Fridge open for 6 years
"Switching from an average car to a 13 mpg SUV would use as much energy as leaving your refrigerator door open for six years."
According to the Sierra Club, driving an SUV is equivilent to: Leaving a fridge open for 6 years, leaving the bathroom light on for 30 years, or leaving the TV on for 28 years. (No idea how a TV is similar in usage to a lightbulb.) https://sierraclub.org/globalwarming/SUVreport/ |
i hate suv's so much!
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SUVs are just a convenient target. I'd rather see VW minivans taken off the road than SUVs, as they pollute more being owned by hippies that believe everyone should be required to cut pollution but they shouldn't bother spending a nickel to put new rings in their engine. When I had my SUV, I once sat in a bank drivethru in the next lane over from an old VW minivan, the whole back of the van was plastered with bumper stickers claiming that SUVs were destroying the environment. When they started the van, the cloud of oily smoke was so thick the stickers were no longer visible. That van pumped out more pollution starting up than my SUV pumped out in a year. SUVs also get very similar mileage (within 5MPG) to minivans, but have more capability to haul a load and are far more capable in bad weather, provided the driver isn't an idiot. Modern SUVs are also far cleaner and more efficient than many older cars.
It would be better if the Sierra Club focused more on the really big polluters, like the Northeast. Let's get rid of those 100 year old oil burning heaters that were in use before the word "emissions" existed. So much crude is used to make heating oil that the price of crude can be affected by 10-15 dollars depending on how cold winter is in the Northeast. Why does the Sierra club attack SUVs, but you never hear them say a word about oil burning furnaces? Because an oil burner which is hidden in the basement is not nearly as pretty a target as the SUV even though they do far more environmental damage. True, we need get the soccer moms out of the SUVs and limit them to the workhorse environment for which they should be designed (the SUVs, not the soccer moms :D, but we'd do far better to end burning oil to heat houses. Crude should be reserved only for portable energy requirements, stationary energy requirements should be provided exclusively by electricity. To do that, we'd need more nukes, more hydro, more solar, more wind, more wave generators. Limiting crude to mobile power sources would likely double or triple the amount of crude available, and since mobile power sources are far more regulated on emissions outputs the pollution would likely drop to 10 percent or less of what it is now. |
Umm, there are a million SUV's out there, and 95% have a single driver with no load. So I think they are a good target. But yes there are many other sources of pollution and waste too.
I can't even remember the last time I saw a VW micro bus, But I think Clench owns one LOL. |
lol the ammount of vw busses left in the world in crappy condition is probably less than 1% theres tones of restored ones but thier in tip top running/driving shape. that and its only a tiny 4 banger so it cant be polluting that much. suv's are truley pointless tho. i mean who needs to carry 8 people all teh time AND be able to crawl up a mountan?
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Welp, FWIW, the impact of pollution depends where you live. In dense, warm areas like CA that have natural areas where pollution tends to clump, I can see the point of strict smog standards. But in BFE, it's not as big of a concern imo.
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Wow, it's either or, 100 percent, no shades of grey here eh? Either you must hate SUVs or kill anyone that says bad about them by pumping their lungs full of gasoline and lighting them up eh? And here I got rid of my own SUV.
My point about this was, why target only SUVs? It's a convenient, attractive target, but is far from being a top polluter or even a top fuel waster. Trucks use just as much fuel as SUVs, but nobody hates trucks. Yet SUVs are trucks with more interior room. How about them crew cabs? They use more fuel than SUVs, but nobody ever goes after them. And when attacking SUVs, is it just the full size ones or all of them? Some of the small ones get almost 30MPG, should their owners go to Hell or is Heck good enough for them? So far as only having one person to a vehicle, you'll never get away from that. People go to work and back, and there isn't necessarily anyone living near to carpool with. What's worse, nobody said a word about the stationary boilers of the Northeast, which pollute far more than all the SUVs put together do. All you did was slam me for daring to defend the SUV as having a purpose in life. Burning a portable fuel source in a stationary system makes far less sense than running an SUV does. And the only real problem with the SUV is how it's been perverted into a status symbol. So I state again, people rail against the SUV because it's a convenient, attractive target, but won't do what is necessary to eliminate true polluters. |
omgwtfbyobbq -
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In LA in the Valley, I *never* experience the shortness of breath that I experienced in the beach cities in the 1970's. There's no comparison. The air is cleaner with maybe twice as many cars. I don't remember the exact phrase, but Native Americans originally called LA something "valley of smoke" because even before there were cars, the air was already hazy. CarloSW2 |
Northeasterner here. My house has an oil burner heater.
