THE Electric Vehicle (EV) Thread pt 1 (merged) Archived

[davidyson]

Someone already mentioned the concept, but I thought I would like to emphasize:

We will not have to stop for hours to recharge with battery-electric vehicles. There would be Plug-In batteries so you can change them within a minute or so just as messengers changed horses quickly at post stations in the "good old times".

Of course, one would not really "own" the battery, butjust a battery!

Davidyson

[backstop]

The proponents of electric motoring on a significant scale seem to be ignoring a number of critical factors discussed in other threads.

1/. Greatly expanding power generation and distribution capacity.

a) The core problem of peak oil is that it impacts the economic growth world wide, by which major infrastructure projects, that take as much as 10 years to come on line, would have been funded.

b) Expanding nuclear power in western nations has many, jointly insuperable, problems. A shortlist of these include

the classic untenable immorality of this generation getting the power and all coming generations getting the wastes, its risks and costs, and its necessary secret police forces;

the massive CO2 emissions during stations' construction that are not recovered by operation displacing fossil fuels for a number of years, meaning that building a series of stations, say 20 at one per year, will put extra CO2 into the atmosphere for well over 30 years. This has an intensifying destabilizing impact on the global economy, (viz hurricane Ivan) exacerbating 1/a) above, and causing potentially catastrophic impacts on food production;

if western countries were to opt for heavy nuclear expansion, they would not only be investing that much less in the sustainables, they would also, undoubtedly, be pushing nuclear across developing countries, multiplying the probability of general nuclear proliferation;

c) The costs of clean coal with carbon sequestration appear still worse than those of nuclear power, thus further exacerbating 1/a) above;

if western countries were to opt for heavy conventional coal power expansion, they would not only be investing that much less in the sustainables, they would also, undoubtedly, be pushing coal power across developing countries, multiplying the probability of general climatic destabilization with catastrophic impacts on global food security.

2/. The alternative option of Sustainable Forest Methanol

a) This option provides a high grade liquid fuel suitable for ICE engines, turbines and fuel cells.

b) Woodland yielding 5 tonnes dry wood per hectare per year can yield over 2.75 tonnes methanol /ha/yr via a local processing plant.

This amount of the fuel, if used in fuel cell vehicles, is roughly equivalent to 1,000 gls of petrol used in an ICE vehicle.

c) Its CO2 emissions are recovered by the regrowth of the woodland's (deciduous) trees in a 'Coppice' silviculture, harvesting on a cycle of from say 7 to 28 years according to local conditions. (i.e. fell say one-seventh of woodland per year)

CO2 is banked in new coppice woodlands' growth effectively for half the harvesting cycle, and continuously in the growth of roots and new soil.

d) By utilizing/replanting existing productive woodland plus additional low-value hill lands, this option minimizes the competition for arable land that mitigates strongly against agribusiness biomass crop production for ethanol, biodiesel, etc.

Coppice woodland (in Europe) accommodates the highest biodiversity of any ecosystem, thus raising non-wood yields such as game, fruit etc.

Coppice woodland stabilizes hill soils cutting erosion, and mitigates lowland flooding by slowing the runoff of intense rainfall.

e) Sustainable Forest Methanol is applicable across developed countries, where a new financial motive for afforestation may be largely welcomed, and particularly across developing countries where low labour costs will predictably accelerate investment with a view to escaping the need to spend hard-earned dollars on fossil fuel imports.

Therefore I suggest that this option is not only desirable for its exceptional sustainability, it is also far mor practical as a viable option than trying to raise power-generation capacity to drive electric or hybrid vehicles.

regards,

Backstop

[davidyson]

backstop,

some questions:

- How long would it take to build the Sustainable Forest Methanol conversion plants?

- Have you got a link showing the feasibility of the conversion process?

- What is the conversion efficiency?

- Did you do an area calculation for how much land we would need to grow 1% of the world's current fuel demand?

