This is true ! We, as Americans, tend to blame everything on someone (or something) other than ourselves. It's our own selfish, piggish at***udes that have got us in the pickle we're in. Think about that as you hammer-down that fuel-guzzling 454 to make that trip to the grocery store 3 blocks away.
as gas mileage increases so will the price of fuel PER GALLON.. is it great that this little engine makes great power, YES, but the cost will be for everyone ELSE..
Largely economics. I'd love to see more of it, but what does E85 cost at the pump these days? In most places it's only .10 or .15 cents cheaper than regular. Then you have to burn more of it to get the same energy. Yep, it's greener. Yep, it's homegrown. Yep, it's really more expensive than gasoline since you have to burn more. A typical car that can haul down 28-30 mpg on gasoline will only get 18-20 mpg on E85. If someone could bring ethanol to the pump today at, say, $2.00/gallon, we would buy it. So far, it's not been feasible, but at some point the cost of gasoline will overtake the cost of ethanol.
In Minnesota we subsidize farmers to grow corn, we subsidize the ethanol plant, we pay more at the pump for gas with 10% ethanol and we get 10% worse mileage with the ethanol/gas blend. Sounds like government economics at work. In the 1970's I paid $5.50/gal for gas in Ireland. 36 years later I pay $3.00/gal in the USA. We're holding the line pretty well. We get a relatively small percentage of our crude oil from the middle east. You can get a car that gets very good mileage nowdays so your annual gas bill probably wouldn't be any higher than people paid in the 1970's driving a typical big car. Auto manufacturers have poured billions of dollars into refining the efficiency and mileage of four stroke-cycle engines. Would they do that if there was a viable engine alternative? They've been looking at alternatives throughout the years. Remember the Chrysler turbine car of the '60's or '70's? I wonder how much fuel is consumed sitting in traffic rather than moving toward a destination. Our road systems have not kept up with demand. The Euphorians keep pushing public transportation, like the light rail debacle in the Twin Cities that the gang bangers use to get to the Mall Of America and not many others use. We subsidize that too. In the meantime the beltline freeway system around here necks down to ONE lane in several places. Not too conducive to fast, efficient traffic flow. Whew! My fingers are exhausted. I'll bet you are too, if you bothered to read all this commentary. One last note: In the 1970's when gas prices went up, I put a Pinto engine in my Model A tudoor. Got up at 3:00am one morning and pulled that ****er out to make room for an engine that could actually make the Model A into a hot rod. A close call!
Ya know it doesn't take any more energy to make methanol then ethanol and it would give us the opportunity to use up sawdust that normally gets burned. If you're gonna go off on a tangent why not use the byproduct of an industry one that gets destroyed and damages the environment rather than produce a product that needs to be grown new every year, and be subject to changes in weather, fertility etc.[/quote] I agree, Methanol is a better idea than Ethanol. I imagine Ethanol was chosen because of the power of midwest farming lobbies, not to mention large seed companies, who through genetic engineering, managed to render most seed lines sterile. You have to buy their seed year after year after year...Wonder who will get rich off of ethanol??? Just follow the bouncing$$$$$$$$.
When the price of gasoline exceeds the price of something else we'll start using that something else. It's really simple economics. We will buy what's cheap and available. Doesn't matter if it's clean or dirty. Is big oil in some kind of conspiracy to get rich and take our money? Doesn't really matter if we can't prove it and stop it. If it becomes cheaper to do something else or do something ourselves, then we will do it. But many people will pay extra to have soemone else handle it. Ever work on a computer? It's not hard. You just gotta know the processes and what does what. It's really no different than building an engine or a house. I see diesel becoming more and more common. Potential sources for diesel fuel are many and many of them are renewable or available as by products of other industries. The other thing I see possibly becoming more popular is individual home based power stations. Small hydrogen and even diesel powered generators already exist. And prices are falling. Hell you can hook up a Lister CS diesel to a generator head and charge a bank of batteries that will give up to around 3kW of power using just 5-6 litres of waste vegitable oil. And because it's not petroluem based it has zero carbon impact on the environment. I can see diesel/electric becoming a viable option at some point as well. Similar to trains.
