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Cheezburger Company Blog
first!!!!!
You’re cool.
What does “accidentied” mean?
I think he meant “Accidentally” as in:
“Uh, Joe…”
“What is it Pete?”
“I think I just accidentally the internet…”
“YOU WHAT!!!!!?!?!??!!????
i think everybody understzands it now. Case closed!:)
So no oil used on the moving parts? “LoL Oil”… gtfo, hippie
No, I have seen this term used on many other Cheezburger sites.
But the meaning that you have given doesn’t make sense.
It is the FailBlog way of spelling “accidentally”. It is also used at the other sites. It comes (I think) from a very old fail from over a year ago.
I can’t believe I’ve been around long enough to remember this one …
failblog.org/2008/10/10/mens-room-fail/
Gotcha. This all makes perfect sense now. My apologies for not understanding, I want to eat the front right tire on your car….
Yea but the whole ‘accidentally’ thing is much older than that, too. It originated on 4chan and I’d bet that the bathroom writer from that post was just trying to take the meme real-world.
what the hell is 4chan?
Oh dear….
Try google. It works.
basically, its like hell, but for the internet
“lol oil” uses electric produced by oil. tesla fail.
Nuclear and hydroelectricity exists too i think you failed
owned
California’s electric needs are generated by 45.2% natural gas and 16.6% coal… 61.8% by burning “fossil” fuels. As more “lol oil” hippies start using “lol oil” cars, the electric demand will skyrocket. Since solar/wind sources in Cali are a total joke (.2% and 2.3%, respectively), you can be sure that more “fossil” fuels will be burned to supply electricity to “lol oil” hippies and their “lol oil” cars. Too bad hippies are anti-nuclear, it could solve their “lol oil” problems.
California’s electric needs are met by…*
Complete douches who think that the dollar is more important than the fact that this archaic technology of burning oil for energy instead of increasing the overall-efficiency of all the major machinery we use to excess is actually dooming us to our own self-made extinction?
Maybe it’s those who make change difficult because they have invested all their money into this technology and they would lose money if this caught on?
Maybe it’s those who vote for these same people, who’s knowledge solely depends on what they choose to believe when they search on Google for these numbers, in an attempt to sound “informed”?
Maybe it’s those who think that anyone who actually has some concern about man’s impact on the environment because of the obvious signs of pollution and contamination, is a “hippie”?
Maybe it’s someone tactless enough to troll this repulsive verse of opinion on a humor site, with an alias that is an unimaginative attempt to be deliberately incendiary, just to garner themselves some extra attention.
Maybe it’s the tea-bagging, tenaciously-tactless trollers on this thread with this tainted torrent of trash-talk, with no thought of tomorrow…
^^ angry hippie
Globalwarmer presented some very acute reasoning coupled with some accurate facts.
Electric cars that you plug in are just as bad, if not WORSE than an internal combustion engine on almost all levels.
It can be calculated in efficiency and energy loss. There is so much energy lost in pushing electricity across a grid and so much energy loss in storage in even the most modern batteries that energy efficiency is almost nonexistent in a Tesla. Get it because it’s torque-y, not because it’s better for the environment, because it isn’t.
Entropy is a b**tch, isn’t it?
None of this matters to members of the various environmentalist cults though. Facts and reason be damned, Captian Planet told us to drive electric cars.
I won’t even get into waste stream generation for electric cars vs. waste stream generation for a conventional ICE car.
You want to save the planet, stay away from electrics.
That dosen’t make petrol a good choice though, does it? At some point the cost of oil will become prohibitive. Only at that point will the car manufacturers roll out cars that use clean alternative fuels. In the meantime, the cost will be driven up to maximise the money sucked out of us before the oil dries up.
There are cars in existence that run on water. These aren’t in research labs or impractical prototypes, people working at the car companies are driving them around. We will have to wait decades before we get the chance. I wonder why?
This depends on your country, in Sweden most energy is from hydro or nuclear plants. Those have their environmental problems too, but the carbondioxide emissions ARE lower despite efficiency problems.
To: Non-Sequiter
I didn’t think it was possible to use that many “Ts” in one sentence. Onomatopoeia ftw! xD
You’re thinking of alliteration. Onomatopoeias are words like boom and snap that mimic sounds.
Oh snap!
Power plants can be replaced or improved a hell of a lot easier than an entire country worth of vehicles. Natural gas is a hell of a lot cleaner than the crap most cars burn. Not every leftist is anti-nuke, either.
Too bad a person who can buy a $120,000 tesla can’t afford to also buy a $12,000 solar/wind combo plant for his home and car.
According to a peer-reviewed study by the DOE and PNL, even on our *current* grid, using vehicles that have no weight reduction or streamlining advantages over their gasoline counterparts, switching to EVs has the following effects:
1) Cuts CO2 27%
2) Slightly increases particulate matter.
3) Keeps SOx the same
4) Slightly lowers NOx
5) Nearly eliminates CO
6) Nearly eliminates VOCs.
That’s on our *current grid*, *nationwide*. California’s grid is cleaner than the national average. And the grid — in California and nationwide — keeps getting cleaner while oil keeps getting dirtier. For example, most of the new power added to the grid in recent years has been wind and natural gas, while solar, still small, is poised for a huge explosion in the coming years. Oil, on the other hand, isn’t so lucky. As we exhaust the easier to get, cleaner deposits, we increasingly have to turn to inferior resources: deepwater, high-sulfur, ultra-heavy, tar sands (bitumen), coal liquefaction, GTL, shale and so forth. So the advantage of EVs versus internal combustion vehicles increases every year.
But I guess it’s easier to make fun of the “stupid hippies” rather than to read the actual research, eh?
Oh, and those who keep saying “electricity runs off oil!”? Oil makes up a negligible percent of the electricity generation of the Lower 48.
Also, since power-to-weight ratio doesn’t really matter for power generation facilities, even fossil fuel fired plants tend to be a LOT more efficient and much cleaner than even the cleanest/most efficient vehicle engines.
Combined cycle coal/gas plants are common, combined cycle vehicles (such as BMW’s Turbosteamer) are still in the research phase.
Utter garbage.
The ‘actual research’ suggests that electric vehicles are horrible, because your cherry-picked, politically driven study doesn’t account for transmission loss (how much power it takes to push the power to the grid) or energy loss in the storage of the electricity (for every amp/hour stored, X many amp/hours are lost in even the most modern batteries), or the waste stream generated by producing and ‘recycling’ batteries.
It’s like talking to a brick wall though, since proponents of the EV are like religious fanatics at this point.
The ONLY solution that is more efficient than the internal combustion engine for personal transportation is Hydrogen. (Industrial hydrogen is not made electrolytically so please don’t drag out that dead BS argument!)
EVs are horribly inefficient when you run the calculation starting with the potential energy at the source and end the calculation with HP at the wheel. The ratio is MUCH worse than the ICE, when you calculate the potential energy at source and subtract production and distribution, through to combustion and HP to the wheel.
So, your ‘science’ is garbage, the laws of Entropy are a harsh mistress to the ideologues.
Finally, the theory that CO2 is a greenhouse gas is spurious at best. It’s based off EM wavelength reactions to the shape of CO2 molecules, not any actual field data. In fact, the fact that field data (REAL LIFE!) does not mesh at all with the radiation theories and lab results is an interesting scientific problem. Personally, I think it’s the hubris of environmental ‘scientists’ thinking they can calculate energy gain/loss from the sun on a global level, but hey.
Your position is fail. EV’s suck. I challenge you to base your opinions on real results, not ideology and wishful thinking.
Every one of these electric cars poisons several thousand Chinese children (or did you miss the news stories about those illegal battery plants?), for a technology that still cannot be recycled. And with an average lifespan of seven years, we’re going to be up to our butts in batteries really darned quickly. And the final insult? Battery packs lose efficiency over time, so all those Prickus drivers who started out getting 40 mpg are getting less and less mileage by the day. At the end of that seven years, they’re lucky to be getting 18 mpg. And let’s not get started on how ‘clean’ e-cars are — power plants are a lot less efficient than an IC car (30-32% vs. 85-88%). But hey, don’t confuse ‘em with facts, their minds are made up.
You’re apparently completely ignorant. A centrally located coal plant is more efficient and puts out less pollution than a bunch of cars. Gas engines are incredibly inefficient compared to electric (and compared to power generation scale coal burning). Even if electricity was 100% coal powered it would still be a net benefit if cars were all electric. So while lol oil is a bit much…. he’s right.
Besides, maybe the driver likes coal and natural gas. It does say lol oil, not lol crbn
But odds are, were not used to charge the car.
46% of US electricity is generated from coal and oil. Odds are (54%) they were!
5% of electricity comes from oil.
49% comes from coal.
