Being that I drive a hybrid vehicle, I might have a biased opinion on the subject, but I can assure you I have done my homework and have some of my own observations, which are shared by similar people spotting a trend that's a change (however slight it may seem) for the better. Here's why.
First of all, let's take the subject at hand: transportation. Actually, that itself is not the actual problem, the problem is global warming. Now the oil companies have also done their 'homework' and have frequently assured us that global warming is not a genuine problem, but given than large car companies (Toyota, GM, Ford, Honda, etc) are coming around to realzing they are taking time and money to convert vehicles, maybe they have done their homework, too.
Now the biggest problem by far in the world for global warming is the US, we consume over a third of the entire world's energy supply. But at the same time we create this huge market by demand, so cutting demand (curbing consumption) is obviously a huge benefit, but by how much can we cut it versus working on other angles, and why do these have to be mutually exclusive (either or predicament).
We also have another problem with humans which some have called "disasturbation", also known as the "ambulance watcher syndrome". People somehow enjoy talking about terrible things (earthquakes, disease, global warming, famine, Presidents who are Functionally Illiterate...whateve).
Now some on here are chemists of sorts, but maybe not energy chemists, and I've tackled some of these specifics elsewhere, but the main points are important.
First of all, over a billion Chinese all want cars (and will get them when they can buy them, if Wal-Mart has its way, the American Consumers are helping hundreds of millions of Chinese buy new cars...isn't that wonderful?) as do the Indians...now we're talking about half of the world or more doesn't even have or need cars...but our culture can create this demand.
Never underestimate the might and effect of the American consumer! Also never underestimate the rapacious greed of the wealthy elite (Plutocrats) or better yet the wealthy elite robber barons (Kleptocrats). These are very much part of the demand (consumption) problem because real estate tycoons jack up prices, holding tenants ransom, forcing them to live farther and farter out of town as corporate greed outsources the previously stable job market and decentralizes all over the world.
This spread of "progress" means also exponential spread of vehicles (to match the exponential population growth) and real estate trends are going to continue their greed-head path and force billions of Chinese and Indians to live farther and father from town, so they have to drive to work. Horses just ain't fast enough to go that far in a work day.
Now we could fix the cities and provide housing and jobs for people on a massive scale and allow or even encourage people to work at home with all sorts of subsidies and tax incentives, but this isn't a market-demand approach, this is very much a hands-on and neck-out approach, and no President will take a bullet right now to save the world. Why bother?
Let's get back to the transportation and demand thing. Jobs. School is a distant second and getting to the store a marginal third. Fuel consumption is primarly for a) transportation, b) heating, c) lighting and d) industrial manufacturing. These vary from country to country and region (northeast uses more heating than Texas of course, bigger suburbs mean more driving etc). Regardless, you can't change the whole supply-and-demand system overnight, but fuel systems are much more doable.
Let's get back to gasoline. Nothing quite like it is as cheap to produce to generate so much chemical power. We don't care as much about the by-products, and even didn't know much about gasonline until the 20th century (gas engines only were invented in late 1800s). But the world was a smaller place then and we didn't approach seven billion people (by 2020, maybe a lot sooner if people have eight kids each). Now it's only getting bigger and we know gasoline chemically has to produce nitrogen and sulphur compounds (both contribute substantially to acid rain, which is nearly as devastating as global warming on the same chemistry set called the atmosphere). Alcohol doesn't have most of these problems, and generates less greenhouse gas. It's less volatile, also less energy, but very soon (right now) it's cheaper than gas to produce and will cost even less as we learn ways to produce it from grasses, wood byproducts, waste products and all sorts of biological compounds that are wasted or underutilized (soy, etc, crop rotation always helps, too much fertilizer is a different problem but related if we don't also get a handle on that, but so is overpopulation which is the root of all of the world's major problems right now...war, famine and other disasterbatory subjects we all tend to get so emotional about...understandably of course).
Now switching to an alternate fuel is a "proof of concept" to show we can even do it in the first place, it gives us options, it teaches us about science (Americans have become rather stupid in math and science, this largely also due to technical jobs being outsourced to the lowest bidders and the massive greed of mega-national corporations who make more profits by exploiting cheaper labor from afar). Also, a farm can produce its own fuel, which is huge if you are a farmer and don't want to throw out all your corn husks and other vegetative byproducts that seemingly have no current use (you feed some to your animals, the rest you plow under or use for fill).
Alcohol itself is a very clean-burning fuel and has very little byproducts in the toxic compound department. CO2 is not "toxic" per se, but sufur dioxide definitely is, and nitric oxide et al produce powerful acids when mixed with water (plenty of that to go around, 'cept in the desert of course). Alcohol still can produce N203, but far less and with proper catalysts, negligible amounts. It's already used as an oxygenatore to replace the extremely poisonous MTBE (one tablespoon in a poolful of water to render it unfit to drink...just as CA about their water table!). So getting off gasoline has the added effect of getting of similar MTBE addiction.
