Automakers working on next generation of engines

"Dori A Schmetterling" > wrote in message
...
> Interesting commentary. Actually I am not one of those advocating
hydrogen
> fuel; I am fairly agnostic about these things and aware that each type of
> fuel has pluses and minuses. What I am curious about is what the total
> lifecycle cost is of batteries.
>

That really depends on the battery material and composition. Lead and
Cadimum are nasty things in the environment and so battery handling
for those batteries must be more expensive since you have to recycle them.

NiMH batteries however can be just thrown away, their materials have no
environmental issues. An interesting discussion of them is he

http://www.cobasys.com/pdf/tutorial/...technology.pdf

My guess though is that the manufacturers will recycle them anyhow as
the materials are more expensive than plain lead.

> A recent report in the UK, from a reputable source, apparently, concluded
> that the energy cost PER PERSON is lower in the car than in a train! My
> 'issue' is that evangelical advocates for a particular form of fuel (or
> transport) overlook total costs.
>

I would agree with that, because the train doesen't run all of the time
fully loaded. I would imagine if every train that ran was fully loaded,
the cost per person would be different. If fuel costs rose and more
people took the train and fewer took a car, the energy cost per person
on the train would drop.

> This extends into related matters. For example, nothing is worthwhile
> recycling other than aluminium containers. The rest should be
incinerated.

Not true, this depends greatly on a number of factors, source separation
and quantity. Paper is definitely worth recycling. I remember being in cub
scouts 25 years ago before curbside recycling was mandated and one of our
fund raisers
was paper drives, a few tons of newsprint, cleaned of garbage like string,
paper bags, etc. was worth money that was definitely greater than the
hauling costs. And before curbside recycling was mandated there were
people making a few bucks driving around to business collecting cardboard
boxes. White office wastepaper is also worth recycling, once again if you
can train people not to throw colored paper into the recycling bins at
the office.

Clear glass containers are also worth recycling if they are source separated
from colored glass, and from clear plate glass. Glass containers melt at a
lower temperature than plate glass and sand, thus it is cheaper to make
clear glass containers out of recycled clear glass containers.

Steel for most purposes (ie: from the household) isn't worth it, the costs
of
collection outweigh the savings for most things, unless you have a lot of
steel in one place (like a car)

Mixed glass, ie: green and brown glass, is generally not worth it. This
should
frankly be something addressed at the federal level, however. There is no
reason to use brown glass for beer bottles, clear glass works just as well
and
indeed a lot of beer already comes in clear glass or cans anyway. It should
be banned for packaging, like styrofoam is (at least in our area). Green
glass is
more of a problem because of the wine industry, wine in a clear wine bottle
would almost certainly look much less appetizing (who wants to buy a clear
bottle of liquid you are supposed to drink that is the color of urine?) and
the wine industry would probably suffer sales as a result. They also don't
put wine in aluminum cans, at least, not anything that your going to get
someone to pay $100 a bottle for.

> BUT it is difficult for local politicians to posit that -- who wants an
> incinerator down the road?
>

If the household waste stream was clean garbage - paper, food, etc. -
no problem. But with people throwing the household chemicals (like
batteries) into the waste stream that they do, an incinerator puts out
a lot of nasty heavy metals and costs more than just dumping it into
a sealed landfill.

The thing is though that a lot of the hauling costs of recyclables you
have to pay anyway. The garbage hauler hauls the same weight of
material off from your house whether he's taking one garbage can
or one garbage can plus a smaller box of recyclables like glass
and paper. If you can get the people to source-separate the recyclables
so the garbage hauler has the two containers to deal with, then
the costs are the same to the garbage hauler in fuel.

We have curbside recycling here and there's wide participation. Before
we had it, a typical garbage hauler might be able to so, say, 100 houses
before his truck was full and they had to send another one out.

Now the garbage company sends 2 trucks out, the first is the garbage
truck and the second is the recyclables truck. The garbage truck now
does perhaps 200 houses. So the end cost to the garbage hauler is
the same, and the advantage is that back at the garbage haulers place
he gets enough quantity of recyclables that it makes it worth while
for someone to come buy them from him.

