WORDS MATTER
Buying Sight-Unseen.
There is the beginnings of an all-out war on the petroleum-powered vehicle happening right now. For many years the ideas have been brewing - some founded and others not - that gasoline and diesel engines are the cause of all the environment's woes. While the very nature of these technologies go against nature, they are not always so destructive to cause significant damage.
Many will point to such atrocities as the poorly maintained delivery trucks in Mexico City spewing carcinogens all day long and proclaim they are the problem. While they certainly contribute large amounts of pollution in to the atmosphere unchecked, compared to the ecological "footprint" of industry as a whole it is a mere drop in the bucket. And that bucket is on a conveyor belt of buckets. Starting way back in the late 1700's, Europe began to industrialize at a dangerous pace. It was dangerous in the sense that up until pretty recently, almost no person thought in terms of the atmospheric impact of these wondrous machines and technologies. If the 1870 you told some lout in Oxford that their horseless carriage seemed like it was burning off too much oil, they would probably challenge you to a crumpet duel. Tea and pastries would follow. It was simply unheard of to even consider such a notion that human creations could ruin such a massive and obviously God-made miracle. That archaic view persisted and still does even in with the mountains of scientific data that would suggest otherwise. People naturally fight change and conceding that we must reign in our reckless behavior certainly is a huge change. Some crumbling delivery trucks belching smoke have nothing on the unimaginable amounts of poorly designed, maintained and performing engines used and abused throughout the decades. If one can grasp the massive numbers of polluting machines that have been used by your average citizen, the amount of energy consumed and by-products produced by industrial endeavors is truly mind-boggling.
The power industry has long been criticized for doing lethal damage to every facet of the natural world, save for perhaps the earth's core. And with good reason, too, as the amounts of toxins dumped are truly staggering. Coal-fired power plants are at the top of the offender list, because of the vast amount and the pollutants emitted. There are some 50,000 plants in the world, all of which exhaust some combination of greenhouse gases. The most abundant gases are water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone, and CFCs. Pretty much any type of power plant or other industrial company pollutes or damages just as recklessly; nuclear plants, hydro-electric dams, steel plants, mines, timber operations, factory farms, chemical corporations, and the list just goes on in to eternal darkness. But they are not the only parties to blame in this... party. The consumer drives the demand for any product, at least in America. At least, whenever the government isn't involved. Society as whole allows this behavior to happen. Perhaps ignorance once prevented most people from knowing that anything negative was happening to the land, air and sea - but it is such common knowledge now it is no longer a valid excuse.
One topic no one dares question is the argument-ending "national security" cliché. It has been a necessary response to some very viable threats, but certainly the size and scope of militaries throughout the world are never necessary. A substantial portion of pollution and destruction is due to the military. Whether or not it is ever justified in it's efforts does not change the fact that endless fortunes are spent driving the war machine. It doesn't help that the government and corporations find ways to profit from the no-questions-asked demand on taxpayers, who are coerced in to funding the operations. Their greed pushes others to waste more resources, a large amount that goes directly to machinery and engines that pollute on a vast scale. And since it is under Uncle Sam's umbrella, any military related destruction is completely exempt from any scrutiny, let alone their own vehicle emission laws. When was the last time you saw an M1 Abrams tank in the emissions test line at the DMV?
To any gearhead, the M1 is one bad ass machine. The engine is a 1500 hp (1119 kW) Honeywell AGT 1500 (originally Lycoming) gas turbine, and a six speed Allison X-1100-3B Hydro-Kinetic automatic transmission. A vehicle weighing as much as 33 Ford Explorers, the alarmingly fast M1 can keep up with traffic on the freeway, but for lame safety reasons the speed is governed to 45 mph (72 km/h). This beast can consume any diesel fuel, kerosene, any grade of gasoline, JP-4, or JP-8 jet fuel. And of course the US Army uses JP-8 jet fuel in order to "simplify logistics." Jet fuel generally costs much more than it's diesel counterpart, but the bureaucracy can't be bothered with such minor details. They have many fleets of M1's to keep track of, which consume oceans of the good stuff.
From wikipedia.org:
The gas turbine propulsion system has proven quite reliable in practice and combat, but its high fuel consumption is a serious logistic issue (starting up the turbine alone consumes nearly 10 gallons of fuel). The engine burns more than 1 gallon per mile and 12 gallons per hour when idle. The high speed, high temperature jet blast emitted from the rear of M1 Abrams tanks makes it difficult for the infantry to proceed shadowing the tank in urban combat. The turbine is very quiet when compared to diesel engines of similar power output and produces a significantly different sound from a contemporary diesel tank engine, reducing the audible distance of the sound, thus earning the Abrams the nickname "whispering death" during its first REFORGER exercise.
Consider there have been over 9,000 of these armored ass kickers built, which would mean a huge amount of exhaust pollutants. And this is one vehicle example of many in one military in many, all in one world that has a finite capacity. The automotive industry never even thought about the end of resources until it was halted for World War II production and then in the '70s when oil suppliers defied the empire. Suddenly the American public thought economic cars were a sound alternative and even motorcycles and scooters gained popularity.