Aside from apparently the Sierra Club isn't against oil heat - in this climate, and with electric power prices as they are, electricity is not a reasonable way to heat a home. Furnaces don't last forever, they do get replaced with more modern cleaner burning ones. Oil works very well and is reasonably economical. I suspect that propane or piped natural gas are also effective and economical but not all homes hav piped gas and not everyone wants a tank of flamable propane behind their house. Some use wood in its various forms but it's not as available as oil. |
Telco -
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Here is my question to you. Can you justify owning an SUV in the majority of urban environments across America? I don't think you can. They are legitimate targets because they waste resources and pollute more in a context where a better choice is available. Anything you can do with an SUV in an urban environment can also be accomplished by a station wagon, minivan, or a trailer hitch. I don't have problems with trucks that are actually used as trucks. However, if someone buys a Dooley just to satisfy their ego, then that person proves my point. If SUVs were 5% or less of new cars on the road, I wouldn't consider them to be an issue. I could go on and on about the uselessness of super long limos, but they are few and far between fishies in the ocean of cars around me. I'll have to think about the "crude for vehicles only" argument. More URLs ... https://www.elmerfudd.us/suvin.htm https://fubini.swarthmore.edu/~WS30/HKFinalProject.html https://www.citizen.org/documents/Dri...fact_sheet.pdf https://www.citizen.org/documents/gas_prices.pdf https://thebesttruckingschool.com/Qui...20Concerns.htm CarloSW2 |
Nicely put.
I normally think that targeting is bad, but when something is designed to evade laws and it's purpose can be fulfilled by something better, than go buy that something better. |
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Common TV wattage 100-200w, Common Fridge running 400-500w, my bathroom lights are 40w florescent. Wait a min, thats not fitting there shock factor example.. I have used all florescent lights in my house for 20 years except the fridge and stove. This makes a huge difference in energy used. Seems like the whole SUV craze was caused by loopholes in the laws and car company marketing. First it was the minivan craze created by Chrysler's marketing to soccer moms. Another big factor is there use in TV and movies, its all selling. Later Ford and Chevy countered with even bigger rolling volumes of space, the giant size SUV's. Again, there all over TV and Movies... I know several folks that claim that they must have a full size Suv/Van/Truck just so there biggie sized guts will fit behind the wheel! Unless the government rules force change in fleet mileage and/or the price of gas stays high, its just not going to change the number of Giant vehicles on the road. |
i had to fill up my dads F-150 yesterday it cost 60 bucks! But he has to have it :(
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Heh heh... yeah, I've seen a few of those supersizers too, tried picturing this one family in an Excursion trying to get in my minivan and pictured the tires blowing out and seeing the shock towers punch through the hood. They really needed a cattle car, not a regular car. Then there was the guy driving the very nice looking Ford pickup. It was a crewcab dually, had a body and suspension lift, long bed, thing was huge. Then the guy gets out of his truck, goes around to the back to get some wood out that he was returning to Lowes. This guy couldn't have been 5 foot tall. He reached way up to the tail gate to open it, and I swear his eyes were level with the tailgate when it was down. Probably weighed in at 90lbs, that truck HAD to be an ego thing for him. His truck dwarfed the 87 fullsize I was driving at the time. Wish I'd have had a camera.
I wasn't necessarily trying to defend SUVs for all. And, that reg that lets them get away with no EPA if they just chunk on a lot of useless weight bothers me too. My point was more that there are other, far more polluting uses of crude that should be focused on first. SUVs are kinda low on the list of polluters in my opinion, mainly that while their mileage isn't that great, they are at least regulated on emissions where there are other uses of crude that are NOT regulated on emissions, my favorite target being the oil burning heater. Read somewhere once that 30 percent of the US's crude oil use is used to heat the Northeast, but I have no link to back this statement up. If those houses were heated with electricity, that would cut our oil usage by 30 percent, AND would probably cut emissions in this nation by a good 50 percent. But, you hear nothing at all about anyone wanting to cut the use of heating oil, ever. You rarely hear about it at all unless there is a shortage in the NE. I just kinda feel like people attacking SUVs are more interested in attacking them as a status symbol than as an actual polluting machine, since they really don't pump that much more pollution than a comparable car does, in the larger scope of things. |
Telco, about those north eastern oil heaters.