Davidyson

[Devil]

Backstop

Please substantiate, with serious references, every one of the statements you have made. Most of them are controversial and it would be easy to find references which go in the opposite sense. I would not consider the sayings of either green or anti-green NGOs or other extremists as serious references. Whereas some of what you say appears correct, some of it is also twaddle. The problem is that some readers here may not have the knowledge to sift the good from the bad and, under a guise of an informed post, they may take it all as being correct or none at all. I therefore suggest this substantiation, so that they can judge better for themselves.

[Whitecrab]

More details on the methanol economy idea: http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic743.html

You can also make methanol from natural gas or coal: this can help supplement the supply until the sustainable tree farming is worked out and scaled up.


I would be interested in seeing if you have more details, too. Methanol, cellulose ethanol, or EVs: it's still unclear which is the best bet.

[Devil]

You can also make methanol from natural gas or coal: this can help supplement the supply until the sustainable tree farming is worked out and scaled up.

Of course you can, and that makes the methanol a fossil fuel and will increase the the greenhouse gas emissions. Not a good idea, is it? You will get just as many joules (if not more) by simply burning the original fuel without any energy-consuming chemical processes, and the number of additional carbon atoms ending up in the atmosphere will be the same.

[backstop]

Davidyson - my apologies for the delay in replying to your questions. Until recently I'd resisted using e-mail and the internet, so info gathered over the years is on paper. I've had an interesting time seeing what's available on the web so that you can review it if you wish.

The scale and degree of modularity of construction will define the time taken "to build methanol conversion plants." Scale is a function of the costs of fuelwood transport, which appears to be best below about 3 miles. This gives a theoretical maximum area of about 28 sq mls which equals about 7,000 hectares. (For anyone who needs to know it, a hectare = 2.47 acres).

I've seen yields of >10 Tonnes Dry Wood/ha/yr in Venezuela, 5TDWd/ha/yr in UK, and 1TDWd/ha/yr in Norway. Taking 5TDWd/ha/yr as the yield, 7,000 ha.s would provide 35,000 TDWd/yr or around 100 Ts/day. For a plant this size, given a large degree of factory production of plant modules, I'd expect an on-site assembly period of less than six months.

It should be noted both that far larger unsustainable plants have been operating to provide methanol as a chemical feedstock, (for instance at Goole, UK, importing 70,000Ts /yr of Baltic conifer forest) and that smaller plants drawing on less than 7,000 ha.s will have lower transport costs. Also, in the interests of decentralization the smaller the operation can be (without untenable capital costs/ tonne output) the better.

The material conversion efficiency in the '80 was 1.0T methanol from 2.3TsDWd, or about 44%. It has since risen to about 55% and, following EU-funded research into reforming the tars & condensates produced during the wood's gasification is set to rise considerably further.

In terms of the energy efficiency of this conversion, dry deciduous wood is generally taken to have a potential of around 4,850 KWHrs/tonne. (For those who need to know, a tonne = 2,205lbs). Both the wood's gasification and the woodgas's conversion to methanol emit heat, a proportion of which is used in processing, with the remainder either being vented or put to use for a steam-turbine genny or possibly community heating. It is not accounted below.

On the present material conversion efficiency of 55%, a tonne of wood yields 550 kg Methanol = 2,994 KWHrs (methanol = 19.6MJ/kg). This gives an energy conversion efficiency of 61.7%. (The bonding in of an atom of Oxygen in the woodgas to make methanol CH3OH is part of the reason for the rise from mce:55%).

I'm loth to attempt your last question without a clear idea of what you mean by 'the world's current fuel demand' but would calculate the following.

Petrol= 44.5MJ/kg x 20% effic IC engine vehicle = 8.9MJ delivered

Methanol= 19.6MJ/kg x 44% effic FC vehicle = 8.62MJ delivered.

On these numbers we need 1.03Ts methanol to replace 1.0T petrol.

Therefore, per million tonnes of petrol replaced we'd need 1.03MT methanol which, at good UK growth rates, needs about 375,000 ha.s of land.