As a point of fact the garbage haulers do just this - they sell the
recyclables
they collect to companies that come buy them. Even mixed glass goes as
the general agreement with the glass haulers is that if they have unused
space
on their truck, they will take the green/brown glass for free. And my
understanding
is that the glass haulers get a large enough quantity of green/brown mixed
that
it makes it worth while for the people that make reflective paint to send
someone out to take the green/brown mixed for free from the glass haulers.

You see this illustrates the problems of trying to determine stuff like
total
lifecycle cost on batteries. What people that do this try to do is
calculate
stuff like "it costs X dollars to move Y pounds so dealing with recycling
lead acid batteries must cost Z." What this ignores is that in real life, a
lot of the lifecycle costs are intermixed with other costs, which makes them
cheaper.

Ted

"Dori A Schmetterling" > wrote in message
...
> That recycling rate is impressive but what about actually making a new
> battery? Energy cost?
>

Let's see, standard retail markeup is 400%.

So a car battery that has a list of $100 probably cost the retailer $25 from
the
battery manufacturer.

Assuming the manufacturer takes 50% (got to pay for R&D as well as
adminstrative
costs) the cost to manufacture the battery is probably around $12. Assume
raw
material costs is about 50% again, we get an energy cost of perhaps $6? At
current fuel prices that should give you an energy cost in barrels of oil,
or
whatever other standard you want to use.

Ted

"Dori A Schmetterling" > wrote in message
...
> That recycling rate is impressive but what about actually making a new
> battery? Energy cost?
>

Let's see, standard retail markeup is 400%.

So a car battery that has a list of $100 probably cost the retailer $25 from
the
battery manufacturer.

Assuming the manufacturer takes 50% (got to pay for R&D as well as
adminstrative
costs) the cost to manufacture the battery is probably around $12. Assume
raw
material costs is about 50% again, we get an energy cost of perhaps $6? At
current fuel prices that should give you an energy cost in barrels of oil,
or
whatever other standard you want to use.

Ted

"Jimmy" > wrote in message
om...
> What city will this be Ted? Being a life long New Yorker, many if not
> most people I know who even have a garage store junk in there. The car
> typically gets parked in the street. And if you have 2 or 3 cars, 2 or
> 3 cars get parked in the street. Will each owner run an extention cord
> to thier vehicles? No matter how nice the area, I would expect not to
> find my extention cord in the morning. And in some neighborhood you'll
> be extremely lucky if you can even park near your front door. I can't
> imagine what the solution would be if you lived in an apartment
> building. Short trips in the city here may be short distance wise but
> the stop and go cycling of the motor will kill the charge rapildy
> since it won't be a steady ride to your location but a series of stop
> and go. I imagine New York is not alone in this instance.
>
> If this is the future of vehicles, horse and buggy will be more
> efficient. You can even use the horse poop to light a stinky fire when
> it dries.
>

There was a huge amount of real world data and observation on the
GM EV1 that refutes everything that you have brought up. No, the
stop and go cycling of the motor didn't kill the charge. No, the power
grid in California didn't melt down as a result of charging them. There's
a number of websites on that vehicle out there, and many testimonials
from people who leased them. Read what the actual owners of these
cars had to say for answers about junk in garages, etc.

The only reason the EV1 isn't sold today is that the cost of manufacture
was too high for the volume sold. Once again, it was the economies of
scale in action. If GM had been able to place 4 times the number of
EV1s that they did, they would still be making them.

All this is old tired arguments that the EV1 study was designed to test
to see if they held water. They didn't. Fundamentally, what the project
boiled down to is that the simple reason electric cars aren't feasible in
the United States is the same reason that passenger car Diesels aren't
feasible
in the United States. It's because the population here is too suspicious
of any fundamental change to vehicle technology to embrace it with enough
volume to make the economies of scale be able to produce it work out. It
has
nothing to do with what people CAN do and everything with what they
have been CONDITIONED to think.

