Do you want to make combustion engines in cars illegal!?
- Thread starter sk8er913
- 208 comments
- 8,605 views
- 1,824
- California
Whoa whoa whoa. Nitrogen Oxide is something wholly different.
From Wikipedia:
"Nitric oxide in the air may convert to nitric acid, which has been implicated in acid rain. However, it is an important source of nutrition for plant life in the form of nitrates."
I hadn't heard anything about NO before but perhaps that's because it's not anywhere near as bad as CO and CO2. That being said, I think most deaths from CO exposure come from things like putting a gasoline generator indoors or any other activity of that sort. I wouldn't know.
From Wikipedia:
"Nitric oxide in the air may convert to nitric acid, which has been implicated in acid rain. However, it is an important source of nutrition for plant life in the form of nitrates."
I hadn't heard anything about NO before but perhaps that's because it's not anywhere near as bad as CO and CO2. That being said, I think most deaths from CO exposure come from things like putting a gasoline generator indoors or any other activity of that sort. I wouldn't know.
- 4,101
- California
- Sk8er913
His post explains it; it creates acidic rain that kills forrest.
That's why the Black Forrest died; acid rain... O.o ok ok. maybe it was Nitrous Oxide; we were talking about CO CO2 and NO all at the same time...
- 3,522
- Chicago
- Brutaka_GT
I'm an advocate for electric car manufacturing but this is definitely not the way to make that happen. The entire Car industry can't be rebuilt in 10 years, it took over 100 for it to be like this now.
Massive and instant change is not a good thing for something as massive as the car industry, you're basically asking everyone to:
Massive and instant change is not a good thing for something as massive as the car industry, you're basically asking everyone to:
- Destroy the oil industry, effectively stopping hundreds of thousands of jobs.
- Buy a new electric car in the next 10 years when we have yet to get any really good ones under $30,000.
- change their entire way of transportation.
- Have every major American car company change their entire lineup in the next 10 years, effectively getting rid of more jobs and possibly, the entire company.
- revamp the mechanical car repair industry (To repair on electric cars, I heard you have to have certain backgrounds in engineering or something)
- 7,611
- Exorcet
- OE Exorcet
Milkmen weren't outlawed. The transition was natural, not a kneejerk chaos storm. Why are you pushing a law? It's not helpful as proposed and it's not needed in the first place.
Sure, if we stopped civilization to fix this one arbitrary "problem".
You can contribute to your goal right now, no laws needed, by being a wise consumer. In the decades it would take to sloppily force change on everyone, you could make a difference by choice.
- 12,389
- Betelgeuse
- Beeblebrox_237
- 4,101
- California
- Sk8er913
How many cars in manufacturer lineups are already EV/Hybrid There's Tesla, Fisker, a lot of Fords, Toyota, Nissan, Mclaren P1, Audi, BMW... within the past 5 years.
... I've done a lot of research, in the science part of it... @Beeblebrox237 I just know that our world is dying, and I'm too young and too small to do anything about it. And I don't know much about manufacturing, but I think it's an achieveable ppb is nothing, ppm is still nothing, parts per thousand, is something.
Last edited:
- 12,389
- Betelgeuse
- Beeblebrox_237
It's hard to tell. For a start, when asked to provide a source you indicated that you were just regurgitating what your professor told you. That's not research. You don't seem to have a clear grasp of the differences between different airbourne pollutants, and you certainly don't seem to know where they come from. And that's without getting into your lack knowledge in the fields of economics and manufacturing.
I'd be willing to take your proposal seriously if you did. Casually proposing what would likely be the single most extreme and expensive piece of legislation in the history of the United States requires, at the very minimum, research and evidence into the implications of such a proposal including, but not limited to the economics, environmental science, and public opinion of such an endeavour. It would also require a review of related literature establishing the reasons that this legislation is necessary. You should justify why this proposal is the best route possible and exactly how it would be implemented, including some preliminary estimates on the results of such a law.
Last edited:
- 4,101
- California
- Sk8er913
CO and NO are created when fuel is not completely burned and doesn't complete it cycle.
CO2 is created in engines that are running properly. 0.04% of the atmosphere is CO2 which inst very much. but its enough to cause significant heating of the atmophere. the thing that heats the planet up the most though is Water Vapor, but that only last in the air for 10 days, CO2 can last for 50,000 years. Some physicist believe that as we explore space we will find worlds were civilzations killed themselves with pollution. Also the increased temperature from the CO2 melts Ice which is a reflective surface into waqter which heats up quickly, also the heat puts more water vapor into the atmosphere. which is a perpetual cycle, where Earth eventually becomes Venus.
In the Car side of it there are several new advancements in Batteries and electric motors that can drive us into the new age. Sodium Oxygen batteries are 8x better than our Lithium ions, im fairly certain that Sodium is more rare than lithium, but we only need a fraction of sodium as lithium.
