We say France is the model and you dig up a few incidents from any country but. Meanwhile, there's this article from Scientific American (how much electricity do we get from coal?): http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste Coal Ash Is More Radioactive than Nuclear Waste By burning away all the pesky carbon and other impurities, coal power plants produce heaps of radiation
You persuaded me. I own vintage Alfa Romeos. Clearly, since I do, I should now suggest everyone does so to solve our energy problems. Brilliant. In other news - astronomers should not talk about space before they go there otherwise it is "do as I say, not as I do". That was a a bullshit statement and I suspect you know it...
I linked to the wiki article listing 10 (2nd worst) accidents. Several of them spilled directly into rivers. If France is the model, the end of humanity is near.
http://www.okobserver.net/2010/07/21/nuclear-energy-causes-global-warming/ http://www.neis.org/Campaigns/YCNGW/index.shtml http://www.ecnt.org/html/cur_climate_nulear.html http://www.sea-us.org.au/powertrip.html
Sorry, Maris, but those are chicken little links. The sky is falling! One says, "global warming is out of control!" (is it snowing near you?) One says, "we can cut CO2 by not using energy." LOL at that one. Maybe you might read your own links and use them to back something you "know" as fact.
To be expected, I suppose. The Military is not buying them that often at this point - and the UK has got their feel. This has very little to do with California specifically, however.
other than a lot of manufacturing jobs will be gone. As will be their suppliers and other related businesses. Aerospace is getting out of California. Norhrup Gruman did last year to go back east. Boeing looking to get out too. The ship is sinking.
I didn't intend to pursuade you. You were on the pulpit about the Volt, yet collect gas guzzling Italian sports cars. If you don't see the disconnect, I can't help you. As for your analogy, astronomers make a concrete commitment to space by making it their vocation. If you tell me you're an electric car engineer, I'll apologize for my comments.
It would be a nice time to buy for a long-term hold. Values won't come back in the next five years, but hold a property for a decade and you'll make out well.
There is absolutely no disconnect because there is no comparison between rarely used collector cars and commuters. I do maybe 1000 miles a year on the race track with them - which has nothing to do at all with electric vehicles. As I told you - I do not commute, but if I were, I would definitely consider an electric vehicle. If you want to bust me up for suggesting that race cars should go electric - you can try to do that, but I did not say that. It was a stupid comment before and I still stand by it - it is a stupid comment. Berating someone that does not commute for not commuting in an electric vehicle and thus having a wrong opinion on the proper way to change our commuting habits is just silly. The math does not lie - this country has less than 5% of the population of the world but it consumes a little more than 50% of the oil produced in the world. This can not continue - no matter how you try to justify it. China's oil usage is going up steadily, you can add India to the list of countries that will continue to grow their oil consumption rather rapidly. If the transportation infrastructure of this country is going to continue to be oil based - the economy is never going to recover. Given that - there are two options - go to an alternative energy source of adopt the lemmings mantra of "it's a big cliff, it must be fun to fall of it". Every person in this country consumes more than 100 times the oil that a person in China consumes, but 10 years ago - there were less than 10 million cars in China - by the end of this year there will be more than 75 million and China will have the 2nd largest car fleet on the earth - you can see where this going... oil prices are going to jump like crazy. Last I have looked - price per barrel has gone up to around $90 - which is close to what we were paying before the recession hit (it was $126 at the peak, but the average price in 2008 was $98). Honestly - there is no other alternative but to convert from oil-based transportation energy to alternative methods.
A thousand miles is still a thousand miles. If you're going to lead, lead by example. Until then, you're Al Gore.
You could say that I am leading by example. I am not commuting... I spend close to zero on commuting chores. But I am also smart enough to know that this does not work for most people... I am also smart enough to see that you are trying to move the discussion from the important and correct point I am making to something else - my personal situation, which is not relevant. This might work in politics, but it really does not make any difference in this situation because I am not trying to gain anything for myself. The facts are that me owning an electric vehicle at this point is irrelevant, especially because I am not a commuter. But, if you are asking me if I am paying attention to gas usage, I most certainly am. I never owned a giant gas guzzler, my family was never moved in a giant SUV or minivan, always in a small sedan or wagon - and when the time comes to replace my family's current mover (a small Subaru Impreza wagon) - I will most certainly look at a more efficient vehicle - and I am glad that there is investment in infrastructure to move the country to more efficient means of energy use - short of a magical oil-well in every back-yard - the way for this country to move forward is to look at an alternative energy source - and the electric grid is the most reasonable one - so California investing in it and in alternative energy - is a smart thing. Change is never easy - and that's why there is so much resistance to it - but it is inevitable. There is no way the current way we live continues if we continue doing what we are doing because it is easy - but if we do not want to find ourselves in the shit in a decade or two - we need to work to fix it - even if the steps getting there are not easy.
Getting back to the topic on hand, the only hope for California is for bankruptcy to be allowed. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/21/business/economy/21bankruptcy.html?_r=1&src=busln
That's the electric grid, so it's the same as what I was saying. The moment these are viable financially - you know you are screwed, because it means that petroleum is super-expensive. I am all for it. But it is just a temporary solution. It just moves the boiling point 25 years further down the line (which is not a bad thing) - as long as it is done while also developing the switch to the electric grid, that's great. If it is done instead of - you are just moving the problem to your kids, unfortunately. At the end of the day, I just do not see any other reasonable solution other than investing in the electric-grid and electric transportation. It just makes sense. The energy industry is the next "gold mine" of the economy. We have done the agricultural thing, done the industrial thing, we have done the computing/networking thing and they are all great and they are good and still need them - but down the line - that's where America can change the game again to it's benefit. It would be stupid not to tackle it.
Yet we're doing none of the things I wrote, all in favor of trying to force new, unproven and expensive technologies down our throat. It's like saying in the late 1800s we're deforesting the country, so no more burning wood for heat and light because Thomas Edison invested the light bulb and we found oil in Pennsylvania. Let it come on its own. Enterprising people will find solutions without the assistance of governmental subsidies, and for damn sure we don't need them to pick winners and losers.
