Christine the Lioness (3122)
Christopher the Pyro (1985)
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Christine 2 the Mercenary (131) Lei the Mercenary (124) Katie the Mercenary (115)
Ben2 the Soldier (56) Christopher the Pyro mentioned
I like new ideas like Christine’s.. unfortunately (yes cc u tought me to spell that one) Ethanol is not a solution…. here are some problems.
Fact: It takes more energy to produce a gallon of ethanol than you get out of it
Fact: If gasoline isn’t clean burning then adding ethonol to it does not make it clean burning.
Fact: Ethanol’s clearest air-quality benefit is that it significantly cuts carbon monoxide, but ethanol also releases more nitrogen oxide, a key element of smog, and it evaporates more easily than gasoline, causing still other air-pollution problems.
Fact: Ethanol, when made from corn, should not even be considered a renewable fuel — and actually provides little help on global warming. It takes large amounts of nonrenewable natural gas, coal and oil to make fertilizer and grow the corn, process ethanol and transport it in trucks and rail cars.
Fact: Gas prices are still not at their highest levels when adjusted for inflaction.. in CA where gas prices are much higher then other parts of the country alot of that is tue to taxes.
Corn belt states began subsidizing ethanol after the Arab oil embargo of 1973. The federal government joined the party a few years later. The Energy Tax Act of 1978 authorized an excise tax exemption for biofuels, chiefly gasohol (a gasoline blend containing at least 10 percent ethanol). Another federal program provided loan guarantees for the construction of ethanol plants, and in 1986 the U.S. even gave ethanol producers free corn. It’s estimated that the excise exemption alone costs U.S. taxpayers as much as $1.4 billion per year.
IMHO The immediate beneficiaries of ethanol subsidies have been corn farmers and, more significantly, the Archer Daniels Midland Corporation of Decatur, Illinois, better known as ADM. The world’s largest grain processor, ADM produces 40 percent of the ethanol used to make gasohol. As might be supposed, the company and its officers have been eloquent in their defense of ethanol and generous in contributing to both political parties. The politicians have been generous right back. The libertarian Cato Institute estimates that every dollar of ADM’s ethanol profit costs taxpayers 30 bucks.
Another point I would make is that a gallon of ethanol is cheaper right now then a gallon of gas but who knows how much price would rise if the whole country converted to ethanol.. I think a better solution might just be to take over the middle east and south america.. and take what we want.. oh wait… we have already started that solution 
Rob the Soldier quibbed this
Using gasohol, ethanol, or any of the other myriad fuel solutions that have been proposed all have one significant drawback; they all use fossil fuel in some phase of their production. The only solution that makes any sense to me is the immediate shift away from our SUV culture toward one that encourages the use of smaller, more efficient cars, and so far people have not been shocked enough to even consider that. Add to this the slow and sure conversion from being a petroleum economy to a hydrogen economy, and I think that we might be on to something. Hydrogen fuel cells are the only type of energy-producing device that makes little to no pollution. Although this technology is still a ways away, the use of high-pollution, so-called “environmentally friendly” fuels like gasohol and ethanol do nothing but continue to encourage our use of oil, while distracting from the need to shift to a real alternative fuel. I realize that the crux of your argument revolves the price of gas, but I feel that the more imortant price to focus on is the one that we as a society pay when we leave our planet in worse condition than how we found it. There must be some sense of stewardship regarding our world, and I almost feel that the best thing that can happen to Americans is the cost of fuel skyrocketing until we feel the need to take action. I do not mean finding another nasty polluting fuel to put in our cars, but by making us pause long enough to think about our consumption habits.
Christopher the Pyro said this
Well we have a way’s to go before Americans stop buying gas sucking cars… altho I believe how this will probably work out is the slow introduction of hybrids into all models of cars.. even if it adds 20% to 30% increase in milage that is better then nothing.. and eventually on to fuel cells.. but I can’t see our culture ever moving to smaller cars as a whole.. besides prices when adjusted for inflation are still lower then in the 1970’s and we arn’t suffering from a shortage.. just higher then normal prices..
Christine the Lioness asserted
While Rob is right in the sense that producing smaller, more efficient cars would take a big leap toward solving our problems concerning the exorbitant waste of resources in this country… I agree with Christopher that America will never, ever give up their huge, gas-guzzlers for something small and efficient, even if the government gave them out for free. Americans like things to be big, oversized, jumbo if you will… even SUVs have gotten bigger in the past few years… to the point where we even inconvenience ourselves by limiting the number of compact parking spaces because people take up two instead of one… if the F150 was big, we had to make the F350 which was bigger… if the monster-sized Denali isn’t big enough… hell, we’ll start making Hummers commercial vehicles… no one fucking needs a Hummer (No, Christopher, other kind of hummer…). In the U.S., bigger means better, more powerful, more manly… grrrrrrr! Now, if they start making an oversized SUV that only runs on solar power, everyone would rush right out and buy one… and in a matter of two years, we’d have figured out how to store solar energy and sell it at Chevron. But until then… the production of SUVs will continue to increase…
Rob the Soldier uttered
Male pornstars shave their pubes. They do this to make their cocks look bigger. Maybe we could start a marketing campaign along these lines: Guys, are you tired of having your tiny weenie made to look even smaller swimming around in a sea of overcompensatory SUV? Try our new penis enhancement solution, the sub-compact car. Your pathetic dick would take up so much space in this car that the girls would all stop and notice. No more excuses like, “I would love to blow you in traffic, but I am so far away, and the search for your dick would take longer than the drive.” I think that this might really be the way to get people out of their SUV’s. Just a thought.
