Global Warming/Climate Change Discussion Thread

[homeforsummer]

Edit: Oh. Manufacturer of solar panels. Not a solar electricity plant. My mistake.

I expect in some areas of the U.S. actual solar plants would make a lot of sense. Unfortunately, making solar panels doesn't make a lot of sense in the U.S. as the companies end up competing with Chinese manufacturers who pay pennies on the dollar for labor and materials. No subsidy or grant is really much use if you still can't make anywhere near the profits of your competitors.

 

[Hun200kmh]

Iceberg twice Manhattan's size breaks off Greenland glacier

Cautious words about it all, so no "Global Warming" drama being reported in these news. Anyway, interesting to know and share.

 

[FoolKiller]

I expect in some areas of the U.S. actual solar plants would make a lot of sense. Unfortunately, making solar panels doesn't make a lot of sense in the U.S. as the companies end up competing with Chinese manufacturers who pay pennies on the dollar for labor and materials. No subsidy or grant is really much use if you still can't make anywhere near the profits of your competitors.

Yet, even outsourcing jobs can't save them all. Solyndra, which had half billion dollar loan went under while outsourcing. But they were mismanaged and tried new silicone-free technology when silicone prices were plummeting.

 

[homeforsummer]

Yet, even outsourcing jobs can't save them all. Solyndra, which had half billion dollar loan went under while outsourcing. But they were mismanaged and tried new silicone-free technology when silicone prices were plummeting.

Solyndra's demise has actually been quite effective at making the DoE take a step back and think a bit more carefully about what they're spending money on, so they don't get their fingers burned again.

I think I'm right in saying that the DoE has frozen most of its loans at the moment and is a lot more cautious about the startups it supports. Tesla might be one of the few still drawing money, but that's because they're meeting all the agreed targets.

 

[Famine]

Iceberg twice Manhattan's size breaks off Greenland glacier

Cautious words about it all, so no "Global Warming" drama being reported in these news. Anyway, interesting to know and share.

Particularly rare in a Northern Hemisphere summer when it's been exposed to sunlight 24hr a day for eight weeks.

 

[FoolKiller]

I hate to beat a dead horse, but unintended consequences.

We often talk about the "farm lobby" as though farmers spoke with a unified voice. And it's true, they usually try to.

But an unusually bitter and public fight is breaking out right now between the farmers who grow corn and other farmers who need to buy that corn.

There are two reasons. The first is the drought that's killing corn and soybean fields across the Midwest, sending feed prices are soaring and fraying the nerves of livestock producers, who are wondering whether they'll even manage to stay in business.

The second reason is ethanol.

Farmers who raise America's cattle, hogs, and chickens never appreciated Washington's infatuation with biofuels — especially ethanol that's produced from corn. After all, when the government nudges more corn toward ethanol factories, it means that there's less available for animals. Last year, in fact, 40 percent of the country's corn harvest went to ethanol production.

In good years, when corn is plentiful and prices stay low, no one complains too much.

In bad years, though .... well, this morning, a coalition of groups representing America's livestock and chicken farmers delivered an angry attack on the "Renewable Fuel Standard," which requires gasoline companies to buy a minimum amount of ethanol — 13 billion gallons this year — and blend it into gasoline supplies. The groups released a new study that argues that this ethanol mandate does very little good: It increases the cost of gasoline and makes the country no less dependent on energy imports.

Even worse, the meat producers say, it creates unfair competition for corn. The mandate forces gasoline companies to buy billions of gallons of ethanol that they don't even want, driving corn prices through the ceiling and potentially forcing livestock producers into bankruptcy.

Of course, corn farmers see nothing at all wrong with soaring prices and a guaranteed market for their harvest. Gary Niemeyer, president of the National Corn Growers Association immediately came to the defense of ethanol mandates. "Now is not the time for changes. It's working," he wrote in a statement to the press. "Now more than ever, U.S. agriculture needs to pull together."

The Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees the renewable fuel program, could step in and reduce the amount of ethanol that gasoline companies are required to blend into fuel this year. But Wallace Tyner, an expert on ethanol markets at Purdue University, says that's extremely unlikely, and wouldn't have much effect anyway. Gasoline companies are well on their way to fulfilling their requirements for 2012 already.

The real battle, he says, will be fought over ethanol production next year. If the drought continues, and corn prices rise even more, gasoline companies won't want to buy that expensive ethanol, and livestock producers will be fighting for their survival. And the EPA will face intense pressures to cut the safety net for ethanol producers. It is expected to announce its ethanol requirements for 2013 in November.

So, the economy is in the crapper and the weather conditions themselves this year are causing food prices to rise, but we still must meet our cleaner ethanol quotas.

Ignoring the fact that the EPA requires higher and higher fuel economies from automobile manufacturers while increasing the lower mileage ethanol in our gasoline (also making it more expensive to own a car without constantly having new car debt), do they really think that maintaining their ethanol standards is this important?

The EPA works to kill coal, one of the cheapest forms of electricity out there, and when old people have to choose between heat/AC or their medicines we blame the drug companies. Now the EPA is harming the food farming industry. When people are choosing between groceries and medicines will we still blame the drug companies? What about after the ACA passes? When the government's policies are in every industry can we finally blame government?

I guess we just wait for the EPA to complete their fracking study in 2014 and hope they don't crack down on it just as all the old coal plants are replaced by natural gas plants.

 

[kk20]

Well im dissapointed to see that the correct statement is only joint top instread of just being top.

Green house gases are NO, H2O, CO, CO2, SO2,

Nitroxide, Water vapour, Carbon Monoxide, Carbon Dioxide, Sulfur Dioxide.

Question 1.

Guess how much we Carbon Dioxide us humans contribute.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Thats right. Less than 1% 99% is natural occuring. Algae accounts for something like 95%.


Question 2.

Which gas contributes most to the greenhouse effect?
.
.
.
.
.
Well, you're wrong, its Water vapour, making up 95% of all greenhouse gases. And we humans contribute 3-4%.


You tell me, are we the cause?

 

[homeforsummer]

You tell me - what makes changes of only percent - or even fractions of percent - irrelevant to whether AGM is real or not? Fractional changes make huge difference in crop yields or weather systems, so why not the climate as a whole?

Also tell me - how much of the greenhouse gases that humankind produces do you think humankind also re-absorbs, and how much of the greenhouse gas generated by nature is naturally absorbed?

To clarify, I'm still undecided on AGW myself, but you seem awfully sure of something that the world's top scientists aren't even sure of...

 

[kk20]

You tell me - what makes changes of only percent - or even fractions of percent - irrelevant to whether AGM is real or not? Fractional changes make huge difference in crop yields or weather systems, so why not the climate as a whole?

Also tell me - how much of the greenhouse gases that humankind produces do you think humankind also re-absorbs, and how much of the greenhouse gas generated by nature is naturally absorbed?

To clarify, I'm still undecided on AGW myself, but you seem awfully sure of something that the world's top scientists aren't even sure of...

My friend, water vapour accounts for 95% of greenhouse gases. CO2 is clearly not the problem. There are all these government schemes and propaganda that we are destroying our planet. The figures speak for themselves. The levels of the gases are going up and as a result the temps are increasing slightly. But we arent the cause of it.

Also, anything which claims to be eco friendly is false. Eg an electric car or a hybrid.

For instance the energy uses to dig up all materials, transportation of materials and manufacture, transportation of product to dealers requires more energy than an ordinary petrol car requires to run an ordinary life. And then you have to plug the electric car into a charging dock, which by the way comes from the coal stations anyway.

Another example of government scam.

 

[Sam48]

My friend, water vapour accounts for 95% of greenhouse gases. CO2 is clearly not the problem. There are all these government schemes and propaganda that we are destroying our planet. The figures speak for themselves. The levels of the gases are going up and as a result the temps are increasing slightly. But we arent the cause of it.

You completely missed his point, that being, the percent makes no difference. The concentration and/or cause and effect of the given substance does make a difference. However, we have yet to properly determine these results.