Ted

"Jimmy" > wrote in message
om...
> What city will this be Ted? Being a life long New Yorker, many if not
> most people I know who even have a garage store junk in there. The car
> typically gets parked in the street. And if you have 2 or 3 cars, 2 or
> 3 cars get parked in the street. Will each owner run an extention cord
> to thier vehicles? No matter how nice the area, I would expect not to
> find my extention cord in the morning. And in some neighborhood you'll
> be extremely lucky if you can even park near your front door. I can't
> imagine what the solution would be if you lived in an apartment
> building. Short trips in the city here may be short distance wise but
> the stop and go cycling of the motor will kill the charge rapildy
> since it won't be a steady ride to your location but a series of stop
> and go. I imagine New York is not alone in this instance.
>
> If this is the future of vehicles, horse and buggy will be more
> efficient. You can even use the horse poop to light a stinky fire when
> it dries.
>

There was a huge amount of real world data and observation on the
GM EV1 that refutes everything that you have brought up. No, the
stop and go cycling of the motor didn't kill the charge. No, the power
grid in California didn't melt down as a result of charging them. There's
a number of websites on that vehicle out there, and many testimonials
from people who leased them. Read what the actual owners of these
cars had to say for answers about junk in garages, etc.

The only reason the EV1 isn't sold today is that the cost of manufacture
was too high for the volume sold. Once again, it was the economies of
scale in action. If GM had been able to place 4 times the number of
EV1s that they did, they would still be making them.

All this is old tired arguments that the EV1 study was designed to test
to see if they held water. They didn't. Fundamentally, what the project
boiled down to is that the simple reason electric cars aren't feasible in
the United States is the same reason that passenger car Diesels aren't
feasible
in the United States. It's because the population here is too suspicious
of any fundamental change to vehicle technology to embrace it with enough
volume to make the economies of scale be able to produce it work out. It
has
nothing to do with what people CAN do and everything with what they
have been CONDITIONED to think.

Ted

"David James Polewka" > wrote in message
...
> "Dave Gower" > wrote:
>
> >The whole thing depends on the cost of oil. The technology to convert
> >solar-heated tropical ocean water to useful energy is neither exotic nor
> >untried. The technology to economically convert energy to hydrogen is at
the
> >experimental phase but there are no known scientific laws to prevent it.
So
> >given expensive oil, you may be surprised what can be done in 30 years.
> >Anyway, let's stick around and find out. Hey, I'll only be 91 ;<).
>
> The sheer size of our population is why we have to be entangled
> in Middle East affairs to keep the oil flowing. That involvement is
> the direct cause of anti-U.S. terrorism.
>

Not true. The Arab world didn't fundamentally hate the United States
until 2 things happened - the first was our alliance with Britian and
how Britian trashed the Arab world after WW1, and the second was
the creation of Israel which the UN did largely as a response to
what Germany did to the Jews.

WW1 was not started by the Arab world and they didn't ask us
to come into their countries and try to get them to take sides, and
Britian's conduct towards the Arabs after the WW1 was totally
reprehensible.

And the Arabs wern't gassing Jews by the millions in gas chambers,
it was Europe that did that, and it was a dirty trick for the UN to
pull the land grab that it did to create Israel, it has had no precident
before or since in international law.

If roles had been reversed and the Arab world had come in and
redrawn all state and country boundaries in North America, and
then later come in and booted all white people out of California
and gave it back to the Indians, we would be pretty upset as well.
We very probably would be initiating the same kind of guerilla actions
against them that they are doing to us.

And even today, the US could still eventually settle the peace with
the Arab world, if we only forced Israel to start doing what
we and the UN have repeatedly demanded that it do - which is
quit dumping settlers into the West Bank, and meaningfully negotiate
with the Arab world, reach peace accords and abide by their
promises.

Israel spys on the United States and violates agreements with us
and everyone else repeatedly, yet has never suffered economic
sanctions, or a cutoff of military aid, or even a threat to sever
diplomatic relations. It is like the neighbor that lets their dog
continually come and crap in your yard and dig up your flowers,
and when they see you watching them while they watch their dog
do all this, all they do is say "bad dog, bad dog" and do nothing
to get up and actually grab the cur and drag it away.