It is perhaps worth noting that even the tiny UK has over 10 million ha.s of deforested moorland and marginal hill pasture, much of which is producing less than 25 servings of lamb per year, largely at the taxpayer's expense. Given reasonable incentives, there are many areas where hill-farmers could be willing to reforest parts of their land with native deciduous species to supply feedstock to a local processing plant.

Below are some of the better web sites on the issue. None I'm afraid give a clear overall picture of the option from forestry to vehicle but each has relevant items that are worth hunting out.

http://payson.tulane.edu:8085/cgi/bin/gw

www.mhi.co.ip/power/e_power/techno/biomass/index.html

www.methanol.org

www.gasnet.uk .

Hoping I've written the addresses properly,

regards,

Backstop

[backstop]

Devil - If you'd a/. care to withdraw the word twaddle, and b/. explain which parts of my previous post you find incredible, I'd be happy to try to explain the option further.

Can we agree that discussion demands courtesy ?

Backstop

[backstop]

Davidyson - sorry about the addresses above which seem to need to be nothing like what showed up in my links column. Here are the three that didn't work.

www.payson.tulane.edu

www.mhi.co

www.gasnet.uk.net/

Hoping these do work,

Backstop

[backstop]

Davidyson - Herewith, God willing, the right address of a current Japanese processor manufacturer. (Misreading a j for an i was I hope the problem).

http://www.mhi.co.jp/power/e_power/tech ... index.html

Backstop

[Devil]

Petrol= 44.5MJ/kg x 20% effic IC engine vehicle = 8.9MJ delivered

Methanol= 19.6MJ/kg x 44% effic FC vehicle = 8.62MJ delivered.

On these numbers we need 1.03Ts methanol to replace 1.0T petrol.

Therefore, per million tonnes of petrol replaced we'd need 1.03MT methanol which, at good UK growth rates, needs about 375,000 ha.s of land.

I will show you very simply why your arguments are twaddle.

You claim that your wood-based methanol requires 375,000 ha/~1 Mt. OK, fine foor the first year, but deciduous forest requires a minimum of 30 years to recycle, so it requires 11-odd million ha to be sustainable, assuming the plants move each year. Your hypothesis of planting moorland is untenable, as a lot of it is at an altitude where deciduous wood will not grow (and some coniferous, as well).

Perhaps it would surprise you to know that most methanol is not made from wood, but from reacting hydrogen with a mixture of CO and CO2 over a catalyst at ~200 bar at ~300 deg C. This is far cheaper, albeit a fossil fuel.

And, for your information, the word 'twaddle' is not, in the least, pejorative. According to the OED, it is a late 18th c word and is not characterised as familiar, colloquial, obscene or in any other way. IOW, it is good English. So, no, I'll not recant.

Also, yesterday, I decided to reduce my contributions to these forums at http://peakoil.com/fortopic1700.html simply because it is a waste of time arguing with evangelists who have never studied the holistic consequences of their proposals. I've replied to you, so as not to leave you hanging, but this is my last message in this thread, so you needn't ask me for further clarification.

Bye!

[backstop]

It seems to me unlikely that devil has any further clarification to offer here as he/she is apparently unable to comprehend the dynamics of the annual through-put and accumulation of carbon, hydrogen and other materials which we call forest, and, further, apparently has no knowledge of the ancient and increasingly popular silviculture known as Coppice.

The critique, such as it was, fails in its first line :

“deciduous forest requires a minimum of 30 years to recycle.”

In several decades of interest in forestry the notion of forest’s recycling of CO2 has been ubiquitous in books and research papers, but I’ve not seen discussion of a period in which a forest itself ‘recycles.’ ‘Regenerates’ yes, from the stump (or ‘stool’) of a coppiced tree, from replanting (mostly for timber) or naturally, even from bare ground; but not ‘recycles.’ This term to my knowledge has no accepted meaning in the study of silviculture.

