phatmonky said:
wow! And these people handed you a cost/benefit analysis on these ideas? or a website on where to view one?
Have you ever asked how they planned to use to develop the hydrogen for fuel cells? or what evidence told them that oil/water/trees (take your pick) wouldn't be around for our children?? I did, and I was chastised, even when trying to ask in the most unassuming way possible.
Were you able to understand how they will implement these ideas over the beat of the drum circle, while people shouted things at a burnding effigy of their favorite globalization 'evil doer' ( ;) ) for that week?
I've never been to an environmental rally, I just couldn't believe that no one at an environmental rally would support those things. Notice I didn't say anything about hydrogen. From what I've read, gasoline has a very good ratio of energy needed to extract/refine it, and Hydrogen's makes it pretty much useless. For every 1 unit of gasoline used to extract/refine/make gasoline, you can get 100 units of gasoline. For every 1 unit of hydrogen use to extract/refine/make hydrogen in a usable form, you get 1/2 unit of hydrogen. I believe wind-power gives off 50 untis of energy for every 1 unit of energy used to make the energy useful, while it's not as good as gasoline, it's pretty decent.
Some of the things I listed seem to be pretty simple though, not like a huge risk. I mean, we had stricter environmental laws under Clinton, and it's not like corporations fell to the ground under his presidency. And the same with gas/electric cars, it's not like cars that get 40+mpg are unthinkable and would cause anything negative to happen, besides perhaps some loss of revenue for oil companies since people would re-fuel less often. Also, wind power has been utilized a lot in California and has proven very promising and useful, and Germany also uses a lot of it too. I'm sure any environmental website could give you the amount of power x amount of land with windmills on it could produce, I remember from an old New York Times article that if the Long Island sound was filled with windmills, that 30,000 homes could be powered indefinately, but I could be remembering the stat wrong...
For real, no one at an environmental rally talked about anything concerning wind/solar power and gas/elelctric hybrid cars or solar powered cars? That seems ridiculous, I got to go organize one of these things and explain all the realistic, plausible crap there is out there to people like you...
Some tangible negative things that will inevitably happen in the future, which I can cite sources for at the moment, all involve global warming and are from an EPA report to congress.
“Human activities have altered the chemical composition of the atmosphere through the buildup of greenhouse gases – primarily carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. The heat-trapping property of these gases is undisputed. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have increased nearly 30%, methane concentrations have more than doubled, and nitrous oxide concentrations have risen by about 15%. These increases have enhanced the heat-trapping capability of the Earth's atmosphere.
Globally, sea level has risen 4-8 inches over the past century. Worldwide precipitation over land has increased by about one percent. The frequency of extreme rainfall events has increased throughout much of the United States.
Scientists expect that the average global surface temperature could rise 1-4.5°F (0.6-2.5°C) in the next fifty years, and 2.2-10°F (1.4-5.8°C) in the next century, with significant regional variation. Evaporation will increase as the climate warms, which will increase average global precipitation. Soil moisture is likely to decline in many regions, and intense rainstorms are likely to become more frequent. Sea level is likely to rise two feet along most of the U.S. coast.”
Though I can't find anything specifically saying how quickly oil and trees are being used up, obviously, you can see, oil and trees are finite resources, we're obviously using them very quickly, and the rate of new oil field being found is steadily decreasing, and we already know where all the trees in the world are. Off the top of my head, I believe we (humans) have destroyed something like 25% of the rainforest to date, and you certainly wouldn't argue that the amount of trees and oil in the world is GROWING, would you?
