News & Views

Hybrids are currently about 1% of the total market in the U.S. I've seen predictions that say hybrids will reach about 10% within 10 years. I personally don't agree with those predictions. In fact, I see hybrids being completely replaced by Extended Range Electric Vehicles (X-REVs) within that same time period. Let me explain why.

First, why do we need to switch from gasoline at all? Most experts will agree that in the long term, we are headed for purely electric drive cars. One big reason is, we have a limited supply of petroleum and it is used in MANY other products (plastics, for example) which we really need to keep making because we don't have good replacements. Another reason is the fact that burning petroleum is just a horrible thing to do to the planet we live on. Plus, electricity can (and should) be generated from renewable sources. The bottom line is, switching to electric drive for our vehicles is really an eventuality, not simply a possibility.

So, let's just agree we're eventually headed for purely electric vehicles. Why can't we just start switching now and get it over with? Why not make all new cars electric? Well, we can't. The reason is simple. The technology just isn't there, and won't be for a very long time to come.

Sure, we have decent electric motors already. In fact, electric motors are really powerful and produce instantaneous, flat, and extreme levels of torque. Freight trains have been pulled by electric motors running off diesel generators for many years. One of the fastest and most responsive cars on the market is a pure electric vehicle called the Tesla Roadster. It goes from 0-60 in 3.9 seconds. The electric motor is also much more energy efficient than the gasoline engine. More of the energy consumed actually makes it to the pavement. You get more power for less energy. The bottom line is, the electric motor is really great for driving the wheels on a car.

The reason we can't all switch to electric cars now is the batteries. While every other technology has advanced very quickly, batteries have proceeded at a virtual snail's pace. Batteries have always been and still are a horrible way to store energy. You get far less out than you put in. Further, there is only so much space available for batteries in a vehicle, in order to still leave room for passengers and their stuff.

Unfortunately, filling the available space with even our best current battery technology stores only enough energy to take a car about 40-60 miles on a charge. If you have a 20 mile commute, one way, that means you MUST remember to plug in your car every single night or it will be dead and useless in the morning. Plus, our current battery technology generates a lot of heat (wasted energy) and takes much too long to charge after it is drained.

Then there is the fact that almost nobody wants a purely electric car. Yeah, I said it. I'm sure I'll hear from the few who NEVER take a trip longer than 20 miles, and who have the discipline to plug it in every night, but the vast majority of us aren't like those people. We are forgetful people who like flexibility and dependability because our lives are chaos and our transportation needs change daily.

The hard reality is, mass acceptance of purely electric vehicles is a LONG way off. Maybe 30 years or more. Why? Two reasons - People are far more afraid of their batteries going dead than they ever were of running out of gas. This because a battery recharge takes HOURS of sitting at a few specific locations and filling the tank takes minutes at tons of convenient locations. What if you forget to plug your car in overnight? You have no car. That's unacceptable.

People also want to be able to take long driving trips without stopping for many hours of recharge sessions every 40 miles. You can't do that with current purely electric cars, and it doesn't look like that level of technology is going to appear for a very long time. Purely electric vehicles will not become the norm until the battery technology allows people to drive all day (or commute all week), only stopping for quickie food, fuel, and restroom breaks. People can do that now with gasoline cars. They won't give it up without a fight.

Hybrids are really the first of two steps needed to get us from petroleum to electric. Hybrids still drive the wheels with a gasoline motor and use the electric motor as a performance "boost" when needed. For this reason, they only need a small amount of battery capacity. Because they still use a gasoline engine as the primary motive power, they operate and refuel just like the cars people use now. They require no change in behavior.

I believe the next step in this evolution is extended range electric vehicles (X-REVs). In an X-REV, the small gasoline motor always idles. It only drives a generator. The gas generator basically charges the batteries constantly in what is essentially an electric car. The X-REV's wheels are driven by an electric motor. There is no kinetic connection at all between the gas motor and the wheels. Yes, you can still plug X-REVs in every night to charge it and save a fortune on fuel, but it won't make the car unusable if you forget occasionally.

That's really a key feature. X-REVs are the next step because they provide that one critical ability. Your battery can run out after 40 miles and you can keep on driving for as long as your conventional fuel allows - 300 miles or even more. Fill your tank whenever it's low and keep driving. You could forget to plug it in half the time and still get to work  every day just fine. That's peace of mind people absolutely need when making the transition.

Plus, swapping to better batteries as technology progresses will also improve your fuel savings allowing you to travel further before using any gas at all. If replacement batteries get good enough sooner than expected, you might eventually stop putting gas into the car at all. That makes it the perfect transition vehicle. You can slowly shift into the habit of charging your car regularly without being severely punished if you forget.

