Awhile ago I made a thread complaining about the banning of 100 watt light bulbs. I assumed the reason was to reduce electrical consumption. Whatever, I'm over it. But how am I supposed to feel when the same government, that is, my BROKE state government, is using taxpayer money to offer $5000 rebates on light duty electric vehicles? Electric vehicles are estimated to increase the energy usage of the household that owns them by up to 60%. Not to mention relocate the source of pollution from under the hood to what will most likely be a coal fired power plant.

LOL Canad...California!

In all seriousness, do your best to vote, and encourage others to vote the bastards out. I know that doesn't sound too good after the demoralizing results of your last elections but that's about all you can do besides flee.

Not even talking about the energy usage of those cars what about all the damage to the environment to manufacture them? All subsidized by state and national tax payers. It's a disgrace.

Maybe they're hoping that you'll become more & more desperate & will move from suburbia back to the city & either utilized public transportation or ride a bicycle. My wife & I moved to the city when I lost my job & we've really enjoyed walking back & forth to work (& everywhere else) together.

It appears that you're upset w/ the baby steps that they're taking w/o considering the larger picture. What alternative do you offer? Should they spend the money to build new energy plants before they move to electric vehicles? Should they ignore pollution until those new plants are built? It's easy to get wound up in legislation when it's taken out of context & when the end-game isn't considered. Rome wasn't built in a day, if you will.

Rome's dead yo

Mental actually hit the nail on the head. They DO want people to move out of suburban areas and into urban/city areas.

The problem is, the endgame here is not worth it. Don't try to saddle me with the "do you want us all to die from pollution??" the air quality in CA is already FAR cleaner than it has been in the past. The "diesel particulate" problem that has been cited was pulled from data taken from Kentucky. In several areas the air quality standards Will NEVER be met. Simply because of the people driving THROUGH.

I wish we had a loosening of that whole nuclear non-proliferation treaty thing. Not because I want to cause nuclear war, but because it requires you to basically throw away perfectly good uranium after one use in a civilian nuclear power plant just because it's got a bit of weaponizable plutonium in it afterward.

-If only we were allowed to recycle, the "where to put nuclear waste" problem would be halved right off the bat.

Now, these electric cars have to be plugged in every night to charge right? So why ban 100watt light bulbs again? Or was that why, so there is still enough energy on the grid to cover the electric cars.

I guess that's a lot worse than hauling gas to gas stations with gas-powered vehicles and using gas in gas-powered vehicles to get to gas at gas stations

no... but it does make banning 100 watt bulbs seem... a little like a nonbinding UN resolution.

also how the heck is californias electrical grid ever supposed to be able to support that kind of increase in demand for power? if electric cars are a serious idea for replacing gasoline then say hello to rolling blackouts 365 days a year.

It's not like everyone is going to switch at once... They're going to have a chance to build up the supply to match demand.

sorry, just dont see it happening. we have not had enough power to fully meet demand in california for quite some time. besides that, unless something other than coal burning plants is used to generate power permits will never be given to build them.

Do you think California should relax emissions standards for power plants and build more of them? Or do you think it should continue maintaining the current gasoline infrastructure and get by with less power production? Or perhaps goad Idaho to build more hydroelectric plants, salmon-be-damned, and sell the excess power to California?

Regulation will never curb electricity demands. Especially when the population is growing. More power plants must be built to meet the demand.

Are we pretending that most cars won't be recharging at night, when California has a large power surplus?

You mean at the times there are never rolling black outs or brownouts because businesses and offices and many manufacturing things are shut down for the night so they aren't drawing massive amounts of power from the grid? Genius!

no

Shouldn't worry about air pollution anyway. China is going to kill us all with their own clouds of crap.

Of course the energy consumption of a house goes up. The difference right now is that most electrical cars have an efficiency of 90% at a power higher than 50 brake horsepower. Which means that 10% of the energy will get lost when comparing the efficiency to the power generated by a fossil fuel plant (neglecting power line losses right now).
However, shifting the focus from fossil fuels to all energies originating from sun energy might actually give the sector of clean forms of energy the boost it deserves.
Furthermore, nuclear energy has a much higher efficiency than the burning of fossil fuel. Effectively increasing the efficiency of our energy consumption.
There is no point in defending the way we're treating power right now as a human race. Because we're being an absolute ***** about it. It's clearly evident from analysis that the climate is affected. And I would really like to postpone that for another couple of millenia by putting a stop to our absolutely proposterous conservative view on our energy consumption.
Furthermore: Are you really comparing ways of transportation which won't lose any degree of effectiveness to losing 50W per lightbulb on your energy bill while still getting the same ammount of light?

There's FAR more of the former than the latter and I'm actually in favor a bit of the idea. There's no need for a 100W lamp when a CF lamp with 1/4 the power requirements puts out roughly the same candela. I already know what you're going to say next and that there is Mg in the CF lamps. Yes there is and it is small quantities. But at least for us Californians you can be environmentally conscious with those dead CF lamps. I'm sure other states have adopted similar measures....except Alaska.

They reduce un-neccesary energy consumption with a law, but increased it by using something that's more environmentally safe.
What's the issue then? There's no hypocrisy here, this is not a wtf moment.
BOTH of the issues listed here are done for the better of environment etc, I really don't get why you're making a big deal about this.
Your argument about wether or not electric cars are better or simply a re-allocation of pollution is an entirely different matter.

I don't get why a lot of coal/natural gas/oil/dead humans power plants are not converted over to nuclear.

The public is retarded, essentially.

fixed

My favorite fact in the whole world is that coal power plants put off more radiation than nuclear power plants.

How so?

Google says:

"the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy."

Maybe that's why Yahweh buried that **** underground.

That is of course talking about ambient radiation. Which is true. Still, I suppose nuclear waste is still a lot more radioactive.

Definitely, but they don't spray it into the air.

good luck trying to get the epa or any of the "environmental conservancy" committees to allow nuclear plants to be built.

personally i would be completely in favor of switching largely to nuclear power whenever possible.

Not to mention the public still has an irrational fear of the word "nuclear." Where I went to school, there was a coal plant smack dab in the middle of campus to keep the hospital running. If they tried to replace that with a nuclear plant, people would freak.

Since when is trying to produce a crap ton of lithium batteries environmentally friendly. If they actually were able to get significant electric car adoption beyond the rich pretentious ignoramus market segment, not only would the rising price of Lithium make further market penetration infeasible. Not to mention the fact that the environmental impact of increased Li production would be significant. In addition, you have the issue of the lower power/mass ratio of batteries compared to gasoline making electric vehicles impractical for many applications.

I'm all for being environmentally conscious, but I really hate it when people go around advocating things that just don't work. These kind of people obviously care far more about appearing environmentally conscious than they do about making a real difference. It's all hypocritical, trendy bull****.

Now I know that there are a few legit application for EVs, but its not going to help the environment or reduce or dependance on oil at all.

Two things equally true.

Okay, then use the sun-fueled electricity to do electrolysis on water and use batteries to power compressors to put that gas into fuel tanks. That way, no energy get's wasted and everyone can still drive around.

The only thing that might be a problem is the water vapor...

Wait, what? You mean Hydrogen? The process you described doesn't make any sense.

Hydrogen would be good, but it has it own set of challenges. The technological hurdles will probably take decades overcome in a best case scenario.

That would be awesome! Let me know when you figure that out? Oh and you will probably have to pay for the research and implementation too, cause CA is broke.