Coal and oil both come from the same prehistoric vegies and monsters, so what’s the difference?
thats like saying “when there’s no more cows, do we eat the vegetarians? same thing no? “
That depends on if she’s cute or not.
Fail… it is obvious that we should eat the male vegetarians first.
You obviously failed to grasp the double entendre he created about “eat”
You obviously failed to grasp the attempted subject change.
I obviously failed to continue this post series.
As did I!
You’ve failed us again, God
There’s really no such thing as a coal spill but when oil spills things get ugly. All those people who keep saying BS about the power grid should go take a swim in the BP oil spill then come and talk sh*t here.
not true
mountaintop removal to get at coal spills waste into valleys destroying entire ecosystems. you just don’t hear about it on fox news
Who cares? Both are hydrocarbon, both have the same by-products.
Seriously, it must be a prerequisite to fail physics to be an environmentalist.
Renewable souces comprise around 10 percent of energy production in the United States. The rest is natural gas, coal and about 20 percent nuclear. And sadly, the same people who decry fossil fuel power plants also go to court to stop new nuclear plants from being built.
Wind, solar and hydroelectric are niche at the moment and completely useless without massive government subsidies. Technology will eventually solve the problem, but electric cars are still going to be powered by dead dinosaurs for years to come.
Well, nuclear fuel is itself a non-renewable resource, obtaining it requires a heavy input of energy from – at the moment – largely or solely fossil-fuel based sources, and the leftovers are difficult to deal with. Not as severe a worldwide problem as carbon dioxide is supposed to be, but much longer lasting.
Take the money that was going to go into that and sink it into renewables, with a proportion of the money from selling their generated energy plowed back into further schemes. It then becomes exponential and self sustaining.
Plus you can build a big ol’ set of wind, solar, wave/tide and geothermal generators in far less time than what’s needed to commission a new nuclear generation plant, and they don’t need anything like the safety procedures and reviews. Hell, if you consider its existence as offsetting the CO2 released from the curing concrete, you could probably build a decent-sized hydro plant in the time. Or at least a pumped storage scheme to smooth out the delivery from the wind/solar projects.
Seriously? It’s not difficult to deal with. We have/will have landfills for nuclear waste enough for a century with 1000 nuclear reactors operating at full capacity. It’s not difficult to deal with, very easy, in fact.
“Hannes Alfvén, Nobel laureate in physics, described the as yet unsolved dilemma of high-level radioactive waste management: “The problem is how to keep radioactive waste in storage until it decays after hundreds of thousands of years. The geologic deposit must be absolutely reliable as the quantities of poison are tremendous. It is very difficult to satisfy these requirements for the simple reason that we have had no practical experience with such a long term project. Moreover permanently guarded storage requires a society with unprecedented stability.”
Ah well. Screw those Nobel laureates in physics, right?
Pssht, physicists, what have they ever done for us?
Well… The aqueduct?
Ooooo! I love thoroughbred racing!
Yeah, about the whole Nobel prize thing…it’s kinda lost it’s meaning since they gave it to a guy who didn’t really do anything at all to earn it.
Anyways, I believe they have developed a way to burn the spent fuel rods at pretty high temperatures to extract even more energy out of them. Millions of dollars in research is being done to make nuclear energy more efficient (meaning, more energy is extracted from the fuel rods before junking them), making nuclear energy more and more viable.
However, each energy source (including alternative energy) has it’s pros and cons, for instance wind turbines have been known to interrupt the migratory paths of birds, scare off local wildlife with it’s noise, and cause many health problems for those living near the turbines (insomnia, stress, hearing problems, etc.)
I’d really like to see them (meaning the US government) get more involved in tidal power, like the Pelamis machine or a Salter’s Duck. With as much coastline (east and west coast) that we have, it could go a long way to help solve the energy crisis.
Ah come on! Disagree with Obama’s Nobel peace prize all you want, that political statement from Stockholm doesn’t change the fact that the Nobel prize for physics still is the most prestigious award one can get. I’d say the claim by Alfvén should be considered very carefully.
But I fully agree with you on the pros and cons of every way to produce energy. It’s just that the nuclear and the fossil ways are clearly not the way to go, we need an energy mix of solar, wind, water and tidal energy (and possibly other ways I’m not aware of.)
Agree with you there. But as knothead said, we will be fueling our cars by fossil fuels for many, many years to come. At least 90% of our energy needs are gotten from oil/coal/nuclear. The problem lies in trying to dismantle the old infrastructure, build a new one out of renewable sources (electric cars, etc), address the problems with alternative energy, and somehow manage to save the large amount of jobs that are directly tied into fossil fuels (for instance, there are over 85,000 coal miners alone in the US, not counting the clerical jobs, safety workers, transportation jobs (truck drivers, trains and their jobs, etc) plus the coal plant workers, etc). It’s a spiderweb effect. You eliminate one job area, and the whole infrastructure around it can crumble with disastrous economic effects. Spain tried going green, and for every one job made by the new system, two were lost.
These are the problems that need to be addressed before alternative energy can truly start to take over; basically, we need to go very, very slowly if we don’t have a way to address these problems.
It’s not easy, true. But there’s also opportunity in a new infrastructure and new priorities: In Germany the No.1 industry was car manufacturing, now it is/almost is the green sector (depends on what you count). Our energy mix now has ~12% renewable energy and growing, two large European projects for renewable energy are launched (I linked to Desertec and Super Smart Grid somewhere here) – it is possible.
And, all in all there’s not really an alternative to it. The sooner we start, the more we can act instead of reacting. I’d rather we decide and not circumstances beyond our control dictate…
“Anyways, I believe they have developed a way to burn the spent fuel rods at pretty high temperatures to extract even more energy out of them. ”
Nuclear physics FAIL.
“Newer nuclear plants, including the fast reactor now being developed at Idaho National Laboratory (INL), contain multiple auto-shutoff mechanisms that reduce the odds of a meltdown exponentially- even in a worst-case scenario, like an industrial accident or a terrorist attack. And some also have the ability to burn spent fuel rods, a convenient way to reuse nuclear wast instead of burying it for thousands of years”. Popular Mechanics July 2010 issue, page 72.
Fail fail?
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/debunking-myths-about-nuclear-fuel-coal-wind-solar?click=main_sr
as reactor technology progresses we will be reclaiming some of that waste as fuel in future reactor designs.
Well, the real solution to the problem is vitrification, but the uneducated masses of those in D.C. who make the rules have blocked every effort to allow a large scale vitrification process to be demonstrated for long term disposal at White Sands in New Mexico which sits on one of the most seismically stable ground in the US.
Did we miss the Harvest Method? You dissolve the waste in 24% leaded glass, and voila! A solid, non-radioactive block. And that was 1978. This has more to do with politics and pusillanity than science. You’ve been lied to. There is no ‘nuclear waste’ issue. Have trouble believing? Look up what the ‘peace symbol’ really means, and then tell us what role politics should play in science.
All energy in the UNIVERSE is non-renewable even solar and wind the sun fuses hydrogen which will eventually run out, but that will take about 4 billion years so it’s safe to say that it is renewable. Same thing goes for fission.
Dave was responding to Bobby, not WetSand. You fail.
The way this site nests comments sucks. It’s really hard to follow.
The important part is that coal and oil were used.
Math FAIL.
Yeah, that was my point. Read the comment I was responding to.
if this is where it looks like it is, then there’s a good chance it was charged with electricity from the San Onofre nuclear power plant near San Diego.
And therefore, it wouldn’t be burning oil, now would it?
Besides, don’t forget — these are people who buy 110k supercars. They can afford the $8k solar array it takes to power it.
How many parts on the car were made from oil based products? Bet it was not shipped on an electric semi
Average annual drive: ~12,000 miles
Fleet average mpg: Was 24mpg last I checked (let’s say we’re up to 26 mpg now)
Average age of a car on the road: ~10 years
Average expected lifespan, extrapolating from the above: 20 years
Miles driven over car lifespan: 240000
Gallons of gas burned: 10,000
Weight of said gas: 35 tons.
Can you see why pretty much every peer-reviewed study on vehicle lifetime emissions finds that vehicles consume way more energy during their operating life than in construction?
The amounts of oil used to make things like carbon reinforced plastic body panels and to ship parts around (BTW — ICE vehicles need their parts made and shipped, too) is utterly dwarfed by the oil savings.
Good GOD stop with the logical fallacies.
“pretty much every peer-reviewed study on vehicle lifetime emissions”
Good with the catch phrases, like ‘peer-reviewed’. Effective writing may fool some, but you can’t fake the math.
It’s a simple ratio, that when you leave it untwisted proves EV is not superior to ICE.
Energy in : Energy out
The rankings are:
Hydrogen (when using industrial production NOT electrolytic)
ICE
EV
Energy efficiency. Energy efficiency. Energy efficiency.