Also, anything which claims to be eco friendly is false. Eg an electric car or a hybrid.

I wouldn't say "anything", but in general, yes, most things marketed as "eco friendly" are really no better than the "normal" versions. But now you're getting off onto a tangent here.

Keep in mind I don't believe in AGW, but your claims are a bit too closed minded. The reason I don't believe in AGW is because the science is currently, and forever will be, politically highjacked. In such a climate, no pun intended, getting to the truth is nearly impossible.

EDIT: Therefore, the safe assumption is to go by what we definitely know. That being said, we're still missing some key pieces to the puzzle. So when we hear scientists babble on about how global warming is going to kill us all, you have to question their motive for such a statement given that they're scientists, not prophets. In general, we discover they're in it for the publicity and the money (e.i. the government pays them to say this). Of course there are scientists on the other side, but they're in it for the attention and money just as much as the other guys, so it becomes a back and forth argument consisting of false data, made up statistics, and flat out lies.

 

[niky]

Better look up your facts and figures first before posting. Because said petrol car also requires raw materials dug up or recycled, transported to factories, processed, transported to other factories, manufactured into components, transported to yet other factories, assembled into the finished product, then transported to the dealers.

-

A hybrid or electric is not cost-effective for most buyers, yes, but there are specific sets of circumstances under which a hybrid is more cost-effective than a regular petrol-powered car... taxi service, for example, where units can rack up over 100,000 miles a year.

 

[kk20]

Better look up your facts and figures first before posting. Because said petrol car also requires raw materials dug up or recycled, transported to factories, processed, transported to other factories, manufactured into components, transported to yet other factories, assembled into the finished product, then transported to the dealers.

-

A hybrid or electric is not cost-effective for most buyers, yes, but there are specific sets of circumstances under which a hybrid is more cost-effective than a regular petrol-powered car... taxi service, for example, where units can rack up over 100,000 miles a year.

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.

The plant is the source of all the nickel found in a Prius’ battery and Toyota purchases 1,000 tons annually. Dubbed the Superstack, the plague-factory has spread sulfur dioxide across northern Ontario, becoming every environmentalist’s nightmare.

“The acid rain around Sudbury was so bad it destroyed all the plants and the soil slid down off the hillside,” said Canadian Greenpeace energy-coordinator David Martin during an interview with Mail, a British-based newspaper.

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. 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?

 

[niky]

No more of a farce than the fact that you've (very obviously) copy pasted that information verbatim from an old study, one which has been thoroughly debunked and discredited... One which claimed that a Prius is more harmful to the environ,ent than a Hummer. One which arbitrarily pegged the usable life of e Prius at a third of that of the Hummer, and pretended that Prius materials couldn't be recycled.

Do you know your car uses lead batteries and solder? And the same is hazardous to your health? Of course, said lead is sealed inside the battery and is mostly recycled, but we can conveniently ignore facts when talking about environmental impact, right?

 

[kk20]

No more of a farce than the fact that you've (very obviously) copy pasted that information verbatim from an old study, one which has been thoroughly debunked and discredited... One which claimed that a Prius is more harmful to the environ,ent than a Hummer. One which arbitrarily pegged the usable life of e Prius at a third of that of the Hummer, and pretended that Prius materials couldn't be recycled.

Do you know your car uses lead batteries and solder? And the same is hazardous to your health? Of course, said lead is sealed inside the battery and is mostly recycled, but we can conveniently ignore facts when talking about environmental impact, right?

Well theres only one way to settle it. Mail toyota and ask them where their nickel is purchased...

 

[homeforsummer]

*Snip*

If you've going to copy and paste your posts from elsewhere on the internet, the least you could do is to remove the "’" from every other line, as it makes things very difficult to read.

A few notes:

That Ontario plant was there long before the Prius was even a twinkle in a designer's eye (like... the early 1900s, to be specific), and provides nickel and other materials to many companies across much of the world. Toyota does buy their nickel from there, but it's not single-handedly responsible for the damage, as many Prius-haters seem very keen to point out.