Christine the Lioness spake, and sayeth
I’m so glad that this conversation finally took a turn toward the topic of men shaving their pubes… I was hoping we would eventually go there since it’s only natural when discussing alternative energy sources to arrive at pubeless male genetalia.
I’m not sure the guys will buy the new marketing campaign though… the smart ones might ask “Well… won’t she think that everything in the car is small since the car itself is small, and it would have to be pretty small to fit inside?” I don’t know how we’d overcome that… but appealing to mens’ vanity is definitely the right idea. If we found a car that could prevent them from balding, EVERY man would eventually have to buy one… we could make little kits for it so they could customize their little anti-balding cars… and women would know when they ask a guy what kind of car he drives, that hey… that guy’s gotta have a full head of hair.
But back to pube shaving… I, for one, completely advocate this for men who are especially hairy. No woman wants to have to whack through the overgrown outback to rescue the fallen fireman. When he stands up, we should be able to see more than just the top of his fireman hat…
So yeah, guys… shaving is a good thing. She will definitely enjoy giving you head much more, and it will somehow bring gasoline prices down (right? wait… how did we get onto this again? )
Cameron the Virgin said this
Ethanol is also harder on the motor - moving parts wear out quicker. We’ve been phasing out the use of it in Australia for that and the other reasons mentioned above.
ashley the Virgin up'n wrote this
Late to the game, I know… The figures are a few years old but the idea is obvious:
Belgium $3.86
France $4.06
Germany $3.77
Italy $3.93
Netherlands $4.23
UK $4.66
US $1.71
Even today, the US has cheap gasoline compared to almost all the rest of the world; and adjusted for inflation we’re much better off today than we have been in the recent past.
I’d love to see changes in the US’s attitude toward gasoline and cars. I don’t understand, for example, why 40mpg is such a big fucking deal with hybrids now when there were cars like the Honda CRX that got 50mpg+ 20 years ago.
SUV’s are just taller station wagons, people! Not only are they wasteful, they are woefully, tragically uncool.
Christine the Lioness thought this
I’d say those figures are quite old… in California, we’re at $2.45/gallon right now, but I get your point, Ashley. Yes, SUVs are complete gas guzzlers. But the problem is… most hybrids are super ugly– even uglier than the CRX– and us Americans are accustomed to big, powerful, fast, cool-looking cars. We’re not all crammed into tiny little spaces like Asia and Europe, so culturally, we see more value in driving something cool than saving space or money. You are right that they are wasteful for sure, but I have to take issue with the idea that they are uncool… I’d much rather drive around in a Denali or Escalade than a Cooper mini.
Adam the Virgin chimed in with
Bear with me my statistic may not be quite right but they should be pretty close I am just recalling all this superfilous knowledge out of my mind. I think the best alternative for long term will be hydrogen fuel cells but like posted above that is a very long way away and you know how stubborn most of the major car companies are about changing their building policies(especially the American based ones) so, that will be a long ways away before that happens. What I see as a more feesable alternative is to use deisal cars that are modified to run off vegatable, peanut, canola, or similar oils. The car only has to be primed for a few second with real deisal to get the glowplugs hot enough to liquify the oil to the right consistency then it can run on vegetable oil from then on. I know you are still using a gasoline but when you can use a quarter gallon of gasoline to heat up your engine then drive maybe even 300 miles on vegetable oil I think that is a decent improvement.
Here are some advantages that could come from this method:
-Vegetable oil has less than 10% the pollutents of regular petroleum based fuels when burnt.
-The agriculture economy could get a huge boost off of this which is doing horribly lately since we have bben importing so much. This would in turn make the US much more self suffecient.
-I read somewhere that like 50,000 gallons of vegetable oil is disposed of everyday from friers at resturants. This can easily be turned into fuel by anybody and you can usually get for free from them because they usually have to pay a company to get rid of it.
-Vegetable oil has like 96% of the potential power of desiel and I also heard that it is actually better on the engine than desiel.
-You can modify an old deisal car for around 200 to 500 dollars and can easily do it yourself with simple tools.
I personally believe the only reason this hasn’t caught on is because it is such a hassle to have to go around and collect fuel from resturants and let the impurities settle out of it in a container before you can use it as fuel. If we could make this more available it would make it more appealing to the average person. There are many tropical island countries that are currently using bio-desiel which is a mixture of desiel and vegetable oil with great success. While it is not quite as enviromentally freindly as using straight oil it requires no modicifation to the car to make it run on it.
Just my thoughts on the subject…
Christopher the Pyro mentioned
Thasnk for the post Adam, very interesting point.. I’ll have to investigate further.
Christine the Lioness uttered
As long as we don’t run out of french fries with all this extra veggie oil consumption, I’m good…
Adam the Virgin remarked
I was wrong about biodeisel. It is actually a mix of vegetable oil and ethanol which is a form of alcohol. So it is renewable and doesn’t void warranties on diesel engines.
Here is a good site on the subject.
http://www.greasestation.com/afuel.htm
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