There are very large areas of forest which take a minimum of around 35 years to ‘regenerate’ naturally and provide sustainability, but this occurs with the human inhabitants’ primary aim being subsistence cultivation under the much-maligned “Slash & Burn” system. This has been practiced for millennia (aeons ?) by indigenous peoples in the Amazon, Indo-China and elsewhere. It is now being recognized by forest ecologists that much of those forests are the long-term result of plots being cleared, cultivated and then abandoned to regenerate naturally for at least 35 years. This approach yields wood for building poles, for artefacts and for fires, but its primary goal is cultivation, i.e. when crop-yields start to decline the community migrates to a new clearing. If this is what devil was referring to it was wholly irrelevant to discussion of a silviculture that yields feedstock for energy.

Coppice is evidently an ancient form of forestry which survives (on a greatly reduced scale) in various forms in various parts of the world, in which deciduous trees are felled and then given from 3 to around 35 years (according to factors including species and local usage) to regenerate from the stump or ‘stool’ before being felled again. To give it some background I'd list the following.

At Mere in Somerset, UK, a bronze age village has been uncovered where a causeway of coppice-wood faggots was laid in the marsh out to a settlement over the lake, with the individual felling tools used still being identifiable by their often notched blades scribing the poles’ cut ends.

In the wetland of the Fens in Norfolk, UK, the remains of a celtic-era causeway have been excavated, running some hundreds of yards from a settlement on raised land through marshes to an open waterway. The structure was of a large number of long straight oak piles driven into marsh in a double row, and was presumably surmounted by framing and a walkway. There were several generations of piles, with the age of the great majority being between 16 and 18 years old when felled. Just as at Mere, the piles’ very straightness declares that they grew as coppice. (Try looking round in a natural (unmanaged) oak forest for hundreds of stems that are straight and all of an age).

The oldest surviving coppice ‘stools’ that I know of are at Ashford in Kent, UK, and have been dated as having been planted during the Roman occupation. These have survived so long only because they’ve been regularly cut ever since those days.

Near the village of Backbeck in Cumbria, UK, there are the massive ruins of an industrial-scale iron foundry from the early eighteenth century which is authoritatively claimed to have been, in its day, the largest industrial building in the world. The iron ore was brought in by ship, primarily from Sweden, for smelting on charcoal made from extensive coppice woodlands across the mountainous region of the lake district. As such, coppice woodland for energy plainly had a direct role in the emergence of industrialism, before being displaced by the peasantry having to work down the mines for coal.

Currently the UK has rather less than 100,000 ha.s of coppice, of which much has been allowed to go derelict (i.e. hasn’t been cut for more than 35 years) and would need harvesting and replanting to get it back into production. Yet a significant area is still worked (until recently much of the yield was used for paper pulp) and the restoration of derelict coppice is slowly gathering pace. By comparison France has a far higher proportion of its far larger land area under coppice, but has faced the same problems of competition with farming (particularly sheep-farming) of loss of traditional markets, and of the absence, until now, of sufficient new ones.

The yield of 5 Tonnes of Dry Wood /hectare /year [5 TDWd /ha /yr] that was in my first post’s example represents a quite good yield from coppice under the temperate forestry conditions in the UK. In passing I would note that the significance of altitude on growth is so central to forest and all other ecosystems that the potential here is very obviously not of reforesting all uplands, but, as suggested my first post, of reforesting parts of the very large areas of the uplands within the UK and elsewhere where it would be appropriate.

A yield of 5TsDWd /ha /yr from temperate coppice is substantially lower that that from “Short Rotation Coppice,” (SRC) which has been rapidly increasing its acreage in various countries as a promising ‘renewable’ energy, mostly in the form of CHP. During its first set of trees, its yields are higher (at up to 7.0TsDWd /ha /yr) as it uses relatively flat arable land for chemically fertilized and biocided monocultures (mostly of poplar or willow in Europe and North America). After around twenty years of being mowed at 3-year intervals (i.e. one third of area per year), the trees are expected (by SRC’s proponents) to be exhausted and to need ploughing up and replanting, thus releasing substantial volumes of CO2 from the soil.

In using a more valuable land type than traditional coppice needs, this modern regime attempts to get higher output per unit of input from high inputs, in the long-debunked economics of intensification which, as usual, fails miserably most tests of sustainability. Using lower-value land to get a modest but sustainable yield per unit of input from lower inputs, by means of a fairly traditional coppice regime, is patently the sane way to go.