Say it with me!
The energy loss in power transmission and point storage (the car’s batteries) is where the EV equation dumps. It takes so much power to push power through the grid, and so much power is lost in battery storage, that EV is not efficient AT ALL.
Energy in : energy out.
The EV also loses in the chemical and industrial waste stream generation. The problem is the batteries.
Hydrogen storage is currently a big problem and what if im out in the middle of no where and i need to fill up my generator or something. There’s no way i be able to lug a heavy metal hydrogen tank around. Electrical storage technologies are getting better and eventually they will prevail over the ICE.
how ’bout the asphalt he’s driving on?
Could be from tar sands…
what’s that mean? tar sands are unconventional deposits of oil.
Well … is an electric car using nuclear electricity as it’s power really better then an oil car ? The nuclear wastes are as bad to the environnement then oil … if not worse ….
Except for heolian and solar electricity , there’s not a real clean source of electricity ( the problem with hydroelectricity is that you need to change the river’s bed in order to create enought pression and by doing so you have to flood the neighboring forests . This destroys the natural habitats and makes the trees release a certain gas wich is toxic and bad for the environnement . I don’t know all the specifics but I know this much since i’m a quebecois and we are one of the biggest creators of hydroelectricity ) .
So he failed but so did you .
By the way sorry for my bad grammar and english mistakes since it’s not my first language . So the grammar ragers who can’t find arguments except for : ” learn to write english properly because I found that you made 1 typo in the 9 millions words text ” , can you just over look this one
This English major would like to point out that your grammar and spelling are better than many native English speakers.
Most of us will understand if english is not your first language. Telling us so helps.
Your English is fine. Your understanding of the US grid isn’t. Most of the new generation capacity being added to the US grid is wind and natural gas, both of which are cleaner than oil. An increasing share of the oil we consume is being imported from Alberta’s tar sands, which as a Canadian, I’m sure you know how environmentally destructive *that* process is. And a growing source is Gulf of Mexico deepwater crude (anyone noticed how clean that is, lately?) Even on our current grid, however, electricity has notably lower emissions than oil (excepting particulate matter).
The gas you’re thinking of, by the way, is methane. It’s a product of anoxic decomposition.
The oil spill in the gulf could be clean by Labor Day if we wanted to.
Bioremediation is the answer.
Why BP hasn’t used it, why the fed hasn’t used it, why the states haven’t used it is beyond me.
It’s been proven effective on large scale spills in the past, converting hydrocarbon (oil) into usable food for the ecosystem. (again, entropy) Energy is fed into the ecosystem, bioremediation is simply the step between crude and food chain, making oil the energy input instead of solar conversion by plants and algae.
Bioremediation has been used extremely successfully, I don’t know if it’s ineptitude or what that keeps it from being used right now.
Never mind coal, natural gas, solar, wind…lol oil indeed.
you should really look into the numbers behind wind and solar before you lol. natural gas is another non renewable resource (though we have plenty of it).
Isn’t natural gas environment friendly, or far more so than oil and coal?
Natural gas is cleaner. It’s not perfect, but it’s better. It’s also very, very plentiful—the stuff seeps out of the ground on its own in some parts of Alaska—so gathering it is not nearly as dangerous as the deep-sea oil drilling we’ve heard so much about lately.
The future is solar, wind, and the like, but natural gas is still an improvement.
The future is deep geothermal. Period. It’s the only thing that can satisfy our demands for electricity.
I’ve always thought that the children are our future.
Anyone know how many BTU you get out of the average child?
Depends, are you fermenting them to make ethanol, or just burning them direcrtly?
Wrong. 6% of the available desert land area in AZ can meet the US’s entire electricity-based energy needs with solar panels. SD can do the same with wind. The energy is ridiculously abundant. It’s all a matter of infrastructure and transporting the energy which is doable with newer High-voltage dc lines. Problem is getting the infrastructure up and running. We’d need a nationwide, thoroughly interconnected grid to make it possible, like interstates for electricity. Which is doable, but unlikely. The only thing stopping the US from transitioning off of oil is lack of political will. We are better poised (at least as far as available renewable resources go) than virtually any other country to leave fossil fuels (or at the very least, fossil fuels controlled by fundamentalist whackjobs (other than ourselves)). With investment on the order of what we put into developing the interstate system or the Apollo project we could do it.
Actually, you’d expect a fairly decent chunk of Tesla owners to have also shelled out to be mostly off-grid. I only know one Tesla owner (which, given how rare they are, isn’t nothing), but he runs his entire house and Tesla off his solar panels.
Plus, in California, utilities are required to use a certain % (15 now, 20 soon) of renewable sources, and any person has the right to pay more to make sure that the portion of their load is covered by renewable providers only.
That said, yeah, most likely SOME of the propulsion of this car derives from oil. But nowhere near as much as the car that only burns gas.
probably the electricity is produced from Coal, not oil, but the efficiency of buring coal to produce electricity is better than the efficiency a gas sports car engine getting 10mpg.
I like your incite though
1st win?!
Must be B.P.’s CEO’s private vehicle.
That was just awesome!
Indeed, but I feel as if a little part of me just died…it’s just too real…
oldie but goldie
dats wat she said
at least my car don’t run on coffee!
lol kevin costner
I saw a really cute t-shirt at despair dot com about BP yesterday. It had the logo and said, “BP: Bringing oil to America’s shores.” They had a lot of cute demotivational items there as well.
(Sorry if this sounds like spam. . .just something I liked. . .)
It doesn’t. Had you included an affiliate link selling the shirt and giving you some of the sale, then yes, it would be spam.
win.
Maybe one day they’ll become readily available and reasonably inexpensive.
They will. Look for the S-class coming. Will be much cheaper.
I’m sorry, but $50K is NOT affordable. I can get two Civic Hybrids for that price.
Indeed, the Model S is a luxury sedan, through and through. In terms of affordable, you’d prolly be better off looking towards the 2012 RAV4 EV or the Nissan Leaf (25K after federal rebates). Since Tesla isn’t really an established car firm, it’s using steadily cheaper and cheaper cars to build up capital. They have plans to release a sub-$30,000 car within five years or so, which is currently codenamed “Bluestar.”
I certainly hope so. Always good to have a new challenger like Tesla come along and shake up the stagnant auto industry.
Tesla is now backed by Toyota…they will be around
my 2001 civic is still running, getting 45 mpg, and will not take all the fuel costs of building a new one. I’m sure there’s other used cars for sale that get good gas mileage until we can all be driving these or honda fcx’s and the hydrogen can be mass produced by solar power..
So your Honda Civic hybrids are decked out with all the latest luxury features and do 0-60 in 5.4 seconds, *as well* as not needing gas?
hybrids are not electric cars. They are HYBRIDS. Nissan Leaf or the Chevy Volt cars will be the comparison. competition brings prices down. Im all for the option of all electric. Great for city driving.
sucks to be you, hobo. I already put the deposit down on mine…
Errr… Aptera type-2-E ring a bell, anyone? anyone?
I don’t know — what kind of bell does one typically ring to represent mourning?
second
dang well that was fast…
It’s sad that a lot of the people on here won’t get this.
Also, shouldn’t this be on EpicWinFTW? I know you’re trying to get more viewers and all, but it just doesn’t fit.
U.S. Electricity Generation by Source
Coal 44.9%
Nat Gas 23.4%
Nuke 20.3%
Hydro 6.9%
other 3.6%
Petroleum 1.0%
electric car saving the environment = FAIL
I think this will change over time. Ecologists shouldn´t be such pussies and they should support nuclear energy, because for it´s effectivity, it´s very clean. Also, as long aas electric cars are the minority, they´re still less harmful than cars that use gasoline, because they don´t take up too much electricity in total…
Let me guess – you’ve been born after 1986, right?
Let me guess again – you didn’t calculate this too-much-electricity-thing, did you?
No, I was born before the Chernobyl disater , but i think the industry has learned from that. Besides, the technology used there was obsolete at that time already. Second, my country is already exporting electricity now – we have many small power plants, that mainly burn coal, all over the country. I guess it would be more effective to have several large nuclear plants instead.
Yeah, look at BP, they really learned from Chernobyl. Like taking no risks just for money and stuff…
the more people object to nuclear energy, the more we´ll be dependent on companies like BP…
Why not go with wind power? It’s very clean, constantly renewable, and can pretty much be generated anywhere. I read (quite some time ago) that IF (please note that that is a big if) the country were to put a giant wind farm (hey, it’s what they’re called) over the entire state of Kansas, we would have enough electricity to power the ENTIRE country with plenty to spare. And the cost maintaining it would be FAR LESS than what it costs now for the same power.