Plus, the conventional fuel used to extend the range could be nearly anything, from gasoline, to compressed natural gas, to hydrogen or diesel. Anything that can run the generator, works. In fact, if the manufacturers design the generator and fuel storage in a modular way, the fuel you use to extend the range could even change over the years without replacing your vehicle. This is yet another advantage.

Imagine when gasoline hits $10 a gallon in 5 years. You simply pop in a compressed natural gas (CNG) generator module which you refill from a compressor installed in your garage. Hook the compressor to your natural gas line and bingo, you can fill your own tank at home. If you are running low, you could use the CNG compressors at friends' or relatives' houses. Even gas stations would start installing CNG pumps.

Or imagine something drastic happens which suddenly cuts off our oil supply. (Can you say "embargo?") If the only fuel available is an electrical outlet and you are one of the smart ones who drives an X-REV, you can still use your car for 40 miles a day while all those gasoline cars sit around useless or wait in long lines for gasoline. You win!

In fact, if we develop future-fuel generators which put out more energy than needed by the electric drive motor, you wouldn't even need the batteries. That would mean your X-REV is suddenly a fully electric car with minimal modification. Replace the generator "module" and it's an electric car. Keep the car you love longer and just swap out one module.

Heck, imagine someday eventually putting in a tiny nuclear generator that would allow you to drive non-stop for 5,000 years without ever recharging. You could drive it until it is a pile of dust and never refuel again. At the rate we're going with batteries we might have tiny reactors long before we have decent batteries, anyway. Even glacial-paced solar technology is progressing faster than batteries and that's just plain sad.

So, for long-term flexibility and dependability, the X-REV would be the perfect choice as our long term transition vehicle to get us off our addiction to oil and move us toward an electric future. In an oil crisis, X-REVs could save us. If fuel technology changes quickly, they could save us. If we forget to plug it in, they could save us. For those long drives to grandma's house, they could save us. X-REVs are the best of all worlds. So in my opinion, they really should replace hybrids as the car of choice while we wait for the distant promise of purely electric vehicles. They deliver the benefits of electric for your daily commute while giving you the flexibility of gasoline cars for any other situation that comes up.

If you want to see what I'm talking about, the Chevy Volt is the first shining star in what I hope will be a very bright future for X-REVs. "TIME.com" was very impressed with this technology. Personally, I can't wait to see what other car companies come out with to compete with the Volt. If the development rumors are true, our automotive future looks brighter than ever. In these times of rampant bad news, it's nice to realize we might have a better future just around the bend.

Labels: automobiles, Climage Change, Energy, Environment, Opinions, Predictions

Everyone who uses laptops or cell-phones these days is at least partially aware of the battery technology everybody uses in those devices. Lithium-ion and lithium-polymer batteries have literally changed the world of portable devices, making them lighter, while also extending useful battery life. They have become the most common type of battery used in consumer rechargeable devices.

Their drawbacks? They generate a lot of heat and are prone to catch fire or even explode in some instances. They are also not very environmentally friendly. Because of these drawbacks, at least one company saw an opportunity to create a safer, greener alternative.

The alternative comes in the form of silver-oxide or silver-zinc technology. Silver-zinc batteries can run up to 40% longer than the equivalent lithium-ion battery. Over 95% of the primary elements in the battery can be recycled. There are no heavy metals or toxic chemicals in modern silver-zinc batteries. Plus, their water-based chemistry make them free from the risk of thermal runaway, fire, and explosion. The primary drawback? Cost. These batteries will cost significantly more than equivalently-sized lithium-ion. Silver, after all, isn't cheap.

There is little doubt that these batteries are a safer, greener, longer-running choice for laptops and cell-phones. With a little more development, their future looks very bright. The technology has the backing of some heavy hitters, as well. For example, Intel Capital has invested in a silver-zinc battery manufacturer named Zinc Matrix Power (ZMP). The only question seems to be, when will we see them in widespread use?

From my quick search on the web, it looks like several laptop manufacturers are in the process of examining silver-zinc batteries for use. ZMP claims at least one laptop maker already has designs in the queue with an eye toward introduction in their high-end laptops in mid 2009. Eventually, we may even see after-market, drop-in replacement batteries engineered to retrofit older laptops with this safer technology. Expect advertising to tout extended run times and the "green" aspects as major selling points, but also expect to pay a hefty premium for those features. Are the extra safety and green features worth the price? That's for you to decide.

