energy production is like saying that by the end of the year you'll have 100 chickens but you haven't even bought any chicks yet! The science isn't there yet! I wish it was. I wish the US put more money into funding alternative energy! I REALLY do.

Even though you dismiss this point, it's actually an extremely important one. The companies that produce electricity for us are FOR PROFIT. They will never adopt something that won't make them money. These ideas are great, but unless they're economically feasible no one will ever do them. Who will fit the bill? The taxpayers? We have enough trouble getting tax payers to pay for healthcare, do you really think they'd willingly pay more just so we're producing electricity via "green" methods.

skye

That's actually a very good idea. Economic "tribalization" tends to keep capital local and reduces central accumulation, which are both good for a top-heavy economy.

I-Like-To-Bike

Yea, sure, whatever you say. Good living standards too, no doubt.

welshTerrier2

Well, this has certainly been interesting. From my OP about increasing the role of bicycles and decreasing the role of cars in our transportation mix, we’ve covered things like fusion reactors, the necessity of cars and the fact that energy companies are for PROFIT.

Let’s get back to the basic premise from the OP: we need to increase the role bicycles play in our transportation mix so that we can reduce our carbon footprint.

I haven’t been able to find good statistics that show the length of the average trip by car but I did find some data suggesting that the majority of miles driven are likely to be within five miles or less of where people live. Comments like I can’t carry my kayak on my bicycle or I’m not going to drive eighty miles to go camping on my bicycle badly miss the point. No one has argued that cars should be eliminated completely. Arguing that there is some degree of need or preference does NOT mean that we can’t make significant reductions in auto use.

The target audience for encouraging more bicycle use should be the “short trip” auto users. That doesn’t mean that cars should never be used on short trips; it means that people should be encouraged to consider using a bicycle for some of their short trips. We can do better if we can stop this unsustainable habit of automatically grabbing the car keys.

And, while I’m on the subject, the so called vehicular cyclists need to acknowledge that a “roads only” approach will never attract the masses in the kind of numbers we’ll need to make a real difference. We need to build as much separated infrastructure as we can to encourage more cycling use. To argue otherwise is nonsense.

And let’s take a closer look at “for PROFIT” companies … especially for profit energy companies. They have been lying about climate change for years. They’ve been lying about the possibilities of renewable energy for years. They’ve been paying their puppets in the media to lie to the public for years.

What needs to be understood is that for PROFIT companies don’t want us to invest in a non-fossil-fuel future. What they do want is very simple … more PROFIT. I’m afraid we cannot continue to let them do that.

I-Like-To-Bike

The basic premise of the OP, doubled down on the message above is just one more political rant that should be posted in the P & R forum.

Also the poster might want to reconsider the repeated use of the word "We need" when he means "I want".

welshTerrier2

Imagine that ... someone posting a political rant in an advocacy forum. Go figure.

auldgeunquers

... as is Canada ... I am confused as to what you are trying to point out.