Like I said, a big if. Crops would have to be re-located, birds flight patterns would have to be taken into account, a whole host of things. But in theory it works.
Only that in order to feed a village with electricity from a wind power plant you need to build air vessels on almost the same area as the area of tha said village.
The same problem exixts with solar energy – I heard there are several square kilometers of solar panels in California and people barely notice it. The performance is just incomparable… On top of that, a lot of energy would get lost in the wires betwen Kansas and the edges of America…And i don´t know what the people in Kansa would say if they had air vessels all over their state 
You can power your own home with just a few solar panels. If you add in wind power, you can “store” it for those periods of time when there is not enough sunlight. Currently the biggest problem with the small wind turbines is the braking mechanism. It’s very loud. And is prone to breakage when forced to stop suddenly in the midst of a particularly strong wind. But that can be figured out.
You do NOT need to build on the same area as the “village”. Already power is generated by more conventional means and goes to cities hundreds of miles away. Thousands in some cases.
The idea was that the people of Kansas could re-locate. That and there are ENORMOUS tracts of barren land in Kansas, particularly the southwestern quarter of it.
Solar panels are the most horrible plan for “going green” and producing electricity. The energy used and the waste produced from making them far outweighs the insignificant amount of electricity they produce.
Admittedly, I don’t know a lot about what goes into making solar panels. I do know that you can use passive solar energy, which doesn’t use technology at all. You just have larger and more windows on the south side of your home. Opening and closing those windows according to whichever heating or cooling benefit you’re going for also helps. This alone will lower your electric bills.
You can also go with wind, but there are problems with that too. If more people got interested in alternative power sources, we might work the bugs out sooner.
But broadly saying it’s all bad and doesn’t work doesn’t help us figure out how to make it better.
Some solutions:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperSmart_Grid
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec
This is incorrect.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_energy_gain .
I am posting this comment from inside an Excelon nuclear facility right now (cool, right?). The constant output of this plant is just shy of 1800 net MW….all day long…all night long…steady. There is also not even the slightest puff of steam that is emitted from this entire facility at any time. It is absolutely and perfectly clean power. It would take over 1600 of the largest, mass produced GE wind turbines…..operating under perfect wind conditions (which never happens)…to equal the output of this one nuke plant. The footprint of this plant is over 1000 times smaller than what would be needed for a wind farm of 1600 wind turbines.
Don’t get me wrong, my career deals with energy in general, and I am very committed to the idea of wind energy; However, comparing the efficiency and reliability of nuclear power with wind power is like comparing Mike Tyson to Shirley Temple. One of the worst things that has ever happened to this country was 9 mile island. This single event skewed our country’s opinion of nuclear power so far to the negative, that we have allowed ourselves to fall way behind the rest of the world’s developed countries in arguably the most critical way imaginable.
Check the two links I posted above your comment – there’s the future (I hope). Nuclear energy isn’t clean, exploitation and transporting pollutes and above all nuclear waste does. Apart from that, accidents CAN happen. Now, even if that is true for many technologies (it is), no catastrophe is as destructive as a nuclear explosion is. What is oil spilling into the gulf compared to Chernobyl (and even that wasn’t the worst thing that could happen)?
And don’t mention reactor designs and whatnot. Sure, western and/or modern reactors are safer, but they cannot be safe, because the chain reaction is inherently unstable. You know, the unsinkable Titanic did sink – steel is inherently heavier than water…
(And btw,if you don’t want your comments to show up late don’t use i m a g.)
“Here are all the problems as I see them with my limited view and lack of expertise in the field, but don’t mention the obvious solutions. No solution is perfect.”
Stupid should hurt.
Wow. What great arguments you have. I’m convinced.
Aweome sauce. My job is done, then.
Seriously, what was that for? You seem to be able to discuss, why these insults?
I can see how you might be offended by that first one, but the second? Really?
And the first was meant more as sarcasm than mean-ness. I just found it odd that you prematurely dismiss any discussion of the actual design, which is a huge safety feature in itself. So it’s pretty hypocritical to hold a “discussion” on those grounds.
I meant the first one. “Stupid should hurt” was sarcasm? Well…
I can’t discuss design issues of nuclear reactors, ’cause I have no idea about that. The second paragraph in my comment on which you sarcastically commented was supposed to explain why I don’t think that design is a discussion-decider. Safer yes, safe no. Unlike fusion, fission reactors are inherently dangerous, they can explode when the chain reaction somehow gets out of control. And the result of such an explosion would be so devastating that I’d say only 100% safety is acceptable, even 99,9% isn’t enough. That was my argument.
There isn’t nearly enough fuel in the reactor for a nuclear explosion. What fuel exists isn’t concentrated enough for a nuclear explosion. The worst that can happen is a steam explosion. That’s the real danger of a nuclear reactor: heat.
And as I said elsewhere on this page, the US designs (and I believe most or all of the EU designs) are negative feedback. The reaction moderates itself. It takes concerted effort to sustain the reaction, not keep it from going out of control.
Maybe “explosion” wasn’t the right word; a meltdown is always possible, however unlikely. And the nuclear fission always needs to be controlled, that would be different only for the until now not functioning fusion reactors.
I should point out that even with the Chernobyl disaster, as decrepit and crappy as that plant was, the people responsible for said disaster had to try very hard to make it blow up. They overrode multiple safety measures and damn near did everything in their power to make the reactor melt down. The catastrophe was not a technological one; it was one of staggering human stupidity.
Of course, there’s no guarantee that companies won’t staff nuclear power plants with similarly stupid people today…
That’s just plain awesome man.
untill its not widy one day and no one has electricity. wind can only be 20% of any powergrid.
Wind + Peaking = Baseload. Wind + Storage = Baseload. Wind + geographic distribution = less variability. Wind + solar = less net variability than either alone.
It’s a true shame nuclear power is so misunderstood. People should take the time to learn some facts (and heaven forbid, some science), before spouting off.
For example the fact that we need to find a place (actually many places) to safely store the tons and tons of nuclear waste for up to one million years so it can neither fall in the wrong hands nor pollute air, ground or water? We’ve been looking for such places for more than 60 years now, but couldn’t find one so far…
But hey, I guess our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren etc will find a solution. Maybe. But why would we care? It’s not like we’re acting responsibly in other areas, so why should we do so when it comes to a technology that is inherently instable and inevitably dirty on a whole different level than any other?
We’re not going to store them for millennia. That’s “old school”. We’re going to use them again.
That only works for a few percent of the nuclear material, most of it is extremely dangerous waste. Unfortunately, it’s not”old school”; it’s inevitable.
My good friend, My. Spallation Proton Beam, would beg to differ.
Hahahaha… one million years? Please tell me where you got this number, because I just did a quick Google search for any such reference, and ever the most crackpot sites out there have enough elementary knowledge of half-life and isotopes to keep their exaggerations realistic. You just made it up, right?
Maybe you should make a slightly bigger effort to search thoroughly.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste#Types_of_radioactive_waste
and:
“Of particular concern in nuclear waste management are two long-lived fission products, Tc-99 (half-life 220,000 years) and I-129 (half-life 17 million years), which dominate spent fuel radioactivity after a few thousand years. The most troublesome transuranic elements in spent fuel are Np-237 (half-life two million years) and Pu-239 (half life 24,000 years).[ Nuclear waste requires sophisticated treatment and management to successfully isolate it from interacting with the biosphere. This usually necessitates treatment, followed by a long-term management strategy involving storage, disposal or transformation of the waste into a non-toxic form. Governments around the world are considering a range of waste management and disposal options, though there has been limited progress toward long-term waste management solutions” (Wiki).
So yeah, I chose a relatively random number, it’s less for Pu-239 and more for Np-237 (and way more for I-129), but still you should get the idea. You’re welcome.
But the spider will still turn you into Spiderman, right?
We can only hope.
My constituents are turning green! They are growing arms on their backs!
Neptunium? Oh man….really?
It is clear to me that you are learned juuuust enough on this topic to ruffle your feathers, but not enough to actually understand it. While it is true that radioactive waste is a serious (and manageable) concern of nuclear energy, Neptunium is nearly irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. And though this wiki article you reference doesn’t necessarily come off as overly inaccurate to me, I am probably going to form a discussion to edit this section, because the use of words like “troublesome” along with “millions of years” is more sensational that informative.
First, Np-237 decays VERY slowly by emitting an ALPHA particle. Alpha radiation, by far the least harmful, is stopped by your skin….or a single sheet of paper….or dust. Alpha radiation really only has the potential for harm if you ingest large amounts of it. That is why Neptunium is considered SAFE enough to be found in large amounts in nearly every single room we dwell…in the common fire detector. A good rule of thumb for you to remember is that if something has a half-life of a large number of years, that it just another way of describing its stability. You couldn’t kill yourself if you laid in a pit of all the Np-237 stored in all the repositories in the world…for YEARS.
