OT Its Hot It Must Be Global Warming 656

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It's not quite that bad, actually. CO2 emissions from transportation are actually a bit lower than from electricity generation. When you take into account that that number *includes* some fixed electricity generation (because, for instance, it includes electric rail) and that vehicles burn fuel less efficiently than fixed power plants, it seems pretty clear that the actual total amount of power used by fossil-fuel powered transportation is *less* than the total amount used in fixed electricity generation. It's just a harder problem because instead of building a few hundred new nuke plants, you need to replace millions of cars.

But most of them get replaced anyway, if you wait a couple of decades. Mandate that new vehicles must be zero-emissions, and the rest eventually takes care of itself.

Maybe the real solution isn't batteries. Maybe it's hydrogen. Not necessarily in fuel cells; you can just burn the stuff. Or ethanol, which a bunch of the vehicles on the road can already burn.

-- "Those who enter the country illegally violate the law." -- George W. Bush in Tucson, Ariz., Nov. 28, 2005