Sweet!!! By then I will want to drive but my eyes and body will tell me otherwise. All my cars are getting super chargers now.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/25/a...eac32a142&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss I thought this was cool, saves the braking energy and uses it to make the truck go again (perfect for the stop and go UPS truck)... I like thinking like this, there's energy wasted all around us, we just need to find new ways to use it. Necessity is the mother of invention, eh?
Yeah the sky is falling types had me driving a 74 Datsun P/U back then. Damn near a dollar a gallon!!! Hot rodding was doomed! The sad thing is the prices have more to do with speculation by paper traders than an actual shortage. They told us we would all have personal helicopters by the year 2000. It's never as bad as some think and it's never as rosey as we'd all like. Remember, when they finally get converted to ethanol, global warming will wipe out the crops!
yeah....I build my own computers, rebuilt my own house, built two garages, build my own engines (including machine work now), etc. I don't know if it's cheaper, but it sure gives a sense of satisfaction that you can't get paying someone else to do it. I still have someone else harvest and process my energy sources, though.
The government makes it hard to make ethanol but the loop hole is for experimental use, personal use. You can make 10,000 gallons per year without having to be cl***ified as commercial. The hardest part of it is figuring out an effective source of energy to heat the boiler(s). I think I figured it out. A large generator will consume about 7 gallons of fuel for 12 hours of use. I could try to buy or just make a generator that will burn ethanol. The plans for a regular setup produces about 55 gallons per hour. Electric heat is the least effeciant form of heat yet in this case, it's not a bad idea. Just using electric burners hooked up to the generator and making the alcohol make it'self. Next to that, you just have to get some connections at local resturants for their food s****s or if you have a big family then you're covered for quite a bit but I think it's only 10 gallons of the good stuff for every 100 gallons of beer. So yeah, it would take a damn big family. I think I'm going to try to grow corn just for that and maybe talk to some local corn farmers and see how much I can pay for the leftovers. Man if you have the space, make your own alcohol. Biodiesel is only okay if you have a connection to get a LOT of cooking oil. That's okay when you're the only guy in your town doing it but if just three others want to do the same, you're ****ed. Not to mention the cost of it in the end seriously only saved you a small amount per gallon. Ethanol can be FREE per gallon. Seriously. If you can get your hands on the s****s or whatever to make it for nothing, like by maybe growing it yourself, and you use the alcohol to heat it'self, then you're set man! You're not drinking it so it doesn't have to be just corn. It will burn good no matter what it's made of.
With my brother, it was a '74 Toyota Hilux pickup. The car he sold? A '68 Impala SS427 4 speed. The price? $700!!!!! **** all the time being wasted on alternate fuel sources--we need to perfect the time machine. Where are Mr. Peabody and Sherman when you need them?
Yea, We've been makin ethanol for years around here. They used to call it Moonshine, guess they were ahead of their time....
I have worked offshore for sometime now......you wouldn't guess how many wells we have drilled and got ready to go......only to have to cap them off.......capping them off is keeping everything ready to go but plugging off the hole......there are hundreds if not more wells capped off in the gulf of mexico......just waiting........and there are LOTS more wells to be drilled in the gulf of mexico........after my company done a future projection they found out the wells are there but they are DEEP they are now building newer rigs that can drill......deep wells in shallow water........and compared to the gas prices to my pay........no i haven't gotten any major boost up in pay ...
I work at a nuke plant and you wouldn't believe what you have to go through to get something done. Not to mention that NO ONE wants a nuke plant in their back yard. Getting more built isn't as simple as it was 25 years ago. Thats why their aren't any new ones, the power company can't build one for a price where they can make money. Not to mention that we use more energy in gasoline than we make in electricity every year (***uming 33% efficiency for an IC engine). So what you're saying is we need to more than double the electris output of the country using a source that currently provides less than a fifth of the current production not to mention the large hurdles that need to be overcome to bring the fuel cell technology itself into economic feasiblity. Probably not going to happen.
