personally I dont plan on purchasing in the future a hybrid car now Al Gore might hate me for this lol but heres my opinion on why hybrid cars are hurting the environment...
The Car battery...what do you do with them after your battery is dead throw it away in the trash =.="? sure you save money on gas but since you cant dispose of the battery it hurts the economy in the long run
The Car battery itself will cost a lot of money from google it says its costing 2000-4000 bucks per battery change...that can buy me a lot of gas lolz ^_^ (if that number is wrong can someone correct me on that)
I dont buy into the whole going green inconvenient truth the world will flood over....Al Gore says that the C02 causes our temperature to go up when in fact expert climatologists found out that it is the temperature that effects C02 shown in this video...
anyways if this topic was posted already im sorry for not finding it
Why hybrid cars are hurting the environment? You mean to say that the disposal of car batteries is worse for the environment than all the extra emissions from using gasoline all the time you spend sitting in the city going 15mph?
Now I agree that hybrids are not the ultimate solution, but they are a hell of a lot better than getting 5mpg driving that hummer around town.
Why hybrid cars are hurting the environment? You mean to say that the disposal of car batteries is worse for the environment than all the extra emissions from using gasoline all the time you spend sitting in the city going 15mph?
Now I agree that hybrids are not the ultimate solution, but they are a hell of a lot better than getting 5mpg driving that hummer around town.
Considering the extremely caustic chemicals that go into producing a car battery, they're not really that much better. Add to that that there's no way to truly dispose of car batteries (not the case for CO2), and hybrids are about as bad as regular gas combustion-engine cars.
Considering the extremely caustic chemicals that go into producing a car battery, they're not really that much better. Add to that that there's no way to truly dispose of car batteries (not the case for CO2), and hybrids are about as bad as regular gas combustion-engine cars.
Posts: 5,121
Join Date: May 2006
Location: MS, USA
06-03-2008, 08:03 PM
Hybrids are nice to drive around your neighborhood. But think about it, you gotta plug it in your house to charge it. Now you're paying an electric bill instead of a gas bill.
Anyways, Hydrogen cells are the only ones showing ANY promise. I hope the Japanese companies really show up the Americans, I wanna see Americans cry at high oil prices while Japan rides out gleefully without worry.
I think you're thinking straight electric. As far as I know, the hybrids get their electrics mostly from the alternator, like most cars, with batteries for a backup. And don't you have to drive a certain way to keep it up anyway? I seem to remember something like that, that if you drove it in the city, with the stop and go traffic, it wouldn't activate the electrics. Could be wrong.
And the Japanese have really got a hydrogen fuel cell going? Haven't heard about those in a long while, and last I did, they weren't working well. If they can get them going, though, that would be ideal. Probably the cleanest overall way of running cars.
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Location: USA
IGN: MozerataBP
Server: Demian
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06-05-2008, 04:04 PM
Well, personally I think that the cause for Global Warming could be many things, but here is one that I rarely see anyone mention.
In the 70's CFC's (chlorofluorocarbons) were widely used in refrigerators and spray canisters. CFC's were discovered to break apart ozone molecules in the stratosphere.
CFC molecules take 10-20 years to break down. One CFC molecule can break down 100,000 Ozone molecules.
Also in the United States we do not have very good transportation systems such as bussing, and trains. Americans also tend to drive more because of this.
Well, personally I think that the cause for Global Warming could be many things, but here is one that I rarely see anyone mention.
In the 70's CFC's (chlorofluorocarbons) were widely used in refrigerators and spray canisters. CFC's were discovered to break apart ozone molecules in the stratosphere.
CFC molecules take 10-20 years to break down. One CFC molecule can break down 100,000 Ozone molecules.
Also in the United States we do not have very good transportation systems such as bussing, and trains. Americans also tend to drive more because of this.
Ozone actually serves to trap heat. Smog in many cities, or haze, is substantially high in ozone. So, the CFC theory might be correct if you're intimating that the increase in O3 is increasing temps. However, I think that O3 isn't playing as big a part in the increase in temperature as it is in screening out harmful wavelengths of light.
U.S. doesn't have good public transport, mainly because most of our towns build after 1950 were built by rich, car-owning people, who fully expected oil to last forever, and had no clue about the fumes let out by cars. To be fully fair, the fumes from cars were small potatoes compared to the coal burned for fuel before that, which caused major pollution, to the point it actually killed, in London and other early industrialized cities.
So, anyway, yeah. Rich Americans wanted more land, as, really, everyone does, and they could afford it. So, they built houses with large yards, away from towns with their bustle and noise, and American life came to be dependent on the car. Oops.
Ozone actually serves to trap heat. Smog in many cities, or haze, is substantially high in ozone. So, the CFC theory might be correct if you're intimating that the increase in O3 is increasing temps. However, I think that O3 isn't playing as big a part in the increase in temperature as it is in screening out harmful wavelengths of light.
U.S. doesn't have good public transport, mainly because most of our towns build after 1950 were built by rich, car-owning people, who fully expected oil to last forever, and had no clue about the fumes let out by cars. To be fully fair, the fumes from cars were small potatoes compared to the coal burned for fuel before that, which caused major pollution, to the point it actually killed, in London and other early industrialized cities.
