::WARNING:: I’m just thinking out loud here. It may provide food for thought, and it may also be completely useless.
The first measurement I hate is one we see all too often. Fortunately most of us are smart enough to recognize the crap on the spot. I’m referring to vehicles which get great miles per gallon… of gasoline. This usually pops up with people who want to plug in their hybrids. Sure they get 100 miles per gallon of gas, but they’re probably using 2 gallons of gasoline equivalent in the form of burning coal. If we want to be efficient, we have to look at the whole system.
Of course part of the goal of efficiency is to reduce the use of fossil fuels in an attempt to control the climate.
Two words, “rain dance.”
Ok the rain dance isn’t really about anything, I just felt like saying it.
But I do have to wonder about average global temperature and stuff like that. Taking a mountain of data and boiling it down to just one value is a effort that requires huge assumptions and no one should be comfortable relying on a single metric for such a complex system.
Now, I don’t know how they calculate such things exactly. But I do know what when the average temperature for a given day for a given location is taken, they find the average of the high and low temperatures for the day. Of course that’s not the average at all. It may be close, but there’s room to be way off.
For example, let’s say we have a group of 24 people. 23 of the 24 people have no income. The 24th person is someone like Bill Gates who, let’s say, makes 2.4 billion dollars a year. by the weather method, the average income of the group would be 1.2 billion dollars per year. But really the mean is a much lower but still impressive 100 million per year.
I wonder what steps climatologists take to correct for that. Do they use a more accurate average that uses more data points per day? Do they use “average” temperatures? High temperatures?
But like I said, I’m just thinking out loud.
Smaller cars. Smaller engines. Smaller drag coefficients. Better mpg. Less exhaust. Less cost to average American. Less dependency on foreign oil. Venezuela can go back to being a 2rd world communist lap dog.
Add in the potential efficiency gains by marrying electronic communications between vehicles to: (1) split air resistence (2) keep traffic moving at a smooth pace via some sort of auto-drive function (3) ensure peak efficiency (4) inflate / deflate tires to minimize friction (5) reduce traffic further by gathering traffic data (if #2 didn’t happen yet) and detecting alternate routes
Add in the possibility of greater reliance of mass transit.
We have the technology right now to cut our miles per gallon by a lot (this is sans-gas-electric-hybrid of course, and not dependent on coal or nuclear or hydro or rain dances). We could stop giving money to Arab nut-jobs. We could set an example to the world. We could tell all those Kyoto whiners to stfu. It would spawn tons of new, uniquely American, industries.
Am I missing something here?
Yeah, but it’s just a little tiny thing: sell your ideas to the American public.
Many — if not most — Americans operate in a time efficient manner. Time efficient is often at odds with energy efficient. “Time is money,” but so is energy. For now, however, time is still much more valuable than energy.
Of course privacy and freedom are also a lot more valuable than energy.
I see little hope for mass transit as long as we remain a wealthy country because we just don’t like being stuck near a bunch of people we don’t know.
I see some hope for an Interstate2.0 along the lines that you mentioned. I’d love to have a car that efficiently and quickly drove itself. But even that pretty much requires a completely new generation of cars and at least 10 years to become mainstream.
Good point on the time factor. I feel this is an area where the sales pitch for smaller, leaner, (slower?), networked vehicles makes even more practical sense. By focusing on the reduction of traffic (and thereby consumption), the potential time-gains are monumental. Considering the commute time for people who work in high-wage high-status positions in and around major American cities, it would make sense to reduce the amount of time spent navigating the roads.
I think your point was more at people stepping on the pedal for a short-term time advantage. Obviously this is really easy to do because it costs so little. Two things jump out at me to combat this: (1) create a legitimate cash bonus for people who maintain a given level of efficiency. Perhaps install taxi-cab-style efficiency meters that can be cashed in. (2) create an efficiency standard and impose a fee on the usage of inefficient vehicles. This would allow price-insensitive people to gas it but it would give incentives to other folks to maximize their efficiency.
Normally, I wouldn’t be in favor of these types of restrictions and taxes, but I think there are too many strategic gains to be made.
Actually my point about time wasn’t really aimed at the speeders in the world. Aside from long, highway drives, there just isn’t much time to be saved by being zippy. (And in some cases the low energy approach is a bit quicker; I try to approach stop lights without stopping. Not only this this more fuel efficient, but I can get through intersections more quickly and possibly time other lights).
There are tremendous energy savings to be had just by carpooling. But that takes away the convience factor that we associate with time. Although I reckon that if carpooling were highly prevalent in very congested areas, people would save more time by carpooling than they do by sitting in traffic.
And really this goes back to measuring the right things… instead of measuring miles per gallon, we should be measuring people-miles per gallon. 6 people in a Ford Explorasaurus may be a better option than 1 guy in his Toyota Pious.