While it is plainly obvious that violence never solves anything with
these kinds of problems, whether it's the neighbors dog (for if you
poison the dog they will just buy another one and the same thing
will happen) or whether it's in the West Bank, the facts of the
matter are that the Arab world has resorted to violence out of
sheer frustration. They have tried talking over and over and over,
and nothing was done. The fact that you think the argument is
over oil and not over Jerusalem, is a pefect example of how useless
all the talking has been, as it's a textbook example of how horrible
the government has been about explaining the real facts of the
terrorist problem.

If there wasn't a drop of oil in the Mid East, the collapse of the
World Trade Center by the terrorists would still have occurred.

Ted

"David James Polewka" > wrote in message
...
> "Dave Gower" > wrote:
>
> >The whole thing depends on the cost of oil. The technology to convert
> >solar-heated tropical ocean water to useful energy is neither exotic nor
> >untried. The technology to economically convert energy to hydrogen is at
the
> >experimental phase but there are no known scientific laws to prevent it.
So
> >given expensive oil, you may be surprised what can be done in 30 years.
> >Anyway, let's stick around and find out. Hey, I'll only be 91 ;<).
>
> The sheer size of our population is why we have to be entangled
> in Middle East affairs to keep the oil flowing. That involvement is
> the direct cause of anti-U.S. terrorism.
>

Not true. The Arab world didn't fundamentally hate the United States
until 2 things happened - the first was our alliance with Britian and
how Britian trashed the Arab world after WW1, and the second was
the creation of Israel which the UN did largely as a response to
what Germany did to the Jews.

WW1 was not started by the Arab world and they didn't ask us
to come into their countries and try to get them to take sides, and
Britian's conduct towards the Arabs after the WW1 was totally
reprehensible.

And the Arabs wern't gassing Jews by the millions in gas chambers,
it was Europe that did that, and it was a dirty trick for the UN to
pull the land grab that it did to create Israel, it has had no precident
before or since in international law.

If roles had been reversed and the Arab world had come in and
redrawn all state and country boundaries in North America, and
then later come in and booted all white people out of California
and gave it back to the Indians, we would be pretty upset as well.
We very probably would be initiating the same kind of guerilla actions
against them that they are doing to us.

And even today, the US could still eventually settle the peace with
the Arab world, if we only forced Israel to start doing what
we and the UN have repeatedly demanded that it do - which is
quit dumping settlers into the West Bank, and meaningfully negotiate
with the Arab world, reach peace accords and abide by their
promises.

Israel spys on the United States and violates agreements with us
and everyone else repeatedly, yet has never suffered economic
sanctions, or a cutoff of military aid, or even a threat to sever
diplomatic relations. It is like the neighbor that lets their dog
continually come and crap in your yard and dig up your flowers,
and when they see you watching them while they watch their dog
do all this, all they do is say "bad dog, bad dog" and do nothing
to get up and actually grab the cur and drag it away.

While it is plainly obvious that violence never solves anything with
these kinds of problems, whether it's the neighbors dog (for if you
poison the dog they will just buy another one and the same thing
will happen) or whether it's in the West Bank, the facts of the
matter are that the Arab world has resorted to violence out of
sheer frustration. They have tried talking over and over and over,
and nothing was done. The fact that you think the argument is
over oil and not over Jerusalem, is a pefect example of how useless
all the talking has been, as it's a textbook example of how horrible
the government has been about explaining the real facts of the
terrorist problem.

If there wasn't a drop of oil in the Mid East, the collapse of the
World Trade Center by the terrorists would still have occurred.

Ted

---

"Ted Mittelstaedt" > wrote in message
...
>
> "Dori A Schmetterling" > wrote in message
> ...
>> Interesting commentary. Actually I am not one of those advocating
> hydrogen
>> fuel; I am fairly agnostic about these things and aware that each type of
>> fuel has pluses and minuses. What I am curious about is what the total
>> lifecycle cost is of batteries.
>>
>
> That really depends on the battery material and composition. Lead and
> Cadimum are nasty things in the environment and so battery handling
> for those batteries must be more expensive since you have to recycle them.
>
> NiMH batteries however can be just thrown away, their materials have no
> environmental issues. An interesting discussion of them is he
>
> http://www.cobasys.com/pdf/tutorial/...technology.pdf
>
> My guess though is that the manufacturers will recycle them anyhow as
> the materials are more expensive than plain lead.

