Opinion on alternative energy misleading
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Charles Jones
Published: July 25, 2008
Your July 21 Opinion piece “Hot air fuels energy” quoted from another newspaper sounded much like a parody of the oil industry PR releases of 10 years ago. The article seems to intend to encourage
continued reliance on oil and discourage development of alternative energy sources. Fortunately, many in the oil industry now recognize the inevitable decline in their product and its ecological impact and
are actively pursuing other potential energy profit centers, including wind and solar energy.
The article suggests that 100 percent reliance on wind or solar is not feasible to reinforce an old oil industry argument. I know of no intelligent person who thinks that we can eliminate our oil
consumption. The author also tries to demonstrate how unfeasible wind or solar energy are by stretching logic. The author compares the solar acreage needed to produce one megawatt of electricity with
the footprint of a power plant, without mentioning the acreage of mountains leveled for coal. The article also says that wind towers would lead to a bird holocaust. Evidence points to minimal bird strikes in
non-migratory bird routes.
Most environmentalists now recognize that corn-based biofuel is detrimental to world food supplies and prices. To suggest in the article that biofuel is not feasible totally disregards the potential for
practical biofuels from other plants such as sugar cane.
The article might also be an attempt at attacking Mark Warner, a friend of the environment. In that case it should be recognized as a political statement in support of the Republican party. The article
concludes with the concept that the author is familiar with the principles of logic. Sorry sir or madam, that is an illogical statement.
CHARLES JONES
Manassas
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Reader Reactions
Posted by ( barnun ) on July 28, 2008 at 12:14 pm
The UK uses a lot diesel engines. They have emissions controls over there as well. These cars would have already passed in over 40 states, i beleive. If we were serious about energy conservation, we’d have already allowed them in all 50 states. My truck gets about 12 mpg and is legal in california but a cooper D that gets 72 mpg might not quite make the cut. Logic ? We are closing US auto plants due to poor sales of the gas monsters. If the big 3 were ready to roll on US production of better MPG vehicles, they could have just changed process vs closing. Many of the diesel engines sold in the UK were actually made here in the US for years and shipped over, although they were not used for US production. Along with this, diesel fuel used to be far cheaper than gasoline, until it started to become popular in the early 80’s. It is barely refined crude and should be far cheaper than gasoline. People need to wake up on all this. There is no 1 single answer, but it really is a solveable problem.
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Posted by ( RonCharest ) on July 25, 2008 at 5:38 pm
Thanks Barnun,
Very interesting on the Cooper, especially as they’re using diesel with those low emissions. We don’t see more diesels in this country due to strict emissions controls, with California having particle controls so tight small diesel engines in the past could not comply.
Seems Cooper has solved that problem. Nice. Sure wish they’d import them here - a Cooper Mini is one of my leading choices for my next car.
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Posted by ( barnun ) on July 25, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Ron,
I cant argue with your opinion on sugar cane. Also, as far as my comment on ethanol being implemented poorly, there are many acres of land in the “farm bank” that should have been used so as not to cut into food supplies. I"ve posted before on the UK cars. go to ford.co.uk and here’s an article on the cooper. these are only 2 examples of many in the UK
http://www.topspeed.com/cars/mini/2008-mini-cooper-d-ar42838.html
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Posted by ( RonCharest ) on July 25, 2008 at 11:17 am
Hey Barnun,
Nice to hear from you again. I’m actually in agreement with about 95% of this post.
I would like to add that while sugar cane ethanol is still not a perfect answer for fuel, it’s actually a bit less destructive than corn ethanol. Reason being that sugar cane grows where most other food crops are not grown, and sugar is already highly subsidized to maintain prices due to over production. Diverting sugar for fuel use would have less impact on food supplies than with corn.
Sugar cane also has a higher sugar concentrate than corn, meaning I believe we could get more ethanol from the same amount of cane (by weight) than corn.
I would question your mileage estimates for the European versions of the Cooper and Ford Fusion. They seem awful high, based on what I experienced living in Italy and from what I’ve read of the current automotive technology. Are you sure those numbers are not conversion errors from converting Lt/Km to MPG?
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Posted by ( barnun ) on July 25, 2008 at 9:40 am
I’d have to somewhat disagree with Mr Jones. Ethanol is a great example as to why. The Non petroleum crowd pushed ethanol as an answer. it does have potential but the initial implimentation was awful. it takes 1.2 gallons of gasoline to put 1 gallon of ethanol in the local pump. It depletes our food supply, and contributes to driving up the cost of almost everything in the food chain. sugar cane could work, yes. So we’ll displace current crops to grow sugar cane ? That’s what we just did with corn, plus nobody has even mentioned ethanol’s contribution to water shortage. I do personally love Solar and Wind energy. Solar should be pushed more so on a house to house basis and use up the millions of acres of roof tops. Windmills could actually follow a similar route and small windmill farms are starting to appear all over. there is an old mindset that our country needs to break and that is that we need to have a few Mega power plants to feed power across our nation. Nobody ever talks about the substantial amount of power lost during transmission. The problem needs to be approached on many levels. We are the middle east of Coal. dont turn your back on it, just improve on it. Aircraft carriers are the size of small cities and they’ve been running on Nukes for a long long time. France is now almost all nuclear. We also need to get the auto industry on board. they’d have you beleive 35 mpg is great or that a hybrid getting 40 mpg is something special. A mini cooper in the UK gets 72 mpg, and a ford fusion gets 64 mpg and they are not hybrids.
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