Papers from Hawaii have a very very detailed outcome of what the rest of the 21st century holds with continuous usage, search it if you want.
- 87,322
- Rule 12
- GTP_Famine
Note there that your chart says 54% of all man made nitrogen oxides emissions comes from ALL transportation. That's cars, trucks, lorries, buses, trains, ships & planes... This again isn't what you've said...I want to buy a car for 400$ take it to a track, and if I crash it I'll recycle it and buy a new one. It sounds like fun.
I don't know the source the teacher used; so I'm looking for it. It might have been for Nitrogen Oxide; which is also bad...
Cars produce surprisingly small amounts of CO (thanks to catalytic convertors, that turn it into CO2) and NOx. For the real NOx culprits you'll need to look at diesel buses, trucks and trains - Transport for London estimates that petrol cars produce about 3% of London's NOx, with diesel cars producing about 6 times that (despite diesel selling at about the same rate as petrol in passenger cars) and TFL's own buses the top dog at 23%.
That's at most 1.6% of NOx emissions coming from petrol cars and 10% from diesel cars. Not 50-60%.
- 924
- Engine Block
How would you take your car to a track if you can't drive it on the public roads?!
- 13,895
- Adelaide
- Neomone
Because it's not a greenhouse gas. It's an anti-greenhouse gas, actually. It destroys methane from memory, so it's a net cooling effect.
You'd have heard about it thirty years ago when acid rain was a thing. But it's really not in most western countries these days. I imagine it's still a thing in China where they do what they want.
Did milkmen go out of style in California in the 1930s? I doubt it.
I know for a fact that as little as 15 years ago there were milkmen in New Zealand, because I was working as a milkboy. I sort of doubt that they're still going, but maybe they are.
The point is that milkmen didn't go out of business because of refrigeration, and nobody saw the need to legislate against someone driving around in a truck delivering milk. Milkmen simply became less popular because they provided a service that wasn't very useful in the modern lifestyle, where many people own vehicles and it's easy to buy small amounts of perishable items on a regular basis.
That's not what you're proposing with cars. You're proposing to legislate a system by which people are forced to change their ways, instead of letting people choose what best suits their needs. A sales rep who drives 2000km a week simply cannot work with a pure electric car at the current state of the technology. Long range trucks might be able to, if they wanted to haul an extra trailer full of batteries.
You're doing a 100 level college paper. This is one level above high school. It's great that you're excited about what you're learning, but let's not get too carried away. You've got at least another two or three years before you complete your degree (depending on where you're studying), and then you'll get to go into business and realise that you just spent four years learning and you still really don't know anything.
College is a tool for feeding you the basics of knowledge that you'll need to start learning how to be an expert in a field. A 100 level paper is simply a condensed form of information that you could find on Wikipedia or the internet with a bit of effort, if you knew what you were looking for.
==========
So far, you've managed to misquote 50-60% of CO as 50-60% of CO2 and misattribute it to cars instead of all transport, which is a fairly big difference. We're yet to see sources for the rest of your data, so you'll have to excuse people for not taking your word for stuff.
If you really want to convince people, don't got at this piecemeal like you have been doing. You started with a super brief OP, and have been fielding random replies one at a time ever since. It's a recipe for things getting out of hand.
Write the OP like you would write a short college essay. State your points, state your reasoning, state your figures, state your sources, and state your proposals. Then people can see exactly what you're saying, and can engage with you in reasonable debate.
At the moment, I'm afraid that you're about one step above "the planet is dying and it's bad". You've got no data, no reasoning, and while you've made a proposal as to how the problem might be addressed you've made no attempt to follow through on it.
What you've proposed is a major thing, with substantial downsides that have been raised by people in this thread. You need to be able to address those, or Beeblebrox is absolutely correct that you haven't thought about this enough. It's not enough to have a good idea, you have to be able to explain why it's a better idea than all the other choices.
Don't take this the wrong way, but I see these threads go one of two ways.
Either you drive yourself nuts trying to reply to every little criticism of your argument, which is so far fairly unsupported and thus pretty easy to criticise. In which case this thread has about a day or two before something goes horribly wrong.
Or you take a breath, take on board what has been said so far and spend some time this weekend rewriting the OP with the level of information and supporting documentation that it requires. Then we won't have to spend the next ten pages picking all the holes in your arguments, and we can actually discuss the arguments themselves.
I think you'll agree that there's no point even discussing a weak argument. Until you put this in a form that is strong and well reasoned, all you're going to get from people is pointing out the errors and fallacies in what you're saying. Correct that, and then you'll get some real feedback on your proposal.
