[Blue Lion]

It's much better that greedy corporations run these things.

Seriously though, I love this unhinged fear we're seeing now.

[Nuclear1]

Oh noes big scary Obama administration taking steps to run our lives...

You know, I'd rather have a government that keeps the Bernie Madoffs of Wall Street in line. I'd rather have a government which breaks monopolies and price fixings. I'd rather have a government that takes some of the ultrarich's money (thus depriving them of their fourth house and 26th 59") to pay for a poor girl's life-saving surgery. I'd rather have a government that encourages work, and does everything in its power to give people the means to be successful.

I'd rather have that than a government which wastes billions on botched wars, throws me on a special database when I use the word "jihad" or "martyr" on the phone regardless of context, or a government that can warrantlessly and without telling me why, throw me into prison to be tortured.

Which one is it that you want again, Lib?

[Liberator]

I'd rather have a small government with low taxes and stays the hell outta my life as much as possible instead of Big Daddy that takes care of my every need.  Cause you know what?  The USA would be a much more prosperous place for EVERYONE if it were like that.  And those "Ultrarich" you were talking about...who are they exactly?  Can you tell me what percent of the population you have to from and how much you have to take to provide all that wonderful stuff you want?

[TrashMan]

Hybrids are the way of the future. They are efficient, save money, save gas.

A Hybrid with the new A123 battery uses only 1/3 of the fuel a normal car would. The batteries are so awesome that the Killacycles (electric racing bike, 0-100 in 3,5 sec) engine blew from sheer power .

Then you have the superefficient car concept - a car redesigned so the actual power of the engine is better used. Uses half the fuel of a normal car and stores excess power so you can plug it into the power grid and sell excess power back to the power company.

Green tech is far better than most people think.... if it could only actually get to the people.

[General Battuta]

I'd rather have a small government with low taxes and stays the hell outta my life as much as possible instead of Big Daddy that takes care of my every need.  Cause you know what?  The USA would be a much more prosperous place for EVERYONE if it were like that.  And those "Ultrarich" you were talking about...who are they exactly?  Can you tell me what percent of the population you have to from and how much you have to take to provide all that wonderful stuff you want?

So where were you during the Bush era again?

[Roanoke]

Hybrids are the way of the future. They are efficient, save money, save gas.

A Hybrid with the new A123 battery uses only 1/3 of the fuel a normal car would. The batteries are so awesome that the Killacycles (electric racing bike, 0-100 in 3,5 sec) engine blew from sheer power .

Then you have the superefficient car concept - a car redesigned so the actual power of the engine is better used. Uses half the fuel of a normal car and stores excess power so you can plug it into the power grid and sell excess power back to the power company.

Green tech is far better than most people think.... if it could only actually get to the people.

Expensive and only marginally better mileage than a good conventional diesel and incredibly admaging to the enviroment if you take into account CO2 costs to manufacture and eventually scrap the car

[TrashMan]

Expensive and only marginally better mileage than a good conventional diesel and incredibly admaging to the enviroment if you take into account CO2 costs to manufacture and eventually scrap the car

WROOOOONG!

It wouldn't really be a green design if manufacturing costs and pollutions weren't considered. The super-battereis are very simple and cheap to make. The Super-efficient car...well, they had to invent a new way to mass produce carbon fiber plates more cheaply and effectively (which they did), but otherwise, it's a very simple design to produce.

[Blue Lion]

I'd rather have a small government with low taxes and stays the hell outta my life as much as possible instead of Big Daddy that takes care of my every need.  Cause you know what?  The USA would be a much more prosperous place for EVERYONE if it were like that.  And those "Ultrarich" you were talking about...who are they exactly?  Can you tell me what percent of the population you have to from and how much you have to take to provide all that wonderful stuff you want?

Then you'd have businesses in every part of your life. It's one or the other. Unless you want to live like a mountain man out in the wilderness, someone is going to be making these decisions.

[Roanoke]

[quote author=Roanoke link=topic=64333.msg1270151#msg1270151 date=124768534

Expensive and only marginally better mileage than a good conventional diesel and incredibly admaging to the enviroment if you take into account CO2 costs to manufacture and eventually scrap the car

WROOOOONG!

It wouldn't really be a green design if manufacturing costs and pollutions weren't considered. The super-battereis are very simple and cheap to make. The Super-efficient car...well, they had to invent a new way to mass produce carbon fiber plates more cheaply and effectively (which they did), but otherwise, it's a very simple design to produce.
[/quote]

Uh, it isn't a green design, that's my point. It's Toyota pretending it is to sell more cars.

