I was listening to Obama's ideas last night and he said within the next ten years he wants to stop all oil imports and have Detroit build a new technology for cars and transport to sell to China. By 2050 he reckons 80% of greenhouse gass produced by the USA will be cut.

I like the fact that he no longer wants to borrow money from China and give it straight to the Mid-East but where is this new technology going to fit in?

Apart from the obvious wind,wave and solar power, how on earth is he going to create a technology for cars and tax large corporations through the nose at the same time?, no institutes will see it financially feesable to research such technology...

Maybe his way of signalling support for nuclear power without getting booed out by the tree huggers?

They'd be right though, those reactors don't take too well to head on collisions on the freeway...is not an option for transport(atm).

I guess you could put those reactors in stationary, robust buildings instead of installing one in every car...

haha, you seriously think he's intending to produce fission-powered cars??

They'd need to be invented first....

Let's face it petrol heads will always be around and for battery power to achieve the performance of combustion engines we'd need a ridiculous amount of weight to be carried on-board.

I just can't imagine the USA selling to China what they already know unless he has some sort of radical new type of engine up his sleeve.

E:

What about biomechanics? In theory I could slap a cow muscle in front of each piston and give it a 100hz jolt?

Im very interested on what the talk of new technology is about...

Nothing wrong with using current fuel cells if the power that fills them comes from a renewable resource. I reckon nuclear is the way forward.

Then we can all get Tesla Roadsters and know the our footprint isn't changing despite our <4 second 0-60 time

Tell me, is there any reason that a car or a house or a factory or whatever couldn't have a roof MADE of solar panels? If it's only the expense that's holding them back, they need a kick in the face. If every house in the world used solar panels instead of tiles, we'd have more power than we knew what to do with.

GREAT SCOTT !!!! lmao

Quote from CSU1 :

GREAT SCOTT !!!! lmao

Rofl! Good old movie

Just dust off the old EV1 and whack in a new fangled battery. Or something similar.

The nuclear question is interesting, but it's still a very hard sell. Maybe the US should look to the French nuclear model, as (what I've heard anyway) they're quite good at keeping waste to a bare minimum though recycling- I've no idea how this is achieved though and it's possible i've been misinformed. The US nuclear waste track record is a nightmare and it's no wonder there's such resistance to this technology. Also in Australia spills are not unheard of and it's just a very creepy scene with the threat of nuclear proliferation/hijacking and all..

Quote from CSU1 :

Apart from the obvious wind,wave and solar power, how on earth is he going to create a technology for cars and tax large corporations through the nose at the same time?

Maybe he's been consulting with this lot.

Quote from Dajmin :

Tell me, is there any reason that a car or a house or a factory or whatever couldn't have a roof MADE of solar panels?

A lot of new builds are being made that way, but it is just the cost, cladding a roof with solar panels tends to hit 5 figures, you can get gov't assistance, as they have been offering for the last 10 odd years, to slap on solar panels but the money is hard to get as you need to know someone in the council to push your paper work through or it gets moth balled, so the owner ends up having to foot the bill.

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If every house in the world used solar panels instead of tiles

There's atleast one company I know of who are combining roof tiles and solar cells.

Another guy was/is/did? invent a cell based paint which you could in theory slap onto any surface, creating a potential application of using existing road surfaces as gigantic solar collectors. It's been a while since I've checked into this stuff as the next big thing is always just over the hill out of reach- frustrating.

Quote from Electrik Kar :

creating a potential application of using existing road surfaces as gigantic solar collectors.

If I remember correctly they have turned roads in Scotland into solar panels. Though I belive it was only in a small area as a trial basis.

Because BBC News search is shit, this is all I could find on it: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sco ... s_and_islands/5098570.stm

That's what pisses me off. I suggested solar panels on the roof of the building I work in. Even if it could only power the lights on one floor, it'd still be a saving in the long run.

Yes, solar panels are a big initial spend. But does nobody bother to take into account the long-term savings that they'll bring? Add a couple of panels per financial year and you'll cover the cost in no time. Where are the accountants who should be saying "yes, this will save us hundreds in bills over the next few year and thousands in the long term when oil prices are sky high or the supply just runs out."?