- 4,101
- California
- Sk8er913
I only thought about this for about 30 minutes before posting it during my commute come. Which everyones knows how 30 minute papers end up. I still think public racetracks similar to the nurburgring for the future is a good idea though. Ill live in New Delhi though. So it wont effect me much. I was just thinking about how awesome it would be if our only admission would from racecars. When your commuting you dont need power. And if it was illegal I knew that current cars would be very cheap and it would help promote track and race days to a wider audience. Trackdays in the US are very expensive. New Delhis is only 75 USD though. But that track looks boring.
- 24,627
- Anoka, MN
I think the only way ICE will become a thing of the past is if all the manufactures got together and decided to collectively develop a new standard power source. However, even if this were to happen I'd imagine it wouldn't fully come to a realization until most of us are done on this earth as you just can't replace all the cars in the world overnight, there are just too many problems that would need addressing, like...
- Infrastructure: Whatever alternative ends up being the new standard, the infrastructure to support it would be very complex as you would need to replace/convert all the petrol stations in the world. On top of that you would need to make sure you can produce the fuel to satisfy the demand. Electric has a head start in this part as it's easy to add a charging station to most homes, but not everyone has a garage and you would need more charging stations than there are petrol stations currently.
- How do people get them? Cars are not cheap and most people are not in the position to just buy one on impulse. This would mean that people would need some time to work a new car into their budget, if they can at all. A greater time span would take care of this to some degree as a used market would develop, but that also doesn't happen over night.
- Will they be ready? Currently, none of the alternatives are at a point where they can provide long term range and durability. If they aren't able to match the performance of normal petrol I'd imagine quite a few people would rather just pay the fine.
-How do you fix them? Whatever replaces ICE will surely be different from a mechanical perspective, this would of course mean all the worlds mechanics would suddenly have to return to school. This of course becomes a problem as once again, it would cost a good amount of money that I'm sure most mechanics don't have to throw away. Sure some companies pay their mechanics to go back for refresher courses, but I doubt all the garages in the world could afford it.
- What about the old cars? Even if you could get everyone into an EV by 2025, you suddenly have billions of cars that are absolutely useless.
I also don't think your plan of having petrol be legal only on race tracks would work as it wouldn't be profitable for oil companies to drill and refine the oil when only a few thousand people will actually buy it.
Overall, I think replacing ICE as the main power source is something that should and will happen, but it should be by natural cycles and not a rushed law. This of course is something I don't expect to see in my lifetime barring some colossal breakthrough in one of the alternates.
- Infrastructure: Whatever alternative ends up being the new standard, the infrastructure to support it would be very complex as you would need to replace/convert all the petrol stations in the world. On top of that you would need to make sure you can produce the fuel to satisfy the demand. Electric has a head start in this part as it's easy to add a charging station to most homes, but not everyone has a garage and you would need more charging stations than there are petrol stations currently.
- How do people get them? Cars are not cheap and most people are not in the position to just buy one on impulse. This would mean that people would need some time to work a new car into their budget, if they can at all. A greater time span would take care of this to some degree as a used market would develop, but that also doesn't happen over night.
- Will they be ready? Currently, none of the alternatives are at a point where they can provide long term range and durability. If they aren't able to match the performance of normal petrol I'd imagine quite a few people would rather just pay the fine.
-How do you fix them? Whatever replaces ICE will surely be different from a mechanical perspective, this would of course mean all the worlds mechanics would suddenly have to return to school. This of course becomes a problem as once again, it would cost a good amount of money that I'm sure most mechanics don't have to throw away. Sure some companies pay their mechanics to go back for refresher courses, but I doubt all the garages in the world could afford it.
- What about the old cars? Even if you could get everyone into an EV by 2025, you suddenly have billions of cars that are absolutely useless.
I also don't think your plan of having petrol be legal only on race tracks would work as it wouldn't be profitable for oil companies to drill and refine the oil when only a few thousand people will actually buy it.
Overall, I think replacing ICE as the main power source is something that should and will happen, but it should be by natural cycles and not a rushed law. This of course is something I don't expect to see in my lifetime barring some colossal breakthrough in one of the alternates.
- 1,916
- Letchworth
- mistersafeway
Current and likely imminent electric cars are only the answer if the question is 'How do we screw this planet up more?'. Expensive, inefficient, polluting and a massive waste of materials. Overhauling power production* should be the priority for environmentalists, cut reliance on fossil fuels overall, cars will follow once the new techniques work (because, again, the current ones suck). In short, you're putting the cart before the horse, sk8er913.
*In case anyone is unaware, a high proportion of electricity comes from burning coal, which releases more pollutants than most (all?) things we do bar rearing cattle. Electric cars quite frequently end up being anything but green.
*In case anyone is unaware, a high proportion of electricity comes from burning coal, which releases more pollutants than most (all?) things we do bar rearing cattle. Electric cars quite frequently end up being anything but green.
