I think "right-sized" cars are still pretty absurd compared to public transportation.
Sometimes What's Normal is Pretty Absurd.
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Re: Sometimes What's Normal is Pretty Absurd.
#12A "smart" car is just another icon of consumerism, like an iPhone, or a "snuggie".
If you want to spend money on stuff that is marketed to a self proclaimed "smart" niche audience of people who think that buying cute stuff makes them better or "smarter" for their purchased possessions, fine, do so, but don't expect the public to be enthused about your overconfidence in how much better material things make you and your life.
P.S. lets hope you're not in a "smart car" when and SUV forgets to stop behind you "too late" at a major intersection.
Re: Sometimes What's Normal is Pretty Absurd.
#13Nitrogen in fertilizer is extracted from the air (not from petroleum as stated). The hydrogen can be gotten from electrolysis of water, or from methane.
"In the USA in 2004, 317 billion cubic feet of natural gas were consumed in the industrial production of ammonia... A 2002 report suggested that the production of ammonia consumes about 5% of global natural gas consumption...
Natural gas is overwhelmingly used for the production of ammonia..." — Wikipedia
Re: Sometimes What's Normal is Pretty Absurd.
#14>Actually, now the other cars on the road looked strange. Why were they so large? Why did cars stick out six feet in front of the driver? Why did they drag around another eight feet of metal behind? It was an epidemic of automotive obesity.
Smarts aren't actually that efficient. The small body means that the car has to be very strong, and therefore very heavy in order to withstand collisions. I was looking at a Smart on display, and I was surprised to see that it got poorer mileage than my Hyundai Elantra, despite the fact that my Elantra is about twice as large.
Re: Sometimes What's Normal is Pretty Absurd.
#15I think "right-sized" cars are still pretty absurd compared to public transportation.
You must live in a city with a public transportation system that doesn't take 2 hours to get you to a destination only 5 to 7 miles away and doesn't require huge taxpayer subsidaries to exist. I would gladly use public transportation if it didn't suck so hard in my city.
Re: Sometimes What's Normal is Pretty Absurd.
#16A "smart" car is just another icon of consumerism, like an iPhone, or a "snuggie". If you want to spend money on stuff that is marketed to a self proclaimed "smart" niche audience of people who think that buying cute stuff makes them better or "smarter" for their purchased possessions, fine, do so, but don't expect the public to be enthused about your overconfidence in how much better material things make you and you…
> P.S. lets hope you're not in a "smart car" when and SUV forgets to stop behind you "too late" at a major intersection.
Maybe that means we need to question that large SUV with a single occupant and an always empty cargo hold. Or perhaps why as a society we do not find it acceptable to "risk our lives" in small, light cars yet we find it perfectly ok to "risk the lives of others" in our large, heavy "car-trucks."
Re: Sometimes What's Normal is Pretty Absurd.
#17I think "right-sized" cars are still pretty absurd compared to public transportation.
You must live in a city with a public transportation system that doesn't take 2 hours to get you to a destination only 5 to 7 miles away and doesn't require huge taxpayer subsidaries to exist. I would gladly use public transportation if it didn't suck so hard in my city.
No, I live in a city with woefully inadequate public transportation, and I drive everywhere I go.
But, I lived in Germany for 5 months and only rode in a car 2 or 3 times, and Germany doesn't even have the best public transportation in the world.
Public transportation will require a lot of tax money, but roads require a lot of tax money too.
Re: Sometimes What's Normal is Pretty Absurd.
#18Nitrogen in fertilizer is extracted from the air (not from petroleum as stated). The hydrogen can be gotten from electrolysis of water, or from methane.
And extracting nitrogen from the air is a very energy intensive process. Energy which comes from petroleum and natural gas.
Re: Sometimes What's Normal is Pretty Absurd.
#19Having eight feet of steel behind you makes a lot more sense when you get rear-ended by a drunk driver going 45 mph while you're sitting at a red light.
>The industrial food system is another. Our food, which could be grown from local sunshine and local compost, is instead grown in distant places with pesticides and fertilizers made from petroleum and natural gas. Meanwhile the sun beats down on our cities only to fall on ornamental grass and concrete. Food waste is hauled off to putrefy in landfills. Normal and absurd.
This has more to do with humanity's insistence on living in places which cannot reasonably produce enough food to sustain the local population. The Phoenix metropolitan area, located in an Arizona desert, holds over 4 million people; Moscow, just shy of the Arctic Circle, is home to 11 million.
Re: Sometimes What's Normal is Pretty Absurd.
#20Nitrogen in fertilizer is extracted from the air (not from petroleum as stated). The hydrogen can be gotten from electrolysis of water, or from methane.
"In the USA in 2004, 317 billion cubic feet of natural gas were consumed in the industrial production of ammonia... A 2002 report suggested that the production of ammonia consumes about 5% of global natural gas consumption... Natural gas is overwhelmingly used for the production of ammonia..." — Wikipedia
Yes, but I read the article to imply that we were spreading petroleum on our fields, versus the alternative: rotting garbage. If the argument was an energy argument, I would have expected some mention of energy costs associated with composting (orders of magnitude worse than large-scale energy infrastructure)? The comparison wasn't apples-to-apples, and I wanted to clear up the implication.
So, sure, we use energy to create fertilizer. Instead of mining it and shipping it, or going without. Again, if it wasn't the cheaper alternative we wouldn't be doing it.