Why are people believing propaganda of electric cars being more environmentally friendly

Vehicles & Mobility
101

This is not strictly true. Almost all modern liners and bulk cargo / container carriers, icebreakers & ice-going cargo ships with high maneuverability needs are moving towards the diesel(fuel oil really) electric propulsion systems or converting COGAS (Combined Gas and Steam) propulsion to COGES (Turbo Electric). Particularly after the introduction of pod based propulsion of ships, which allowed high powered motors to be located outside the ship without a large drive and enable fine directional thrust control.
(See Azipod) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azipod

Liners such as the Queen Mary 2 are an easy example of Diesel Electric propulsion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Queen_Mary_2#Power_plant_and_propulsion_system

Main reason that so many ships are still ICE direct drive is purely out of economical (they are cheaper to build) and legacy entrenchment & support industry reasons.

See this MAN Marine article page 2,3,4.
https://marine.man.eu/docs/librariesprovider6/marine-broschures/diesel-electric-drives-guideline.pdf

If shipping lines see the efficiency benefits of Diesel Electric propulsion and the economics fall into place, diesel eletric will completely take over. In a way they already have, it's just that most ships also have incredibly long useful operational lifespans, so it takes a very long time to start seeing meaningful change on a global scale.

See shipjournal article about DE drive too.

https://www.shipjournal.co/index.php/sst/article/view/10/62

Here's another study on COGES vs Diesel Electric Propulsion (PDF)
Comparison of COGES and Diesel-Electric Ship Propulsion Systems

There are also construction benefits of Diesel-Electric in ships allowing heavy equipment to be distributed better and provide structural strength benefits.
http://www.professionalmariner.com/October-2007/Diesel-electric-propulsion-pushes-ahead/

And finally a nice article on the basics of ship propulsion by MAN Marine.

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102

Windturbines on cargo ships are only a good idea when you do not want to use the space above the ship to load or unload cargo.
On high seas, having direct sunlight is not that common. More than half the time you have clouds or storms. Plus solar cells are quite fragile.

On the subject of boosting efficency: Flettner rotor ships (like the E-Ship 1) save about 30% of the fuel. Problem beeing the cost of implementing the extra ruder system and the rotors itself getting in the way of containers.

Like @catsay posted, Azipods are widely used in modern ships.

103

Nothing has to emitted to charge and use an electric car, but how would you feed the sugar to the algae at sea.

How about we just build nuclear power stations and deal with the situation from start to finish instead of creating a protracted system that causes more problems than it solves.

104

+1

As I said before, the birds and the bees are fucked anyway, the question is who's going to benefit from it. The only thing we can get out of certain self-destruction, is freedom and a nice ride. The real question is, who's going to enjoy that ride and freedom.

It's ridiculous. High taxation to fund all of these nonsensical pseudo-scientist civil servant projects, which means people have to make more money, which means employers have to pay them more money, which means employers dump people and go to China, where they still use fossil fuels and pay less taxes.

In the sixties and seventies, there was the hippie movement of people who agreed with the Club of Rome and wanted to change the world... that hippie generation is the one that voted Ronald Reagan and Margret Thatcher, those are the raiders of the 1980's that invented the IT, financial, IP, etc... bubbles, those are the people that sit on top now and move their operations to China.

Ideals are nice to have, but realism is much nicer. When you're all confined before your brainwash displays at home without reasonable income to afford education or travel or culture or decent food, and you don't want children any more because you can't afford them, and you're all depressed and miserable, and the only job you can get is opening doors for the wealthy middle class Chinese, Russian and Indian tourists on vacation, that's when you'll realize how wrong you all were in buying that eco-crap. You can't make the world healthy, it will only get more sick until the human population self-destructs because of sheer overpopulation and lack of biosphere. Might as well enjoy killing the planet instead of watching it happen miserably...

105

You make natural co2 by breathing. Quick better stop breathing!

106

90% for a gas turbine??? Show me.

60% is what you get out of a gas turbine on a REALLY good day.
See Mitsubishi Heavy Industries J-Series
https://www.mhi-global.com/company/technology/review/pdf/e491/e491018.pdf

Or siemens SGT6-8000 in COMBINED CYCLE.
http://www.energy.siemens.com/hq/en/fossil-power-generation/gas-turbines/sgt6-8000h.htm

107

You know what is more environmentally friendly? Bikes, horse drawn carriages, mass transit ....

but humanity doesn't really care.

The world can burn for all I care. There's so much that could be done to make the world a better place and it is not being done.

The sun can't swallow up the Earth fast enough.

108

what the hell? this is preposterously false! how did you even come to think that? The production (not the use) of an electric car in by itself is much more pollutant to the environment compared to a regular combustion car, never mind even having to switch batteries!

you...you dont feed sugar to algae, plants make the sugar from photosynthesis. You use the plant to make sugar witch is then converted to alcohol, hence the fuel. at sea they cant be directly fertilized, meaning they would have to feed on whatever is available at sea, and maybe some fertilizers can be dropped at the sea surface and get immediately absorbed.

