Comments by "Thump Er the Sweaty Fat Guy" (@SweatyFatGuy) on "A World without Fossil Fuels | 5-Minute Videos" video.

  1. I'm inclined to agree that we can't just shut off fossil fuels, wind and solar aren't going to cut it. EVs are not the answer unless you live in an urban area where its warm most of the year (as in above 40F) and you have short commutes. Sure EVs are popular and work in Norway, but the gulf stream keeps Europe a lot warmer all winter than Michigan, Montana, Alberta, or Siberia. The range needed is not hundreds of miles either. Travelling 1000 miles in Europe means going all the way across it. For me its Michigan to Nebraska, not even half way across the US. I can do that in 14 hours pulling a trailer with my 24 year old truck, trying that with an EV would mean several travel days just to get there. Bear in mind this is not coming from someone who is saying things like 'dig up more dinosaurs because I need gasoline...' other than to study the bones of course. I produce ethanol from cattails to power my muscle cars, 1965 GTO, 1970 GTO, 1968 LeMans, and when I get some others built, they will run on my home made vodka fuel as well. Other than the used plastic tanks and pipe employed to ferment the starch/sugar, very little in the way of fossil fuels are used. I produce and use methane to heat the stills, its super simple to produce and use methane, but it doesn't work very well for vehicles because like hydrogen the range is very short. Also I use biomass, as in wood pellets made from sawdust to heat my home, along with another system that heats water to 140F without burning anything. Why do I produce fuel and heat with primitive methods? Well its cheaper for me, because I can make cattail vodka for 10 to 40 cents a gallon. Premium is $4 here, it just came down from $5 two months ago. New gas station owners are having a price war where the old owners colluded to set prices high. They incentivized me to produce fuel for my cars starting back in 2007, and my fuel is VERY cheap compared to race gas which is the closest correlation, that stuff is $12 a gallon and up. CNG is not available where I live, so I make my own, rather than buying it (or LPG) from someone else at a large markup to cover their expenses and make some profit. To put it in $$$ on propane my heating bill is $1200 a month, using wood pellets its just increased to $320 a month. I have the heat on from October to June because the snow shows up from November to May. My cost to replenish the hot water heater varies, but its usually $300 for the entire year. The most difficult thing for me to do up here on the 46th parallel is producing electricity without unruly noise and expense. Wind is gale force or calm, not much in between. Solar doesn't work well because daylight is VERY short, particularly in winter, it gets light about 0830 and dark around 1730. In summer the sun is still a sharp angle rather than nearly directly overhead. Sure you get some energy, but its expensive and intermittent. This is the latest thing I am working on, producing useable electricity for myself without a noisy generator and messy acid batteries. The lithium based batteries are too expensive for me. There is quite a bit involved with producing AC current, you have to get the hertz right along with voltage and amperage or you fry whatever you are trying to run on it. I can run a generator on methane or ethanol for months, but then I have that droning engine out there. As it stands the coal fired power plant feeding me grid power is the way to go... except it went out this morning, which is a common thing. Its not an agenda to help the environment being pushed on us, its using environmental assertions to justify the agenda.
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