[geeks] electric cars

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

On Mon, 23 Oct 2006 18:47:50 +0100
Mike Meredith <very at zonky.org> wrote:

> On Mon, 23 Oct 2006 09:34:50 -0500 (CDT), Lionel Peterson wrote:
> > Gasoline is cheaper than Coca Cola - $2/gallon for Gas around here
> > (central NJ), $2.58 for Coca Cola ($1.29 for a 2 liter bottle, 4
> 
> Petrol prices in the UK are nearer 0.87 (# per litre) x 4.55
> (litre->gallon conversion) x 1.87 (#->$) ... $7.14/gallon. It's
> amusing to hear about US residents complaining about high fuel
> prices :)
> 
> Petrol is amazingly cheap (after removing taxes) but it competes
> 'unfairly' with other fuels because there is no cost of production ...
> just the cost of retrieval (oil is after all not produced by oil
> companies but by natural processes that turn rotting vegetation to oil
> over geological time periods).

Oil has quite a bit of production after it is pumped from the ground,
so I can't agree that it has no cost of production.  Then when you add
the cost of refining, you definitely cannot say it has no cost of
production.  It can be quite high in fact, especially when you add tree
hugger laws that ironically kill more trees than they save.
 
> It might be worth distorting the market by slowly raising petrol
> prices to encourage the use of bio-fuels.

Yes, let's screw the market up even more than it already is by messing
with something that doesn't need messing with.

> As an aside to another message ... the amount of agricultural land in
> the US has dropped by roughly 405,000 square miles since 1950 (21%).
> Finding 250,000 square miles for bio-fuels doesn't seem impossible.

No, but it will be difficult, especially without any will to do so.

It strikes me that places like Africa could raise one hell of a lot of
recent biomass fuel.

Is there any need to burn recent biomass near its site of production to
maintain the natural cycle, or does the Earth's atmosphere take care of
that for you?


-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- ["That which is overdesigned, too highly
specific, anticipates outcome; the anticipation of outcome garantees, if
not failure, the absence of grace." -- William Gibson, All Tomorrow's
Parties]