[OT] Engine braking

[H. S. Teoh]

On Thu, Aug 01, 2013 at 02:40:57PM -0700, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 8/1/2013 2:30 PM, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> >The disadvantage of gasoline is that in a sense we're "cheating",
> >because the energy stored in it was built up over millions of years
> >by ancient organisms that have long decayed, and we're only now
> >discharging all that build-up. We didn't pay anything to put that
> >energy there, that's why it's so economical.
> 
> Yet the electric power to charge the batteries comes from burning coal
> and natural gas :-)
> 
> Yeah, I know, solar, wind, etc. But that's still way off in providing
> base power.

The ancient organisms conveniently collected all that solar energy for
us in a convenient, easy-to-use, highly efficient form. We're still
"cheating" if we're merely diverting some of that pre-collected energy
into another form just so we can make convincing presentations about
being green.


> Like I said, it ain't easy being green. It's hard to do a "dust to
> dust" analysis, and most of the time people simply choose to ignore
> costs that are hard to calculate.

The bottom line is that to be truly green, we have to spend millions of
years building up reservoirs of fuel built from solar energy. The rate
at which we're burning up energy in today's society is simply untenable
in the long run. (Well, there's always nuclear energy, of which there is
plenty to go around, but it comes with other disadvantages. :-P  Some
days you win, most days you lose.)


T

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