With all that’s going on at the moment, especially in terms of oil production, global warming, ice sheets melting etc etc etc, just wondering what people’s views are.
What do you think it will take to make mankind more eco friendly? Has everyone seem the day after tomorrow? Does everything that’s going on make you think about being more eco friendly? Would you buy a dual fuel car? Will using gas rather than coal help things? etc etc.
On a personal note, I’m scared. I think things will kick off earlier than people think, and believe that countries should start cracking down on CO2 levels now. I would now even consider buying a dual fual car. either gas/petrol or electric/petrol. I think fuel cell technology for cars will be too late as there is not enough money spent on it to make it a commercially viable option to fossil fuels.
I agree in part with the idea of more nuclear power, however I doubt fully that mankind knows how to dispose of or keep safe the nuclear waste that they generate. Not trying to be pessimistic, but I don’t see a bright rosy future for the near term.
I think we can do much more than we do now, without significantly impacting the way we live.
Take recycling, this could and should be a whole lot easier than it is now. In Swindon, they only collect paper from home. What about the rest? Ok, you can take it down to a recycling point, but they are all arranged in such a manner that you can’t quickly dispose of recycled matter. And far too often they’re not emptied prompty after filling so you either take it home again, or dump it by the side where it takes someome else’s effort to move later. Plastics are hardly considered.
I’d use a car regardless of it’s fuel type, providing it is practical and cost effective. I don’t see current production alternative fuels as being worth switching to.
I’d like to make driving itself more efficient. I’d like to see a redeisgn of the driving test system to account for real world driving. Also retesting say every 4 years. This will hopefully get rid of the brain dead that passed their test centuries ago and are still driving at 2mph. Also, I’d bring in a law making flex time mandatory in professions where working at the same time is not a critical requirement. So production line workers would not get it, but those in general office roles would. This would help spread the load of traffic and dilute the “rush hour”. Less cars stationary = better efficiency.
Apart from the nimby factor, I can’t see any reason not to have lots more nuclear power stations, and ditch the fossil ones. So called renewable sources I’m not sure about. In comparison, they’re much less energy dense and I’m not sure they’re as cost effective as they’re made out to be. It’s a lot of resource to build for relatively small returns. If you haven’t got room for a nuclear power station or few, there’s not much chance of fitting a wind farm. Sticking them out at sea may be ok, but I’m sure that will make the costs even more horrific.
Oh, one thing I would do is to make houses LESS heat retaining. I put it to you that as things get warmer, the costs of air con in summer will go up and heating in winter will go down. We can’t be far off when summer aircon related costs will outstrip winter heating. I’m probably beyond that stage already, as I ran an aircon unit on average maybe 2 days out of 5 this summer, and last winter I never turned on the heating.
The only non-energy efficient electrical items in my house are the pc’s that run 24/7. The fridge and freezer were expensive category A, as is the washing machine.
We have a recycling pickup every fortnight, although I tend to end up having to empty the tidgy bin we are given at least twice in that period.
Glass recycling of beer and wine bottles gets done weekly (did you expect anything less)
I would love to be able to afford the dual fuel, petrol/fuel cell cars, but think a lot of things need to happen countrywide to many areas before this could be reality.
I do agree though, the climate is already changing, I was the same as you Mackeral, no heating this winter (ours was broken anyway), and a load of desk fans this summer :nod:
Well it sounds as if we are farther ahead on the recycler regime. We have seperate collection contaier for clear glass, plastics, cardboard, and newspapers. The city uses the funds from the collection of these items to defray the landfill costs on the rest of out trash collection. We still pay for trash collection but ourcity has what I consider a very low rate for refuse @ about $10 a month for weekly collection.
As fgar as fuel cell technology goes, it is really ready. I saw a program on Discovery a couple weeks agao. that showed a GM car fully equipt with fuel cell. More than likely the prefered alternative fuel is going to be hydrogen, as it produces sufficent power, can be stored as a hydride, and ultimately the cleanest burning of all the fuels. It could be used today if the production and distribution network was in place.
Compessed gas cars (propane and CNG) are making some inroads here, lots of fleet vehicles like buses, taxis and airport shuttle vans are now all on CNG. Why, because the airport/city made an effort to put a fueling station in there.
I think in the next 10 years great strides will be made in the adoption alternative fuel tecnologies, It is really a Catch22, the car makers want to go CNG or something similar but until the profit is there to place fueling stations everywhere they can’t sell a car with CNG, but there is no reason to put fueling staions out there until there is a reasonable number of cars running on CNG.
As far as AC usage! :eek: :scared: :eek: it has been under load since April.
I can hardly lay claim to energy efficiency, as despite driving a modern diesel car, I also have a 20mpg Citroen (it does 50 on oil tho!) and until next week, a 5.7 litre 1.5 tonne sixties mustang. :uhh:
I went through a phase of buying those “Energy efficent” lightbulbs.
They seem to be self defeating, as with most of them inside a year they only glow dimly on startup, so you end up leaving them on longer.
For instance, when I get up in the morning the first thing I do is turn the bathroom light on. This is to when I want to put my contact lenses in 30 minutes later, theres enough light to see by. If I used a regular 60w filament bulb, it would only be on when I was in the room.
Other non-patented ideas from O’Borgs Big Book of Blathering :
Trucks. They need a huge, diesel guzzling engine and a big, unaerodynamic box body to haul 32 tonnes of cargo around. And there’s no practical way to do away with them.
However, while trucks get zero point buggerall MPG when crawling along in traffic jams, once they get shifting along at 60mph they’re not bad as far as fuel efficency for their load goes. The solution is to design the road system so neccessary HGVs can get from A to B at their best speed. So let them use Bus Lanes, like that deserted one on the M4 that Jeremy Clarkson takes the P out of on a regular basis. Or widen the motorways by a lane and let the HGVs only use the inside lane. The government can stick up cameras and prosecute anyone in a car who decides to go into the HGV lane.
It may be a catch-22 commercial money driven decision, but I think what’s at risk is above making a profit. Plus putting in infrastructure means more CNG cars will be bought, as oil prices go up, more will be sold, and it starts a whole sales cycle. But without the infrastructure in place it can’t happen. It’s looking for short sighted profits that stifles this kind of progress. And it’s this kind of thinking that will exacerbate our current climate problems in my opinion.
I read somewhere, probably another internet forum (so it must be true…) that there’s plenty of gas/oil left in the world, it’s just not as easy to get at as the stuff you can pump out of the ground.
Biodiesel is my vote for the near future, until the advent of hydrogen powercells or micro fusion reactors. Diesels are currently the most practical and fuel efficient engine for a small vehicle, and biodiesel can be made from recycled chip fat or other vegetable oils. It’s a renewable resource that just requires land to grow crops.
Once the middle east runs dry, there’s all that desert just begging for an intensive irrigation program.
Its not as bad as everybody thinks. We haven’t come out of the last ice age yet!
And as for pollution, our individual efforts wont make a blind bit of difference. If industrial America won’t change…
There is more oil under teh surface than you can fathom…all teh dead plant and animal life since forever is now oil, thats a lot. it will just become extremly difficult and expensive to get at. things will have to change, due to basic economics.
(did you expect anything less)