Quote:
Originally Posted by brucey
This sounds like such a perfect test for Mythbusters, unless one of you guys have a mobile emissions testing center.
I'm still in the "FE is more important than emissions." camp myself. If you burn half as much fuel but produce twice as much emissions doing it, you're still ahead because that fuel is not having to be extracted and pumped and refined and piped and stored and shipped and pumped and burned.
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Exactly, the trouble is how would Mythbusters setup the parameters.
There is a hoard of resources that are indirectly tied to the oil by the labor force that works for the oil companies, would they be included? How do we quantify emissions into the ground or emissions that would be "other" since they aren't normally in a cars exhaust, like mercury, arsenic, cobalt and other exotics that tend to get freed.
Also our crude to fuel process goes, oil exploration, drill, extract in the US, put on the open market for the highest bidder, send 50-90% US oil overseas because it is of a higher quality than most crude. Pay the lowest bidder to refine low quality crude on antique equipment that is overseas and exempt from US regulations to make that crude usable for us in various forms. Transport back to the US (more pollution), refine further (more pollution) ship and distribute (more pollution).
I think really if we want to do the right thing for the country we need to scrap this system sending crude and gas 2-3k miles each way, seems asinine from a resource consumption standpoint, yet because of the many special interests its how we do it the wrong way and make more profit.
Ah well.