FROM DAS: I read your post further down about the estimated USD 6 energy
cost. I need to ponder that. (I was thinking about the total cost of
smelting the ores etc, but maybe you have given a simple, effective
indicator.)

I have retained a copy of the Cobasys battery article as it's a good
explanation of how they work, but it does not, understandably, discuss the
cost of making and disposal/recycling.

My underlying point is, I suppose, about displaced enery consumption.
Electric trains are often considered wonderfully environmentally friendly,
whilst it is overlooked that you need, in most cases, regular power stations
using oil or gas, to produce the electricity in prodigious quantities. Only
a few regions, such as Switzerland, are blessed with truly environmentally
friendly power sources such as water (hydroelectric).
Same with electric cars. You need to make the batteries and, even if they
are, after all, quite cheap in energy and environmental terms, you still
need to build vast numbers of electricity generating stations to run them...

>
>> A recent report in the UK, from a reputable source, apparently, concluded
>> that the energy cost PER PERSON is lower in the car than in a train! My
>> 'issue' is that evangelical advocates for a particular form of fuel (or
>> transport) overlook total costs.
>>
>
> I would agree with that, because the train doesen't run all of the time
> fully loaded. I would imagine if every train that ran was fully loaded,
> the cost per person would be different. If fuel costs rose and more
> people took the train and fewer took a car, the energy cost per person
> on the train would drop.

FROM DAS: Precisely. We can forget about the 'ifs' of fully laden trains
all the time. I have been on trains with standing room only, but these only
run on main routes and it doesn't occur throughout the day or throughout the
year. Even in the US I was on a well-patronised train, namely from Philly
to DC, and then from DC to NYC, but I am sure that's an exception, too.
(I.e. it's a main route.)

In principle you are right about shifts to trains if cars become less
available, but in a free society this is a pipe dream. In the ex-COMECON
countries there is still a quite high utilisation of trains, stemming from
the days of when it was very difficult for individuals to own cars (for a
variety of reasons) and when ticket prices were kept artifically low. But,
I suggest, this is falling as more and more people buy cars. The fact is
that the automobile is one of the most important (if not THE most important
factor) in the free movement of individuals (hats off to Henry Ford here).
You can see that despite the high fuel taxes in Europe and other places
sales of cars continue to rise in most years.
It has been calculated in the UK that even if only 10 percent of freight
were moved to rail from the road, it would DOUBLE the freight train
requirement, and there is no way anybody is going to invest in such
infrastructure unless there were coercion or other factors at play. Rail
transport for freight is only of limited economic value because of its
inflexibility, so it's good, for example, for the long-distance transport of
coal, but useless for the movement of 1000 computers being sent to 100
wholesalers in 20 different parts of the country.

Even in Germany, where any significant company had a railhead, use has
declined dramatically...

I am a great fan of rail travel, but not at the expense of economic reality.


>
>> This extends into related matters. For example, nothing is worthwhile
>> recycling other than aluminium containers. The rest should be
> incinerated.
>
> Not true, this depends greatly on a number of factors, source separation
> and quantity. Paper is definitely worth recycling. I remember being in
> cub
> scouts 25 years ago before curbside recycling was mandated and one of our
> fund raisers

FROM DAS: This is I dispute. These days paper recycling is a 'political'
act done to salve people's consciences. A few years ago in the UK a major
newspaper tried paying people GBP 5 for every ton (or was it per 100 kg?) of
paper but the campaign failed as they could not sell it on for a profit.
Yes, our local council also collects paper as well as other items, but it
would be simpler and cheaper to incinerate it.

Try buying writing paper made from recycled paper. It's not as good and
costs more.

The only way to make paper recycling economically viable is not introduce
market distortions, such as taxes on landfills and other ways of handling.


> was paper drives, a few tons of newsprint, cleaned of garbage like string,
> paper bags, etc. was worth money that was definitely greater than the
> hauling costs. And before curbside recycling was mandated there were
> people making a few bucks driving around to business collecting cardboard
> boxes. White office wastepaper is also worth recycling, once again if you
> can train people not to throw colored paper into the recycling bins at
> the office.