I'll keep you posted as I find out more.

Labels: Energy, Environment

Even if you are one of the very few who don't agree with the many thousands of climate scientists who say we are on the brink of a disastrous change in world climate, there are still many other strong incentives for us to shift to clean and renewable energy sources.
 
For example, the instability of foreign oil supplies has caused our gasoline prices to virtually triple in the past 8 years. Oil is also the reason we are fighting and dying in a war to stabilize the middle east. We literally pay $700 billion per year to other countries to feed our oil addiction and that figure is growing quickly. In some cases we are giving money to governments who use it to fund armies who then shoot at us.

If we were energy independent, that would be $700 billion feeding into our own economy and $700 billion less pumped into the economies of countries who are quickly becoming global threats. Removing our dependence on unstable regions of the world would go a long way to stabilizing our economy. Pumping less money into their economies would also make it more difficult for them to build armies.

Another great reason to achieve energy independence using clean energy is that it will create a lot of "green collar" jobs. These are semi-skilled jobs created in the production, installation, and maintenance of renewable energy equipment. This would allow many of the folks displaced from assembly line or construction jobs to find new work with minimal training. It would be a boon to the lower and middle class. In fact, a massive shift toward wind, solar, tidal, and geothermal energy would likely create millions of new jobs that pay pretty well. High unemployment is one of many things contributing to our current financial crisis and green energy industries could help solve it.

Many ask, "If we are trying to break our addiction to oil, what will we use for our vehicles?" That's a great question. What if I told you we already have an abundant supply of a clean transportation fuel which costs about half as much as gasoline at the pump? I'm talking about compressed natural gas (CNG). A nationwide switch to CNG for transportation could break our addiction to oil very quickly. When I say quickly, I mean a matter of years, not decades.

Why CNG? We have a lot more domestic natural gas reserves than oil. It also works perfectly as a transportation fuel. In fact, 8 million vehicles already use it worldwide. It burns clean, so it is much better for the environment. You can convert existing vehicles to use it. The conversion cost would be low enough that the government could pay the vehicle conversion cost rather than sending us a $1500 check to buy our votes this year. It is even being used to generate electricity.

So why haven't we all switched to CNG already? Good question. Perhaps we should ask our leaders, the auto makers, and most importantly, the oil companies who also happen to own most of the natural gas reserves. All three are guilty to some extent, but the oil companies are the ones who control both the fuel supply and our leaders. It is the oil companies who spend many millions lobbying our leaders in order to influence legislation, regulations, and the adoption of clean air standards. It is the oil companies that keep our nation from following CO2 emission standards endorsed by most of the rest of the world. It is the oil companies who originated the "drill baby drill" chant.

If you think about it, "Big Oil" has become the "Big Tobacco" of this century. They know in their hearts they are killing our planet. We also know they are killing our planet. But just like the tobacco companies in the 80's and 90's, the general population hasn't tried to fight "Big Oil" because we have simply been too addicted to their products. It's high time for that to change. It's time to kick the oil habit. We have the alternatives available.

With all of the technological progress which has been made in the past 150 years, and our ever-increasing demand for energy, it is hard to believe that we are still using the same few fossil fuels we used at the beginning of the industrial revolution. Solar and wind technologies have existed for decades, yet we have put little money or effort into refining them. Geothermal and tidal forces still remain nearly untapped. We are generating our energy as if we still live in 1900.

The time for renewable, clean energy sources has arrived. Now is the time to put them all to use. Now is the time to bring our money home to rebuild our own future. Now is the time to stop letting the radical leaders of a few tiny nations dictate the future of the most powerful nation on Earth. Now is the time to create millions of new jobs while creating a brighter, cleaner future for our descendants. The stability of our economy and the future of our planet depend on making some significant changes in how we produce the energy we need. In short, it is time for an energy revolution.

Labels: Climage Change, Energy, Environment

Wind power will allow us to purchase $300 billion less in foreign oil every year. That's the upshot of an amazing plan presented by T. Boone Pickens. The plan, known as "The Pickens Plan," may really be the salvation for our ever growing dependence on foreign oil. He has found a way for us to replace oil imports with wind!

According to Pickens, we now import about 70% of the oil we use in the United States. This figure is nearly triple the percentage we were importing in 1970. But the real kicker is that the foreign oil costs us a whopping $700 billion a year! That's money taken straight out of our pockets and sent overseas.

Pickens is working to help us stop sending so much of our own money to foreign interests, while creating more jobs, saving us money on fuel costs, and reducing our environmental impact. To accomplish this, Pickens wants us to utilize our wind power. What is odd about his enthusiasm for wind power, is that Pickens made his fortune in oil.