All the emissions regulations by the government, multiplied by a sudden market demand only compounded the numerous issues facing the Big Three automakers. Performance was, for lack of a better word... lacking. Sure there were still many high-performing vehicles still available for purchase, but the big picture was looking grim. Only when attitudes seemed to relax were there rumblings of a new, very revolutionary movement afoot. To some people, when you say environmentalism they fill with rage while others fill with rage over the atrocities committed by humans against nature. The populace seems to be torn over the concept of respecting the natural world all around us. It should not be thought of as anything except a logical practice to take care of the earth as a whole. But of course certain groups had to completely eviscerate the point of the entire crusade.
The mailbox-heads in Washington began getting aggressive once they got any heat from their constituents. The first "clunker laws" were enacted in the early 1990's and to the horror of gearheads everywhere, people were having perfectly* good cars destroyed for incentives that they were funding through taxation. (* using the term loosely) Story after story emerged about fantastic vintage cars being unmercifully crushed in to cubes and smelted in to ingots. If that weren't bad enough to dash the dreams of any kid with oil in their veins and WD-40® in their bladders, another set of equally skilled manipulators were hard at work. When marketing departments finally sank their claws in to the "green" bandwagon, the automotive industry was a prime target to exploit the idea. While there have been many times corporations have genuinely tried to be more efficient and less wasteful, it is generally to serve the profit margin. A double bonus that may be, it does not count toward them actually "being green." However! This silly hippie movement from the 1970's finally made it profitable to push cleaner technologies and products. GM's ground-breaking EV1 aside, the industry took some time to really offer a consumer products that were affordable and appealing.
The Toyota Prius was the first hybrid vehicle to hit the market in 1997 in Japan and 2001 worldwide. Hybrid simply means multiple power sources, but the implication is that it will consume less fuel and produce far less emissions. Honda followed suit with the Insight, and now almost every major manufacturer offers some variety of hybrid. It became stomped in to the psyche of the consumer. In all the rhetoric people lost sight of what is really being sold. Any engine or motor requires some power source to run. Whether it runs on fossil fuels, electricity, solar or steam, the vehicle needs a power source. In the case of electric cars the power must come from the grid, so that means from a station that in turn is burning fuel, smashing atoms, cranking turbines, or otherwise generating the power. Some intrepid (not the car) engineers included regenerative systems that utilize braking energy to charge battery cells, but that can never generate sufficient power because it relies on an initial energy usage. No matter what configuration the powertrain, the vehicle will still use fuel in some form.
Detestable.
It is a great effort to think of alternative solutions to the standard automobile equation and in turn change the whole mindset of the populace, but it must be done intelligently or else we may suffer greater devastation than having done nothing at all. The E-85 fuel program ended in what may be conservatively rated as an utter failure. The government took it upon themselves to use billions of taxpayer dollars to begin the integration of an entire network of ethanol refueling stations, launch an advertising campaign that humbled even the Geico cavemen, and change the agricultural output for the necessary crops to feed the relatively miniscule demand. E-85 fuel has less energy potential than gasoline, thus worse economy than standard gas. But the output potential is far greater due to a much higher octane rating which has many racers exploring the limits of the new fuel. But when it is marketed as an alternative "green" energy source, that is a ridiculous notion considering the energy used and ecological damage caused by harvesting and processing huge quantities of corn.
GM is claiming the new Chevrolet Volt will get 230 mpg. That may be true when just taking the tiny internal combustion generator in to consideration, but the real energy is the drawing from the electrical grid. For a full charge, they claim it takes approximately 8 hours on a standard North American 120 V outlet. Doing that every night for a commute is going to make your cell phone bill seem like chump change compared to the utility charges. There is obviously more cost than the advertisements would have you believe. The more accurate number is just shy of 85 mpg using the EPA's miles per gallon gasoline equivalent formula. That is very good economy for a passenger car but why go to so much effort and expense to engineer complex systems to power a slow and arguably lame box when you can get the same miserly efficiency on a fun and cheap scooter? Because we are at the beginnings of major changes on our planet due to reckless use and abuse on the part of human activities.
It's the nature of finding a new way. We will stumble over some experiments gone awry until a truly viable alternative is produced. There needs to be people who buy Priusii(?), who invest in new industries to find alternatives, and people who design cars that are leading the way down a cleaner path. It doesn't mean there can be no more fun cars, just that they will become more and more specialized. Electric motor powered vehicles promise to someday easily outperform their fossil fuel brethren once the technologies involved are advanced and made more available. While they are often called "zero emission vehicles" due to no pollutants expelled when operating, the energy required to shuttle your dimply golf balls to the next tee has to be created somewhere. And most likely that place is a filthy power plant blasting toxic exhaust out.
Right now the misinformation and rhetoric forced on people must be corrected so we can all make informed, logical decisions. The government just stopped the $3 billion program giving monetary incentives to trade in old cars for new models. They thankfully rid the world of hordes of shit box Explorers and other junk, but it is the first barrage in a war on cars. Anyone who likes freedom should fight this unjust assault on the very industry that undoubtedly played a major role in providing America with the growth and power that launched it in to a top ranking among the world's countries. The freedom to enjoy your vehicle, whatever it may be. Caring for the environment is a whole other battle.
Zap.
↑ TOP