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poltr1Some of you may have received a chain letter advising people to avoid buying gasoline on Wednesday, May 19th. Personally, I don't think it will have any effect -- people will just buy their gas a day sooner or a day later. It will take at least a week-long boycott in order to make a significant impact.
Here's what snopes.com has to say about gas boycotts.
A better solution is to decrease fuel consumption in a long-term manner, like switching to bicycles or taking public transportation.
Another tip to stretch your fuel economy is to avoid travelling more than the speed limit on highways. (I hear you say, "WTF? I can't drive 55!") Although cars are a lot more aerodynamic these days, there's still a certain speed point -- I think it's around 70 mph now -- where the amount of fuel needed to overcome wind resistance increases drastically. So while you can go faster, you're burning more fuel in order to do so.
What about electric cars? Some places, like California, mandate that a certain percentage of vehicles be powered by alternate fuel sources, like natural gas or electricity. While all-electric cars claim to be pollution-free, the energy consumed to generate that electricity probably isn't. In many parts of the US, there are still plenty of coal-fired electric power plants. The pollution source is essentially shifted from the car's exhaust pipe to the power plant's smokestack. Plus the batteries, when they need to be replaced, will need some special disposal methods. (Mustn't let those nastybad heavy metals like lead and cadmium contaminate the landfills.)
And what about nuclear power? It doesn't produce any airborne pollution, except steam. But as we learned from the lessons of West Valley and Fernald, fission-based nuclear power leaves lots of pollution, in the form of spent fuel rods that can't be reprocessed effectively. And we learned from Three Mile Island and Chernobyl that if something should go wrong, it will have catastrophic results lasting decades or even centuries. (My college psychology textbook had a great photograph of a skull and skeletal hand holding an electric toothbrush which had the caption, "Can nuclear power give you whiter teeth? You bet your life!") Until we can produce self-sustaining fusion-based nuclear power, I'm not interested. Thanks but no thanks.
Oh yeah....the gaspricewatch.com website I cited in yesterday's entry only lists stations and prices in the USA. Sorry about that.
Here's what snopes.com has to say about gas boycotts.
A better solution is to decrease fuel consumption in a long-term manner, like switching to bicycles or taking public transportation.
Another tip to stretch your fuel economy is to avoid travelling more than the speed limit on highways. (I hear you say, "WTF? I can't drive 55!") Although cars are a lot more aerodynamic these days, there's still a certain speed point -- I think it's around 70 mph now -- where the amount of fuel needed to overcome wind resistance increases drastically. So while you can go faster, you're burning more fuel in order to do so.
What about electric cars? Some places, like California, mandate that a certain percentage of vehicles be powered by alternate fuel sources, like natural gas or electricity. While all-electric cars claim to be pollution-free, the energy consumed to generate that electricity probably isn't. In many parts of the US, there are still plenty of coal-fired electric power plants. The pollution source is essentially shifted from the car's exhaust pipe to the power plant's smokestack. Plus the batteries, when they need to be replaced, will need some special disposal methods. (Mustn't let those nastybad heavy metals like lead and cadmium contaminate the landfills.)
And what about nuclear power? It doesn't produce any airborne pollution, except steam. But as we learned from the lessons of West Valley and Fernald, fission-based nuclear power leaves lots of pollution, in the form of spent fuel rods that can't be reprocessed effectively. And we learned from Three Mile Island and Chernobyl that if something should go wrong, it will have catastrophic results lasting decades or even centuries. (My college psychology textbook had a great photograph of a skull and skeletal hand holding an electric toothbrush which had the caption, "Can nuclear power give you whiter teeth? You bet your life!") Until we can produce self-sustaining fusion-based nuclear power, I'm not interested. Thanks but no thanks.
Oh yeah....the gaspricewatch.com website I cited in yesterday's entry only lists stations and prices in the USA. Sorry about that.