Moving to an alternate liquid fuel teaches us what's involved so we can then think about the next transition to other fuels, ideally hydrogen is perhaps the cleanest chemical fuel (until we get fusion mastered, fision is just way too dirty for a vehicle...just ask the Navy! ;-}). There are ionic fuels like hydrides in solution that also show promise, but largely these electrical-battery type reactions (still chemical, but not heat-based as much, though some hydrogen cells are hot and some are cold, they don't operate the same way as an internal combustion fueled engine). In the long run these are best if we master solar power and transfer, and other clean sources like hydro, wind and geo. But the same environmentalists who complain about gasoline also complain about windmills over the ocean, and this kind of narrow-minded restrictive thinking really infuriates me. They have to tolerate something. We can't just go back to the stone age...that is not possible (short of armageddon, then we get back to disasterbation and at that point I think "population control" is a good thing so maybe it's inevitable when we hit the magic number, kaboom we blow the planet up and the roaches inherit the charred remains of our modern chariots...haha ;-}).
Other thing with fuel technology is the alternative forces manufacturers to learn leaner approaches like making the vehicles lighter and much more efficient. One hybrid car prototype (actually on the road but maybe 10 years away from large-scale production) gets over 170 MPG! Sure it only carries 3 people, but how many do you need for a commuter car?
If anything the advent of hybrid fuel technology will teach a bunch of American science illiterates a little bit...who knows, maybe spark a rebound in our engineering institutions (god knows we're in need of it...just ask the professors). The other thing is it advertises that helps change public sentiment into the "what if" category and for a little snippet of time, you have thwarted a mind from total immersion disasterbation, from which there is no return and people are so blinded by the fear of everything they can't ever reason normally ever again. Their heads are permanently affixed to the ambulance, missing all the sunsets and taking whoever they can with them in their downward spiral.
Beam me up, Scotty.
People said flying would be impossible and now that's our third biggest transportation fuel waster (commuting and cargo are the biggest). I have exact figures for all of these things from the DoE and other fine sites that could just be brainwashing us silly, but I've had my share of chemistry courses (and physics, else chemistry would never occur ;-}) and realize there are many fuels and means for energy production and storage. I've also had enough psych and anthro classes to know that we can't stop people from having too many babies and in general people want what they haven't got. Seven billion cars means we're all doomed if they alll burn leaded gas, diesel is marginally better, gasoline unleaded is better (but not with MTBE) gas w/ ethanol is better and for all of its shortcomings, alcohol is the cause and solution to all of life's problems.
Well, it's a start anyways. Sure, it's not perfect, but it's a "green cycle" product from living material, so growing more green means using up more C02 as a nice "side effect" rather than pulling all of the oil (dead animal and tree carcasses that have rotted under pressure) out of the ground and blasting it into the air.
Green cycle fuels make scientific sense, but if we focus on the bad practices of agribusness (these also can be solved) instead of the main goal we lose our ability to make lasting change, just like chasing the ambulances on the highways of life.
Now the other big problem is getting people to work at home with no immediate supervision. This is hard for old businesses who need "seat warmers" to understand. I am much more productive at home, but they still like that warm fuzzy I give them when I'm at my desk. They know they can walk over and bitch about something. For this reason I call my job "systems psychology" because half is making things work, and the other half is convincing people it's a problem in the first place or at least giving them the room to vent over something they think they can't control. What I do is give them control and in some cases intervene as a moderator between forces who are fighting for reasons they forgot a long time ago. I also give them a comfort level, but I can do a lot of this remotely because I'm used to working that way productively. The main workforce is not as Net-literate as it could be, but I think upper management that refuses to learn is the biggest problem, so the telecommuting thing has caught on very slowly where this could stem the largest demand if we only had incentive (tax breaks, policy, etc) to move fast in that direction.
Now with recycling I had a roommate who used to do environmental consulting for big businesses (skyscrapers in NYC) and she used to help large groups of companies all change to the same policy for the whole building in a matter of months. In the business world this is known as "rapid deployment" and was a godsend to the buildings she helped overhaul. This "green trend" is continuing for several reasons, and disasterbation may only be one of them but the other is the greed factor and they realize they save billions (collectively) by recycling, and on a large scale it's proven to be worth the cost (for most major things like paper, water, even air and heat, commodities we don't necessarily think about when we look at a hurricane and see the devastation without realizing what if we build giant windmills that could tap that energy or somehow capture the millions of joules of a lightning bolt?).
So recycling is "in", "green" is "sexy" and companies are using these "ploys" to brainwash us into thinking the green approach is better and aww heck maybe we can save our asses while billions pump out billions more babies who can never possibly be fed.