FROM DAS: To many 'ifs'. Forget about 'training'. Even if 99 out of a 100
get it right, just one sheet of coloured paper ruins the batch...

Here in Britain we are always exhorted not to chuck our Yellow Pages
directories into the paper recycling bins (because of the yellow paper), but
how many take heed? Paper is paper, right?


>
> Clear glass containers are also worth recycling if they are source
> separated
> from colored glass, and from clear plate glass. Glass containers melt at
> a
> lower temperature than plate glass and sand, thus it is cheaper to make
> clear glass containers out of recycled clear glass containers.

FROM DAS: Even more so here. One brown bottle in a batch of 100 uncoloured
ones is enough to rion the lot.


>
> Steel for most purposes (ie: from the household) isn't worth it, the costs
> of
> collection outweigh the savings for most things, unless you have a lot of
> steel in one place (like a car)
>
[..........]
> glass is
> more of a problem because of the wine industry, wine in a clear wine
> bottle
> would almost certainly look much less appetizing (who wants to buy a clear
> bottle of liquid you are supposed to drink that is the color of urine?)
> and
> the wine industry would probably suffer sales as a result. They also
> don't
> put wine in aluminum cans, at least, not anything that your going to get
> someone to pay $100 a bottle for.

FROM DAS: I don't get it. White wine (urine coloured?) is always sold in
uncoloured bottles.

>
>> BUT it is difficult for local politicians to posit that -- who wants an
>> incinerator down the road?
>>
>
> If the household waste stream was clean garbage - paper, food, etc. -
> no problem. But with people throwing the household chemicals (like
> batteries) into the waste stream that they do, an incinerator puts out
> a lot of nasty heavy metals and costs more than just dumping it into
> a sealed landfill.

FROM DAS: Modern scrubbers easily take care of noxious gases, just like out
of car exhausts.


>
> The thing is though that a lot of the hauling costs of recyclables you
> have to pay anyway. The garbage hauler hauls the same weight of
> material off from your house whether he's taking one garbage can
> or one garbage can plus a smaller box of recyclables like glass
> and paper. If you can get the people to source-separate the recyclables
> so the garbage hauler has the two containers to deal with, then
> the costs are the same to the garbage hauler in fuel.
>
> We have curbside recycling here and there's wide participation. Before
> we had it, a typical garbage hauler might be able to so, say, 100 houses
> before his truck was full and they had to send another one out.
>
> Now the garbage company sends 2 trucks out, the first is the garbage
> truck and the second is the recyclables truck. The garbage truck now
> does perhaps 200 houses. So the end cost to the garbage hauler is
> the same, and the advantage is that back at the garbage haulers place
> he gets enough quantity of recyclables that it makes it worth while
> for someone to come buy them from him.
>
> As a point of fact the garbage haulers do just this - they sell the
> recyclables
> they collect to companies that come buy them.

FROM DAS: We have versions of this in the UK, the exact format depending on
the Local Authority (municipality). It does not detract from my general
contention that incinerators would be the most efficient solution (you can
also use the heat output for heating, done in some places in Europe). For
things other than aluminium only distortions help, one of these being the
(political) difficulty of building incinerators.

As regards glass, the raw material is infinitely available, and I have seen
the energy balance.

Try speaking to people in the recycling and incineration business.
[............]

---

"Ted Mittelstaedt" > wrote in message
...
>
> "Dori A Schmetterling" > wrote in message
> ...
>> Interesting commentary. Actually I am not one of those advocating
> hydrogen
>> fuel; I am fairly agnostic about these things and aware that each type of
>> fuel has pluses and minuses. What I am curious about is what the total
>> lifecycle cost is of batteries.
>>
>
> That really depends on the battery material and composition. Lead and
> Cadimum are nasty things in the environment and so battery handling
> for those batteries must be more expensive since you have to recycle them.
>
> NiMH batteries however can be just thrown away, their materials have no
> environmental issues. An interesting discussion of them is he
>
> http://www.cobasys.com/pdf/tutorial/...technology.pdf
>
> My guess though is that the manufacturers will recycle them anyhow as
> the materials are more expensive than plain lead.

