Post
You might think owning a car is easy. It isn’t
I kind of miss the time when we didn’t have to worry about the climate change. A time when we could burn anything plastic in our ovens, build our houses as if energy were free and feel a bit different ill will toward our neighbours as we do now.
See, the ill will is something that doesn’t disappear no matter what.
When I was younger we used envy our neighbours’ cars. If you bought a new one, big and expensive, everybody in the neighbourhood would think that you were a dumb yuppie. People had to consider how much they were willing to flaunt their riches. Most people didn’t to avoid rousing neighbours’ ill will.
Now, things are different. I bought my first personal car recently, about a year ago. Some people I know questioned my decision. Why on earth would you need a car, they asked. One person said she was never going to get a car and that she was thinking about giving up flying too.
For a moment I felt like the biggest criminal in society. Not only is the atmosphere filled with greenhouse gases already, I was going to pollute it some more.
Initially I’d thought that I woudn’t be driving very much. Since I’m a nature photographer, I’d only really need to drive to nature parks, distant lakes or areas most of people never visit. Those places you can’t reach by bus.
I soon realized I was actually driving more kilometers per month than my parents in combined.
I still don’t feel ok owning a car. I need it but I wish it polluted less. I have no money for hybrid or electric cars so I’m lumbered with a regular one. Plus
I still feel the ill will. No one says it aloud and it’s not all my fault but in general every car owner is considered to be guilty for the climate change.
If I had been born 20 years earlier I would have no pressure now. I would drive around with my car and feel happy.
Damn you climate change!
Comments
Haha… insightful
Life was easy back then. And that is exactly the thing with cars - if you buy them you use them much more than you planned to. Which, by the way, also goes for accordions and computers.
...and a thrilling sentence at the end. Great post!
I like your sarcastic storytelling style.
Climate change makes us give up many things, probably good momentarily. But we leave our next generation a higher chance to live in a more healthy environment.
What’s wrong? Just pay your pennance and all sins will be forgiven.
PS: Hybrid and electric cars actually consume 17-40% more energy and hence emit more CO2 than traditional combustion engines.
Mike: Do you have specific statistics on the consuming of hybrid and electric cars? I’d be interested to see them and maybe write about the subject.
Studying for exams, so all I can give you for now is this:
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Plug-In Autos are a Fraud by all Criteria
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Fake greens are claiming that electricity is a more efficient and environmentally friendly source of energy for autos than liquid fuels. The logic is that a gas motor has an efficiency of 20%, while electric motors have an efficiency of 85%. On top of that, scale is supposed to create a big savings, and an electric power plant is a million times larger than an auto engine. Fraud, fraud, fraud.
Efficiency could mean anything depending upon what is compared. There is such an ocean of alternatives that it is almost impossible to pin down a consistent meaning for efficiency.
For efficiency of an auto, the meaning is how much fuel is required to move the passengers, or maybe the whole auto—it varies. For efficiency of an electric motor, the meaning is conversion of cranking torque into electrical energy.
What really happens is this: The new natural gas electric plants will use turbines to convert the “fossil fuel” into rotational torque — the efficiency being 20-40% — not an iota better than the conversion efficiency for a modern auto engine, which could use liquefied natural gas directly. The torque from the turbine will then generate electricity, supposedly at an efficiency of 85%. The electricity will be transported on power lines at 5 million volts costing about $2-5 million per mile. On humid days, about 50% or more of the electricity will dissipate into the air and ground, because 5 million volts does that. At least four transformers are needed to get up and down in voltage. Ideally, they might have 90% efficiency. The electric motor in the auto will supposedly have 85% efficiency.
The net efficiency for electric cars is 30% for the gas turbine times 85% for the electric generator times 90% X 90% X 90% X 90% for the transformers times 85% for the electric motor in the auto, which totals 14% of the energy recovered for the electric auto. But the auto using natural gas directly would have an efficiency of 20% or more. It means electric autos are nowhere near as efficient as burning fuel directly.
Often there will be even more losses with electricity due to line-loss, additional transformers, etc. And this assumes that someone will invent the battery and it will use 120 volts, so another transformer is not needed.
Furthermore, the efficiency needs to include the increased expense of the electric vehicle, because it takes a lot of energy and resources to produce something. And then the physical plant for generating electricity and transmission lines are very expensive. The pretense that no amount of expense is too great for saving energy is a fraud. Expense is energy burned.
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Source: http://nov55.com/35mpg.html
And yes, this guy talks about everything you could think of about global warming. Please don’t waste time posting that he is a microbiologist or whatever. Take it or leave it.
Great post as usual Mike, good luck with your exams, with your wide knowledge you’ll soon have that high school diploma!
I was thinking of looking up some of them newspaper websites, but am glad I came here instead. Although glad is not quite the right word… let me just say I needed this after the incessant chatter in the media, and am grateful to you for articulating something many of us are feeling - even from distant shores.
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The cars are also one of the tools which have made our richness!
We can see a lot of persons in a small time and have informations very important!