In addition, the damage of which you speak was done long before the Prius was invented too - as far back as the 1960s. It's just that - unsurprisingly - the anti-Prius lot decided that since the Prius uses nickel in its batteries, it must be responsible for the 1960s-70s destruction. Obviously.

And well done you for picking the figure "1,000 tons" from the internet, but there's plenty of evidence elsewhere on the internet to suggest that Toyota buys a mere 1% of the plant's output. Making this:

Well theres only one way to settle it. Mail toyota and ask them where their nickel is purchased...

...largely irrelevant. You almost certainly have several items in your household that use more nickel than a Toyota battery pack.

While we're on the subject of unresearched rubbish, I'd also take issue with your comment that electricity for EVs "comes from the coal stations anyway".

That depends entirely on where you live. Where I live, coal makes up less than a third of the energy mix. And since you give your location as London, the same applies to you. Possibly less, depending on your energy supplier. A full list is here.

Even in U.S. states like North Dakota, which are almost 100% coal as far as I'm aware, it's a very close-run thing as to which is cleaner between an electric car and a regular gasoline one. There's an interesting discussion on the relative CO2 levels here.

In California, coal is something like less than 10%, which is less than the state gets from renewables. Natural gas is the main energy source to my knowledge, which isn't perfect, but it's still cleaner than burning gasoline. And in Cali, many early adopters also use solar power anyway, at which point their use of fossil fuels is nominal.

And lets not forget, whatever your burning and in whatever quantity, EVs are physically more efficient than anything with an internal combustion engine. An electric motor is generally more than 90% efficient, where a good petrol engine is around the 40% mark. Whatever you're burning to make that electricity, more of it is going to actually moving you down the road. You could be burning litters of puppies and it'd be more efficient.

Regarding everything else, Sam48 summed it up:

You completely missed his point, that being, the percent makes no difference. The concentration and/or cause and effect of the given substance does make a difference. However, we have yet to properly determine these results.

Essentially, we don't know, but saying that fractions of a percent don't potentially make a difference is a load of tosh. Any change makes some sort of difference, whether it's natural or man made. We're just yet to categorically determine whether the current changes are natural or man made.

 

[niky]

Why don't you? and while you're at it, why don't you research the current state of the Sudbury mine, which is a whole lot more environmentally friendly than it was in the 60's... Three decades before the Prius, and the period which your faulty source cites.

Then ask yourself how much of that nickel production goes into making 20" chrome wheels for American SUVs...

 

[kk20]

If you've going to copy and paste your posts from elsewhere on the internet, the least you could do is to remove the "’" from every other line, as it makes things very difficult to read.

A few notes:

That Ontario plant was there long before the Prius was even a twinkle in a designer's eye (like... the early 1900s, to be specific), and provides nickel and other materials to many companies across much of the world. Toyota does buy their nickel from there, but it's not single-handedly responsible for the damage, as many Prius-haters seem very keen to point out.

In addition, the damage of which you speak was done long before the Prius was invented too - as far back as the 1960s. It's just that - unsurprisingly - the anti-Prius lot decided that since the Prius uses nickel in its batteries, it must be responsible for the 1960s-70s destruction. Obviously.

And well done you for picking the figure "1,000 tons" from the internet, but there's plenty of evidence elsewhere on the internet to suggest that Toyota buys a mere 1% of the plant's output. Making this:



...largely irrelevant. You almost certainly have several items in your household that use more nickel than a Toyota battery pack.

While we're on the subject of unresearched rubbish, I'd also take issue with your comment that electricity for EVs "comes from the coal stations anyway".

That depends entirely on where you live. Where I live, coal makes up less than a third of the energy mix. And since you give your location as London, the same applies to you. Possibly less, depending on your energy supplier. A full list is here.

Even in U.S. states like North Dakota, which are almost 100% coal as far as I'm aware, it's a very close-run thing as to which is cleaner between an electric car and a regular gasoline one. There's an interesting discussion on the relative CO2 levels here.