I'm from Finland and it's probably as cold here in winter or even a little bit colder than in your north east. Heating a house with electricity cost double that of heating it with oil and the heating cost in a cold climate can be from $150 to $400/month depending on the size of the house. The SUV owner would save money by not being a SUV owner, the oil heater would loose a lot of money by switching to electricity. Not that I think it's good to heat with oil but you can't expect someone else to pay for your green ideas, you will freeze to death without heat in a nothern winter, you will probably not die from not owning a SUV. There is also another aspect to this. If you heat with electricity you usually have a coal or oil powered plant that produces that electricity and due to losses in the generators and power lines that power plant will have to burn double the amount of oli to get the same heat to your house as when you heat directly with oil. I really don't like oil as house heating method, it's just that it has been the most economical for quite a while. Now with high oil prices wood based fuels are on the way up. Still modern wood based furnaces and feeders are more expencive and complicated and wood as a fuel takes a lot more room than oil which make oil based solutions still a popular choice. The most enviromentally friendly heating method in my opinion is district heating. We have it a lot here in Finland and it basically mean you take the hot cooling water from a power plant and lead it through pipes in the ground to all houses in a city. This type of energy has almost zero impact on the enviroment as that cooling water would be pumped out in the sea if it where not used. Only problem here being that the power plant has to be near a city which is not always popular. I'm always amazed at people that think electricity is a clean energy. Maybe when we run everything on water, wind and solar power it will be, but until then I think it should not be considered a green alternative. Simon |
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There's not an LEV sticker on the window of the Ody?
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Milesgallon.com, I hear you, and agree that shifting from oil boilers to electricity generated from fossil fuels would not do any good. Coal and natural gas fired electricity is also on my list. What I'd like to see is a lot more breeder nuclear reactors up and operational. I also like what Spain has done, it's now a law that all new buildings, including residential, must install solar powered equipment when built. It would be nice if the laws in the US were changed to make it easier to at least put solar panels on the roof to help generate electricity, even if one couldn't get enough panels to go offgrid you could at least make enough to help. And, this would require fewer power plants overall.
On the whole "cheaper to burn oil" thing, that's wrong thinking. Yes, it's cheaper, but it is also polluting. There is just no way around it, by burning fuel oil you are using a motive fuel in a non-motive device. Motive fuel should be reserved for motive devices, ie cars, planes, ect, ie anything that requires fuel to operate, and the operation involves moving from one place to another. These fuels should not be used to heat, because if it is a finite resource then we should reserve it for that which needs it the most. There are other ways to heat a house, be it electricity, or a district heating setup as you describe. Incidentally, district heating is wonderful, my last military post used it. Unlimited radiant heat, no cost to me since the base was going to heat the place whether I was there or not. On who pays for it all, would it not be better for those who emit to pay the extra costs of cleanup? The folks using fuel oil would be paying more for heating their houses, and I'd likely be paying more to heat my own place since I'd need to convert from natural gas to electricity, and my power bill would be higher to help pay for changing from natural gas and coal fired plants to other forms (I live in the midwest US) of power. None of this could be overnight either, so people would have plenty of time to plan the extra billing. I figure that with a concerted push, it would take 20 to 30 years to completely eliminate fuel oil use for heating, and coal/natural gas use for electrical generation. One source of electricity that would solve 2 problems at once, is the plasma generator. This little gem is something that all cities should have at least one of, if not more. It turns garbage into dust and electricity, has no problems with hazardous materials, and would solve both electrical problems and the problems of landfills overflowing. You see, if we are going to make an effort to clean the environment, then it is going to cost somebody something. The ones it would cost the most are the ones currently supplying the wasteful resources, next in line are the ones using those resources, but making a concerted effort would spread the costs across everyone, so that nobody has to pay an inordinate share. Lugnut, that's a whole 'nuther problem requiring a refinement of the CAFE standards. |
Lug_Nut -
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Odyssey = ULEV-2 https://automobiles.honda.com/odyssey/environment.aspx Pilot = ULEV https://automobiles.honda.com/pilot/environment.aspx CR-V = ULEV https://automobiles.honda.com/cr-v/environment.aspx Element = LEV-2 https://automobiles.honda.com/element/environment.aspx Ridgeline = No Info, Bad Honda! CarloSW2 |
I had a great big tirade all set up for y'all...but an errant click deleted it for me, instead of posting. Bad for me, probably good for you.