- 4,101
- California
- Sk8er913
Nevermind, after reading this it seems that there is no need to create laws to restrict oil usage.
http://www.imeche.org/knowledge/themes/energy/energy-supply/fossil-energy/when-will-oil-run-out
http://www.imeche.org/knowledge/themes/energy/energy-supply/fossil-energy/when-will-oil-run-out
- 28,470
- Windsor, Ontario, Canada
- Johnnypenso
- 11,985
- Australia
- I_Grayson_Fox_I
Combustion engines will go away slowly.
Just like carbureted engines on cars.
I don't know of any modern car that uses them.
The only engines that use a carburetor are small engines like lawn mowers, line trimmers, and chain saws.
Maybe 125cc bikes but these days with any road vehicle they want to minimize emissions which means fuel injection and ECUs
Just like carbureted engines on cars.
I don't know of any modern car that uses them.
The only engines that use a carburetor are small engines like lawn mowers, line trimmers, and chain saws.
Maybe 125cc bikes but these days with any road vehicle they want to minimize emissions which means fuel injection and ECUs
- 23,800
- Philippines
As Famine says... no. And even if he didn't... no. There are various studies showing cars contributing more to local pollution than power plants. As in: Local... within the area... but this doesn't change the fact that power generation from coal and bunker oil causes more pollution than cars.
I won't get into the coal-powered EVs vs gasoline automobiles nonsense... because that's just nonsense. Economies of scale and off-peak charging and grid balancing make a mockery of any such assessment. Let's just agree that, all things equal, EVs are better.
-
But let's also keep in mind that EVs cost a lot to build.
-
It's not just a lack of capacity that makes this problematic. It's the lack of rare earths for the powerful permanent magnets needed for electric motors. It's the lithium needed to make the batteries. It's the lack of gold. Lack of platinum. Any of a million other things to make massive electrification of the highways work.
-
Then there's the cost of additional power generation. Where are you going to get all that electricity? We don't have the capacity to produce enough solar or wind to power those cars, so a lot of them will be powered by coal
-
Also, doesn't matter if you only need 400 million. In the scenario I gave, that means 400 years of electric car production, not 1000. Still not making that 2025 deadline. Not by a long shot.
Even if you retooled all the car factories today to build EVs only, there's no possible way to scale up battery supply to power them. The bottleneck is not in stamping out car bodies... but building the expensive electric motors and batteries to put into them. (which you'd know if you took the time to read my post or actually research the subject.) Sodium-Oxy batteries? Pipe dream. Wake me up when they get to the consumer electronics phase. And even then, they'll still be a decade or two away from being suitable for vehicles.
For who? Won't be for me or you. If you remove gasoline completely from the equation, the price of running a gasoline track-only car will be the automotive equivalent of racing pedigree horses. Insanely expensive. Only the very rich will be able to afford rare, low-volume parts, lubricants, fuels and tires.
Nuh-uh. You aren't getting away that easily. You're looking at a page written in 2007, when we hit peak demand. This is different from peak oil, but just as important.
In the eight years that have passed since that was written, the fracking revolution has unlocked US reserves that were previously too expensive to tap (this is not new oil, however... we've known of these reserves since the 70's...) and with much of the unrest in several oil-producing nations winding down, we find ourselves with an embarrassing surplus of oil, and a world in the midst of a global slump in oil demand. That demand might never completely recover.
So take that 2040 prediction and possibly add another decade or three to that.
-
We're way past peak oil for many traditional fields. What matters now is how we tailor demand and the shrinking global economy to fit the supply we have left.
You really need to study the issue from all sides and then write something more coherent and realistic.
-
My most optimistic forecast for how we could transition (which I thought up in about that much time a few years ago) involves a much longer timeline... we would basically have to change the way we live and work.
1. Low-impact electricity usage. There's no reason for families in developed countries to be using three to four times as much electricity as I do... I already use the internet, television, cooling and heating devices and etcetera, and my carbon footprint is tiny.
2. Change the transport paradigm. While cars are not the biggest contributor to pollution, they're worth working on. We have to disabuse people of the notion that bigger is better/safer. Lighter, lower, more efficient is the keyword. Think lighter than a Mirage and about twice as efficient. A mix of tiny ICE generators and electric motors can get us there.
3. More efficient land use, in terms of where people live and work. This will, in turn make public transport, biking and walking more appealing to people. You will still need to transport goods to and from these population centers, but again, economies of scale... more efficient to transport more lightweight goods per vehicle than to have relatively heavy humans move around needlessly. (this allows those humans to save commuting money for trips that they DO want to take)
Without making an all-or-nothing ban, you can cut fossil fuel use drastically. Down to zero? You'd have to change the way society and the global economy work on a fundamental level. Which would be difficult, to say the least.
Similar threads