About E85, even the Sierra Club has gotten on the bandwagon against it. http://pennsylvania.sierraclub.org/moshannon/issues_snow%20shoe_parks.htm Turns out a number of studies, including ones by the government, have show E85 to increase smog pollutants, and aid in tranferring the gasoline still in it into the groundwater. E85 transport is an issue. The current petroleum pipelines that we use in this country will not work for transporting ethanol. The alcohol is a solvent and will disolve some of the residual buildups on the pipeline walls, tainting the fuel and potentially eating through the pipelines themselves. Further, the ability for ethanol to mix with water (unlike petroleum fuel) poses a mess of problems. Ethanol is being made cheaply in Brazil from Sugar cane, We can't grow that crop easily here, and Hawaii can't support the m***ive needs the US has. Seeing as how you ferment sugars, not cellulose, you need to break down cellulose first to use any other plant crop. They're working on the catalysts to do this, but they aren't there yet. Transportation only makes up 45% of our petroleum use. Out of the transportation sector, private cars make up a considerably smaller amount, and gas guzzlers an even smaller percentage. Once you remove commercial and government vehciles, planes, trains, shipping, Boats, construction equipment, landscaping equipment (which gets it's fuel from the corner gas station) logging equipment, ambulance, fire, etc from the picture, our automotive fuel use is a drop in the bucket. Home heating oil across the country is a huge segment of oil use, as is plastics production. http://biz.yahoo.com/bizwk/060427/bw20060427493909.html?.v=1 http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050421/NEWS01/504210377/1008 http://www.taemag.com/issues/articleid.17703/article_detail.asp http://www.perc.org/perc.php?subsection=4&id=637 From the Sierra Club:
It doesn't matter if we have enough oil for 10 years or 100, it's going to run out sometime so we need to start thinking ahead. We owe it to future generations to be good stewards of our planet. Look at the Middle East...we wouldn't be there if we didn't have a huge dependence on oil. Change is gonna come, but at what price?
your right too Blair....probably not going to happen...but I wonder if we can afford Iraq and afganistan? .....how many nuclear power plants could we have built with that money? ...We can't afford not to build them...
Or maybe they need those vehicles for work and can't afford extras? Where I live we get snowed in and w/out a full size Bronco I'm stuck here for a day or 2. Yeah maybe there's a few soccer moms as you say, but a workin stiff like me sees what's on the road to the tune of a 60mi round trip daily. Not to mention that most of the newer (read that as leased) mid-size SUVs are relatively decent on fuel...most of them, not all. I can't help but read into your comment the same sentiment that I see on occaision, being the force of one's will over the rest of the population. There's a few ****s like that blocking morning traffic at 55mph in their lone and lame attempt to "save us from ourselves". Most everyone knows why oil's at an all time high along with the recorded profits. Those that don't are either in denial or have severe cranial rectosis.
There ain't no snow in Orlando, and any vehicle that gets off road here is called an "accident". I don't begrudge you or anyone who needs that type of vehicle for work. It only makes perfect sense if you haul a trailer, work offroad, live in an extreme climate, or need the capacity. But for the life of me, I cannot figure out why the guy down the street from me needs a 4x4 crew cab dually diesel with a 6" lift and lots of chrome **** hanging on it. He's an accountant and works downtown. He has a 30 minute daily commute thru traffic on the expressway. He hasn't got a boat or horse trailer. He's just "stylin". WTF, his biggest payload is a couple of bags of mulch from Home Depot. And even at that, he's lifted the truck so friggin' high that you just about need a forklift to load it. He was recently *****ing about the 9-10 mpg that beast gets in the daily commute thru traffic. And *****ing about finding a parking spot. My response to him was "tough". No sympathy from me. Personally, I really don't give a **** what he drives and I'm damn sure not going to try to legislate his choices. It's his money and there's no law that says he can't drive a Kenworth if he wants to. My point is that he *****es about the cost of fuel. Jeez, if the cost of fuel is too high to suit your sense of automotive fashion, then you need to drive something else more appropriate to your needs. You'd think an accountant could figure that out every time he drops $100 to fill that pig up.... Global warming.....better than global cooling. Another Ice Age would be worse.
Not true, if they use the enzymes made right here in NC and stop with the corn ****, it doesn't need to be corn, corn takes more work, you can use the enzyme and just about any plant matter.... Don't believe the FUD, big oil is trying to keep you ****ling on it's teet for a long time... You also end up with fertilizer as the byproduct as well...
The Jalopy Journal
