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The Rat

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4. Just as important to me, or perhaps more so, is the national security and balance of payments aspect. Even if the carbon footprint was the same, I'd rather send my dollars to American natural gas producers and hydro dams in California than to Iran, Venezuela, and BP. I bought a Leaf in part to buy American ... fuel.

And if we reduced the unnecessary regulation on the production of oil, and allowed the new construction of refineries, we could move toward energy independence again. There hasn't been a new refinery built in the US since the 70's, due to EPA restrictions, and the reason they are doing deep water offshore drilling is that the EPA won't allow the oil companies to drill closer to shore, where it's less risky. Plus, the EPA mandates a lot of special blends of gas that aren't really necessary.

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There are too many issues brought up to reply to them all, but some basic points:

 

1. Electricity in California is produced using virtually no coal (<1% according to sources I trust). I believe the biggest source is natural gas followed by hydroelectric, wind, and solar.

 

2. My Leaf is charged almost entirely at night during off-peak hours when hydroelectric and wind make up a larger % of the power source since they have to run constantly, while the gas is turned way down to just the minimum needed to keep the voltage up. Basically, almost no extra gas or other fossil fuel is burned to charge it.

 

3. The argument that electric cars simply shift the emissions to the power plant and do not ultimately reduce harmful emissions compared to internal combustion engines (ICE) has been thoroughly debunked by the scientific community, although people will choose to believe what they want to believe on this issue, I'm sure. ICE cars have a much bigger carbon footprint.

 

4. Just as important to me, or perhaps more so, is the national security and balance of payments aspect. Even if the carbon footprint was the same, I'd rather send my dollars to American natural gas producers and hydro dams in California than to Iran, Venezuela, and BP. I bought a Leaf in part to buy American ... fuel.

 

5. For most people an EV probably won't save you money. I wouldn't have bought it for a ridiculous amount. With government incentives it was in the mid $20K range, less than the original price of the car I traded in (a 1998 ICE car). It has cost me about $20/month in increased electricity. I expect to have almost no service costs, either.

 

6. I'm not telling anyone to buy or cache an EV. It really is only suitable for a particular demographic subset. We don't have range problems because we have an ICE car for longer trips.

 

If you have a long commute or need to tow a boat or trailer, etc., it's not for you, at least not as your only vehicle. I do hope my blog disabuses people of some of the misinformation put out about EV's, or even possibly justified negative views based on EV's of years past. I'm also hoping it makes you think about the environment when caching. For example, for longer trips you can carpool instead of all meeting at the endpoint; it's more fun with a group talking in the car anyway, in my experience.

 

I hope you don't mind that I reformatted your wall of text for easier reading.

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I could just say that Global Warming is Bunk, and it would be true, but it would also be inflamatory, and you wouldn't believe it. Instead, I'll give you some information you may not have come across.

 

1. Most of the electricity produced in this nation is from coal, and while we do not have many coal power plants here in California, thanks to Grey Davis and his era of legislation, we cannot and do not produce enough electricity to meet local demand, and must each year import it across state lines.

 

2. The perceived temperature rise in the average temperature taken by monitering stations corresponds directly to the closing of many of those stations in Siberia brought about by the economic woes of the Soviet Union.

 

3. Warm periods, warmer than our current one, have happened before in our worlds history and have always led to times of growth and prosperity (for example the Mideival Warm Period. The reason Greenland is called that is not marketing. It's because when Lief Erikson saw the shores of Greenland the hills were covered with really nice looking vineyards. Perhaps someone here from Greenland can tell me how many unsheltered, uncovered vineyards cover the hills of Greenland today.)

 

4. Temperature variations in our planets history do not correlate to human emissions with any noticeable degree of success. What they do correlate to is the variable output of our sun.

 

5. Human emissions are so small compared to natural emissions that it is hubris to think that we play a leading role. When Mt. St. Helens erupted in 1980, it put out more greenhouse gasses in one day than all human emissions from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution to date. Saying that we are changing the climate with our emissions is equivalent to saying we are going to make the sun hotter by shooting our nuclear missiles at it. Any affect we had would be swallowed without a trace by the suns normal sun spot cycle.

 

6. Greater amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere directly means strong, hardier, more productive plants.