So, anyway, yeah. Rich Americans wanted more land, as, really, everyone does, and they could afford it. So, they built houses with large yards, away from towns with their bustle and noise, and American life came to be dependent on the car. Oops.
I may be wrong, but didn't a car company (General Motors?) actually purchase the train infrastructure in a major city just so they could dismantle it and force people to buy cars?
I may be wrong, but didn't a car company (General Motors?) actually purchase the train infrastructure in a major city just so they could dismantle it and force people to buy cars?
Probably. I do know that they (car companies) were pretty instrumental in getting the highway system put together, and that even without help, public transport was being pushed aside because the car was sexier and more powerful than taking a bus, and, America being at the time the richest place on Earth, everyone who wasn't a minority could get one.
Hybrid Cars are inefficient, and does not change the fact that mankind is using up the earth's natural resources. You can't say growing corns all over the planet will not cause any drastic changes on the condition of the planet... No, the solution is not hybrid cars that use ethanol, but still uses fossil fuels. This will only cut down on Gasoline usage and it'll be many years before EVERYONE converts to Hybrid Cars... Hopefully the earth's resources aren't dried up by then.
The answer to this "global warning" is probably the use of resources that don't dry up.
Water>>Hydrogen is NOT the answer to that because then, we are making our car run with the resources that we truly need: Water. Same thing as ethanol where we are using up precious, fertile land to grow toxic plant needed to run cars. That amount of land can be used to regrow severed trees, to recultivate real corns into the ground, and to give it to the hungry individuals across the globe.
Now, you're probably thinking: "Well, by using hydrogen, we only let out water! So in the end, we are not using any resources at all!" That may be true, but where would the water be? Certainly not in large reserves! No, water will be scattered across the country, probably dehydrated into the air or soaked into the ground. Do you think we have the technology to concentrate mass areas of water vapor into drinkable water? Not at the moment, and certainly not in 10 years where gas prices cost as much as diamonds.
How about solar? Wouldn't that be more efficient? Obviously since its a resource we are not using directly, and there is too much of it on this planet anyway! The answer to global warming is not to reduce heat, but to make use of it! Nyah-Nyah-Nyah!
Oh, and if you read all that, you can add a couple of points to your AR list. lol
Isn't that sort of what happens to water now? Call me crazy, but I seem to remember a little thing called rain.
Seems it's a much more noble pursuit than gas-burning hybrids, at least, or using ethanol. At least until cellulotic ethanol is perfected.
The problem with energy is two-fold. Firstly, any large-output energies involve large amounts of heat, which almost invariably comes from burning something. Things such as hydrogen power or ethanol are produced using power that most likely comes from burn fossil fuels or woods (hydrogen is pulled out of water by electrocuting the water, splitting the molecules into their component atoms, hydrogen and oxygen, and ethanol needs to be processed using more energy than we can derive from it), or from using nuclear fuels, which, while better than gas or coal, still aren't that wonderful (no immediate output of pollutants, but an eventual production of nuclear waste).
Two, the passive forms of energy production, wind, water and solar, just don't make enough energy yet to provide for the needs of developed and developing countries. At the moment, I believe about 90% or so of the energy that goes into running the millions of servers that make up the internet and various intranets is used to cool the servers, not to run them. Not sure of the exact number, but I do know that it's quite a bit more to cool than it is to run.
So, in the end, until solar, hydro, geothermal and wind power production can be made vastly more efficient and productive, we'll be best off with a hybrid power structure, really. Burn as little as possible, and rely on nuclear and "renewables".
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Server: Mushpoie
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07-07-2008, 02:58 AM
Hmm i thought we were talking about Solar Cars not other items such as servers. I know for a fact that Solar powered cars are up to supporting themselves and going at the rate of a standard car. Last years World Solar Challenge was to create a Solar Powered Car that looked pretty much like a normal car. However I imagine that there may be a few issues for those countries where it is not light outside a lot (Eg. It rains a lot in England, Other countries theres only a few hours of sun in a day at particular times of the year, etc etc).
Gasoline hurts the planet. That's a fact. Now the new 'Hybrid car fuel', is Ethanol. As most of you know, this stuff doesn't hurt the planet. Ethanol is made with corn. The process of making Ethanol, requires burning the corn's roots. This process realeses natural gases stored in the corn, which also, hurt the Ozone layer. It's all relative, they both hurt the planet, it's just using hybrid cars will hurt it less. until we don't find a way to power our cars with salty water, our planet will die.
Actually, unless you do a lot of highway driving, you're just using the gas-burning parts of the engine anyway. Now, toss in that hybrids are expensive, and the better-paying jobs are in cities, and, well, you get the picture.
By the way, I do have to lol at everyone thinking gasoline is this horrible, man-made plauge. You all do know it's just made out of millions-of-years-old plants, right? Fundamentally the same as ethanol, just with a lot less aging time.
06-03-2008, 03:29 PM
^^
Nyah-Nyah-Nyah!
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