[Mpls] Answer to Minneapolis traffic

[WJKAHN at aol.com]

> Dan McGrath says:
> 
> "Electric cars still have to get their power from *somewhere* Right now,
> that's nuclear and coal power. Adding another huge consumer of electricity
> to our outdated grid would mean we have to build another power plant, and
> all the greenies who want electric cars would have to go have a protest
> march."
> 
> Dan McGrath is sorta missing the point, I think, while most intelligent 
> folks with green leanings are able to get it. Driving an electric car instead of 
> one powered by an internal combustion engine means that you are not driving 
> an incredibly wasteful and dirty power plant, one of hundreds of millions, off 
> the road. These mobile power plants are incredibly inefficient 
> thermodynamically when compared to most stationary nuclear and fossil fuel power plants. 
> And each mobile plant must be maintained in a safe and clean manner by the 
> folks owning and operating these planes, trains, trucks, busses and 
> automobiles....that stuff happens doesn't it......sure it does, and I'll get that truck 
> of mine tuned tomorrow, or the next day maybe. And who is to say that 
> batteries for electric automobiles cannot be designed to quickly swap out for 
> charging photoelectrically? You'd only need the big power plants to manufacture and 
> recycle the things then.
> 
> McGrath is correct that demand for electric power will rise if we shift en 
> masse to electric vehicles requiring charging from the grid, but neglects to 
> add that demand for oil will also fall. He also misses the fact that it is 
> easier to monitor, maintain, and repair stationary power plants to operate as 
> cleanly as possible than to do so for hundreds of millions of mobile plants on 
> the road; we have tried and failed to do the latter on numerous occasions for 
> reasons of local politics and economy.
> 
> A shift away from conventional cars to electrics now makes it possible to 
> decommission old, dangerous, and dirty power plants as new technology becomes 
> available, whether that new technology is wind (or the other solar power 
> options of hydroelectric, photovoltaic, passive use, biomass, and numerous others) 
> or less problematic use of nuclear fission/fusion and coal and other fossil 
> fuels. One has to wonder how big a concern destabilization of the Middle East 
> would have been years ago if we had made the shift earlier. 
> 
> Bill Kahn
> Prospect Park   
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