Found a new line of work suited for Mr. TK

[MoeMag]

I wonder how far a cart could get off my 92/45

[angrysasquatch]

"... whereas carbon fibre just splits"

riight...

The thing all these ideas don't take into account is that the energy doesn't simply become free once we move off fossil fuels. It comes from your gas, coal, nuclear or oil-fired power plant. If we somehow were able to perfect one of these designs and have one in our garages tomorrow, the current infrastructure simply couldn't handle it and nobody could use their new electric or compressed air from electricity cars. Electricity runs off the same dirty fossil fuels we use in our cars now, so what is the net benefit? A complete redesign of cars, a bunch of batteries needing to be built employing very very nasty chemicals and byproducts to make? No thanks.


A note- renewable energies are such a tiny portion of total production, I didn't mention them. Either way, there is NO such thing as energy for free, period, end of story. Sure, wind turbines take energy that came from the sun a just a few minutes ago, but has anybody stopped to think what would happen if we were to put up tons of turbines? The climate depends on the winds, if you decrease them, it's stupid to think that everything else would stay constant. It's not like wind energy just disappears into thin air, having no effect whatsoever on the earth.

The only solution where we don't shoot ourselves in the foot (other than wasting less energy) is to put huge solar arrays in space, that don't cast a shadow on the earth. Every other way of gathering energy has some unwanted side effect. Or using the most efficient collector of solar energy, trees, and basically farm them to power steam engines.

/rant

[MoeMag]

so what is the net benefit?

Burning Dirty american coal from american coal mines with american workers is WAY better in my book than making some :Blank: Arabs rich.

We would figure something else out pretty fast if we became dependant upon the electric grid.

[KevinA]

I applaud those who want to get the alternative fuel cars, and vehicles not powered by combustion. That just means I can get a Camaro for cheaper, and well, there will be far less people buying gas, so that beast won't be ravaging my pocket much at all...

[Hilltop Customs]

[angrysasquatch]

Nuclear is not the answer. That just passes the responsibility down a few generations, when our planet is covered in spent fuel rods. Sure, it's awful convenient to ditch our current global warming woes, but it is going to cost many, many times more than its fossil fuel counterpart to store until kingdom come. Plus, you think the terrorists have too many weapons at their disposal now, wait till a massive influx of spent rods start dotting the globe. Can you say "dirty bomb"?

Charred planet sounds marginally better than nuclear wasteland.

[MANN]

Charred planet sounds marginally better than nuclear wasteland.

Just be glad that we are not alone. The temperature on other planets has been increasing also. The way I look at it is that the martians are using too much gas . Either that or we are sending them our CO2

[Hilltop Customs]

Nuclear is not the answer. That just passes the responsibility down a few generations, when our planet is covered in spent fuel rods. Sure, it's awful convenient to ditch our current global warming woes, but it is going to cost many, many times more than its fossil fuel counterpart to store until kingdom come. Plus, you think the terrorists have too many weapons at their disposal now, wait till a massive influx of spent rods start dotting the globe. Can you say "dirty bomb"?

Charred planet sounds marginally better than nuclear wasteland.

Nuclear does come with the responsibility of properly disposing of spent fuel rods....but isnt that why we are spending billions of dollars at yucka mountain? IMO nuclear is much cleaner, your left with a soild waste that can be delt with, compared with airbore waste that no matter how much filtering you are still releasing contaminates into the atmosphere. People are afraid of nuclear power....IMO thats a good thing, it forces the government to take exteremly safe steps in the disposal of materials. Now when other countries that are not regulated start to utilize nuclear power, I will be more worried about proper disposal.

As for terrorists getting ahold of waste and creating a dirty bomb...I'm not concerned about that at all. Constantly being afraid of terrorists is a extremely overused excuse for all kinds of things. Yes occasionally some stupid extremist will use their resourses and intellegence to cause terror, but overall it does not change day to day life. We are luckly people smart enough to come up with ideas that could really cause terror have enough reason not to. Yes 9/11 was horrible, and a huge number of people lost their lives......but compare that to say contamination of the bread belts water supply, where millions could die of hunger because of the effects on the agriculture industry.

Honestly I'm less concerned with global warming, and more concerned with when oil reservers run low.....Unlike global warming there is no doubting that we have a limited supply of fossil fuels....eventually wells run dry....probably not in our life times, and thats why no one cares about any of this(global warming or fuels) Not to mention were less likely to kill each other over rising temps, but we will surely kill each other when fossil fuels are depeleting.

