| Author | Message | ||
     Etennuly |
I keep track of my gas mileage as a matter of being anal about how things are running. I drive a GMC Denali in situations where my Uly won't due. It very consistently will get 16.4 MPG driving it under my normal conditions in my local area, doing what ever it is that I do with it. The last time I got gas it was 10% alcohol mix. On this tank of "fuel" I cannot get the vehicle to do better than 14.8 mpg no matter how much back pedaling I do. This has happened twice before with the alcohol mix gasolines. How does this "mix" help the world go around? I pay the same price as I do for regular "gasoline", but I get 10% less mileage out of it. Hmmmmmmmmm. Where does that benefit go. Does 10% less mileage mean it pumps out 10% more pollution to go the same amount of miles as "regular gas"? Does using a bunch of bushels of food product, that drives my food prices up, help? Does having to stop 10% more times at the "fuel station" help? Each time uses its own amount of energy. I love it when a solution to the burgeoning problem is to get me to throw money at it sideways. Sorry, it is just another way for "the Man" to urk me. Oh and next week or so, when I put gas in it again, I will pass by the mixed fuel stations and get my mileage back. | ||
| Cowboy |
The tractor that cultivate the crop use more fuell than they make. Just another political foot ball. | ||
| Snowscum |
Just like this story tells us about Al Gore's theory. http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20080103/94768732.html | ||
| Hexangler |
My girl is reading this book: http://www.michaelpollan.com/omnivore.php Granted he's a leftist from Berkeley, but it looks like everything is made out of corn now-a-days. Look at your pepsi or coke ingredients, they are full of high fructose corn syrup not sugar anymore. I guess in the last ten years cane and beet sugar have been replaced by a "cheaper" alternative. The cost is only cheaper because of subsidized farming. But corn is really hard on the land, so insert nitrogen fertilizers. Hex | ||
| Barker |
FYI: When you add ethanol to your gas you are going to lose power. In when i was growing up VA, my family legally produced up to 200 gallons a year for "Fuell". You can safely add up to 15% to just about any gas engine. We only did it because we used a wood fire to produce the "Fuell". We had plenty of cheap energy(wood) to produce another energy, ethanol. We burned alotta wood to get a gallon. | ||
| Strokizator |
Alcohol has less energy than the equivalent amount of gasoline so you can expect your mileage to decrease as the amount of alcohol in the fuel goes up. E85 vehicles get 20% to 25% less than gas only (this is based upon user reports rather than manufacturers data). I can't wait for my next motorcycle to come equipped with compact flourescents. | ||
| Hexangler |
compact flourescents Might be brighter than some of the boards XBR's.  | ||
| Ft_bstrd |
Ethanol is nothing more than Greenie placation and farm subsidies. Like seafood from the gulf? Google "Gulf of Mexico deadzone" and you won't be so excited about ethanol. We need more Nuclear power, but rational thought went out during the Carter administration. | ||
| Slaughter |
Too lazy to look up the bio-fuels BS but the energy to produce the fuels (as Jeremy posted above) - added to the EXTREME environmental impact - just doesn't make sense. Better off to just conserve. Biodiesel is a myth. It works as long as only a small minority of folks use the materials. We CAN use more bio-materials for fuels but ONLY if we are willing to conserve more total energy and are willing to pay the price in ground water contamination. We'd also be better served by more genetic engineering to produce more fuel-suitable species of grain/cellulose/carbohydrates. Nuclear - absolutely! But it is not trivial since we need to put more science into waste disposal or reclamation. Solar? Fuggedaboudit. EXTREMELY ineffecient and ties up HUGE amounts of toxic materials in batteries - until we have distributed electricity (think cable cars) Wind? Fuggedaboudit. Works in small areas where energy costs are extremely high. More wind turbines actually affect local micro-climate and totally change bird migration. Conservation, yes... gimmicks, no. | ||
| Hughlysses |
I'm convinced that ethanol (at least as produced in the U.S.) is a waste of resources. Biodiesel seems it holds promise. Slaughter- I assume you're referring to biodiesel made from waste cooking oil (WCO) not being viable. Yea, if everybody starts showing up at their local McDonalds asking for their leftover french fry oil it won't be long until they're charging $3/gallon for it. OTOH, if you can grow rapeseed (canola) or whatever and expend less fuel than is gained from the seed, then you're onto something. The left-over solid waste (seed husks) can still be fed to livestock. The trouble with ALL this stuff is it's hard to get to the facts. Greenies exaggerate the claims for their favorite projects, big corporations exaggerate the claims for theirs. Some things (like ethanol) are backed by BOTH despite its problems. Greenies like it for the alleged environmental benefits, big corporations like ADM like it because they get tax breaks for producing it. (Message edited by hughlysses on January 03, 2008) | ||
| Thumper74 |
Ethanol is a bandaid. It's less efficient, and use more. Most of the major car mags have actually reported higher fuel costs over long term roadtests. I'm not convinced. I think conserving fuel is a better option. 16mpg in a Yukon is pretty F'in good! New body style or the previous iteration? | ||