In California, coal is something like less than 10%, which is less than the state gets from renewables. Natural gas is the main energy source to my knowledge, which isn't perfect, but it's still cleaner than burning gasoline. And in Cali, many early adopters also use solar power anyway, at which point their use of fossil fuels is nominal.

And lets not forget, whatever your burning and in whatever quantity, EVs are physically more efficient than anything with an internal combustion engine. An electric motor is generally more than 90% efficient, where a good petrol engine is around the 40% mark. Whatever you're burning to make that electricity, more of it is going to actually moving you down the road. You could be burning litters of puppies and it'd be more efficient.

Regarding everything else, Sam48 summed it up:



Essentially, we don't know, but saying that fractions of a percent don't potentially make a difference is a load of tosh. Any change makes some sort of difference, whether it's natural or man made. We're just yet to categorically determine whether the current changes are natural or man made.

My bad for the quotes. I remember hearing it first on top gear and I wanted to get the exact journey the nickel makes. All I am saying is that the greenhouse gases emmited from the various machinery to make a prius, is more than a regular petrol car would emit plus the emmisions from making the car.

http://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=electricity_in_the_united_states

I dont know if this is correct or not. let me know if it is. according to this 67% is from fossil fuels. 19% from nuclear plants. We've established fossil fuels as being bad, 67% of USA runs on this. However the 19% is considered clean by others. Ok. What happens with the waste? Nothing is 100% in terms of engineering. keep it in a box and it will leak eventually. So keep it underground and let the people in the future suffer for our incompetence?

Why don't you? and while you're at it, why don't you research the current state of the Sudbury mine, which is a whole lot more environmentally friendly than it was in the 60's... Three decades before the Prius, and the period which your faulty source cites.

Then ask yourself how much of that nickel production goes into making 20" chrome wheels for American SUVs...

Ok I was wrong to copy and paste the stuff about the mines. Didnt know much about that. Just thought I'd include it. But the hybrids batteries materials undergo this long journey before its even in the dealers.

 

[JediRage]

Well im dissapointed to see that the correct statement is only joint top instread of just being top.

Green house gases are NO, H2O, CO, CO2, SO2,

Nitroxide, Water vapour, Carbon Monoxide, Carbon Dioxide, Sulfur Dioxide.

Question 1.

Guess how much we Carbon Dioxide us humans contribute.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Thats right. Less than 1% 99% is natural occuring. Algae accounts for something like 95%.


Question 2.

Which gas contributes most to the greenhouse effect?
.
.
.
.
.
Well, you're wrong, its Water vapour, making up 95% of all greenhouse gases. And we humans contribute 3-4%.


You tell me, are we the cause?

That's too simplistic a view. Small percentages or even fractions of percentages can make a huge difference in nature.

Take the Earth's orbit. Move the earth a small distance (percentage of total distance between Earth and Sun which again changes since its an elliptical orbit) towards or away from the sun and the possibility of human life goes down significantly.

That's the reason they call humanity a cosmic joke. The chances for it to happen were just incredibly small. Small percentages make all the difference.

 

[homeforsummer]

I dont know if this is correct or not. let me know if it is. according to this 67% is from fossil fuels. 19% from nuclear plants. We've established fossil fuels as being bad, 67% of USA runs on this. However the 19% is considered clean by others. Ok. What happens with the waste? Nothing is 100% in terms of engineering. keep it in a box and it will leak eventually. So keep it underground and let the people in the future suffer for our incompetence?

How is all that any different from drilling billions of gallons of oil out of a millions of years-old, depleting energy resource and carbon sink, and then releasing a collection of toxic and greenhouse gases into the air?

What makes doing all that okay, but using an increasingly-renewable grid to generate electricity for a more efficient method of propulsion a recipe for suffering through incompetence?

Whether you like the idea of electric cars and/or hybrids or not, they're still significantly cleaner than regular internal combustion vehicles. Only in very rare circumstances are EVs responsible for greater quantities of greenhouse gas than the equivalent ICE vehicle.

Incidentally, protip: Top Gear generally isn't the best place to start when researching for a balanced argument on the subject of alternative fuels and energy.

