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To: tpaine
I would love for electric cars to be viable. Why is talking frankly about the consequences of mass adoption of these vehicles considered being against them?

Enviros love to lecture the public that the US is not paying the "full cost of oil", yet they have not wanted to talk about the "full cost" of their darling technologies.

Electric cars mean coal fired cars. I would really like to burn less coal than burn more. I think that there is less environmental burden to converting coal to a liquid fuel and in the process refining the mercury, radioactivity and sulfur out.

We presently cannot support converting even 10% of the vehicles on the road to electric. We cannot build the power plants fast enough. Fast-build new plants would not be nuke- they would be gas fired turbines with their own pollution and supply problems.

We have more energy in the form of coal under Illinois than Saudi Arabia has in oil. We have more energy under eastern Utah and western Colorado in the form of oil shale than Saudi Arabia has in oil. We have the technology to convert coal to liquid fuels. We can convert shale to liquid fuels.

What are we whining about? What are we waiting for? We don't have to rush any new technologies at all. We don't have to disrupt markets or household budgets one bit. Just allow the free market to rationalize the value of these hydrocarbon assets we have by the billions of tons.

We can adopt electric technologies as they develop and become economical in an orderly manner, rather than rushing in and causing waste of natural resources and waste of personal financial assets.

It took about 100 years to convert from wood to coal. It took about the same to transition from consuming the oil from whales to light lamps in homes to oil from coal. The only way the transition was made was because over time, the reasons for doing so became compelling and obvious to everyone. A transition to any technology that is better than the internal combustion engine will not take place until the same thing happens to it. The only other way to make it happen involves the destruction of liberty because we will get armed government agents involved in a sugar-coated scheme that is really coercion. (That is the honest truth anytime we pass a law or regulation to force people to choose something they would not otherwise voluntarily choose.)
90 posted on 08/12/2006 9:01:52 PM PDT by theBuckwheat
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To: theBuckwheat
I don't "get it".. --- Are you really against the entire concept of a usable electric car?
Why?

It took about 100 years to convert from wood to coal. It took about the same to transition from consuming the oil from whales to light lamps in homes to oil from coal.
The only way the transition was made was because over time, the reasons for doing so became compelling and obvious to everyone.
A transition to any technology that is better than the internal combustion engine will not take place until the same thing happens to it.
The only other way to make it happen involves the destruction of liberty because we will get armed government agents involved in a sugar-coated scheme that is really coercion.

Whatever. -- Needless to say, I believe our transition to electric autos only needs some technology that works. -- The market would then take care of the details, regardless of 'gov't agents'..

97 posted on 08/12/2006 10:30:48 PM PDT by tpaine
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