| Jlnance |
Greenies like it for the alleged environmental benefits, big corporations like ADM like it because they get tax breaks for producing it. When you ride up to homecoming through Illinois, it's amazing how popular Ethanol is up there. Of course they grow corn.  When I was going through the south west, I was surprised by how many windmills I saw. There is a stretch near Abilene, TX where there must have been 20 miles of windmills. It was huge. I was really supprised, we don't have any windmills around here. Personally I suspect using corn to make Ethanol is a loosing proposition. I am excited about the potential to make ethanol from things that are currently "waste." No that thats going to solve our energy problems, but it might be a nice way to get rid of some stuff that are currently pollutants. | ||
| Ironken |
We move a couple trainloads (entire 100+ car loads per train) of ethanol out here per week. I watched a program on ethanol and they stated that for every 1.3 gallons of ethanol produced, it takes 1 gallon of petroleum to produce it (cultivation,harvest,cooking etc.). Figure in that is less effecient moving the internal combustion engine....where's the benefit???? | ||
| Slaughter |
Hugh - you are basically right in what I was thinking. Biodiesel is NOT efficient - even if we COULD produce a fuel made from non-petrochemical products. It IS attractive from the sense that it'd be reducing our dependence on foreign oil but we just don't have the land to support our needs (or wants) - and we will not tolerate the pollution which would be required with all the fertilizers, pesticides and stuff required for NON-food bio-products. I used to know where there were land usage figures put out by an Ag advocacy group (ADM?) but can't find it now. | ||
| Slaughter |
I'm too lazy tonight to think of math but from http://www.ecoworld.com/blog/2007/12/28/land-for-b iofuel/ - ecoworld is an unabashedly left-leaning organization. Even by their figures, we're talking serious land usage impacts.
My own bottom line: conservation first, alternate energies (including nukes) second, politics last (ending dependence on "middle-East oil") | ||
| Slaughter |
...oh and conserve by riding your bike with a little less throttle usage and save your car for those times when you have to haul stuff or more people. | ||
| Just_ziptab |
It's just a damned lame ass way to make money. That is all (and only) what it's about. Creates tons of jobs, which burns more fuel and increases the costs of everyday goods.........like stainless steel that the new plants are sucking up. Corn is up, tallow is up......freaking everything is up........mostly from supply/demand...and that equals....GOUGE/PROFIT! | ||
| Slaughter |
and from Ecoworld:
All this from a LEFTIST group... Aint no free lunch | ||
| Ft_bstrd |
I am intrigued by the proposition of fuel production as a by product of industrial processes. The one that made the most sense was with industries that created significant CO2 emissions. Some are pumping this CO2 into the ground to keep from releasing it into the atmosphere. The one I saw that was cool was a plant that was pumping the CO2 through large tanks of algae and converting the algae into biodiesel. The initial design worked so effectively, that they planned to expand the process and that it produced enough energy to actually power the plant and allow enough to sell. Self sustaining factories taken off the grid would reduce quite a bit of pollution and energy usage. If electric cars could become more efficient with a range of 300-500 miles and 8 hour or less recharge times, I could see some advantages there. I believe reduction in usage of petroleum is key. Until we can move off of internal combustion engines for vehicles, alternative fuels are merely rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Nuclear based energy production supplying energy to electric cars would reduce a significant amount of CO2 emissions. The delivery systems are already in place, so transportation costs of fuels as well as production inefficiencies are greatly reduced. I'd like to see fissionable materials from recycled nuclear weapons be reprocessed to create fuel rods for nuclear power plants. We would need to sort out storage of spent fuel rods for sure. I live less than 3 hours from three nuclear power plants. As part of TVA, the nuclear energy provides a significant amount of the energy we use. Our costs of energy are some of the lowest in the nation. Hell, even Al Gore uses a bunch of it. | ||
| Blake |
Ethanol plants don't run on petroleum, do they? I don't buy the myth that it takes more than a gallon of gasoline or diesel to produce every gallon of ethanol. But even if that were true, why not use coal or nuke generated electricity to produce ethanol? Even if at just a one for one trade in energy value produced versus invested, it that would be basically converting coal or nuke fuel into something that we can burn in our beloved internal combustion engines. See that's the issue, obtaining fuel for our driving habit. So ethanol may be less of a fuel production issue and more of a fuel conversion scenario. Works for me. Not enough arable land in America to support anything close to a conversion to biodiesel. Wired magazine had an excellent article on why high oil prices are good for America. Lots of good graphics illustrating the situation with alternative fuels and fossil fuels too. Methane hydrates anyone? | ||
| Slaughter |