[angrysasquatch]

Nuclear does come with the responsibility of properly disposing of spent fuel rods....but isnt that why we are spending billions of dollars at yucka mountain? IMO nuclear is much cleaner, your left with a soild waste that can be delt with, compared with airbore waste that no matter how much filtering you are still releasing contaminates into the atmosphere. People are afraid of nuclear power....IMO thats a good thing, it forces the government to take exteremly safe steps in the disposal of materials. Now when other countries that are not regulated start to utilize nuclear power, I will be more worried about proper disposal.

As for terrorists getting ahold of waste and creating a dirty bomb...I'm not concerned about that at all. Constantly being afraid of terrorists is a extremely overused excuse for all kinds of things. Yes occasionally some stupid extremist will use their resourses and intellegence to cause terror, but overall it does not change day to day life. We are luckly people smart enough to come up with ideas that could really cause terror have enough reason not to. Yes 9/11 was horrible, and a huge number of people lost their lives......but compare that to say contamination of the bread belts water supply, where millions could die of hunger because of the effects on the agriculture industry.

Honestly I'm less concerned with global warming, and more concerned with when oil reservers run low.....Unlike global warming there is no doubting that we have a limited supply of fossil fuels....eventually wells run dry....probably not in our life times, and thats why no one cares about any of this(global warming or fuels) Not to mention were less likely to kill each other over rising temps, but we will surely kill each other when fossil fuels are depeleting.

Yes, the Yuka mtn. project will be able to hold a huge amount of waste, but that's in today's terms. If we start making a lot more nuclear plants (2 or 3x), then that's simply not enough. Plus, it isn't exactly disposed of, just temporarily stored. I believe the half-life is on the order of tens of thousands of years, and the containers we use last 100 if we're lucky. So, the cost of nuclear power is not only the material going in, but thousands of container changes and thousands of new containers. The true cost adds up pretty quickly. And if you plant enough trees, they'll clean the air right up.

I'm actually kind of pleased we're running out of oil. That means that we'll run out of fuel before we bake ourselves. Just one positive to consider in a sea of negatives.

[teufelhunden]

I'm actually kind of pleased we're running out of oil. That means that we'll run out of fuel before we bake ourselves. Just one positive to consider in a sea of negatives.

We'd all be dead before we actually run out of fuel. Well, probably everybody not on our side. And a lot of us.




I'd rather see nuclear fuel over anything else, because aside from the disposal issue, it's cleaner, more efficient, less environmental effect, and more developed. And (haha, kind of), I dealt with the disposal issue! Pick a random vector in space that isn't going to go near anything we care about, put the fuel on a rocket, shoot it bye bye. Expensive, but I bet you could get a decent amount of spent nuke fuel on there.

[Hilltop Customs]

haha, i was thinking the same thing.....we have plenty of rockets, so it would only be expensive retrofitting the rockets. I think I would shoot it into the sun....or onto some baking planet like mercury....It would be better somewhere other than just floating around in space.

I doubt the public would allow it though.....well maybe if they knew of the cost differences and safety precautions used for shooting the rocket up. I wonder how safe it could be given there is a limited weight limit on a rocket....

If there was a easy way to dispose of nuclear waste, we could create a ton of new neclear plants and be prepared to use these air powered, or straight electric vehicles.....and best of all everyones monthly electric bill would be slightly more(using more power for vehicles), but it would still be less than what your paying now for electric and gas combined.

talk about killing 2 birds with one stone....gas and coal, in one shot.




and why it wont happen, people are stupid, they still are afraid of nuclear power. No one wants a nuclear plant in their area(this includes local governing bodies). So it is harder to find land that is acceptable, and because of that no one tries to push new plants. There is more reasons than just that, but I think this is the one that is really holding nuclear power back.

not to mention it would DEMOLISH a major part of our economies infrastructure....

[pyrodragon]

in the future i could see us driving nuclear powered cars. they already have subs and ships so why not?

[questionful]

Why not? Well. . . nuclear waste. Sorry, I know it's a bummer.

Of course the argument always comes up that when you "just plug it in," the power is coming from the same ol' polluting powerplants. And that our power grids can't take it. Now, I don't know much about energy (especially electricity ), but I'm sure if instead of having hundreds of millions of cheap gasoline motors running around, you had just a few hundred BIG, EXPENSIVE, EFFICIENT power plants, you would have a more efficient system once you take everything into account.

What would be awesome is a steam engine that ran of ocean water and ran into an underground geothermal thingy. And then you could turn the water into drinking water too! Maybe cure aids and cancer while you're at it?