New Book Calls Out 'Greenwashing' of Electric Cars

[Epidemic]

Ummmm how much more slowly would I have to read your post to see the things you did not write???


this was not in evidence at the time of my post

The Stealth gets over 30 mpg @ 75 mph. And 25 MPG @ 90 mph.

The best the Maxima can is 27 mpg.

[MegalosSkylaki]

Let me look at complexity from two perspectives:

First who people and Societies manage to survive or manage to run themselves into the ground.

The second--which I regard as also illustrative regards the growing argument regarding "Peak Oil", which may very well be our chopping down the trees on Easter Island to build the statues till we can't grow any food food and eat each other. The Maya also burned their trees into hot-burning charcoal to make the plaster to show their exploits til there were no food left , let alone exploits and they vanished into the forests that remained.

What this means is --and I've seen different dates given by different "authorities" is that the peak production of Oil has been reached or has passed and all the low hanging fruit has been plucked and on the far side of the Peak Oil slope it becomes harder and harder --more costly and technologically complex--to pluck the "high hanging fruit" i.e. extract the remaining Oil once the majority of reserves (half-way point) have be extracted.

We run into a wall of complexity and in NY State it was decided to allow fracking but only in relatively less-populated areas, as if the "less people" could be sacrificed for the "more people". These technological solutions invoving turning fresh water into waste are also being used in Canada with Shale and the Dakotas.



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Jared Diamond’s Collapse traces the fates of societies to their treatment of the environment | Grist


MegalosSkylaki

[Epidemic]

Passing peak oil is not a problem. When the cost of production rises then alternatives will look more attractive.

Unlike easter island there are alternatives they just suck compared with the present methods.

The only argument against oil is if the CO2 causes catastrophic problems, or if the price rises too high. As for fracking, NY should allow fracking only in industrial areas and populated areas. Ground water is not used for drinking nor is surface water in the urban areas.

Fracking in upstate new york will cause the water supply for both the non populated and populated areas to be polluted if there is a problem.


I don't know if there are any serious air pollution concerns associated with fracking so I don't know if that would be a problem for urban areas.

[tony_j15]

Passing peak oil is not a problem. When the cost of production rises then alternatives will look more attractive.

Actually, it's a huge problem. We have no developed alternatives that can take the place of a oil-driven society overnight. We have a bunch of tech in development, but everything about America is based on cheaply available oil. The cold hard fact is our society will collapse and people will begin to starve once we pass peak oil. Or worse, we'll end up at war with China over the remaining reserves.
This isn't some sort of cute game where the magic marketplace will solve the problem. It is an issue that requires action on our part now.

The only argument against oil is if the CO2 causes catastrophic problems, or if the price rises too high.

False. You do not understand peak oil. When we hit peak, there is more demand than available supply. In other words, we literally will be unable to suck it out of the ground fast enough to keep everyone's car filled. At this point prices skyrocket, but prices are just a symptom of the deeper problem of there not being enough to go around.

[MegalosSkylaki]

Passing peak oil is not a problem. When the cost of production rises then alternatives will look more attractive.

Unlike easter island there are alternatives they just suck compared with the present methods.

The only argument against oil is if the CO2 causes catastrophic problems, or if the price rises too high. As for fracking, NY should allow fracking only in industrial areas and populated areas. Ground water is not used for drinking nor is surface water in the urban areas.

Fracking in upstate new york will cause the water supply for both the non populated and populated areas to be polluted if there is a problem.


I don't know if there are any serious air pollution concerns associated with fracking so I don't know if that would be a problem for urban areas.

First let me touch on the technology of "hydrolic fracking" for Natgas as compared drilling for oil:

Drilling and Fracturing

Both vertical and horizontal wells are used in shale gas drilling and completion; however, horizontal wells are the increasing trend due to both environmental concerns and economic efficiency (DOE, 2009). Horizontal drilling allows more exposure within the formation to optimize capture of natural gas as well as reducing the environmental footprint of drilling activity (DOE, 2009). The United States Department of Energy’s recently released document on shale gas development in the United States explains that “a vertical well may be exposed to as little as 50 ft of formation while a horizontal well may have a lateral wellbore extending in length from 2,000 to 6,000 ft within the 50-300 ft thick formation” (DOE, 2009, p.47). As such, surface disturbance and impacts to wildlife and communities are reduced while providing optimal gas recovery; considering 16 vertical wells per 640-acre section of land would disturb 77 acres, the equivalent in horizontal wells (4- horizontal wells) would disturb approximately 7.4 acres (DOE, 2009). In addition to reductions in surface disturbance, horizontal wells allow for development in areas previously considered unavailable, primarily urban and environmentally sensitive or protected areas. Well pads can be located away, or ‘setback’, from residences, roadways, wildlife habitats and other protected areas without hampering access to available gas reserves.

In order to recover the shale gas after drilling a well, current industry practice is to hydraulic fracture the formation to stimulate the near wellbore area and facilitate the release of natural gas trapped within the shale. Hydraulic fracturing is a process whereby a fracturing fluid, primarily water, is pumped into the formation under pressure at a calculated rate to form fractures and cracks within the formation, providing a pathway for the gas to migrate to the wellhead for recovery. Sand or other granular materials are added to the fracturing fluid to help ‘prop’ open the newly created fractures after the fluid has been removed from the formation (ALL, 2008a). Additional chemicals may be added to the fracturing fluid for specific engineering purposes; these additions may include friction-reducing agents, biocides and various stabilizers to prevent corrosion of metal piping in the well (DOE, 2009; ALL, 2008a). Depending on the formation and well characteristics, multiple fracturing procedures may be performed in order to fully develop the well for gas recovery (DOE, 2009). While each well and geologic formation is unique, continuing advances in horizontal drilling and well completion practices provide additional reductions in environmental impacts from oil and gas activities while providing the nation’s critical energy supply.