 

7. Even if greenhouse gasses were a problem, the lowest emitters are the developed world with our advanced processes. The worst emitters are the third world nations that have:

A) Cheaper, less efficient coal and wood burning power plants

B) Make use of wood or dung fires for heating which produces much more pollutants and greenhouse gasses than do gas or electric heaters.

C) Have large numbers of animals as cattle, for transportation, and for labor (ie oxen instead of tractors.) (Yes cow's burps and farts are a greater source of greenhouse gasses than human emissions. Deal with it.)

 

8. Our world is a self-regulating system. That means that if there was a problem, natural processes would solve it.

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2. My Leaf is charged almost entirely at night during off-peak hours when hydroelectric and wind make up a larger % of the power source since they have to run constantly

Hydroelectric has to run constantly? I don't think so. Hydropower can be turned off at the dam with the flick of a switch. It's coal (and maybe gas too) that needs to run 24x7 for maximum efficiency.

 

My neighboring province of BC makes lots of money because they have hydro dams, while my province of Alberta has coal plants. At night BC turns their dams off and buys electricity from Alberta's coal plants at cheap nighttime rates. In the daytime BC turns on their dams and sells the surplus electricity to the US at higher daytime rates.

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For every Nissan Leaf you see on the road, that's $7,500.00 of our federal tax dollars and $5,000.00 of our California tax dollars that was given to a private citizen to buy a car that the government feels is Politically Correct.

 

Thus ends the mystery of why our taxes are so high and the government is still so far in debt.

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For every Nissan Leaf you see on the road, that's $7,500.00 of our federal tax dollars and $5,000.00 of our California tax dollars that was given to a private citizen to buy a car that the government feels is Politically Correct.

The California government ran out of subsidy money for electric cars some months back. I'm not sure if the Rat was early enough though.

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There are too many issues brought up to reply to them all, but some basic points:

1. Electricity in California is produced using virtually no coal (<1% according to sources I trust). I believe the biggest source is natural gas followed by hydroelectric, wind, and solar.

...

4. Just as important to me, or perhaps more so, is the national security and balance of payments aspect. Even if the carbon footprint was the same, I'd rather send my dollars to American natural gas producers and hydro dams in California than to Iran, Venezuela, and BP. I bought a Leaf in part to buy American ... fuel.

 

This is getting pretty far outside the scope of this forum, but who are "American natural gas producers"?

 

Isn't natural gas, like coal, extracted from the earth? Some of the recent natural gas extraction processes are pretty controversial right now.

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I am having serious reservations regarding how this topic pertains to geocaching. The link seems to be extremely tenuous, at best.

You will notice I asked the essentially same question on the previous page. :smile::omnomnom:

You will notice I answered essentially the same question in post #31. :omnomnom:

 

I think it is interesting to discuss the limitations of geocaching with an electric vehicle, similar to, say, a bicycle. But with the Rat's choice of words : "carbon footprint" and "environmentally friendly" I pretty much figured this thread is a lost cause in that direction. Anyway I'm not sure it is possible to discuss electric cars without having some people up in arms.

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Maybe if we killed off all life on earth the environmentalist nutbags would be happy.

Can we start with geocaching, forum lounging dogs first? :anibad:

While I can't advocate violence, if some were to actually try employing this method, shouldn't the environmental nutbags be first? After all, it was their idea originally. We could toss in personal injury attorneys who advertise on TV, and politicians, followed by Justin Beiber, just to round up the numbers. Once that dust settles, we could see where things stand. :ph34r:

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Maybe if we killed off all life on earth the environmentalist nutbags would be happy.

Can we start with geocaching, forum lounging dogs first? :anibad:

While I can't advocate violence, if some were to actually try employing this method, shouldn't the environmental nutbags be first? After all, it was their idea originally. We could toss in personal injury attorneys who advertise on TV, and politicians, followed by Justin Beiber, just to round up the numbers. Once that dust settles, we could see where things stand. :ph34r:

While I'm sure there are "environmental nutbags", lets avoid that sort of extreme categorization, OK? Even "environmental nutbags" have some valid points that get tossed out with the bathwater when we use terms like that. That is exactly the sort of disenfranchising characterization that keeps the dust from settling. Earlier tonight, I heard the term "tree hugger" being used in a similar context, and that is what got me to thinking. Hell, I LOVE trees! You probably do, too. To characterize all "tree huggers" as people with nothing to offer is just plain against our better interests as much as accepting everything they have to offer is against our better interests.

 

</soapbox>

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