FROM DAS: I read your post further down about the estimated USD 6 energy
cost. I need to ponder that. (I was thinking about the total cost of
smelting the ores etc, but maybe you have given a simple, effective
indicator.)

I have retained a copy of the Cobasys battery article as it's a good
explanation of how they work, but it does not, understandably, discuss the
cost of making and disposal/recycling.

My underlying point is, I suppose, about displaced enery consumption.
Electric trains are often considered wonderfully environmentally friendly,
whilst it is overlooked that you need, in most cases, regular power stations
using oil or gas, to produce the electricity in prodigious quantities. Only
a few regions, such as Switzerland, are blessed with truly environmentally
friendly power sources such as water (hydroelectric).
Same with electric cars. You need to make the batteries and, even if they
are, after all, quite cheap in energy and environmental terms, you still
need to build vast numbers of electricity generating stations to run them...

>
>> A recent report in the UK, from a reputable source, apparently, concluded
>> that the energy cost PER PERSON is lower in the car than in a train! My
>> 'issue' is that evangelical advocates for a particular form of fuel (or
>> transport) overlook total costs.
>>
>
> I would agree with that, because the train doesen't run all of the time
> fully loaded. I would imagine if every train that ran was fully loaded,
> the cost per person would be different. If fuel costs rose and more
> people took the train and fewer took a car, the energy cost per person
> on the train would drop.

FROM DAS: Precisely. We can forget about the 'ifs' of fully laden trains
all the time. I have been on trains with standing room only, but these only
run on main routes and it doesn't occur throughout the day or throughout the
year. Even in the US I was on a well-patronised train, namely from Philly
to DC, and then from DC to NYC, but I am sure that's an exception, too.
(I.e. it's a main route.)

In principle you are right about shifts to trains if cars become less
available, but in a free society this is a pipe dream. In the ex-COMECON
countries there is still a quite high utilisation of trains, stemming from
the days of when it was very difficult for individuals to own cars (for a
variety of reasons) and when ticket prices were kept artifically low. But,
I suggest, this is falling as more and more people buy cars. The fact is
that the automobile is one of the most important (if not THE most important
factor) in the free movement of individuals (hats off to Henry Ford here).
You can see that despite the high fuel taxes in Europe and other places
sales of cars continue to rise in most years.
It has been calculated in the UK that even if only 10 percent of freight
were moved to rail from the road, it would DOUBLE the freight train
requirement, and there is no way anybody is going to invest in such
infrastructure unless there were coercion or other factors at play. Rail
transport for freight is only of limited economic value because of its
inflexibility, so it's good, for example, for the long-distance transport of
coal, but useless for the movement of 1000 computers being sent to 100
wholesalers in 20 different parts of the country.

Even in Germany, where any significant company had a railhead, use has
declined dramatically...

I am a great fan of rail travel, but not at the expense of economic reality.


>
>> This extends into related matters. For example, nothing is worthwhile
>> recycling other than aluminium containers. The rest should be
> incinerated.
>
> Not true, this depends greatly on a number of factors, source separation
> and quantity. Paper is definitely worth recycling. I remember being in
> cub
> scouts 25 years ago before curbside recycling was mandated and one of our
> fund raisers

FROM DAS: This is I dispute. These days paper recycling is a 'political'
act done to salve people's consciences. A few years ago in the UK a major
newspaper tried paying people GBP 5 for every ton (or was it per 100 kg?) of
paper but the campaign failed as they could not sell it on for a profit.
Yes, our local council also collects paper as well as other items, but it
would be simpler and cheaper to incinerate it.

Try buying writing paper made from recycled paper. It's not as good and
costs more.

The only way to make paper recycling economically viable is not introduce
market distortions, such as taxes on landfills and other ways of handling.


> was paper drives, a few tons of newsprint, cleaned of garbage like string,
> paper bags, etc. was worth money that was definitely greater than the
> hauling costs. And before curbside recycling was mandated there were
> people making a few bucks driving around to business collecting cardboard
> boxes. White office wastepaper is also worth recycling, once again if you
> can train people not to throw colored paper into the recycling bins at
> the office.

