Hey, do you remember earth week? Wasn’t that great? And green? It sure was hard, though! Good thing it was just a week!
I personally was amazed at how much good one can do by changing the NBC symbol to one color for a couple of days. It definitely got me thinking about green. Things that are green. I have many fond memories of green. And that reminded me of “Memories of Green,” the 1000ad map music from Chrono Trigger.
Chrono Trigger has nice music. Sorcerian is also a popular choice this time of year. But I won’t bore you with my musical tastes. Unless I talk about them.
‘ey, do you remember when it was perceived as necessary for single corporate entities to pretend they didn’t own everything? I also seem to recall when they actually didn’t, not quite, but that might just be all the green fogging up my memories. You can rest comfortably knowing “oxygen” up there means the tv channel oxygen and not that NBC Universal just owns all the air; Pepsico has the lock on that.
If General Electric truly gave a bean about green, that being the pointless stupid codeword for not being wasteful ignorant oafs, it wouldn’t be for a week, and he wouldn’t put his logos on it. If that gang was serious it’d [not cut out but not pretend is the ultimate achievement either] this ‘hybrid’ tomfoolery and make a sincere effort in the fully electric automobile department. Krigstein, it has “Electric” in its name; it should not be hard to get this done properly.
Doy, do you remember electric cars? That there were some? From actual major automobile companies? But they intentionally weren’t promoted and didn’t sell very well and so the ones that were sold were recalled / repossessed and destroyed for no reason and the people who designed them were fired and the factories which factored them were changed into dumb old normal car factories? Good times. Imagine, instead of using electricity and corn to make fuel, you used electricity and no corn and were already done. It can boggle one’s mind if one is into that sort of thing. At least we ought to bring out that solar-powered truck Rick Moranis drives in one of those honey movies. And maybe while he’s at it he can shrink the national deficit HA ha eh. I’ll change that to a better joke when I refer back to this post a few months from now.
I’m told there are “over 100,000 non-emission vehicles on US streets,” more than there ever have been previously, according to a crazy estimate made over three years ago, but it’s still really not all that much. I’ve certainly never seen one. And “on US streets” can mean a number of things. A car could be crushed by a genetically engineered 60 ton crouton and rendered inoperable but still be considered on the streets. This is in fact the most likely situation, as a car in one piece can only be on one street at a time. That could also mean the cars are homeless strays, a growing problem in this country. Please adopt one if you get a chance and be sure to get it neutered. I know I was saying there aren’t enough of them, but when electric cars get pregnant they give birth to stray cats. It’s complicated, I’ll explain later. But at least the cars are on the streets and not under them. Can you imagine the public embarrassment if the Turtle Van went electric before the Bat-Mobile?
This is no time for doubting, Bat-Man. We both know there’s only one way to resolve this: Battle.
A Rotten Robot sez:
The hybrid is, in essence, an intermediate step, a time-buyer; the entire point is to help cut down on burnable fuel use so that an effective emission-free travel machine can be devised before reserves run out. While there have indeed been electric autos for a very long time (even Gumby’s grandmother had one), the fact is that they’ve all worked pitifully. Any electric-powered automobile fast enough to be a worth using in the first place requires a LOT of bloody electricity. Also, the batteries run out quickly, and they take a very long time to recharge. What’s worse, they’re fairly large and heavy, increasing the overall vehicle size, so the more batteries you have, the more batteries you need.
Granted, smaller, flatter batteries have recently been developed to help address this problem (as well as a system for swapping depleted batteries for fully charged ones on the spot) but there still remains one fundamental problem–where do we get the electricity to charge them in the first place? Why, from our dirty, coal-burning power plants, of course! And remember, we’re suggesting powering all of the millions of cars worldwide with this, so we’re going to have to jack up production therein quite significantly. As such, the emissions/fuel problem isn’t solved at all; it’s simply been relocated.
“Eh, wot about hydrogen fuel cells?” you say, “They’re ridiculously efficient and produce only water vapor as a bi-product!” Sounds appealing, no? But again, you still have the problem of producing the hydrogen in the first place–and the primary method, is of course, electrolysis, which brings us back to our previous issue. Plus it has to be stored at obscenely low temperatures, likes to blow up, etc.
In short, it’s a very complex problem which will likely take a very long time to solve and require a major rethinking of how we produce energy in the first place. To blame it on dastardly conspiracies by the automobile companies is a bit naïve, and while greed was certainly a contributing factor (why throw endless sums of money in research that never seems to produce anything but more complications when we can just exploit these huge fields of oil!), the primary culprit is, of course, humanity’s ancient nemesis–simple short-sightedness.
Splachtempf sez:
And they look funny, too! Yes yes, very complicated. I still think people in general are dragging their proverbial feet, knuckles and ears on this. I want signs someone is making real progress, not dopey official alerts telling me some obvious compromise is what I’ve been waiting for. If it’s not a technology conspiracy it’s definitely an information conspiracy.
Regarding the relocation: as nasty as coal is, I’d rather its output go directly into the cars than into doing whatever it does to the corn, assuming it’s a direct trade off (and my assumptions always serve me so well!). And… United Statia has more coal than oil! Isn’t that… no, because they do stuff to the oil so it’s unleaded or something and less bad than coal. Bicycle cake, I really don’t know what I’m doing here. I think I saw those electricity fire-hydrants in the Watchmen comics and violently thought “hey! why don’t we have electricity fire hydrants?” I must have momentarily forgotten that we also don’t have a magical naked blue man made of energy from whom we learn the proper way to do things. The closest we have is a pathetic blue dope made of goop.