The government especially should be pushing this. Less dependence on oil from countries who want to blow us up can only be a good thing. And you know at least one tanker runs aground every year, so there's less chance of environmental mess.

FFS, wind turbines at sea could piggyback cables that already run to and from oil platforms and feed the network even more. It's not rocket science, people!

Its because the gains are long term and will only become apparent long after said accountants and the people above them approving the decisions cease to work there, and so they won't do anything that doesn't directly benefit themselves.

Dangerous thing to say, I thought if you running for an election your supposed to say what your voters want to hear, regardless of what you want to do.

Why can't we just run on ethanol? Its cleaner (global warming is a LIE anyway), gives you more power and you can grow it in your garden.

The only thing that is a lie is Ethanol being a cleaner fuel, there is quite a big problem with growing fuel for cars instead of food for starving people, you would do less harm running your car on ground up babies.

It's not really cleaner (combustion produces more ozone than gasoline) and it's raising the price of corn through the roof. Not a good option imo.

edit- Quicksilver in first.

PS,

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I suggested solar panels on the roof of the building I work in. Even if it could only power the lights on one floor, it'd still be a saving in the long run.

I remember being amazed flying over Adana airport in Turkey and seeing that every single apartment building was covered in solar panels. It looked to me like a city of the future (being the idealistic environmentalist I was). Apparently solar is cheap over there, so it's the most attractive option. We have our own form of government subsidies to make the cost of solar more attractive in Australia, but the take up rate is slow, which makes me wonder if it's really that financially viable.

Just have to say 5haz, manmade climate change is scientific fact, when US politicians start talking about greener cars instead of 20 tonne monster trucks running on endangered species, then you should really start researching the topic, otherwise you end up looking less intelligent than George W Bush.

Quote from ATC Quicksilver :

Just have to say 5haz, manmade climate change is scientific fact, when US politicians start talking about greener cars instead of 20 tonne monster trucks running on endangered species, then you should really start researching the topic, otherwise you end up looking less intelligent than George W Bush.

I'm afraid not, there is plenty of evidence of Roman vineyards all over the South of England, right now it is too cold in S England to grow such things reliably, there is also evidence of ancient remains of plant life in some of the coldest, most hostile climates, this all suggests that the Earth has been a warmer place before, remember that we are coming out of an 'cool period' that started several hundred years ago, the world is simply going through a warm/ cool cycle that hypocrites such as Al Gore use to get attention/ make money.

Perhaps humans are speeding up the process, but the Earth will always balance itself out temperature wise.

I bet most people in america would much rather politicians left them alone rather than forcing them to drive 'greenmobiles', so when you start harping on about greenness when you want people to vote for you, then you run the risk of alienating some of your voters.

Just because the US politicians have started going on about global warming doesn't make it any more beleivable.

Quote from ATC Quicksilver :

The only thing that is a lie is Ethanol being a cleaner fuel, there is quite a big problem with growing fuel for cars instead of food for starving people, you would do less harm running your car on ground up babies.

Electricity is no better, plus its not lack of land that causes food shortages, its war/ drought/ corruption/ the fact we are not allowed to use GM crops so that drought starved areas can grow corn on barely any rainfall a year/ the fact that we are spending so much money on pointless, gimmicky green smug power and putting into a database everything we do on the internet instead of using the money to help some poor farmer so he can actually get some crops to grow.

man-made Global Warming (i.e. the fact we influence our temperature) is a fact (well, a scientific theory - but then so is Gravity etc). The influence we have, compared to sun-spots, distance from the Sun etc is debatable.

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I was listening to Obama's ideas last night and he said within the next ten years he wants to stop all oil imports and have Detroit build a new technology for cars and transport to sell to China.

He's got the blueprints for Lerts' non-electric electric motor running on petrol ... The Magneto Drive!

Quote from Dajmin :

If every house in the world used solar panels instead of tiles, we'd have more power than we knew what to do with.

i seem to remember that they still have trouble producing more power that it takes to make them during their average lifespan