Re: [Paddlewise] A last turn on Global Warning

 Hi,

Noticed your mail today - don't know how I missed it! Sorry!

Anyway, while electric cars, and electric scooters, have
made great inroads lately the problem is still where can we get
all that extra power, without building a nuclear power plant in
each county. Some alternative power sources, like windmills,
and voltaic cells, will help a little bit, but will not go far!

Yes, we still have areas in Sweden where the mushrooms
are considered too radioactive for human consumption, after
the little Ukrainian nuclear plant went amok, after some
engineers tried something they shouldn't!

Electric cars (and ditto motorbikes) have come a long way
the last few years, but their range is very restricted, compared
to conventional vehicles!

In models of all kinds electric power rules supreme, except
in the really big models (say 1/3 scale aircraft), and more
and more tools are battery-powered. This means the tools use
more power than their cord-powered cousins, as charging a
battery is to this day very wasteful, some 20% is lost as
heat during charging, and another 20% when discharging,
no matter what type of battery we're talking about. And they
all have a life-expectancy (when half their charging capacity
is gone) of about 7 years. NiCads, NiMHs, LiPos and SLAs
have all their very much built-in age limit - if we treat them very
kindly we might be able to use them marginally longer, but
if we mistreat them they age fast!

Let's hope that one day we can make light and efficient vehicles,
that pollute less than a 1hp moped, but it will not come soon!
The trend seems to be more horsepower, instead of less, SUVs
instead of compacts. The number of diesel-powered cars are
increasing, but the soot these highly efficient modern diesel engines
emit, if you stomp on the accelerator, is just the right size to find
its way down into the smallest parts of the lungs of those unfortunate
that don't have highly effective air filters in their cars, or does like
to wear a gas mask with efficient filters, while they walk, or bike,
along the busy streets of today! The most sensitive are the infants,
but I haven't yet seen a baby carriage with built-in filtered
airconditioning!

The world is going to hell, it's just a matter of years - latest figure
I've heard was 4 million, but man will be gone long before that!

Take care, enjoy while you can,

Tord









-----Original Message-----
From: Alex M <al.m_at_3web.net>
To: Tord S. Eriksson <tord_at_mindless.com>; PaddleWise_at_paddlewise.net
Sent: Tue, Jan 6, 2009 9:55 am
Subject: Re: [Paddlewise] A last turn on Global Warning









> My own take on this is to use as energy-efficient vehicles

> we can afford, but I see no future for an all-electric

> vehicle park.


I see no future even for my personal all-electric "vehicle park" :-). With
maximum speed 45 km/h they are banned from most municipalities.  Not that I
like driving at 120 km/h, but such a 45 km/h vehicle should have a
designated lane, like bicycle, and I don't expect this to happen in the
nearest future.


> Heavy transports on land should all be electric train-based,


... and banished out and away, underground :-), 'cause nobody but deaf or
permanently high on dope would be able to live next to the tracks. Even
those light trains are annoying enough, when they dart past your window from
6 am to midnight or to 1 am, every 30 seconds in rush hours, considering
both directions. Not to say that busy street with cars is better.


> And the nuclear power stations should be built where the consumers

> are (human or industrial), not in far-away places, where

> only those totally innocent, will be in harms way!


Chernobyl nuclear station in Ukraine was fairly remote from Western Europe,
and yet, with agreeable winds, radioactive cloud reached Finland and Sweden
a few days after the disaster (weakened and dissipated already, but enough
to register).  Not that I'm against nuclear stations at all - just to note
that there is no place on this planet that can be considered far away enough
to be completely ignored.  Coal smoke and dust from China goes around,
because the globe is round (obvious, isn't it), and settles down where you
don't want it, and so on.
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