« Cool Tool | Main | Today's History Lesson »
July 18, 2005
It's Not Easy Being Green
Couple of things kinda tickled my funny bone over the weekend. First, there was this:
But the pendulum has swung. The 2005 Honda Accord hybrid gets about the same miles per gallon as the basic four-cylinder model, according to a review by Consumer Reports, a car-buyer's guide, and it saves only about two miles a gallon compared with the V-6 model on which it is based. Thanks to the hybrid technology, though, it accelerates better.
So hybrid car drivers aren't really saving gas or preventing pollutions, but hey! They've got acceleration!
Next, there's this:
Supporters of ethanol and other biofuels contend they burn cleaner than fossil fuels, reduce U.S. dependence on oil and give farmers another market to sell their produce.
But researchers at Cornell University (search) and the University of California-Berkeley say it takes 29 percent more fossil energy to turn corn into ethanol than the amount of fuel the process produces. For switch grass, a warm weather perennial grass found in the Great Plains and eastern North America United States, it takes 45 percent more energy and for wood, 57 percent.
It takes 27 percent more energy to turn soybeans into biodiesel fuel and more than double the energy produced is needed to do the same to sunflower plants, the study found.
Hehe. That cracks me up.
Not that I'm against alternative fuels, mind you. I'd love to see us less dependent on fossil fuel. But most, if not all, of the 'environmentally correct' solutions totally ignore that little thing call the Three Laws of Thermodynamics.
Those darned laws of physics will get you every time.
Posted by Rita at July 18, 2005 05:05 AM