Please read into this further than just Wikipedia. I will Pwn you all day long in this subject.
There you go, Blogmonster. Eat up.
Oh, and I thought we’re having a discussion rather that a game in which “pwning” is the goal. My bad.
Nah. I reserve discussions for the other half of my day wasted on Reuters, NY Times, and WSJ blogs. I’m really just here for the pwning.
Aha. For that you seemed to be awfully eager to discuss. Wait, no – to mention your points of view, not discuss.
Neptunium? Oh man….really?
It is clear to me that you are learned juuuust enough on this topic to ruffle your feathers, but not enough to actually understand it. While it is true that radioactive waste is a serious (and manageable) concern of nuclear energy, Neptunium is nearly irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. And though this wiki article you reference doesn’t necessarily come off as overly inaccurate to me, I am probably going to form a discussion to edit this section, because the use of words like “troublesome” along with “millions of years” is more sensational that informative.
First, Np-237 decays VERY slowly by emitting an ALPHA particle. Alpha radiation, by far the least harmful, is stopped by your skin….or a single sheet of paper….or dust. Alpha radiation really only has the potential for harm if you ingest large amounts of it. That is why Neptunium is considered SAFE enough to be found in large amounts in nearly every single room we dwell…in the common fire detector. A good rule of thumb for you to remember is that if something has a half-life of a large number of years, that it just another way of describing its stability. You couldn’t kill yourself if you laid in a pit of all the Np-237 stored in all the repositories in the world…for YEARS.
You seem like you have some knowledge on the subject. My main concern is waste storage. (Safety is also a concern but we all know that safety is third.)
The U.S. Department of Energy estimated in 2001 that there were 100 million gallons of radioactive waste and 2,500 metric tons of spent fuel.
My question is: Has there been any truly viable solutions to deal with this?
100 million gallons and 2,500 metric tons sounds like enormous numbers…. they are not. Yucca Mtn was extremely viable, but uneducated fear and “not in my backyard” mindsets were problematic enough to have the project scrapped….with no contingency planned. We are a nation filled with irrational people who want to drive their big cars every time they leave the house, but who are vehemently against oil drilling….who want to have 50 things in their home plugged in at all times, but are against real energy solutions. The rest of the developed world has been all over nuclear power for decades, while America has hemmed and hawed and not built a new plant since the early 80′s. Instead we burn coal and natural gas in astronomical amounts and have the pipe dream that one day the wind and sun will be all we need. The problem truly lies in the fact that the rest of the world is quickly growing up while the U.S. just gets dumber and more immature. In 50 years, this world we have an entirely different hierarchy. Believe it.
Germany quits. Just saying.
*Snickers*
?
It’s true. Even our heavily-influenced-by-cooperate-interests government doesn’t question that quitting is the only option. They discuss WHEN, not IF.
Oh sorry, hehehe! No, I meant the usage of nuclear energy.
Perhaps being #1 all the time isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
How is that viable? At the current rate it will be full in 4-5 years and remain so for what, 90,000 years? Are we to burrow into every mountain and fill it with waste? How long can that go on. You didn’t even address the liquid waste. Surly there must be other solutions in the works. Please elaborate for me.
The amount of waste from spent fuel rods could easily be stored in one large storage facility like Yucca for all the existing and currently proposed nuke plants in the country for generations to come….more than enough time for technology to come up with a way to fully recycle the the rad waste (see MOX). Liquid waste is much less dangerous and completely decays to a benign level in a relatively short time. The storage of highly radioactive waste is certainly dangerous and would be scary if there were not soooo many safeguards in how it is handled and stored. Being scared of rad waste buried 1500ft in the Earth, in depleted uranium or lead containers, which are in concrete containers, which are in metal containers, is like being scared of a great white shark in the Pacific Ocean while you are living in Denver. Your health will never realize any negative effects of radioactive waste in your lifetime no matter how many nuke plants we build. This is not exactly a willy-nilly operation.
You mean to tell me you wouldn’t mind living next to a mountain full of radioactive waste? Do you have a cancer fetish or something?!
I absolutely would not mind it at all. I would build a house on Yucca Mountain and raise a family there. The Uranium pellets that make up fuel rods are about the size of a pencil eraser. The containment placed around spent fuel would be effective if it were only 2% of the barrier that it actually is. I hate to make so many analogies in this thread but how much heat would you feel if someone struck a match in the house next door to you? You are far less shielded in that scenario. Nuclear physicists, plant designers, and engineers overkill the crap out of containment and shielding. ALARA is always the word of the day.
I’d be more concerned with the shipment of the stuff to the site:
state.nv.us/nucwaste/trans/trfact03.htm
You’re correct, I learned just enough to form my opinion; I’m not a nuclear physicist. It’s good that you admit the Wiki article is accurate enough and it’s telling that you focus entirely on the Neptunium. The really important thing is: We need to safely store that waste for much longer than any human perception and experience goes.
You claim it’s a “managable” concern; you forgot to explain why there is not one permanent repository for nuclear waste IN THE WORLD after more than 60 years of searching for one.
I understand that this issue is of personal concern for you, considering you work in that industry. I’m so bold to say: Don’t worry, your job is safe and maybe even your grandchildren can work in that business. That doesn’t change that it’s an irresponsible way of producing energy.
You think it is an irresponsible way of producing energy. I disagree. And although I do consult companies like Excelon, it is not exactly my cash cow. I went to work for GE as a generator specialist right out of college and have worked at hundreds of power plants around the world. As an engineering consultant now, I can work for a nuke plant one day, a wind farm the next, and a gas plant the day after that. From what I have seen, nuclear power is the most logical and safe way to feed our energy needs for the future.
This is the internet. You’re not allowed to actually know what you’re talking about and make valid statements.
Are you nuts?
Alpha radiation may not travel a long distance, or penetrate through the skin.
But on a shallow, cellular level (like skin cells), the results of exposure to Alpha Radiation are devastating.
Sure. Devastating like being out in the sun all day without sunscreen is devastating to your skin. Or like eating an unripe banana is radiologically devastating to your mouth and throat. You show me a single human who has ever suffered acute harm from Alpha radiation and I will publicly FAIL myself.
I assume you meant to say that AMERICIUM is found in smoke detectors, not neptunium.
*sigh*
No, I meant Neptunium. Smoke detectors contain an americium-241 ionization chamber, which from day one, accumulates a significant amount of neptunium-237 as part of its natural decay chain. Then as the Neptunium decays, other elements, such as bismuth, lead, polonium, radium, thallium, and uranium are created in trace amounts. But in the same scope of time that we were discussing yesterday, the americium in your smoke detector will be almost entirely neptunium for the majority of its life cycle. It decays to this state quickly and takes a long time to decay out of it.
I don’t want to come off as a big know-it-all on this topic folks, but I have had years of military training in nuclear physics and found it interesting enough to keep studying afterwards. I am at a nuclear power plant right now. You are going to have to do more than skim over a Wikipedia article to trip me up on this.
The waste that lasts “one million years” isn’t dangerous. It’s not. If its half-life is so long, that means its barely emitting any radiation.
The waste that is dangerous lasts much, much shorter a time than that. Measured in hours or days, not years.
“Measured in hours or days, not years.”
Evilolive, could you please tell him if that’s correct? I doubt he’d take my word for it.
Too bad, he seems to have lost the interest, so I’ll have to jump in.
failblog.org/2010/07/19/epic-fail-photos-license-plate-win-2/#comment-948518
failblog.org/2010/07/19/epic-fail-photos-license-plate-win-2/#comment-948422
I assume you meant to call in that guy? He’s making the same point as I. The longer the half-life, the less frequent the radiation. And in the specific cases you’re invoking, the less potent.
And at any rate, we won’t have green energy being the plurality, let alone majority, of our energy production for decades. Nuclear power would be a great intermediate source. Better to contain the waste, even if it’s more concentrated, than spewing the waste into the sky like with fossil fuels.
Yes, I meant him, because I assumed that you would have accepted it easier if he as a pro-nuclear guy tells you that your claim about “hours or days, not years” is simply incorrect. Instead I linked to my earlier qoute from Hannes Alfvén.
And yes, it will certainly take time to adjust our energy production. But in the long run there is no responsible alternative to “going green”, unless fusion power plants start to function. The longer we rely on nuclear energy et al, the longer it takes to change things.
I don’t see ξ√ÌlÖlÍ√ξ making that claim at all here. In fact, I see him outwardly laughing at your claim. And also pointing out: “Alpha radiation, by far the least harmful, is stopped by your skin….or a single sheet of paper….or dust. Alpha radiation really only has the potential for harm if you ingest large amounts of it. … A good rule of thumb for you to remember is that if something has a half-life of a large number of years, that it just another way of describing its stability.”