I'm on board with more nuclear...dunno if it is enough to power everyone using electric cars though.

109

This thread is just a jab at electric automobiles. And is really meant to say that electric sucks and diesel will always be the king. True their is no such thing as a shortage of oil because this planet is old as fuck. And huge as hell. Remind you of someone? That was a joke for someone, somewhere.

110

Nuke>car zero emissions.

So you cast the GM organism into the sea without any control. What could ever go wrong...

111

EPIC FACEPALM
We got the organism from the sea in the first place...its ALGAE! the thing the sea is riddled with!

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112

Ah ok I skimmed a lot of this. Yes 61 percent for gas turbines.

113

Germany is one of the countries with the most potential in renewable energy sources lol, there is tons of agriculture, tons of hydroelectric plants, hundreds of biogas harvesting sites, tens of thousands of windmills, modern efficient technology everywhere, enough money, the best researchers, and the actual will to use renewable energy in all aspects. If Germany can't switch to renewable energy, who can lol? Germany wants to get rid of nuclear power because of the danger. It's a matter of time before something bad happens in continental Europe, and Germany doesn't want to store nuclear waste but wants it processed, which is done in France, and that's a problem. Germany wants to be nuclear-free because it can only work against Germany in the future, and that's a pretty realistic assessment.
On the other hand, Germany also has several Thorium reactors, most of which have not been further developed because not efficient enough, Germany is also the leading authority in terms of fusion reactors, with two world leading experimental fusion reactors of different principles being actively developed and currently leading in terms of operation and functionality. If renewable energy fails in Germany, that's because it is bound to fail, because renewable energy cannot satisfy demand for energy.

114

Make up your mind.

Should i tag this as a "joke" thread?

5 Likes
115

I've focused a bit on transportation, but it also applies to energy production as a whole. Going to run out of space for biofuels or natural resources for "normal" fuels, which doesn't leave much to choose from.

I have different numbers than @anon37371794 (different sources), but I have to agree, switching to biofuel simply takes up too much space. For just light vehicles in the United States, using Oil Palm for biofuels would require 19.2% of the United States current agricultural land. Using crops that can be rotated it's ~100%. That's not including heavy equipment, trucks, or the like.

image.png1119x291 15.5 KB

Fuel Used numbers from Bureau of Transportation Statistics (2015)
Agricultural land area from World Bank (2014)
Plant Fuel numbers from NCAT (2010)

Petroleum based fuels, both gasoline and regular diesel, aren't the best choice simply because they are non-renewable. It probably won't happen today or tomorrow, but at some point oil is going to be so expensive to extract that it will not be worth it to use it.

I guess I'll cite Michael Klare's The Race For What's Left for this section.

Yay, solar. Solar needs actually very little land to produce quite a bit of power. There's a report somewhere out there that states something like 2% of the Sahara with solar panels would provide the entire world with power.

Going back to the United States, solar covering ~1% of the land mass would theoretically have enough power for the United States. More efficient panels would decrease this number and less sun would increase it.

image.png808x88 4.28 KB

PV = photovoltaic, CSP = concentrated solar power

Power consumption from World Fact Book (2014)
Acres per GWh per year of solar from NREL (2013) ← PDF

Going completely hydro would require about 6.1 times the current installed hydro capacity.

Wave power may be an option in some locations. Again in the United States, waves can apparently provide up to 1170 TWh/year, about 1/3 of US power consumption. Although I think that's if everything is "optimum".

Hydro capacity from World Energy Council (2016)
Wave power estimates from NREL (2011)

Nuclear goes here I guess? Doubt it will ever become a huge amount of world energy production after Chernobyl/Lucens/Three Mile Island/Fukushima. People be scared.

Although the engineering behind the newer reactor designs is pretty cool.

One of the easiest ways to mitigate all of these energy issues is to reduce/reuse/recycle when possible. Save plastic and use reusable bottles, ride the bus/train if possible, eat more vegetables or something.

Just don't go throwing anything out that's still usable just to get something green (i.e. lightbulbs) because that is completely defeating the purpose of going green.

EDIT: Dammit Discourse, stop cropping shit!

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116

You are so ignorant it baffles me. Every post on this thread by you is you whining like a 4 year old stamping his foot demanding something.

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117

You don't fully understand what the proposal is. This isn't kelp.

118

I was going to make a post similar to something you said. But I think that the Chinese had a good idea not having a kid every 10 or 20 years. Seems like a fail safe plan encase a generation fucks up.

119

ST's (Steam Turbines) are about the same efficiency when accounting for boiler & heat loses.
They also operate at lower temperatures and pressures than gas turbines so the thermal efficiency is not as good. But they are still the kings of power production when combined with nuclear power.

Talking about nuclear... thorium MSR's anyone? :smiley:

^^ My favorite topic

120

You could always use the hammer :wink:

1 Like