Any planet has a limit and we reached ours a long time ago, but to see an alternative fuel as only a temporary solution is missing the larger point that humans might only be temporary and certainly we are not the solution right now as much as the cause for the things we rubber neck at without actually doing things to make it so. Making it so means buying green even if we don't have a Chem PhD because we think it's a step in the right direction. It means wearing a sweater or living close to work, biking or walking, taking the bus and doing all these things other much older countries have learned to do automatically. God help us if the Chinese and Indians all learn Americans' wasteful bad habits (my Chinese and Indian friends tell me they are, and are devastating their own countries at rates excessive beyond even our own western expansion...at least the US population has rougly stabilized in comparison).
Because ethan-ol (how come ethan doesn't like it his name is in there? ;-}) is a step and a solution, however marginal, it will lead to progress and learning about things most people are afraid to too lazy to want to learn. We like everything handed to us and this is also unfortunate but forgivable. I am trying to learn to forgive our whole country, but this is very hard from what I learn every day from people outside our country. However, realizing that alcohol is a green cycle fuel isn't rocket science...and eventually rocket science will also follow suit, which leads to airplanes and even heating and electricity.
How many people have replaced all their lightbulbs with low-wattage kinds? Lighting is number three energy waster (transpo and heat number one and two). All those streetlights on at night...all wasting electricity because people are afraid of the dark (I have cat eyes, I love the night). All the rooms in the house warm but we only stay in one or two. Shut a door and close the vents to save billions of barrels a month. These all help tremendously but since global consumption is on the rise, just trimming the fat from American's belts won't save the planet. Starting with fuels and social biases we can move in the right direction. But if someone tells me a windmill farm off the coast where noone will see it but the birds and fishes is worse than some new nuke plant or the same old coal plant is going to get clobbered the next time we're in a heated discussion. I am very aware of the problem we have on our hands, and some of the solutions we have now just need some support to go to the next phase. We're not going to get to warp drive and interplanetary travel by riding bicycles, nor are we going to tell the Chinese to stop buying cars by supporting Wal-Mart. Cheapest is not always best, but over time technology can make the green expensive cheap and accepted (even desired...like I said, on a marketing level, green is sexy and that's a good thing even if it's just a ruse...the brainwashing is good in any form along these lines IMO).
I think the disaster is daily and green is everywhere, we just have to learn to adapt and use it. But if we are stuck living 50 miles from work, a bike just won't cut it. Until we fix the massive infrastructure, we have to take some steps in the right directions. Hydro, Geo, Solar, and green cycle liquid energy fuels (at this stage in human evolution, still primitive because we're burning shit to get heat, which is caveman physics). In a few years we might also master nuclear fusion, which is another relatively clean energy source but we're not at the level of scientific evolution, so we can "steal" the solar that's already transmitted but missed (like infinite supplies if we put collectors in space).
We all drink ethanol (with notable exceptions) so we know it's a lot cleaner than gasoline, which only very few of us have ever tasted. If it tastes good, it is good. For this reason, sugar is good. We would die without it, but processed sugar is bad. Raw is good, and ethanol is much more on the "raw" side since it's produced much simpler and more quickly than the gasoline which has been squashed for millions of years under thousands of feet of rock pressure and heat.
Now until recently a gallon of ethanol cost four or five bucks to produce, but now it's under a buck and some experiments have it down to 60 cents or so. On a massive scale we can get it cheaper and when gas hits five bucks (in only one or two years) you 25% whiners will pony up the bucks for the fuel you can drink and I'll be trading in my old hybrid for alcohol, veggie diesel, hydrogen ion or even liquid hydrogen fuel if we get that far (that's maybe 20 years away, fusion maybe 50, but I might not live long enough to see that hit us and we all might not make it that far...there I go disasterbating myself into oblivion).
Other thing is you don't have to produce alcohol from corn, in fact the cheapest methods use waste products or grass...so please everyone do some research and learn about these things so you can teach everyone else.
The "economy of scale" is the world population explosion, so if we're thinking bigger is badder, we're all screwing ourselves in the process. We have to learn to take advantage of something, or anything will take advantage of us. Also those who think biodiesel is cleaner than alcohol hasn't tried to burn both and sniff the fumes or see the results. One is oily and viscous (complex) and the other is a very simple solvent. You can get oil out of something that's not produced? Not a crop? So we go back to getting oil out of whales or the ground? Where does oil come from????
-Make it so,
Phrazz
P.S.: King Oil (donkey kong) is still very much a hindrance, but he is also easily brainwashed himself...just need the right mind control machine.
I'm not so sure about Pat, however. His mind is too strong, so we need to pursuade him when he's drunk. I'll take on his other pros and cons with enough time (con 4 is a non-issue really, it's a ramp-up and there's already thousands of stations, will be ten times that in ten years).
Also major Kudos to lumpy who is making the leap to alternative fuel and will surely get some action as he basks in the wisdom of his giant leap towards saving the planet.
However, the cheapest solution to consumption is radical reduction in population, and that's not going to happen anytime soon and neither is rebuilding all the cities to provide affordable housing. Switching a fuel system in most cars literally takes a few hours and this is definitely a step of progress, however small it may seem. These are not excluding conservation and elimination...they all work together.