My father worked almost his whole life for the NRC. I’ve read books covering positions from both sides. I know what I’m talking about when I say that the dangerous stuff degrades very quickly.
I wanted Evilolive to comment on your claim that nuclear waste isn’t dangerous after days, because I’m sure he’d have to tell you you’re claim is incorrect. He didn’t say anything to that, so I lost patience and gave you the link to what the physicist had to say about that. Is my intention now understandable?
And what that physicist had to say about your claim proves you wrong as far as I’m concerned. Maybe we’re not talking about millions of years (although I read that alpha rays emitted IN your body are pretty unhealthy. If that’s true we still have to make sure that Np and other waste doesn’t find its way into our water, air or ground – for millions of years.), but we’re certainly talking about tens, if not hundreds of thousand years. Longer than the whole history of civilizations date back.
BTW, it’s not only that one physicist who says so, but also your, mine and any other government. They’re looking for places to store the waste for a loooooooong time, not just for days. And couldn’t find such a place after 60 years of searching.
Joe is correct. The most extreme energy can be released in reactions that take milliseconds even to fully decay. This is why control rods and moderators are used to slow the process down. The physics is as simple as it seems: If it takes millions of years to decay, it is giving off minuscule amounts of its energy. If it is decaying very quickly, its energy is being released in a destructive way.
Arthur Eld…to respond to your comment right above mine here, I never made the claim that rad waste is not dangerous after hours or days–these kinds of isotopes never become rad waste because they are fully decayed before they need to be stored. I am fully aware that some forms of rad waste are dangerous for years after they are viable for commercial energy production and require safe storage. My point is that I feel that the scientific and engineering community more than have a handle on this issue and that the dangerous stuff doesn’t last for millions of years. We are talking about this issue as if we didn’t have a great many nuclear plants that have been producing clean power for decades. As long as America is hesitant to fully adopt nuclear power, we will fall further and further behind the rest of the world. And it is sad because we are in more danger of the boogie man than exposure to radiation from stored rad waste. Check this out: failblog.org/2010/07/19/epic-fail-photos-license-plate-win-2/#comment-948422
Or check out what France and England is doing with MOX. There will be more and more advancements while America has its frightened little head in the sand.
Sorry, meant this link in my last post: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBMR
Sorry, meant this link in my last post: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBMR
Chernobyl design = positive feedback
All US designs = negative feedback
Comparing US nuclear tech to Chernobyl = FAIL
At the current rate of consumption there is enough uranium for 200 years.
Should all electricity be generated from nuclear fuel that would obviously shrink to 40 years, less with much more electric cars around. Not a long-term solution.
↑ Citation needed.
Nevermind that it’s done much more efficiently in bulk at power plants than it would be in an ICE, or in a much cleaner way, or the fact that this doesn’t account for the electric layout of his specific area….
Yea, man…. you’re totally right.. We should all walk or ride bikes like they do in china.. Those guys are going to have the best environment in 50 years cuz they are in tune with nature..
I wish I could get anywhere I needed to be on foot or by bike from my house. : ( Geographic problems notwithstanding, the heat and humidity would have me stroking out in no time.
if you lived in China, you´d choke from all the exhausts from the factories … Just remember the Olympics in Peking were almost irregular because of that…
I wondered if China was the best example. I went to look for statistics on their pollution and got distracted by something shiny, though, so I don’t know.
Copenhagen is a much better example.
Not sure where you’re getting your made-up numbers.
This linkie is for the USA Department of Energy:
ht tp://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/pdf/pecss_diagram.pdf
Petroleum 37.1%
Natural Gas 23.8%
Coal 22.5%
Renewable Energy 7.3%
Nuclear Electric Power 8.5%
Granted, this diagram is from 2008, and we all know what a HUGE revolution we had in the last couple of years in energy consumption, so maybe your 1% petroleum is correct…
Fluffy, the diagram you linked to shows 1% of petroleum going to electricity generation.
hahahaha.. Thanks Admiral Apparent..
Google “U.S. Electricity Generation by Source” and you’ll get a bunch of website with about the same numbers…
Oh sh!t. I failed so hard. Sorry.
S’OK Fluff, I would rate that chart “confusing”.
I’ve not looked at the link, but I would point out that ‘chart’ is an anagram of ‘RC hat’.
Statistics FAIL.
Well maybe you shouldn’t look only at the USA.
Try out Germany, we allrdy have pretty good percentage of green energy. We still want more and thats why we’re one of the leading nations in that business.
You can drive one ele-car in germany without losing all of your karma instantly.
Is that counting all the Hydro power they purchase from BC or the Nuclear power they purchase from Ontario? BC sells a HUGE amount of electricity to the states (mostly California).
If not, this is like statistics of plastic toys made in the US, when 97% come from China.
Maybe it doesn’t, but surely it saves the air you’re breathing.
I know where that picture was taken. That’s off the 5 freeway near the 55 freeway in Santa Ana. I drive by there every day!
I thought it looked familiar. I’ve seen quite a few Teslas in OC.
This.. is not a win. This is not a win.
WOW! I know this freeway. Its the 5-freeway on California. I live there.
All the people knocking the means in which electricity is generated and saying that this is a Tesla fail utterly fail to grasp the big picture. An electric car opens the doors to run fully off of renewable resources entirely once power plants make the switch as well. Not to mention that the energy used in an electric motor is far more efficient in the propulsion of the vehicle and occupants, whereas most of the energy in a combustion engine is lost to heat (something like 80% or more, I cant remember the exact statistic).
Bottom line: Even if the energy comes from burning coal or other substances, an electric engine is far superior due to the simple fact that the combustion engine is grossly and fundamentally inefficient at harnessing the energy from oil.
And what you’ve failed to understand is that we know where the components of the batteries and the electricity for that electric car came from and they are all non renewable (save for wind and solar but LOL on those). Lithium comes from china primarily and its shipped to japan for refining into ingots then to somewhere in europe via cargo ship half way around the world for further refining into a very pure substance on a roll. Its then sent to either a chinese, japanese or american manufacturer via ship again to turn into a battery then shipped once more to california to tesla’s headquarters to be put into one of their cars so you can claim youre not using any oil. Youve used up 3x more oil than I’ll ever use in my standard 4cyl sedan before youve driven 1 mile!
OWNED!!! Thankfully there is SOMEONE out there not drinking the EV bulls**t.
I love babble talk 30-40% of energy used to create electricity is lost and electric motors only give you about 60-70 % of what goes in as a final output ,,, quit believing all the BS propaganda – bet you believe that a car can run on water as fuel or maybe even the perpetual motion machine
Energy used up to run an electric car in ‘todays USA’ is about 50% efficiency and that is a FAIL
Electric cars for general use are highly inefficient and highly toxic from the batteries which have a limited lifespan and make an electric car financially not viable for most.
even worse are Hydrogen cars – except there I finally figured out a semi feasible concept – Hydrogen from electrolysis is the only way to store power from solar cells or wind for the times when nether sun or wind are available – now that way — I’ll get with it.
Oh Ryan … I will acknowledge one factor in electric cars powered by fossil fuel power plants ….. not efficiency as I already explained – but pollution wise – as to output of power – large power plants are cleaner than a matching power number of vehicles … that I will grant you
and it still cant carry the same energy density as gas
The tires are an oil product. Most of the interior plastics are oil products. Every bit of the insulation on the numerous wires and the plastic coatings of most of the electrical components are oil products. As someone pointed out well up the list, the electricity that charged this thing was likely derived from the burning of an oil product.
Further, being as how the electricity is derived from something akin an engine: burning oil to generate heat to move a piston to turn a crank to turn a generator—
Regardless of how efficient the motor is, charing it from fossil fuel still comes to a net loss. Now if we could go nuclear, then hey– big gains. If we only wanted to drive once a month, we could go solar. Again, big gains.
As-is? Petroleum fuel, petroleum parts, and likely parked in a garage that requires a goodly percentage of petroleum products, and driven over roads that are almost completely petroleum products. The idea that electric cars are some sort of salvation from oil is a fantasy. They are at best, as Ryan pointed out, a good jumping off point. But they are far, far more dependent on oil than most people seem to realize.
Calling this tag a WIN?
Fail.
What about through using recycled plastics like the Aptera 2e?
Plastic can be made from hemp oil, as can fabrics, textiles and most non-metallic car parts. Legalizing hemp and cannabis production would also save countless trees from going to paper production. Green for green!
Particularly since you can get something like three harvests a year from hemp. This country should have long since removed the restrictions surrounding the production of hemp.
Dude, then you could like totally smoke your car!
Roadside accident interviews would take on a whole new perspective …
Officer: What happened?
