As daft as this question is, I’m glad it was asked. Except they totally said ‘global’ first didn’t they.
Well, the addition of a single word would have made the question more incisive:
Because the answer to that may obviously be no, but at least you’d be able to point out a few things about how a global climate issue change affects different local areas:
That hole in the ozone above Aus and NZ plays a big role in Australia having the highest rates of skin cancer and skin cancer mortality in the world
The Maldives are like max 3m above sea level. They’ll completely vanish in 30 years if a tsunami hasn’t already wiped it out.
ELECTRICITY SHOULD NEVER TAKE OEVER 100% AS THE MEANS OF POWERING TRANSPORT
When your cars share the same power source as your home, our insatiable demand for electricity will only go up. As our lives get more and electrified, making things more efficient with electric use will do nothing when we’re using more of those electric devices? And what happens if suddenly the power grid is somehow sabotaged or damaged? Not only will your communications and conveniences be incapacitated, your means of transport will.
I am a firm believer in that society should never be dependent on only one resource.
Why? Currently the issue is that fossil fuels are being used at such a rate that they will run out in a short time. If even just a good portion of the population switches to electric cars, mainly the city commuters and freight for example, we can reduce usage to make them last so much longer.
Global warming is not an issue we can tackle by simply switching off fossil fuels.
Just to add in a sec, I see some owners of Tesla’s carry around a backup generator so they can charge it at least a little bit to not leave them stranded.
Well designed nuclear reactors are perfectly safe, which is why I am sad that they have such a bad rep, considering they would probably be the best alternative for clean-ish energy while the other stuff gets cheaper.
Coal is just horrible though. The new gen stuff isn’t as bad as the older stuff, but it still creates tons of particulates and other nasty stuff. If you want to make power by burning something combined cycle natural gas is much better both in terms of cleanliness and efficiency.
Just to butt a little, here in Brazil we use ethanol as a normal fuel, most cars and a lot of bikes are flex fuel (can use any mix of gasoline and ethanol). A ethanol vehicle has a lot less emissions because it is made from sugar cane.
And some scientists already produced pure ethanol from CO2, with around 62% efficiency in a relatively cheap way.
So in my opinion, ethanol is the future of cars, just need to mix it with Mazda SkyActiv technology and it’s done.
Eletric car depends on the eletrical power plant of the country to be interesting, and in most countries it isn’t. Hybrids are just a bad joke, the worst of the two worlds.
In the US, we’ve been steadily improving the “cleanliness” of coal since before the Clean Air Act in 1970.
In fact, we’ve actually surpassed the reduction goals for NOx emissions.
Read more in this report from the Institute for Energy Research PDF Report
The US is the “Saudi Arabia” of coal, so why would we Not use it?
The means by which one is extracting coal nowadays, however, is a greater concern still. Fracking ain’t kind to the land.
Side note: even being a Greenie, I think their partisan anti-nuclear stance goes too far. I’m all for solar and wind and hydroelectric. I don’t know if it’s enough.
Am I seriously the only one who considers steam relevant? Any fuel could be used to boil water, and the emissions from the steam engine itself are just lots and lots of hot water vapor. You could use literally any fuel to boil water, which leaves plenty of possible relevant renewable fuels to use.
Would steam powered cars be able to keep up with traffic?
Also this could work better now as we would have the electronics to automatically open pressure valves meaning that clueless people don’t accidentally detonate themselves
The use of any fuel as well would make it the most renewable source of transport
I see no reason why they wouldn’t be able to keep up with traffic. Let’s face it, transmissions could make up for it if they spin too slow, or too fast. No one says you have to run direct drive, after all.
It’s why I brought up steam engines in the first place, because they can run on any fuel that can boil water. Sure, you need a reasonable amount of heat to really get a good bunch of steam going, but I figure, you run a water tank, an on-demand one gallon boiler, and a steam engine fed by that boiler, you’d likely have a car that could run rather well.
The biggest difficulty to have to work around is that water, and by extension steam, is not a lubricant, so you’d need to have an oiling system designed to splash the pistons with lubrication or they’re going to scratch the living hell out of the cylinder walls. Modern metal-working is better than the cast iron behemoths of the past, with better tolerances and structural integrity. If we can harness thousands of explosions per minute for propulsion, surely we could make an engine that handles the expected forces of expanding steam.
I just feel the market wont accept steam cars. For one it will take time to actually get it started since the water needs to be heated up to boiling which takes time, which is an inconvenience. Also I feel there might be the idea that steam is “old” technology, and people are more interested in something new, and modern.
Those of you who are promoting electric cars; How will they be charged?
Calculate how many cars there is in a large city, then look up how much it takes to charge
that number of electric cars, daily. Then look up how much “extra” current power generation in the area has.
I wonder if 1 new nuke plant per 100000 cars will be enough.