[Liberator]

Something to remember about about so-called "green" designs. 
They're purpose is to eliminate or reduce the amounts of pollutants that the cars are putting into the air.  That's all fine and good, but what about what they're taking out of the ground to make these "greed", er, "green" cars?  Precious rare earths that are in an actual limited supply.  We're not talking about saving a few polar bears(which was a red herring btw) or making LA's air as pure as Yellowstone's, we're talking about running out of these rare earths in a VERY short period time, not in a century or two, but actually being out of usable sources of certain rare earths withing 5 to 10 years if we start cranking out these so called "green" cars on the scale where it will actually matter.  We're not talking about a few hundred thousand of these crackerbox, unsafe cars that don't work where the Grid is virtually non-existent.  Were talking about hundreds of millions.

Just a thought I had.

BTW, during the Bush years I was in the same place I am now.  From a certain perspective, I am glad that Bush was tied up with Iraq and Afghanistan.  It kept him from pursuing a social agenda that probably would've looked similar to what Obama is trying to do.  I am very much a Reagan style conservative. 

I heard a dirty rumor that suggested we're on the verge of a new resurgence of eugenics to weed out the "unwanted" sectors of the population, coupled with the fact that they engineered a type of corn that carries a contraceptive in it, I am becoming troubled about that as well.  But this is a tale for another thread.

[Nuclear1]

Seriously...where are you getting half of this?

[TrashMan]

So...just cause some fool paints a rock in gold color and tries to pass it off as gold, you conclude there is no gold?

There are green tech and cars out there. REAL green techs and cars. Built and designed and researched to be more efficient and pollute less, while having similar (if not lesser) manufacturing costs. If you ever bothered to do some research....

[Blue Lion]

I love when Lib comes in and posts.

[Liberator]

Platinum is a key ingredient in rechargable Li-Ion batteries.  However, and I quote,

Platinum is an extremely rare metal, occurring as only 0.003 ppb in the Earth's crust.

If production goes forward in quantity, I stress those last two words, we'll run out of Platinum for other, arguably more important projects and endeavours possibly before we ever realize we need it.

This is one of many reasons we, as a species, need to get off our collective asses and really push the development of space technologies to the point where they become ubiquitous.  I mean seriously, our premier space vehicle is aproaching the 30 year old mark with no replacement in sight and still, in all seriousness, classes as a prototype(and a dangerous one at that).

[Spicious]

Well done at utterly failing to read the entirety of that article, which incidentally fails to mention lithium ion batteries (similarly the lithium ion battery page fails to mention platinum). The closest thing google could find was non-rechargeable lithium batteries with a single mention of platinum. Anyway, on with the actual use of most platinum:

Of the 239 tonnes of platinum sold in 2006, 130 tonnes were used for automobile emissions control devices, 49 tonnes were used for jewelry, 13.3 tonnes were used in electronics, and 11.2 tonnes were used by the chemical industry as a catalyst

Clearly, if these cars were phased out, the platinum to be used in them could be redirected to more space exploration related pursuits whatever you think they may be.

[Aardwolf]

Hmm Let's see...

Government taking over Wall Street....check
Government taking over the Auto Industry...almost there
Government taking over the Oil/Energy Industry...before the end of the year
Government taking over the Medical Industry...yayoubetcha
Government cracking down on Free Speech rights...it's coming(but only if you are against Government)
Government raising taxes on everyone that makes over X amt(which they consider rich) to 80% to pay for entitlement programs to buy votes to keep them in office...check

You seeing a theme here yet?

This one's for my fans:
Godless Atheists providing a legal beatdown anytime someone expresses a belief in God...every major Christian holiday...er, check(I wouldn't complain if they *****ed about Ramadan or a Jewish one, but they don't').

I'm seeing a theme. Liberator says "<such-and-such> is going to happen!" and assumes that we agree that <such-and-such> is bad and shouldn't happen.

Edit: also, yeah we need to save our platinum... so we can make jewelery out of it and whatnot... 

[Blue Lion]

Yea are we saving Platinum for something?

[Flipside]

Frankly, I'd be more worried about Tin and Copper, the thing about Platinum is that everyone knows it's rare, so it's recycled to death, people take Tin and Copper for granted, and not nearly enough effort is made to recycle them, despite the fact that our own mineable stocks are starting to run low.

[Blue Lion]

Frankly, I'd be more worried about Tin and Copper, the thing about Platinum is that everyone knows it's rare, so it's recycled to death, people take Tin and Copper for granted, and not nearly enough effort is made to recycle them, despite the fact that our own mineable stocks are starting to run low.

What is this? The bronze age?

[Liberator]

Flip the difference with copper is that in the entirety of human history from before the Sumerians and Egyptians to right now, we've uses MAYBE 7-10% of the total available supply.  I expect it's similar with tin, iron has me a little worried but that's a few centuries from now.