Until we end our DEMAND that we all own and control our own transportation, we're gonna have trouble solving this energy thing. Until we end our DEMAND that we each have more than 350 square feet of habitable living space, we're gonna have trouble solving this energy thing. Until we end our DEMAND that we use stereo systems with enough power to move a pair of bicyclists at 20 MPH, we're gonna have trouble solving this energy thing. I could go on - but we're going to have to seriously revisit what our DEMANDS are and decide just on what we're willing to compromise. | ||
| Ft_bstrd |
Oooooooh, methane hydrates. I forgot about those! Yes please!  | ||
| Ironken |
Ethanol plants don't run on petroleum, do they? Not that I know of....Cultivation, harvest, transportation do. I was also under the impression that some fertilizers are petrochemical based too.} | ||
| Not_purple_s2 |
If E85 cuts emissions by 30% then even with a 10% increase in usage you will still be cutting emissions by 23%. 1gal gas = X amount of emissions 1gal E85 = 70% of X to travel the same distance 1gal gas = 1.1gal E85 = 1.1*0.70X = 0.77X = 77% of X Its up to you to decide if the cost is worth the reduction in pollution. Advantages of E85 are the 105octane rating and it's "cooling" effect as it vaporizes. When tuned properly E85 will make more power than premium gasoline. If I had it available, I'd love to build a high compression Buell to run on E85. Ethanol can be made out of lots of starchy vegetation not just corn. Actually corn isn't even the most ideal product. I believe they use sugar cane in South America to produce ethanol for fuel with much more success. | ||
| Not_purple_s2 |
If you're going to bring the fuel use into the equation don't forget that fuel is burned in the process of getting crude oil out of the ground and into your car as gasoline. Does anyone have figures for the amount of fuel burned in generators on oil rigs, plus the fuel used for transportation of workers, supplies, equipment, and product? | ||
| Kuuud |
Gasohol is neither efficient nor environmentally friendly at this point. We use corn which requires more fertilizer than most any other crop. It drives food prices up as farmer's switch to corn. Someday when we can use waste plant matter or grass to produce ethanol, it MAY be worth it. National Geographic had a great article on this recently. Oh yeah, and that $1 per gallon that the gov't subsidize so gasohol costs the same as gasoline...it doesn't go to the farmers. It doesn't even go to the greedy producer's like ADM (as I previously thought). It goes to the companies that blend gasohol...yes those companies, Exxon, et al. 'W's cronies!!!! | ||
| Reepicheep |
I'm waiting for the genetically engineered alge that outgas hydrogen, and cars with fuel cells that can "burn" it (producing water as exhaust). Thats your high efficiency solar collector, battery, and waste disposal system all together. | ||
| Kuuud |
We need more Nuclear power, but rational thought went out during the Carter administration. But at least in the 70's the gov't encouraged solar power,oil shale production and other alternatives through tax credits. When Ronnie Raygun got elected the tax credits went bye-bye, big oil was in favor again, and it was business as usual. I was working out west in the mining industry at that time. The entire industry went into the toilet in 81-82 as a direct result of the change in gov't policies. We would probably be energy self-sufficient by now if we had stayed on the Carter path (like Brazil). I also lived very near to 3 mile island when the accident occurred, and worked with men who helped build nuke plants and heard lots of scary stories. In the late 70's and 80's we had no business building more nuke plants. Things may have improved but I still haven't heard convincing evidence on the subject of safe long-term nuke waste storage. Riddle me this Batman...Why did the top compact cars get 47-49 highway mpg 15 years ago and now those same cars get in the 30's? If you need specifics...I sold cars in 1991. The Honda Civic care in a special high mileage edition with skinny, low-resistance tires that got 47 highway (up from 45). The Geo Metro (3 cylinder Suzuki)got 49. The Dept of Energy lists the new Civic(5 spd manual) as 34 under the new guidelines and 38 under the old. It list the best Suzuki as 28 new/ 31 old (highway). | ||
| Jaydub |
couldn't we mimic / mirror what Brazil has done with sugar? If we can use corn or soybeans to make a biofuel, then use that same biofuel to cultivate / harvest / process it wouldn't we be ahead of the game? I think we have to turn the WHOLE industry on its ear for them to see the solution. One of the biggest issues with any alternative fuel is that you need to burn fossil fuels to make it. That is the biggest part that needs to change to make any solution more viable. | ||
| What_the |
Jaydub that was the first thought that came to me as well. Brazil is basically "energy independent" but it took quite awhile to get the infrastructure in place. There's an interesting series on the science channel covering alternative fuels. Episodes are being repeated now. http://science.discovery.com/tv-schedules/series.h tml?paid=48.15232.122449.34341.3 For what its worth E85 is beginning to build a subculture in the performance world as great (cost effective) alternative to race gas. The last time I bought a jug of VP C16 it was nearly $10 a gallon. That was two years ago. E85 can be had for under $3, and ethanol has good anti knock characteristics which is nice for turbos or nitrous. |