 

[niky]

All the parts in your common car undergo long journeys to the manufacturing plants before they reach the dealers. Global economy means just that. An American car might be made with Chinese steel, Japanese or Korean electronics, with semiconductors maybe assembled in the Philippines or elsewhere...

This is because the cost of shipping a few pounds of electronics or about three hundred pounds worth of engine is almost negligible considering the thousands of tons of material they share space with on board a cargo vessel. It's so cheap that it costs less than the difference in the price of labor and production.

And that fractional cost in energy is far outweighed by differences in fuel consumption over the lifetime of the vehicle. Not to say that a hybrid or electric is greener for the person who drives 10-20k miles a year, but given the tens of thousands of dollars of CO2 emitting gasoline a vehicle needs to run, a couple of bucks MORE (because many vehicles, again, have content that must be shipped between far-flung plants) worth of bunker oil in terms of foreign-sourced content is literally a drop in the bucket.

 

[jasr73]

Perhaps we’re getting more into the issue of increases in global toxicity (probably should be a thread on that one! ) rather than Global Warming?

Waste from the Nickel refinement process can be a big problem in terms of toxicity. Having witnessed first hand waste acid tailing dams at some Aussie mining sites, I can certainly testify to that. In any event, I don’t believe hybrids are the big the answer some corporates and governments would have us believe. Certainly the emergence of hybrids has raised broader community awareness about consumption generally, but for the most part, we seem to be shuffling the problem elsewhere rather than actually coming up with longer term solutions for personalised transportation.

I don’t like to think of the human factor increasing global warming – rather influencing global climate instability. It seems to me the accelerated use of hydrocarbons that have been dormant for many millions of years and the subsequent accelerated release of C02 sequestered within them is a problem.

Remember, there was very little of this type hydrocarbon production going on even 100 years ago, then whamo! Along comes industrialisation and globalisation (sorry about all the ‘ations&#8217 and we’ve been foot flat to the floor ever since.

Dig it up, pump it up, frack it out and burn it off to support the choices we’ve made about modernising ourselves as a species. All the while that ancient C02 tucked safety away in the ground gets released along with it… massive amounts of the stuff being introduced over a very short space of time… what might that do to the lower atmosphere? Hopefully nothing…but it’s a hell of a gamble we’re taking...

 

[kk20]

Well atleast we've got a healthy discussion going on here. Back to studying...

 

[FoolKiller]

And lets not forget, whatever your burning and in whatever quantity, EVs are physically more efficient than anything with an internal combustion engine. An electric motor is generally more than 90% efficient,

Assuming the power plant you charge from is 100% efficient. EV's are 90% of the power plant's efficiency.

Not saying your point is wrong, just pointing out that until EV's produce their power exclusively under the hood that 90% efficiency number is not on an even measurement to an ICE.

To quote a comedian I once saw (George Carlin, I believe), "Because electricity grows on trees!"

 

[niky]

Even taking charging inefficiency into account, thanks to economies of scale, you can go further on a gallon of fuel burned with an electric.

Still too expensive for anyone but rich first-worlders, though.

 

[Sam48]

Still too expensive for anyone but rich first-worlders, though.

Not only that, but, if you happened to see the episode of Top Gear where they tested electric cars, the lithium ion batteries in electric cars need to be replaced every 5-10 years, and at quite an expense. (Wait, we were talking about all electric cars and not hybrids, right?)

 

[niky]

Depends on the battery pack and the amount of depletion you allow. If you force depletion rates within a certain zone (for example, no depletion below 20% of reserve capacity) and do little to no quick-charging, the packs keep useable life for a long time.

But if you run them hot and hard... fugeddaboutit.

What's encouraging is that you can recycle and recondition packs, so it's entirely possible you can get a pack costing $8k now for some $3-$4k down the line. Still expensive, but the cost per mile still falls well within what a normal car will cost.

Unfortunately, pack replacement pushes the ROI further out still.

Top Gear is not a good source of info. Many of the "green" sites and forums have owners who share information about pack longevity, replacement and problems. It's not worry free... not in the slightest... but it's surprising what amount of capacity you can get for your money when you start considering refurbishing, recycling and buying secondhand battery packs.