You may wonder how building wind farms will reduce our dependence on foreign oil and reduce transportation costs. Oil is used primarily for transportation, while wind is used to generate electricity. You may be thinking, "he's pushing electric cars."  You would be wrong. If he's not suggesting we drive electric cars, then how are we going to make transportation costs cheaper at the same time? Oil is going up in price. How does all of this fit together?

This is where the genius of his plan really becomes evident. Pickens says we should use wind power to replace natural gas for generating electricity and then use that extra natural gas to power our transportation. This is one of those ideas that is so simple it's brilliant. It makes one wonder why nobody thought of this before. There are already 8 million natural gas vehicles on the road, so we know it works well as a transportation fuel. But can we really reduce that $700 billion number by using natural gas?  And if so, by how much?

Currently, we generate 22% of our electricity using natural gas. If we were to generate that 22% using wind power, we could apply all of that natural gas toward transportation. According to Pickens that would reduce our oil imports by 38%, to the tune of around $300 billion.

So the next question becomes, "can we generate enough electricity to replace the natural gas?" The Department of Energy released the results of a study last April which seem to verify that it is indeed possible. Take a look at the Department of Energy wind map, and you will notice that the United States has more land area with usable levels of wind than anyone else in the world. Best of all, we have a huge "wind corridor" running straight down the middle of the rural portions of our nation, which will make for easier east-west distribution of the electricity.

The location of the "wind corridor" also means we'll be utilizing lots of wide open fields surrounding small communities that have been hit hard by changes in agriculture over the past few decades. Putting wind farms on all of that land will not only generate the electricity we need, but it will revitalize those ravaged rural communities. Farm owners will have an additional source of income by becoming wind generation sites.

There are other benefits from the Pickens plan, too. Additional jobs will be created from the manufacture, operation, and maintenance of the wind generation facilities and equipment. A larger percentage of the nation's vehicles will burn natural gas, which burns much cleaner than gasoline, with fewer emissions. The Honda Civic GX Natural Gas Vehicle pictured is the cleanest internal-combustion vehicle in the world, according to the EPA. Further, natural gas is cheaper than gasoline, which will save us all money. Plus, I personally feel better knowing we wouldn't be handing as much of our cash over to nations that despise us and our way of life.

One of the things I like most about the Pickens plan is that it can be implemented fairly quickly. I saw Senate hearings where numbers were tossed around about costs and timetable. It was stated that this plan could be fully implemented within 10 years at a cost of about $17 billion per year of private industry investment. Compare that cost with the (constantly rising) $700 billion per year we are already handing to other nations to purchase oil, and it seems trivial. Put another way, spending $17 billion per year for 10 years could save us $300 billion a year forever. That's less than half the amount we are spending each year on the war in Iraq!

At this point, I can't see any logical reason why both Presidential candidates and all of Congress shouldn't be jumping up and down to implement this plan. In fact, I don't see why we need to wait for private industry to make that $17 billion per year investment. This should be an infrastructure expenditure like the national highway system or the Hoover dam.

In a nutshell, we should just do it! If we need to, bring the troops home and put THEM to work helping to build it. If we as Americans pull together to make a change, it can happen much faster. Let's put some pressure on our elected officials to make this happen quickly. The quicker it happens, the quicker we can stop pumping our own cash into the hands of other countries.

Labels: Congress, Environment

Several years ago, the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change, assembled 928 peer-reviewed and published research findings from long-term studies on global climate done by scientific research teams all over the world. This comprises research done, cross-checked, and verified by probably tens of thousands of climate research scientists in total. The UN IPCC compiled this report in order to see if there was consistent scientific evidence that we are experiencing a human-induced, long-term global climate change. They came up with the following results, as reported in Science magazine:

"The 928 papers were divided into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. Of all the papers, 75% fell into the first three categories, either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change. Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position."

(Excerpt from "The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change,"  Science Magazine, December 2004.)

In other words, close to a THOUSAND peer-reviewed scientific research studies were compiled into one combined report and not a single one of those research studies disagreed with the fact that global warming is real.

Think about that. If global warming weren't real, you would think at least ONE of these reports would disagree. Wouldn't you?