At the core of devil’s misrepresentation of this option lies an apparent incomprehension of the feedstock’s accumulation in each hectare in each year, giving a standing stock of hectare-years’ growth. This is best illustrated in some examples, with the first being on a small scale.

Suppose:
12 ha.s of coppice are managed in twelve plots of 1 ha. each on a 12 year cycle.
Each plot gains the Equivalent of 5 TsDWd /year. [5 TsDWdEq /yr]
(This is around 7.8 tonnes of Green Wood /ha /yr [7.8 TsGWd /ha /yr]).
Each year the plots gain overall 12 ha.s x 5Ts = 60TsDWdEq /yr.
One plot is cut each year so in Year 13 the first plot is ready to cut again.
This holds 12 years’ growth x 1.0 ha = 12 x 5 = 60TsDWd Equivalent.
Thus the annual output from the fraction of the total area that is harvested equals the annual overall gain.

There is a somewhat more subtle regime of quite long precedence (at least mediaeval) known as ‘Coppice with Standards,’ which offers significant advantages over Coppice alone, particularly if the ‘Standards’ (trees grown to maturity) are planted as shelter belts to assist coppice growth-rates while also yielding thinnings to the feedstock output. However, to keep this post simple that option must be left to another post, should people be interested.

To scale up the example above, the area of 375,000 ha.s gaining 5TsDWDEq /ha /yr is repeated from the first post as being needed at 55% material conversion to supply 1.03MT methanol, in order to replace 1.0MT petrol.

Suppose:
375,000 ha.s are managed on a 12-year cycle and thus (notionally) in twelve plots of 31,250 ha.s each.
Each plot gains 31,250 ha.s x 5 TsDWdEq /yr = 156,250 TsDWdEq /yr
Each year the 12 plots gain overall 375,000 ha.s x 5 TsDWdEq = 1,875,000 TsDWdEq /yr.
One plot is cut each year so at Year 13 the first plot is ready to cut again.
This now holds 12 years’ growth x 31,250 ha = 12 x 5 x 31,250 = Annual yield of 1,875,000 TsDWdEq.
1.875 MTsDWdEq with a 55% material conversion efficiency, yields 1.03125 MT methanol. Annually.

Thus 375,000 ha.s of coppice gaining 5 TsDWdEq /ha /yr, yields a sustainable annual supply of feedstock for 1.03 MT of methanol (for use in FC vehicles) to replace 1.0MT of petrol (now used in ICE vehicles).

BTW the processing plant or station is of course stationary within the area of coppice woodland. I’ve seen no mention anywhere (apart from devil’s post) of the idea of a mobile methanol plant, and, short of some unforeseen breakthrough in miniaturizing plant for wood gasification and its conversion to methanol, and I see no prospect of such for a host of reasons.

To sum up, 0.375 Mha.s at good temperate coppice yields will supply feedstock for enough methanol to replace about 1.0MT of petrol annually. This equates to 0.93 acres of the same supplying feedstock for enough methanol to replace about 1.0T of petrol annually. I.e. about 1.08 tonnes of petrol-equivalent is produced per acre of coppice. These figures are of course predicated on a degree of shift from petrol ICE vehicles to methanol Fuel-Cell Electric vehicles.

I can’t tell why devil chose to cop out of this thread. Looking through it I don’t see anything like the attitudes he/she complains of, and, given the employment merits and exceptional biodiversity of sustainable coppice woodland for methanol, it is amply proof against the slur of lacking benign ‘holistic consequences.’ Meanwhile devil's own unconstructive and wilfully uninformed position does him/her no credit, as before sounding off he/she could simply have looked up the Mitsubishi website; among a lot else this includes remarks on their plant’s wood-sourced methanol becoming cost-competitive with some forms of diesel usage. For all that is after research dating back to the 1600s, the funding that has gone into this option globally since 1990 would be laughable (if it weren’t tragic), and yet already that competitiveness is being achieved.