From>>> Drilling & Fracturing Primer - Go Marcellus Shale

NOTE: This info is from a group of investors advocating for fracking the Marcellus and Utica deposits in the Northeast--not its opponants. You will note the increasing complexity and potential for costs.

Passing peak oil is not a problem. When the cost of production rises then alternatives will look more attractive.

That is a double-edged sword: what are the "look more attractive alternatives" and just how ugly might they be?

Unlike easter island there are alternatives they just suck compared with the present methods.

The Easter Island people did have alternatives: the most obvious is not to cut down trees to use them as rollers to move the parts that made up the statue heads and crush them in the process. In fact, they did use toward the end another alternative: instead of competing chieftans trying to outdo each other by building ever bigger statues, they chose to topple their opponant chieftans statues, leaving their own standing....err...for a little while at least until the chieftans "got back". Guess how?

The only argument against oil is if the CO2 causes catastrophic problems, or if the price rises too high. As for fracking, NY should allow fracking only in industrial areas and populated areas. Ground water is not used for drinking nor is surface water in the urban areas.

Actually there are several mammoth problems to that--dare I mention "com-plex-i-ty"? Let's see...pollution by radioactivity into water which cannot be removed...unpredictable flow of water and absorbtion of wasteewater into water table and ultimately (once) potable water. Problem is, unless there is constant monotoring everywhere , no one knows if the water is still err..potable.

Check out>>>

Drillers trucked at least half of this waste to public sewage treatment plants in Pennsylvania in 2008 and 2009, according to state officials. Some of it has been sent to other states, including New York and West Virginia.

Yet sewage treatment plant operators say they are far less capable of removing radioactive contaminants than most other toxic substances. Indeed, most of these facilities cannot remove enough of the radioactive material to meet federal drinking-water standards before discharging the wastewater into rivers, sometimes just miles upstream from drinking-water intake plants.

In Pennsylvania, these treatment plants discharged waste into some of the state’s major river basins. Greater amounts of the wastewater went to the Monongahela River, which provides drinking water to more than 800,000 people in the western part of the state, including Pittsburgh, and to the Susquehanna River, which feeds into Chesapeake Bay and provides drinking water to more than six million people, including some in Harrisburg and Baltimore
.
Lower amounts have been discharged into the Delaware River, which provides drinking water for more than 15 million people in Philadelphia and eastern Pennsylvania.

In New York [from Pennsylvania as NY had a Moritorium on fracking--DOOG], the wastewater was sent to at least one plant that discharges into Southern Cayuga Lake, near Ithaca, and another that discharges into Owasco Outlet, near Auburn. In West Virginia, a plant in Wheeling discharged gas-drilling wastewater into the Ohio River.

“Hydrofracking impacts associated with health problems as well as widespread air and water contamination have been reported in at least a dozen states,” said Walter Hang, president of Toxics Targeting, a business in Ithaca, N.Y., that compiles data on gas drilling.

from>>>http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/us...pagewanted=all

MegalosSkylaki

[MegalosSkylaki]

PS.

The only argument against oil is if the CO2 causes catastrophic problems

It does cause catastrophic problems. Ask your local Polar Bear.

In the future, regarding Peak Oil, you might want to ask Communist China. It already claims it own a half a dozen plus Countries --or at least part of them....India ...Pakistan....Bhutan....Tibet.....etc...the former Soveit Republics I can't spell but they are the ones with the major Oil deposits.

[Epidemic]

ask the millions of creatures that have died in ice ages. huge temperature changes have been extinctifying creatures for millions of years. Wooley mamouths Giant sloths, saber tooth tigers all were pushed to the brink by nature. I am not a fan of global warming but likewise I am not a fan of the impending Ice age that is right around the geological corner. Perhaps the CO2 we are generating will cause the ice age to be delayed allowing some warm weather creature to not be wiped out. Or perhaps increased atmospheric moisture is saving some desert mole. Which creature do you want wiped out polar bears or desert moles

Doog,

Most of what you said are arguments against fracking but if one were to frack I think they are arguments for doing them in newark NJ. Ground water is already off the table it is highly toxic as we speak. Where as in the rural areas ground water is still safe. All I am saying is that it is better to do it in urban setting with regards to taking relatively pristine environment and killing. It is kinda like feeding a dead guy poison vs an infant.

Do you think people still use local ground water in Newark and NYC?

I do not have an opinion on Fracking itself, but fracking in upstate NY is probably worse than in next to the BQE or along I-95.


Tony,

I understand peak oil. Do you? When peak oil is reached prices will skyrocket. people will travel less, carpool and cars will shrink and the commuter in the family will take the economy car from the wife. This gives us a buffer where entrepeneurs will develope new technologies which are now more attractive. Simultaniously the increased price makes recovery of more expensive lower producing oil reserves again re-defining "Peak Oil"

It is rough on the economy but both you and I believe the economy is on a road to economic collapse as I recall. In the end we are 20 years from massive economic collapse which will again reduce oil usage, pushing us to an oil glut.

[tony_j15]

Epi: It would seem you don't understand because you are still making the fundemental error of assuming the magic market will solve the issue. It can't and it won't. What you are describing when we go through the huge price swings and switching from lacking oil to "oil glut" are the death throws of the global economy.
Again, we can't wait. Again, we must act now. What's your plan? Based on your posts, you are impying a position where we just wait passively for peak oil to hit and then ride it out. Do you understand how catastrophic that will be? Do you realize how many people will end up out of work? Do you realize how many people will be absolutely penniless and how many will end up starving?