Driver: Dude, you should have seen it! My car caught on fire and it was all like woosh! And I was all like dude! I could like totally see the colors! It was soo kewl!! Dude!!
Officer: Looks like this guy was in an accident of some sort and lost his car. We need a box of cookies and some milk, stat!
Hemp for the production of textiles and oils. Not for the production of “tobacco”.
Aww, you’re no fun. 8)
we have to start somewhere.
There’s also gears and a drivetrain involved, most likely lubricated with oil products too.
There just really isn’t any getting around use of some oil to make things. Any plastic item you touch or see was origionally oil. The keyboard I’m typing on, the screen I’m looking at, etc. If the world really does run completely bone dry, we’re all screwed and I’m not even talking about oil’s use in energy production.
If we run out of oil to make plastic, then along the way the price of plastic will go up enough to make recycling profitable. And when that happens, all of the golf courses that were planted on top of landfills will be opened up and all of the plastic buried therein will be recycled.
It’s not as if the stuff we throw in the landfill is going to actually disappear or anything. It’ll be right there where we left it when it becomes economically reasonable to make use of it.
Who puts “LOL” on a license plate..really!?
FAIL!
why not?
agreed
Best one I ever saw was also on a Tesla — s/b 280 in Palo Alto that read,
“GBY OPEC”. Solid Win.
Took a moment to realize what “GBY” stood for, but that is indeed epic win of the highest order. It’s like “lol oil” for the cultured.
goodbye o.p.e.c. (some petroleum group) for those who cant figure it out
Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries
They basically protect the interests of oil-producing countries.
None of this is personal knowledge, just scrapped together from Google.
I think these E cars are great, but the companies are going the wrong way about it in my opinion. The infrastructure is not there to support a country on E powered cars. We need to start at the top and work our way down. 1st power plants..nuke,wind,solar etc. 2nd Start putting th recharge stations up across the country. 3rd goto your heavy haulers. They consume alot of fuel, get the semis to go E and that will take a good chunk out. Next would be public transportation..huge metropolatins full of E powered buses. All the while expanding the infrastructure. Finally after this is all done, goto your private sector. By this time the technology will be far more advanced and thus cheaper. Just my opinion take it for whats its worth. Got a question what do E cars do for heat or ac?
Well, I know they are already using hybrid buses in some cities, so that’s a start. And I think St. Louis’ light rail system is electric. Again, it’s a start.
If we REALLY want the country to go electric, the military has to do it first. If anyone has the means and the ability to figure out how to transport people and things via electric powered vehicles, they can. Besides, if the military does it first, it will sway the conservatives to think of it in a better light.
Since when are CONSERVEatives against conservation? We look for the best solution, not the brightest ideal. Theory versus application.
No, you don’t look for the best solution. You look for either the solution that makes the most money for the right-wing nutters, or the solution that the right-wing nutters tell you to look for. By the way, those are essentially the same thing. I am so tired of being told that nothing we do to reduce emissions will do any good. If it reduces emissions, it’s doing good.
Who’s we? Corporate giant CEO’s and conservative politicians are the extreme minority in our party, they have a large presence because they have access to the media. The majority of conservatives are very environmentally conscious as far as the ecology and park systems go (the EPA was invented by Satan. I mean, Nixon).
Get off your right wing nutter mindset. I don’t hate liberals, I think they are wrong, but I don’t let their nutjobs who run their parties mark my opinion about all of them.
*snork* How’s the product of your right wing ideology going at the moment? Could it be that it’s not the ideal way to run a country in a rapidly globalising world?
*shrug* I guess the answer to those questions lay with the perspective from which one’s able to view their society.
Spending trillions we don’t have under Obama is certainly a better cure for our economy than Bush’s overspending by several hundred billion. If you think we have conservative economy with the level of taxation, regulation, and overspending, I think I need to move to some mythical land where government isn’t looking for the next thing to tax to cover their endless spending.
You do remember WHY the Obama administration had to spend that much, don’t you? You should remember WHO signed the first stimulus bill, shouldn’t you? And if you then continue to remember HOW you as a nation came to that point, I guess talking about regulation would only make sense when you talk about the lack thereof.
*squeeeeeze*
I see you’re talking to brick walls again. And yet, we continue to do it.
*Sigh*
Yeah, I do. But that “argument” is one I hear quite often lately and it seems to be overly forgetful even for Americans who generally don’t like to remember the past too much. As if Obama wanted to spend that money… Also nevermind that Reps and Dems were FOR that, Americans and Europeans and Japanese and Koreans and even the “communist” Chinese. Ah well.
*squeeze*
(Get some sleep!)
You fail because you think I thought Bush’s wasteful and pointless war and useless stimulus package himself was a good idea. It’s not talking to a brick wall, it’s talking to someone who’s sick of government from both sides. Fail fail and triple fail on all of you who think you can defend Obama’s spending.
Well, you compared both presidents and Bush came out better in your comparison – but yeah, I assumed because I heard that talking point quite often.
Apart from that, it wasn’t just Obama’s spending, it was the world’s spending. Almost everyone did the same thing almost everywhere, no matter what political party ruled or what the overall ideology was. Almost all economists said that the world’s economy would REALLY be hurt if we all didn’t spend all that money. I can’t really judge if that’s true or not, but those who claim they can all said pretty much the same thing.
A serial killer who kills 8 people is roughly half as bad as the one that kills 16. Doesn’t mean I support the first serial killer because he’s not as bad.
The European Union is in chaos. France, italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, all these countries have runaway spending and debt issues. Just because everyone is jumping off a cliff doesn’t mean we should follow. We have to pay this money back someday you know. The interest alone on the debt we’ve incurred is probably more than we’ll ever see in benefits from the “Spendulus” package. The Republicans may be better on the issue, but not by much. They went along with Bush, then made an about face on Obama, claiming Obama is spending far more than Bush did. Well, they are all a pack of whores, but the Democrats under Obama are far worse.
What’s the solution? Maybe there is not. Perhaps short of reducing government spending by 66% nothing is going to do much to fix the problem. Wall Street may have caused the economic collapse, but the US government watched the entire time, nodding in approval, both Democrats and Republicans.
By the way, even Obama has had to admit the stimulus package he passed did virtually nothing to help out economy. How did everyone seemingly forget that? Probably the largest number of jobs created were entirely within the government, not the private sector, and most of those jobs were temporary census work.
Besides, the answer to a gambling problem isn’t gambling to get your money back. That’s all the government does, spend money and hope the economy improves and they get their money back from taxes.
I think the point the “it’s not a fail” people are missing is that this is an extremely insignificant measure in reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Even if you took every car off the road in California, the California Air Resources Board chaired by Mary Nichols admits that may be MAX about 1% of the total of carbon dioxide output across the world.
Energy conservation is a good thing. Driving a car almost no one else can afford unless they are one of those Wall Street people bribing, or a politician taking bribes… ruling class indeed.
I made a mistake, I believe it’s not every car in California, it’s every PERSON. All 38 million die that is.
What about the oil in the engine huh? Plastics, what are they, thats right, petroleum product
“oil in the engine”? really?
Shhh…..don’t tell anyone its how “they” are going to keep us hooked on oil
try game genie?
all I have to say is I <3 my 66 Mustang and 63 Impala they eat gass but kick a…
yeah that’s right! that car is in my hometown Santa Ana..
Too bad it does not hold a charge like it claims…. Plus, oil products are just about all over the car… So it should be “lol gas” That would make a little sense!!
Pardon for my ignorance… but wouldnt the axles need some sort of lubricant from ceasing up? That would be grease most likely, and wouldnt that be oil based?
Your ignorance is duly noted. Wouldn’t this car still be using significantly less oil product than every other gasoline/diesel based vehicle on the road? Isn’t that kind of significant reduction worth something?
Not really. All it does is shift the combustion of the petroleum distillate in question from the car to the power-plant. And lest anyone chime in, the benefits of improved emissions controls are more than offset by the energy conversion and transmission losses along the way.
Pretty sure he uses oil anyway. A lot of energy to build that car and power the battery comes from oil, just not directly. Technically its less efficiant. The jokes on him tbh…
Are we 100% positive that this vanity plate isn’t just the owners’ initials? Husband and wife? Lawrence Oliver Ludwig and Olivia Ingrid Ludwig? Or something. I see that all the time. I also think it’s stupid all the time, but just sayin’.
i highly doubt that
Maybe one day they’ll become readily available and reasonably inexpensive.
Hahaha. All you crybabies whining about how this car is no better than one that consumes oil… my car is electric (converted Rav4) and my home is 100% solar powered… AND it produces enough power to… guess what – CHARGE MY CAR. So my car doesn’t only NOT use oil, it runs off pure sunlight. And I don’t represent some whacked out concept either. Lots of people are going solar and once these electric cars go mainstream (and become affordable, which they inevitably will) they will have a 100% zero-emissions vehicle and home.