Here's the basics: The point you brought up, milesgallon.com: Sometimes it's not cost effective to change from an SUV to another vehicle. Once you factor in all of the costs related, in some cases, there is a long time to the break-even point. With all the finger-pointing going on with this topic...I'm surprised nobody's looked at the fast-food industry yet....... |
Anything that is non-renewable is not going to make it in the long run. Oil heating is certainly not going to cut it, neither is electricity from coal. My house is heated by a renewable byproduct... wood pellets! Not only is it pure renewable wood (I wish it could be sustainably harvested but who knows - at least it's a possibility) with no additives, it is a recycled product from a local furniture manufacturer 20 miles away. I hear it's the cheapest form of heating around. And pellets are better than wood logs because the stoves can burn it much more efficiently (the best of any burning process) and it's all on a thermostat. I just fill the hopper once a day in the winter.
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I do not consider nuclear power to be enviromentally friendly, the consequences of a nuclear accident are devastating.
Just think Chernobyl. There is still, over 20 years after the accident, places in Northern Sweden where they have to check the reindeers for the levels of radioactive cesium before the meat can be put to market. And this is over a thousand miles plus 20 years from the accident. The startech plasma machine sounds like it could become big, it almost sound too good to be true. Could be a good idea to buy stock in that company. I think the oil problem will take care of itself. The world will not run out of oli some day 20 years from now, instead as the global supply of oli (starting now) is less than the demand the price will go continuously upvards until one day oil, even though it still exist, is the most expencive fuel around and will not be used much. There is so many alternatives, like electricity, vegetable oil diesels, ethanol and hybrid solutions that will suddenly seem so good when the price of gas is double what it is today. Simon |
GeekGuyAndy,
I like wood too, we probably have enough wood in Finland to run all power plants on it. I assume it's still more expencive than coal, othervise they would have abandoned coal long ago. Actually we burn peat also in power plants, Finland is covered in marchlands so there is an abundant supply. Many have combination wood/oil heating here, using wood when it's available and they have time to load it and using oil when they want the convenience of not having to operate the heater. Simon |
Raccoonjoe
I would say let people decide themselves what to drive, some like driving something really big (I think I would from time to time) but let those that pollute pay for it by having some enviroment tax on all polluting fuels. This would automatically reduce pollution and the market would start thinking up more efficient vehicles and alternative fuels. Simon |
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On the nukes, they are environmentally friendly in that the only thing they emit is steam, when all operates properly. Radiation must be checked regularly, of course, but that' par for the course. It's only when something goes wrong that there is a problem, but nukes have been operating safely for decades, even using old technology. I mean, there are hundreds of very old reactors in the world, and so far as I know there have been only 3 or 4 failures, decades ago. Chernobyl is the most recent, and it happened about 20 years ago. The biggest issue with nukes is the waste, and with the breeders, even that isn't a problem.
On garbage incinerators, a scrubber in the smokestacks is enough to make it clean. Incinerators are used routinely by the US military to destroy chemical and biological warfare materials (the US has been working on destroying all its stockpiles of these weapons) and they check the smoke coming out to make sure it isn't hazardous, so no problems there. And, the plasma arc incinerator is even hotter than standard incinerators, and requires no outside power to operate once it's started. Once the arc is initiated, the plasma incinerator provides not only its own power to operate, but can provide power to thousands of homes so long as the garbage never stops coming in. The analysis of the material that comes out is very basic materials, as the plasma arc breaks the stuff down by splitting the atoms off. Not splitting the atomic particles themselves, but breaks the atomic bonds to make simpler atoms. Basically, contaminated garbage goes in, clean dirt, air and electricity comes out. On charging the big polluter more in taxes for driving the bigger polluter, yes, yes and yes. If you wanna burn more fuel, then pay the price for it. I also agree that the oil problem will resolve itself, it already is. When gasoline is over 3 dollars a gallon in the US, the cost is higher than other forms of fuel, and when those forms of fuel are cheaper people will invest money to try and get the tech out. Because of this I doubt that gasoline in the US will ever go more than 3 bucks a gallon, and when it does it won't stay long, because the oil companies know that if they let an alternative form of energy get its foot in the door, their days are numbered. Even they don't have enough money to buy everyone off. |
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SVOboy, it's easy enough for us in college to agree that public transit works, but I sure couldn't talk some of my fmaily members into relying on public transit instead of driving nicer cars. I hope that our generation continues to see things the way they are now, and be more open to public transit.