 

[FoolKiller]

My brother's Prius had the battery die about a month short of ten years. He couldn't believe the estimates for his model were that close.

 

[niky]

Prii have some of the best battery management in the biz... though I've seen some strange pack overheats and failures in test-fleet units out here in the tropics.

 

[jasr73]

My problem with Hybrids is not so much the effect/arguable benefit of on consumption of gasoline. As others have mentioned, the ROI via increased gas mileage is certainly tangible, once ownership reaches a certain time frame. And there’s no discounting the positive educational benefits of owning a Hybrid or indeed a more fuel efficient car generally on broader society. Making a conscious choice to own a ‘greener car’ spills over into other ways folks begin to look at their consumption patterns. That’s a good thing, even if people begin to adopt a mindset to switch off a few lights or take the bike to the shops on the weekend instead of the car. 👍

Even better, the switch manufacturers are making from Nickel Metal Hydride batteries to Lithium-ion is a promising development from an environmental impact point of view. Most scientific studies agree that Li-ion is safer and less toxic than NiMh. It is however, a chunk more expensive. I note that both the Leaf and the Volt are both more expensive propositions due to Li-ion battery use. Certainly economies of scale will bring this price down going forward.

What is disappointing that manufacturers do seem to be ‘a little’ reluctant to release the true cradle to grave production costs of these types vehicles or indeed participate in independent auditing to ascertain a complete production figure. Obviously it’s not great press but a little more transparency would be helpful here.

Just a little on info on Lithium…
Lithium is a soft silvery like metal that has been around for quite some time in various commercial forms. It’s been used in heat resistant glass and various ceramics. It’s often useful tranquilizing effects can be found in pharmaceuticals – I am feeling quite relaxed

In more recent times, Lithium has been used in the manufacture of batteries. You’ve mostly likely got one in your mobile phone, laptop computer or digital camera. The big advantage of Lithium battery is its both lighter than other materials used to date in batteries and holds a charge for longer. Indeed US Geological Survey reports suggest that further development of this battery to form called lithium metal-air battery may result in a battery able to deliver as much as ten times the energy density of today’s Li-ion tech.

So lithium-ion may be one of the silver bullets we’ve been searching for?
The Obama Administration certainly believes so, the 2009 economic stimulus package allocated over $940mil to the lithium battery industry in the US. I would suggest that China would have similar programs in place to develop this tech.

Of course all this interest in lithium has a problem, in that increased global consumption will follow. Present supplies from current producers seem to fit the bill. However the additional demand is that expected to come will mean that new reserves will need to be found. That means more and more previously undisturbed areas of the planet under investigation for resource development.

So issue I have is we haven’t really solved the problem of sustainability, we’ve just shifted consumption on to yet another finite resource in this case lithium. Certainly the initial benefit is we’ll be reducing our carbon footprint, therefore hypothetically it’s a positive effect on global warning. However we are still in a mindset that’s driven by the depletion of natural resources and that’s not a longer term solution for the planet.

 

[niky]

The question is less one of the finity of the raw materials for batteries, but the fact that batteries will likely never be as energy dense as gasoline, or, consequently, as cheap per unit of energy storage. (though again, that changes as you look into lifetime usage)

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/08/battery-performance-deficit-disorder/

Note that the scale is logarithmic... so the deficit in capacity to gasoline is by a factor of ten... Even fuel cells fall short, and the exotic materials required in current fuel cell designs are a very limiting factor.

Still, even if we will never get near gasoline-level convenience, EVs with lithium batteries might be able to fulfill some of our high-end and medium-end urban transport needs.

Lithium is abundant and recyclable. While it is currently cheap enough to dig up and so expensive to recycle that we simply produce more raw lithium instead of recycling old batteries, when we start to run low, we will eventually recycle. Fortunately or not... the global economy might not even be robust enough to get us to that point... and we'll all end up driving lead-acid powered Chinese buggies with pedal assist cross-country.