In reacting to my first post on this thread devil chose to describe it as ‘twaddle,’ yet if that is so, then Mitsubishi and others are spending tens of millions of dollars on twaddle in biomass methanol production and in its use in fuel cells, and are getting very positive results for doing so. The term ‘twaddle’ was not given any definition in devil’s post, but the current usage (taken from Heinemann English Dictionary) defines it as “meaningless or foolish talk or writing.”

I hope that people will investigate the web addresses in my first post and conclude for themselves that these two posts are by no means ‘meaningless or foolish.’

I’m intrigued by the fact that I’ve seen just this reaction of utter unquestioning denial of the coppice-methanol option on various occasions since I began researching it in 1987 after the Great Storm over southern England. Yet that denial has usually been by people with an interest in the fossil status quo, including oil-men and car-makers, politicians and diplomats. In addition I’ve not previously seen such an obfuscation of the issues (muddying the waters) whose only effect, as far as I can see, might be to discourage those who aren’t conversant with the issues from looking at the websites to make up their own minds. Being directly anti-educational this would plainly conflict with the ethos of the peak oil website.

And as to why nobody in commerce has been interested in coppice methanol for so long ? Ask yourself just how many countries around the world could have been producing methanol from upland coppice woodlands all these years to enjoy national self-reliance in an high quality liquid fuel, and then ask what that would have cost the beef industry in curtailed expansion and the oil industry in lost sales and influence, and the dollar in hegemony ?

Regards,

Backstop

[AdvocatusDiaboli]

Lithium batteries are unlikely to be feasible to use in EVs.
All lithium batteries have a relatively short lifespan even if you don't cycle them at all. Furthermore they are VERY heat sensitive, in Texas the batteries probably would not even survive a year.
No, the solution will have to come from other sources, likely Nimh.
Nimh batteries can be charged very fast, so it would be conceivable to have "filling stations" where the batteries are recharged within a quarter of an hour.
That would seriously ameliorate the range problem because a 20 minute stop every hundred miles isn't THAT bad and 99% of all car voyages are far shorter.

[Whitecrab]

One problem with some of the above "solutions" is that they serve to push much of the load for change on to the poor. Effectively creating a consumption tax which the rich would not even feel. What could help that?

Give the people 1-2 years warning. Calculate how much the tax will hurt the average poor person, and put that as a tax rebate into the next year's taxes. (i.e. If the average person will lose $1,000/yr from the fuel tax, the government pays them $1,000 at tax time).

This would cause 0 net hurt to the average person*, but it would raise the price of gas at the pump. You'd have psychological incentive to weigh your use of it more carefully, fuel efficeint cars would become hotter, etc. etc.


*Assuming the person doesn't blow the $1,000 stupidly and then become poor.

[frankthetank]

the massive CO2 emissions during stations' construction that are not recovered by operation displacing fossil fuels for a number of years, meaning that building a series of stations, say 20 at one per year, will put extra CO2 into the atmosphere for well over 30 years. This has an intensifying destabilizing impact on the global economy, (viz hurricane Ivan) exacerbating 1/a) above, and causing potentially catastrophic impacts on food production;

Backstop~blaming CO2 for Hurricane Ivan? Give me a break. Have you ever looked at the history of landfalling hurricanes in the US. Its a cycle and lately the coastal areas have been very lucky (but not this year).The climate is constantly changing. Try reading the Ice Chronicles (i checked it out from my library) I AM NOT SAYING WE AREN'T KILLING THE PLANET. I totally agree with the increase in CO2, Methane, HG, etc. I've read both sides of the issue. We need to cut energy use-big time. And lose a LOT of Fat (not me :D )

I just haven't come across the evidence that CO2 is causing hurricanes to hit the coastal US.