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Nuclear plants shouldn't exist because of murphys law, if it can go wrong it will. Sooner or later. And I don't want to be near that place.
GeekGuyAndy What's the problem with vegetable oil diesels? Why couldn't all vehicles run on that when it's been developed enough? During WW2 they ran vehicles on wood, it's not an efficient process but it's possible to run a gas engine on wood by heating the wood until it emits flamable gasses and running the engine on the gasses. It might only work with pine woods that contain some famable stuff that I have no idea what it's called in english. Simon |
I doubt there's enough of a supply to run the country on SVO if that's what you mean.
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I just read on a Swedish page that you need 5000-6000ha of land to produce 5000 cubic meters of vegetable oil.
That should be about 10000 acers for 1320000 gallons of vegetable oil and you can grow it on normal farmland. The US uses one billion gallons a day of oil, that would be 3 billion acers of land for a years supply, hmm do you have that much farmland? I suppose food prices could start to rise if we grow fuel on farmland, so it's not entirely positive really. Simon |
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says we have about 600 million acres. We're a little short. No idea if the source is correct. It was just the first Yahoo hit I got... |
That's what I mean... these politicians say ethanol or svo or hydrogen will save the car industry when oil is expensive, but there's no way it will ever be as large scale as gasoline. It's likely that some more pumps will start showing up, and it may be a viable option for some cars, but it's not going to be anywhere near as big as gasoline, and certainly far less efficient, at least in this decade and most likely the next few
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I was on the ethanol bandwagon but got off. It simply isn't going to work well. Diesel is a better option, and biodiesel (not veggiediesel) looks to be the most promising, made from algae emissions. They use special strains of algae that make a lot of oil, skim the oil, and there it is. And, says that the algae makes more usable fuel with a 1 acre pond than you can get from 30 acres of crops, and it's cleaner to begin with. Combine this with the fact that a diesel is far more efficient than gasoline (gasoline burns all its fuel almost instantly, while a diesel burns for the entire power stroke, which is what makes all the torque) for pushing a vehicle, you have a real winner here. Because of the way diesel burns, you can use a smaller engine to push a vehicle than you need for gasoline, and with a turbo on it the diesel is just as fast.
Get algae diesel into our tanks, and it will burn cleaner, carry us farther on a gallon, and make our crude supplies last far longer since you really only need to mix in regular diesel in the wintertime, and then at a 15 percent mix rate to ensure wintertime starting. This won't be the final solution, but it'll get us further down the road to one. Same with nuclear power. I don't see it as a final solution (eventually solar cells will be able to provide unlimited power, seems they are able to double the output on average every 3 years) but I do see it as an effective bridge to the next level. When you combine the increases in solar cell efficiency with the increases in electrical product efficiency, I see two points far apart building a bridge to each other, with solar cells making more power and appliances needing less power to operate, the magic crossing point is actually coming along a lot faster than people realize. Just last year they came up with a new cell that makes 3 times more power than they used to, and they just came up with the first LED that makes as much light as a 60 watt incandescent bulb. One old solar cell would make enough power to operate one 60 watt incandescent, a new solar cell of the same physical size will make enough power to operate 3 60 watt incandescents, 12 CFLs, or 30 60 watt-equivilent LEDs. Just as a rough example. :D |
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Like GS?
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Telco: If it makes you feel any better, I have hated trucks far longer than SUVs have even existed. My friend drove one (not by choice) and we hated it together. They are totally worthless (even more so than an SUV) if not properly used. I think it would be nice if we had permits where you had to prove that you were really going to use a car for its intended purpose. Otherwise you wouldn't be allowed to drive a huge *** dually or whatever else people are driving these days...
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Erdrick, what kind of American are you? Don't you know we have freedom to choose how much gas to burn?! If there are any laws about owning the right cars, it should be for people that drive small cars "efficiently" since they aren't helping our great nations growth!
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