FROM DAS: To many 'ifs'. Forget about 'training'. Even if 99 out of a 100
get it right, just one sheet of coloured paper ruins the batch...

Here in Britain we are always exhorted not to chuck our Yellow Pages
directories into the paper recycling bins (because of the yellow paper), but
how many take heed? Paper is paper, right?


>
> Clear glass containers are also worth recycling if they are source
> separated
> from colored glass, and from clear plate glass. Glass containers melt at
> a
> lower temperature than plate glass and sand, thus it is cheaper to make
> clear glass containers out of recycled clear glass containers.

FROM DAS: Even more so here. One brown bottle in a batch of 100 uncoloured
ones is enough to rion the lot.


>
> Steel for most purposes (ie: from the household) isn't worth it, the costs
> of
> collection outweigh the savings for most things, unless you have a lot of
> steel in one place (like a car)
>
[..........]
> glass is
> more of a problem because of the wine industry, wine in a clear wine
> bottle
> would almost certainly look much less appetizing (who wants to buy a clear
> bottle of liquid you are supposed to drink that is the color of urine?)
> and
> the wine industry would probably suffer sales as a result. They also
> don't
> put wine in aluminum cans, at least, not anything that your going to get
> someone to pay $100 a bottle for.

FROM DAS: I don't get it. White wine (urine coloured?) is always sold in
uncoloured bottles.

>
>> BUT it is difficult for local politicians to posit that -- who wants an
>> incinerator down the road?
>>
>
> If the household waste stream was clean garbage - paper, food, etc. -
> no problem. But with people throwing the household chemicals (like
> batteries) into the waste stream that they do, an incinerator puts out
> a lot of nasty heavy metals and costs more than just dumping it into
> a sealed landfill.

FROM DAS: Modern scrubbers easily take care of noxious gases, just like out
of car exhausts.


>
> The thing is though that a lot of the hauling costs of recyclables you
> have to pay anyway. The garbage hauler hauls the same weight of
> material off from your house whether he's taking one garbage can
> or one garbage can plus a smaller box of recyclables like glass
> and paper. If you can get the people to source-separate the recyclables
> so the garbage hauler has the two containers to deal with, then
> the costs are the same to the garbage hauler in fuel.
>
> We have curbside recycling here and there's wide participation. Before
> we had it, a typical garbage hauler might be able to so, say, 100 houses
> before his truck was full and they had to send another one out.
>
> Now the garbage company sends 2 trucks out, the first is the garbage
> truck and the second is the recyclables truck. The garbage truck now
> does perhaps 200 houses. So the end cost to the garbage hauler is
> the same, and the advantage is that back at the garbage haulers place
> he gets enough quantity of recyclables that it makes it worth while
> for someone to come buy them from him.
>
> As a point of fact the garbage haulers do just this - they sell the
> recyclables
> they collect to companies that come buy them.

FROM DAS: We have versions of this in the UK, the exact format depending on
the Local Authority (municipality). It does not detract from my general
contention that incinerators would be the most efficient solution (you can
also use the heat output for heating, done in some places in Europe). For
things other than aluminium only distortions help, one of these being the
(political) difficulty of building incinerators.

As regards glass, the raw material is infinitely available, and I have seen
the energy balance.

Try speaking to people in the recycling and incineration business.
[............]

1) Only the US oil companies which were 'nationalised' in Saudi Arabia,
Iran...

2) A view, but a slightly simplified one...

DAS
--
For direct contact replace nospam with schmetterling
---

"Ted Mittelstaedt" > wrote in message
...
>
[............]
>>
>
> Not true. The Arab world didn't fundamentally hate the United States
> until 2 things happened - the first was our alliance with Britian and
> how Britian trashed the Arab world after WW1, and the second was
> the creation of Israel which the UN did largely as a response to
> what Germany did to the Jews.
>
[........]
> and it was a dirty trick for the UN to
> pull the land grab that it did to create Israel, it has had no precident
> before or since in international law.
>
[.......]