Electric vehicles solving transportation fiasco in the making? I doubt it. A lot of things need to happen. I see super small vehicles (golf carts) being more of a chance than full size cars. [/quote]

[backstop]

Frank - I wrote:

"the massive CO2 emissions during stations' construction that are not recovered by operation displacing fossil fuels for a number of years, meaning that building a series of stations, say 20 at one per year, will put extra CO2 into the atmosphere for well over 30 years. This has an intensifying destabilizing impact on the global economy, (viz hurricane Ivan) exacerbating 1/a) above, and causing potentially catastrophic impacts on food production;"

and I stand by this. Your suggestion that I'm blaming CO2 for Hurricane Ivan is your interpretation, not my writing.

I referred to hurricane Ivan as an example of weather impacts' "intensifying destabilizing impact on the global economy," which it evidently has had and still is having in terms of exceptionally low US crude oil inventories elevating oil prices.

You ask whether I've "ever looked at the history of landfalling hurricanes in the US ?" - I first did so about 28 years ago.

Your slogans : "Its a cycle" & "The climate is constantly changing." seem to me unsubstantiated as an argument that the steady intensification of global weather damage over the last few is not due to man-made global warming.

Since the global climate system directly reflects the level of solar heat retained in the ecosphere by insulatory atmospheric gasses,
and since even the Whitehouse now acknowledges that man-made global warming began over fifty years ago,
and since global weather damage rates have been climbing for decades,
would you care to explain how the present intensification if weather impacts, (viz Hurricane Ivan) is not due to man-made C02 emissions ?

regards,

Backstop

[frankthetank]

I thought you were implying that Ivan was a direct result of global warming....thats all...i'm not denying that the Earth is warming...I'm a weather nut and its one of my passions...This hurricane season has been active, but nothing to suggest that global warming is the cause.

I think worrying about climate change (which is going to happen no matter if we pump out CO2 or not) is not at the top of my list (or the US Governments--Kyoto) I worry more about Mercury in my food and Particulates in my lungs...

i have noticed that many online Meteorologists (JBastardi,many others @accuwx, JoeDAleo, and others) take a pretty hard line against Global Warming...with a lot of data to back up their arguments...

Sorry for misinterpeting your post...

[backstop]

Frank - while my first post wasn't suggesting that Ivan was the result of Global warming, my response to your post was suggesting that Ivan was an example of increasingly violent weather wordwide that is due to Global Warming.

While individual weather events cannot be differentiated into natural and anthropogenic, the increase in such events in a given area is identifiable. Therefore I suggest you choose which of Charlie, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne to consider, notionally, as anthropogenic.

With regard to the information you've been fed denying that anthropogenic global warming is now under way, that the Whitehouse has now acknowledged began 50 years ago, I suggest you have a look at the writings of the UK's cheif scientist, Prof. David King, and at the publications of the UK Meteorological Office, and at the recent output of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

No offence meant, but your opinion that "climate change . . . is going to happen no matter if we pump out CO2 or not" is really uninformed. It's your choice what you do about it.

regards,

Backstop

[frankthetank]

Ice core samples show that the earth has had a history of ice ages and warm periods. This is fact.

Hurricane Ivan forming does not prove that global warming is occurring. Historically speaking, this season is not out of the ordinary. I guess my point is that i'm more worried about PO then I am about the global warming.

This post is about electric cars. I don't believe electric cars can replace gasoline engines. If battery technology can improve and nuclear plants are built I might be swayed.

[backstop]

Frank, we're agreed that the ice cores record a series of ice ages, and that Hurricane Ivan is not, in isolation, proof positive of global warming. It looks as if we should agree to differ over the unprecedented nature of this year's hurricane season so far. OK by you ?

To return to the thread, I'd suggest that Fuel-Cell Electric Vehicles [FCEVs] can replace a proportion of gasoline ICE engines sustainably, if they are fuelled with sustainably sourced methanol or ethanol.

This avoids the substantive problems of massively raising grid capacities globally, plus corresponding rises in power plant capacities, purely to meet transport energy demand.

However, given the limited scale of the planet, I don't see that any technology, whether sustainable or not, can support an exponential growth in energy usage without crashing us into one or other of the critical limits to growth that are now in sight.

Where do you stand on trying, or not trying, to maintain exponential growth ?

regards,

Backstop