It’s time that the whiners finally grow up and realize that their blatant ignorance and unfounded pessimism is falling on deaf ears… unless those listening are just as stupid as they are.
So, tell us, big guy…
Where did all the plastics in your car come from? I think you’ll find there’s a lot. Dashboard, light covers, bumpers, various interior panels and oddments. Especially consider the battery enclosures and the household solar panels.
How was the metal ore extracted and transported, then refined, melted and shaped into the body?
What are the paints made out of?
How was the rubber for the tyre extracted, transported, vulcanised, molded then transported to the factory or wherever you bought them?
What of all the lubricants it will still have in it, e.g. hub grease or particularly – unless you’re using hub motors – the remaining transmission? Plus shocks, brake fluid…
What’s in the batteries and the controller circuitry? How was that produced and transported?
Window and light-bulb glass (and metal)? Seats and upholstery, particularly if it’s artificial fibre?
Brakes?
Etc, etc, etc. There’s far more to the fossil fuel and non-renewable resource cost of a vehicle than just its fuel – it doesn’t magically spring into existence – and the electric conversion isn’t itself without cost. It can *help*, especially if (as per the tesla) it is made as such from new, so the potential ICE never gets made, used or scrapped, and it is more efficient of the energy it uses in any form… but it’s not flawless, an enormous revolution, or a universal panacea.
The Tesla probably uses even more oil than the electric Rav4, because of the bodywork. AFAIK carbon fibre is more accurately described as carbon fibre reinforced plastic. If we can figure out a reliable way of making durable plastics from plant matter, such as we can already make fuels, then this won’t be such an issue. But that’s not happened yet.
Oh, and as I mentioned far above, if it’s running off nuclear power there’s STILL a considerable fossil fuel / environmental impact even if you disregard the whole nuclear waste issue. The mining machines, refineries and trains (boats, planes, trucks) that extract, process and transport the fuel typically run off diesel (or use coal, gas etc directly), rather than the electrical power supply to which nuclear is but one contributor.
Renewably planted wood-frame car with stretched hemp bodywork, flywheel storage, motors made from recycled, solar-heated scrap copper (and similarly sourced/constructed tyres, glass, furniture and instruments) FTW. Or heck, a small 4-stroke cat-equipped motorcycle. Cut your fuel use and emissions by half or better, and the machine itself requires far less energy and resources to build/transport.
Whats the range on your E powered car?
So… How much environmental damage did creating all of those solar panels cause? Lots of heavy metals go into making photovoltaics….
Is that Jason Calacanis? Seems like his sense of humor and I know his Tesla is orange.
Damn i used to live in Tustin CA near santa ana and we would always take this route when going to the mall
Good times
LOL NOWERE2CHRG. Damn, that doesn’t fit.
LOL WATT. That’s better.
LOL RANGE.
LOL PRICEY.
What about the engine? I suppose it doesn’t have any moving parts that need to be lubricated by oil?
I wanna see someone in a proper car like an Aston go past with the plate LOL ECO.
I KNOW RIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I want to put on my SUV, “GAS GUZLR”
License plate WIN—Tesla car FAIL
Big price to pay for being “eco-friendly”
AWESOME – especially in days of BP´s heavy failing
Looks like 5 freeway northbound near Santa Ana.
Am I right?
OC FTW!
It sure is. i noticed that too.
Who can afford those things!?! Really!
But…want.
that’s a win
Renewables like wind and solar just don’t work they take up acres of land for such a small power output and it takes years for solar panels to give back the energy that was required to make them. The only real solutions are nuclear fission and nuclear fusion. Nuclear fusion solves all the problems of fission and it will last us for billions of years however we have not been able to make a sustained controlled fusion reaction that produces net energy. Nuclear Fission however has really only one problem as long as you use thorium fuelled reactors and that is waste storage we can store it in the ground but we will eventually run out of space although the fuel will last us a very long time especially thorium and remember 1 kilo of coal will produce much less power than the same amount of thorium
Erm, that’s not a Tesla. It’s a Lotus Elise, very much a petrol powered car! Fail Fail?
that’s exacly what i thought, but then i rechecked and apparently the guys at tesla motors design cars that look suspiciously like lotuses.
Oops, it is a Tesla! Failed myself!
LOL Oil, eh? What do you think the plastic body panels are made of?
Imagine this car driving in front of the golf of mexico >.<
Fail. The moron probably thinks that his electricity comes just from the three little holes in his wall.
I still wonder how much oil it took to build, ship, and operate the machinery needed to assemble these vehicles.
Sort of like electric hand dryers. Sure, there’s no paper involved, but I am imagining the level of power needed to run those things, and how much coal had to burn to produce it. Recycling the paper towels might have been a much better option.
Who would have thought one could go to failblog to learn everything you always wanted to know but were afraid to ask about energy sources….
“you can be sure that more “fossil” fuels will be burned to supply electricity to “lol oil” hippies and their “lol oil” cars. ”
Missing the point. Cars getting powered by one oil plant is FAR less harmful to the environment than all of the cars running on individual motor systems.
All the ignorant motorists can suck on the rising sea level when their homes are swallowed by their own fail-apathy.
Thankyou to this guy for proving a commentor here currently owns a brain:
Your ignorance is duly noted. Wouldn’t this car still be using significantly less oil product than every other gasoline/diesel based vehicle on the road? Isn’t that kind of significant reduction worth something?
Back to the issue – fact is that a lot of the wall plug electricity for the Tesla comes from nuclear or fossil fuel. It’s really not *that* clean….
A clean alternative already exists! And it’s not a frickin’ Tesla, like many good people have been trying to say. The Tesla is not even practical for long distances. Instead or pointlessly arguing, why not do some research? Try looking up for the Honda FCX Clarity, which is an hydrogen powered solution. Now, this is a truly good car for the environment! Not that pseudo-environmentalist marketing schemes like the Tesla and the Prius.
Using hydrogen for fuel is even more “lol” than oil. Safe and efficient transport and storage of hydrogen is orders of magnitude more difficult than it is with electric power. To illustrate: hydrogen diffuses through most metals, making them brittle in the process. Hydrogen mixes with air much more readily than petrol fumes or even alcohol, thus a car crash or an accidental leakage could result in a spectacular explosion. Also, there are two ways for producing hydrogen: reducing fossil fuels, and electrolysis of water. These processes use about at least as much fuel or electric power than simply powering a car with them. So, about the only thing the Clarity has on the Tesla is its range. And considering that you can get electric power just about anywhere in the world, while fast-fill hydrogen stations are not that easy to come by outside of Southern California, I’d rather buy a Tesla.
Tesla = fun, but not efficient.
Electricity (and gasoline for that matter) were also once considered distribution problems.
Your whole argument against hydrogen is that there are current technological issues to overcome. Well no kidding!
The fact remains: industrial hydrogen has the lowest energy loss from production to HP at the wheel than any other current tech. The energy loss just pushing the power to the grid and the energy loss in battery storage KO any chances for the EV to be more efficient.
Entropy sucks, the way it breaks down the almost religious fanaticism of EV proponents.
L is right, Hydrogen is the future.
Look at what’s important: the laws of thermodynamics. They cannot be overcome.
BTW, the argument for reducing fossil fuels is spurious, the chief concern, CO2, does not react in the real world the way lab results predict. The data does not correlate. The labs show that EM at certain wavelengths should produce WAY more heat retention than even the most skewed (data stations above industrial AC units, FTL) real world data suggests by orders of magnitude. So, there’s a massive misunderstanding of the mechanics involved in ‘global warming’.
Alarmism coupled with ideology and fear at it’s finest.
is Ronald McDonald driving?
Ah, Failblog. Solving the worlds problems before bed time. I think the license plate is funny… almost as funny as the people who use the comments on it as a soapbox to lecture each other about how everything works.
Just combating ignorance on my afternoon off! Glad you enjoyed!
(Also I agree, it IS a funny plate, because the Tesla is such a great performing machine, not some BS)
Lol, Oil.
I know right? that’s a funny license place!
Hey looks it the 5 freeway and merrill lynch
dude guys relax, the license plate rocks because he doesnt have to fill his car up. dont dig so deep into it….
Why are all efficiency measurements measured in mpg and percentage of useable energy from storage device. All efficiency measurements except for geothermal, nuclear and tidal should be measured in sun to wheel efficency since all energy comes from the sun (even nuclear and geothermal is power from suns that produced power many millions of years ago).
it a good blog
electric car fail, car last 15min at 100mph
I just want one because it looks really cool.
It’s based on a Lotus but with more weight more price and worse handling.
I always wanted a car that needs an 8 hour charge for an hour of driving.
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