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A rebuttal to Super Jabs saving the economy.
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Lypha
| In response to Jab?s Post on saving the economy.Pardon me "President Jabs"My opinion??Stick with titties and poop jokes.They are WAY easier.The problem with your post and many people?s arguments and whining about gas prices is that if it were really that simple, don?t you think greater minds would have come up with something by now??Well, they have, sort of.?In the past five years, technology has made giant leaps in a combination of fields,Semiconductors being the biggest.?Cars (hybrids) have already been made available that are as cheap as current models that run on electricity and gas.Duh.Right??Not so fast.?It gets better.?We take a hybrid car and make it a "plug-in".This technology is the same that you have had in your I-Pod and laptops for years.?They already make a more powerful version of these for a car that doesn?t jack up the price.?Add a plug-in battery to a hybrid car and it gets 75mpg as opposed to 50mpg.?Good start, right??Well, there are already cars being manufactured and sold in the U.S. with "flex-fuel tanks".?Flex-fuel tanks can run on ethanol, methanol, gasoline or any combination of the three.?The biggest part of this equation??A flex-fuel vehicle needs a minimum of 15% gasoline to run and you can fill the rest of the tank with ethanol or methanol which allows a "hybrid-electric plug-in" to get close to 500 MILES PER GALLON of GASOLINE.?Of course you don?t get 500 miles per gallon of FUEL, but mixing gas and ethanol will dramatically decrease the amount of gasoline we as a nation consume, hence, dropping the price of gas.?The technology IS ALREADY HERE.As a matter of fact, the United States Military and your tax dollars were major pioneers in the development of hybrid technology.?Every new naval ship that is built is electric powered as well as surface mining trucks and trains.?So it?s certainly not a matter of our government not being aware of this technology.So what?s the problem??Oil Companies, and the "Big Oil" lobbies of course.?It is estimated that it would cost between $20,000-60,000 per gas station to be fitted to pump ethanol and methanol.Multiply THAT by every gas station in the country.?It?s a big number.Also, semiconductor companies, ethanol, methanol and other new(er) industries that are developing this technology have little or no lobbies on Capitol HillBrazil, yes, Brazil, has had regulations in place for YEARS that requires 50% of new cars sold to be flex-fuel hybrids.One company?s estimate for our government to make a move to a hybrid-based transportation system - $12 Billion or approximately what we spend every 90 days in Iraq.??Fascinating.?However, it?s really not that simple.?If your head isn?t spinning yet, it?s about to.You say you drive a hybrid??You?re trying to help the environment are you?Here are some excerpts from a Connecticut University report that sums up the total nightmare that a Toyota Prius really is - or that you?would ultimately help the environment more by driving a Hummer:?"The Toyota Prius has become the flagship car for those in our society so environmentally conscious that they are willing to spend a premium to show the world how much they care.Unfortunately for them, their ultimate ?green car?is the source of some of the worst pollution in North America; it takes more combined energy per Prius to produce than a Hummer.""Building a Toyota Prius causes more environmental damage than a Hummer that is on the road for three times longer than a Prius.As already noted, the Prius is partly driven by a battery which contains nickel.The nickel is mined and smelted at a plant in Sudbury, Ontario.This plant has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the ?dead zone?around the plant to test moon rovers.The area around the plant is devoid of any life for miles.""All of this would be bad enough in and of itself; however, the journey to make a hybrid doesn?t end there.The nickel produced by this disastrous plant is shipped via massive container ship to the largest nickel refinery in Europe. |
| The nickel produced by this disastrous plant is shipped via massive container ship to the largest nickel refinery in Europe.From there, the nickel hops over to China to produce ?nickel foam.?From there, it goes to Japan.Finally, the completed batteries are shipped to the United States, finalizing the around-the-world trip required to produce a single Prius battery.Are these not sounding less and less like environmentally sound cars and more like a farce?""When you pool together all the combined energy it takes to drive and build a Toyota Prius, the flagship car of energy fanatics, it takes almost 50 percent more energy than a Hummer - the Prius?s arch nemesis.Through a study by CNW Marketing called "Dust to Dust," the total combined energy is taken from all the electrical, fuel, transportation, materials (metal, plastic, etc) and hundreds of other factors over the expected lifetime of a vehicle.The Prius costs an average of $3.25 per mile driven over a lifetime of 100,000 miles - the expected lifespan of the Hybrid.The Hummer, on the other hand, costs a more fiscal $1.95 per mile to put on the road over an expected lifetime of 300,000 miles.That means the Hummer will last three times longer than a Prius and use less combined energy doing it.?So, if you are really an environmentalist - ditch the Prius.Instead, buy one of the most economical cars available - a Toyota Scion xB.The Scion only costs a paltry $0.48 per mile to put on the road."Again.?Fascinating.?While we?re at it, let?s look at a few other things we do.Drink bottled water??Did you know that the "water industry" funny unto itself uses more than 1.5 million barrels of oil to manufacture all of those plastic bottles??They use 10 TIMES that much to distribute their products enough to fill up well over 100,000 cars for a full year.?Add to that the fact that less than 25% of those plastic gems actually get recycled.?The rest end up buried in land fills or dumped in the ocean.?Yes, if you didn?t know, we take thousands of barges full of trash and dump it in the ocean.That?s just from bottled water.?Throw in the numbers from soda and other beverages and you will just vomit.?There is some humor in all of this.?EPA Standards for bottled water are far lower than for tap water.?Sometimes the bacteria levels can be twice as highbut by all means, keep on drinking it.Do you eat red meat burgers, meatloaf, steak?Of course you do.?Most of you at least.?Eating red meat is worse for the environment than driving a car in terms of the greenhouse gases that farting cows produce.?Yes, it?s funny, but sadly, it?s true.?It?s estimated that cows produce as much as 18% of greenhouse gases more than planes, trains and cars COMBINED.?Let?s not forget the massive water pollution caused by contaminated run-off from these "farms".Okay.?I?m done.?I?m not taking sides here.?Do you want to know why??Because I am at a total loss as to what to do.?And I?m a pretty smart guy.?It seems like one thing cancels out another.?Yes, we?ve built a better car but at what cost??What?s that old phrase??Robbing Peter to pay Paul??I think a lot of us think about things like this, but it ultimately seems like we can?t "win" no matter what we do and just decide to go about our lives and hope someone ELSE figures it all out.And nothing changeswe rely on our government to represent "we the people" and it seems like all they do is stick with the "status quo" while the rich get richer and the rest of us try to live our lives waiting for that someone else to come alongWhat are your thoughts? |
| And nothing changeswe rely on our government to represent "we the people" and it seems like all they do is stick with the "status quo" while the rich get richer and the rest of us try to live our lives waiting for that someone else to come alongWhat are your thoughts? |
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 17 July 2008 )
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