ShortMan wrote:Yeah just so you know that was all utter complete bullshit.
The hybrid really does use much less gasoline and goes up and down hills just fine. And it IS an internal combustion engine, with a battery backup, so that 70% of potential energy which we've been wasting for over a hundred years can finally have some of it reclaimed. Thats why its called a hybrid and not an electric. Video maker should have criticized the nasty crap they need to make the batteries, which has no good argument at all.
Hybrids for small cars are a poor idea. The weight added to the car from the car is a major problem as are the chemicals used for the batteries. If you think we are making a lot of toxic chemicals for our laptops and phones now, just wait until every car has them! The EPA standards are seriously flawed for hybrid MPG. Most owners of those 70MPG cars get significantly less, usually mid-high 40s. When they build a regular sized small car they usually get low to mid 40s. You can almost get that with a manual gas car and diesels in Europe easy eclipse that.
Where hybrids make the most sense is exactly where they are used the least: people who drive very large automobiles around the city. The slow, stop and go traffic is perfect for electric motors; it is horrible for internal combustion engines. Better still is a diesel electric setup like locomotives. Vastly better than all of the silliness of filling your car with batteries.
No matter how you slice it, we need resources to enable modern life. Wasting resources is always a bad idea, but the liberal model of using the government to mandate the solution is a terrible idea. At the very least the government shuts down all competing alternatives by fiat.
ShortMan wrote:The fluorescent bulb uses even less than 25% of the energy of its incandescent bulb counterpart, which means fewer of your precious wetlands plowed over to make new power plants. And it comes on instantly nowadays, and the disposal method is no worse than what the other bulbs were required to have, but people just got used to ignoring those instructions. I'm sure they will do the same with these ones as well.
If this is correct (
http://www.eia.doe.gov/ask/electricity_ ... y_lighting) than only 15% of the average household power bill is due to lighting.
Residential lighting consumption was about 208 billion kWh, equal to about 15% of all residential electricity consumption.
It depends on your CFL, but they are are much better than 25% more efficient on average. More like they only use 25% of the power of an incandescent bulb. I.e. your reference frame is flipped.
For a given light output, CFL's use 20 to 33 percent of the power of equivalent incandescent lamps. Since lighting accounted for approximately 9% of household electricity usage in the United States in 2001, widespread use of CFL's could save as much as 7% of total US household usage.
The lower usage is probably mostly due to model used to estimate the power. Using the worse number of 15%, saving 75% of your lighting power would reduce your power usage by about 11%. The average bill in the US appears to be $104.52 (
http://www.eia.doe.gov/energyexplained/ ... _home#tab2), thus an 11% reduction would yield about $11.50 a month in savings. The really nice CFLs which are designed to have virtually no negatives concerning light spectrum, instant on, lumens, etc. cost nearly $5 a piece. Of course you can get them cheaper, but the quality of light is not comparable in most cases. The average users is either going to loose light quality or it will take 1-3 years to recoup the costs.
I replaced all of my bulbs because I have a lot of recessed lighting which was using flood lights. In my situation it made a lot of sense as the CFLs significantly reduced the heat output, but that isn't true of the average user. Banning incandescents is silly IMHO. There are still applications where they are vastly superior and besides, I guess you think you are better and more knowledgeable about what other people need in their houses?
As a side note, the average monthly usage is 908kWHr in the US (same reference as the last). An 11% savings is only 100kWHr a month, which is 3.33kWHr a day, which is only a 139W continuous load. I bet your PC uses at least that much. Even if you power everything off in your house, the zombie load is probably that much. I think we should pass a law which requires you to unplug every electronic device in your house until you need it to eliminate the zombie load. We can create a massive bureaucracy to monitor you in your house too and of course the minimum punishment is 10 years in jail for ever 5mins you don't comply. Clearly I know what is better for you and think of the wetlands I will save controlling your activity.
ShortMan wrote:And the main reason Obamacare is broke is because of what the conservatives did to it. But once again the guy making the video did not wanna acknowledge that.
That has to be one of the funniest things I have ever read.
(5 of 5)
The whole concept is demonstrably unsustainable according to game theory, unless you allow the federal government to do what I suggested they do to you above concerning your zombie load. The only way the system the democrats were suggesting could possibly work (even in theory) long term is if we give up all remaining freedom concerning health care. Besides, all of the problems they are trying to fix they caused from previous reform...remember the insurance companies are only doing what Congress mandated they do.
What changes are you talking about? The conservatives didn't vote for it, so why did Obama need any of their changes? You "compromise" to get votes which he didn't get so WTF? The changes you reference were to buy off the blue dog democrats, not conservatives. Take a little reality pill with your state sponsored propaganda.
