Just watched a program on TV about Alaska and the effects climate change is having on the wildlife there. Still beating the global warming drum, these folks are, and there is no doubt in my mind that the climate is changing. There is lots and lots of photographic evidence of where glaciers have melted. Whole valleys that 50 or 100 years ago were full of ice that are now down to bare rock. Can’t argue that, it is obvious that its gone. What gets me is that all these scientists are saying that every single person on earth contributes to global warming, so every single person has to contribute to fixing it.
Ok, so what would they have us do? I agree that we all waste a lot of energy and water. We can make conscious efforts to turn off lights, not leave the water running while we brush our teeth, etc. That will make us aware of the problem, but it won’t fix it. “Stop driving those polluting SUV’s!”….Ok, what do you do with it? Trade it in for what…a Prius? Manufacturing the battery bank for one hybrid or “all electric” car does far more damage to the environment than a full size pickup will do burning gasoline or diesel over its lifetime, but you never hear about that. You will never see any serious push by government entities to switch to an alternate “clean” fuel until a reliable way can be established to tax it. What? What does that have to do with anything you say? Think about it folks…the biggest portion of the price of a gallon of gasoline is the various city, county, state, and federal taxes. Until a method comes along to tax cars by the miles they are driven, governments are not going to give up their cash cow. Think about the economic impact it would have if someone came up with a little black box you could attach under the hood and instantly double the fuel economy of any engine. That would be great, right? Except that it would have the instant effect of cutting tax revenue generated by “per gallon” sales in half as well. Who cares, right? Just be that much less that the politicians can’t waste or steal. Sorry folks, it don’t work that way. They will continue to waste and steal, but you won’t get your roads built and maintained, they’ll have to cut back on traffic safety programs and even fire and police protection. Everything that lives off these tax revenues will suffer, except the waste and theft.
Back to the point of this bit however…what to do about climate change. Do we suddenly reject all technology, go back to subsistence farming and hunting and gathering? Some of us can do that, but billions of people will starve trying to live that way. Inner city folks can’t farm, and there’s nothing to hunt or gather, so that won’t work. Most of us can’t live within walking distance of where we work. Round here, and throughout most of the south, public transportation is limited, so that’s out. Agriculture makes up a big part of the south’s economy, as well as the Midwest and western states. That means trucks, tractors and other large equipment. Farmers are just like everyone else…it makes no sense to have a several special purpose vehicles. You know, a truck to use on the farm, but a little bitty car to run to town in. You buy one pickup truck that will do it all. We all gotta have heat in the winter, and most of us think that air conditioning in summer is a necessity. So what do we do? The inner city folks are dependent on the farmers for food, so that means lots of trucks to bring food to the stores, and cars to get to the stores. And of course, they will have to have jobs in offices and factories to make the money to pay for the food, so they are pretty well stuck. These offices and factories will use lights and water and all sorts of chemicals and things, so what do we do?
You can’t let people starve to death. Can we be more conservative? Sure, we can and should. Can we all just give up modern life and go back to being cavemen? Of course not. Wouldn’t even if we could. We got all sorts of folks pointing out the problem. How about some real solutions?
"Manufacturing the battery bank for one hybrid or “all electric” car does far more damage to the environment than a full size pickup will do burning gasoline or diesel over its lifetime..."
ReplyDeleteIs that true? Do you have a source? If so, it would make your argument more sound to include it as a link in your post. If you have a cited source, I'd like to read it.
Actually the source for that comment was me. And no, I don't have any actual facts to back it up, just an application of common sense to how my limited knowledge of how these things are made. You made mention of two articles in your blog that have opposing points of view. Both make valid and interesting points, and below I offer a few of my own. (The following is a copy and paste from the comment I left on your blog.)
ReplyDeleteThe TreeHugger article is interesting and I don't dispute the information in it with one exception. It concentrates on lithium-ion batteries and those are used mainly in full electric and "plug-in" hybrids and there just aren't that many on the roads. The Prius and other popular gas-electric hybrids use a nickel metal hydride battery pack, not lithium-ion. Nickel mining has been linked to all sorts of ailments in humans and to any number of environmental problems from fish kills to acid rain. Toyota has recently announced a lithium-ion plug in version of the Prius will become available some time in the future, but it has yet to go into production. The eHow article make mention of the tremendous amounts of engery consumed by mining and processing these materials, but neither article explores the logistics of it all. The mining equipment consumes an enormous amount of engergy, as does the refining process. This is true whether the metal is lithium or nickel. That energy is in the form of diesel, gasoline, and electricity. It also takes a lot of energy (trucks, forklifts, cranes, railcars, ships) to get from the mine to the refinery. Once the metal is refined, it gets moved to the factories that make the batteries. More trucks, ships, rail cars, cranes, forklifts, etc. That factory uses lots of energy as well, but now we have to package these batteries so that they can be shipped safely. That creates a demand for cardboard, plastic and wooden crates, and all sorts of energy is used to produce and ship these to the battery factory. Once crated, they then are shipped to various warehouses around the world until needed, when they get shipped again to where ever they are installed. Then if you think about it further, there is is even more energy consumed to haul away the waste products from each stage of this process. The amount diesel exhaust alone would give Al Gore nightmares. If you then add the engergy and materials consumed to make the equipment necessary to produce and ship these batteries it just gets worse. And for what?...a car that gets 5-15 more miles per gallon than its gasoline powered counterpart? Not to mention that a diesel version of that same car would get about the same mileage as the hybrid.
A more in-depth look at hybrids, gas mileage and such things will be along in a future edition of this blog. Stay tuned, you won't want to miss it.