Our freakishly-stupid government officials still deny the reality of global warming, despite the entire legitimate scientific community supporting it time after time in hundreds upon hundreds of studies. Why would our government do this? It seems to me these government puppets cannot bite the hand that feeds them (special interests) so they constantly vote down any form of government response saying, "it needs more study." As if the 928 long-term studies cited by the UN IPCC report aren't quite enough and one more report might just do it. The Bush administration, in particular, has tried to sweep all of the world scientific research under the rug with disinformation because the "good old boy" himself sleeps with "Big Oil" more than he sleeps with his own wife.

These same large corporations who seemingly own most of our government officials (big oil, coal, gas, pharmaceutical, chemical, and other manufacturing industries who do not want to clean up their emissions due to the expense) are forming and financing small no-name organizations which are tasked to find believable ways to discredit the masses of global warming research and convince us we're all ok with things the way they are now.

These little organizations supposedly do research, but they won't subject it to scientific peer review because they know it would be proven to be fabricated or biased. Yet, they still publish the research without ever having it reviewed and call it truth. Sometimes they use it to try to promote conspiracy theories about the "global warming movement," as if these many thousands of independent climate scientists all over the world have something to gain by saying we're doomed.

In reality, the only people who stand to gain anything are the people trying to convince us it isn't real since they get paid more if they find some evidence, however small, that it might not be true. That should make their motives suspect. Then they use the Internet to spread disinformation because the Internet is free, and people will believe anything they receive in email or read in a user forum.

It's pretty easy to find published results of real scientific studies on global warming. Just do a quick search on Google or Wikipedia.

 
More information on this chart.

Most scientists don't want to cause complete panic so they temper their public statements, but the situation really is dire. I can look at the numbers myself and understand a lot of the calculations on what is coming. It only takes 2 degrees Celsius of increase in world average temperature to completely change our world in a disastrous way. It only takes 2-3 degrees to melt almost all of the ice on Earth, raising sea levels dramatically.

More information on global warming.

So what could happen if all of these predictions are true? You may want to sit down while I tell you.

Within 30-60 years, if this rate of warming and glacier/polar ice melting continues, we could be 3-5 degrees Celsius hotter. This means the Midwest could mostly become a desert. The polar icecaps and glaciers of the world could be almost completely gone. Some areas will have horrible storms and flooding. Others will suffer extremely long periods of drought.

Canada and Russia may become the major agricultural suppliers to the world due to warmer temperatures and much longer growing seasons in the far north. The Colorado River may dry to a comparable trickle causing people to abandon entire cities due to water shortages in the desert southwest.

Most of the coastlines of the world may be under water. A lot of Florida could be under water. The island of Manhattan could be under water. London could be under water. Some island nations may disappear completely. A lot of fish species in the oceans will die off due to lack of oxygenation, upsetting a huge portion of the world food chain and causing widespread famine.

Two hundred million people in THIS country alone may need to be relocated to other areas and literally billions will be affected worldwide. Many trillions of dollars of property could be lost, bankrupting a huge number of big corporations and banks. The effects might plunge the world into the worst depression in history. Economies of a lot of nations might completely collapse.

Governments could fall. Violence could erupt from food shortages. Our own nation's economy may come close to collapse as well. There might be worldwide famine. I wish I was making all of this up, but we might live to see it happen if we don't do anything to stop it.

For my generation, it's easy to say, "So what? I probably won't be here by that time anyway." But do we really want to be remembered as the generation that sent the entire world back into third-world status when we could do something about it now and prevent it? I don't want our generation to be remembered that way, but it doesn't matter what I want.

In reality, I'm completely certain this nation won't do a damned thing. Our country has never even signed the Kyoto agreement. Some individuals may care, but our leadership obviously doesn't. We won't do anything about the future because we are a nation governed by short-sighted, power-crazed, money-grubbing, ill-informed, puppets sitting in marble halls plotting what legislation they can pass next in order to get the rich lobbyists to pay for their next family vacation on a private corporate jet.

That's the American way. Stupid people breed like rabbits and intelligent people don't. Self-serving jerks move up in power and nice people get walked on. The rich own the politicians and the politicians run the nation into the ground while ignoring the rights of the people. All of this while the apathetic majority in this country sits at home and watches Jerry Springer reruns with every light and appliance in the house turned on.

What can we do? We should all install compact florescent light bulbs. We should all recycle. We should embrace more efficient technologies in our transportation and homes. But in the end, this may only delay the inevitable until our generation is dead and gone. At some point, humanity will have to pay the piper for the mistakes of our leadership.

The bottom line is, we are likely all doomed because of the short-sightedness of our leaders. We might as well sit back and enjoy the ride while it lasts and hope we are dead before the worst of it hits. Because, our long-term future looks truly grim.

Labels: Congress, Environment