China's fuel use is WAY less than the US. Yes, they have billions of people, but they aren't all driving cars, they walk and use bicycles (mostly because they have to). Its not a small country either.

How many cars do we own? In the US, as of 2003, there are about 475 cars per 1000 people. In China, there are a whopping 6 cars per 1000 people. Even if each of those cars puts out 10 fold more pollution than the average US car then their output from automobile use is still tremendously less than ours.

China has 5 times as many people as the US (that estimate is a bit high, but it works for these quick calculations). Even adjusted for that population difference, they still have about 6% as many cars as the US has. The average Chinese person uses 827 kilowatt hours of electricity in the time it takes the average American to use 12,322 kilowatt hours. Again, adjusted for population differences, they only use 30% of the electricity we use. Their powerplants can be 3 times dirtier than ours and STILL make less pollution than we do. Plus, a huge amount of their power comes from hydroelectric systems (which actually do their own sort of environmental damage, but since we are talking about air pollution ATM, they count as pretty clean).

Yes, we need to be concerned about the pollution outputs of rising world industries like China and India, but we still consume the lions share of energy, and put out the lions share of pollution.

Now, I'm not saying CARB is always right, in fact, having lived in Cali, I know they are usually misguided, but pollution controls themselves are not misguided. Now if you live in a rural area, you might not have a good understanding of what tremendous pollution problems are like, but you will. Despite all the pollution lowering advances made by car makers, the fact remains that every year Americans drive more miles than the previous year. The increase in miles driven cancels out much of the pollution control measures. Its like people buying low-fat cookies, and then eating the whole box.

Not to mention the fact that while per-gallon emissions are down, fuel economy gets worse every year. In fact, the highest average fuel economy US vehicles had was in 1987, with a value around 22.1 MPG. Its down to 20.8 in 2003, and had held steady for something like 8 years. All our advances are not amounting to a decrease in fuel use, they are amounting to an INCREASE in fuel use, along with an increase in CO2 output.

The point I'm trying to make is that the US has a problem. These numbers are simple facts, and show that car manufacturers and average car buyers are not interested in lowering consumption or pollution, and that if there is going to be a light at the end of the tunnel, it will be through a concerted effort to raise efficiencies and lower pollution further. Just because you don't see smog in your rural sky doesn't mean your climate is not being affected by global warming today, and for years to come.

Now, I'm not saying I know HOW we should fix these problems, and I'm not saying CARB knows how they should be fixed either. But I know a few things I can do as an individual, like bike when I can, drive my scooter (at 100MPG and fuel injected to produce lower emissions than modern cars) when its just myself, and use biodiesel vehicles when moving more than just myself. If everyone did what they could to lower their output, we wouldn't need silly laws, problem is, left to their own devices, the average american would just consume faster and faster until we all passed out dead in our hummers on the freeway. Now, silly laws aren't usually the solution, just public education, but in crisis areas like LA, something had to be done..

Hopefully with ULSD fuel and increased availability of biofuels, modern diesels can make a comeback in the US. Diesel electric hybrids make a lot of sense (and should have preceded the gas-hybrid, IMHO).

Whew. Back to work. ;)
-Sam

References:
http://www.dallasfed.org/research/swe/2003/swe0305a.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/rtecs/chapter3.html
http://www.epa.gov/otaq/fetrends.htm
http://www.epa.gov/otaq/cert/mpg/fetrends/420s04002.pdf

Nice research, Sam! :D I like to read stuff from someone who does his homework. :)

Mike

I think China has Far more than 5 times the population of the USA. India is about at that level and china is far bigger. Now who produces these facts, the Left leaning Enviromental lobby or the UN with its anti USA agenda. They are clearly slanted by design.

I am not against pollution controls. I am against the overzealous loons in Cali trying to dictate to the rest of us.

Factor in most of China is heated not with electricity but Coal, wood and cow dung. Pollution comes from more sources than cars. Factor in Industries in china that are completely unregulated. India is more fortunate in that its climate means heating needs are limited to certain geographic areas, but again lots of industry unregulated and most of the cars, Motorcycles and mopeds are gross polluters by US Federal standards.

Chinas enviromental damage do to dumping and total lack of industrial smog controls makes Russia and its factory cities look like enviromental gardens of eden. Hell even national Geographic had extensive articles to that effect.

Yet the Kyoto treaty exempts them and the liberals bash the USA for refusing to ratify a treaty writen by design to wreck only the US economy if followed to the letter.

Yes China and India use far less electricity per capita then Americans, so does most of central and south america and every other less developed country. But even the worst of our generating plants is cleaner then the best of theirs. And they have far more and far worse places than the much remembered Love Canal

I support the US Federal clean air act, NOT the Peoples republic of Kalifornias version. I would love the new mercedes diesel and if it wasn't priced at twice what I can afford I would have one.

China's population, est. July 2003: 1,286,975,468
India's population, est. July 2003: 1,049,700,118
US's population, est. July 2003: 290,342,554
China has about 4.43 times US's population.
India has about 3.62 times US's population.

I know that a lot of analyses of the numbers I quoted come out slanted one way or the other depending on who's talking, but the numbers themselves are pretty simple statistics, and not subject to much 'spin' by liberal or conservative groups.

I admit they are overzealous frequently, but they aren't doing a great job of dictating to the rest of us. I'm all for state's rights, and that includes the other state's right to do what they think is best for themselves, regardless of what Cali does.

Thats true, China's coal usage has gone up a lot recently, and that is definately a problem... Imagine early 1900's London, only with 1.2 billion people... Bad news.

However, while their plants aren't as clean as ours, their consumption per capita is still less than ours, something like 1.3 billion tons in 2000 vs. our 1.0 billion during the same time period. Still less per capita. More soot output, but less per-capita CO2 output.

Again, true.. Their propensity for putting up dams with complete disregard for the rest of the freshwater chain doesn't help either. They are rushing to industrialize, and its costing them their environment.

I think the more rational criticism of our refusal is that we didn't make an attempt to fix the treaty, or make it better. We just said, "no way, jose!" instead of, "Lets use this as an opportunity to work with our neighbors to figure out a solution that works for all of us." The treaty as it stood probably wasn't the best thing to jump in on.

Yes, cleaner plants help, but our huge per-capita consumption is still gonna get us, one dirty plant vs. 10 clean ones isn't a great tradeoff.

Our clean air act isn't in a great shape right now, but it has the makings for something better, hopefully our govt pursues it with earnest... And we definately agree on a few things, I'd be all over one of those new CDI's, though I'd need to do some more research on its biodiesel feasibility! :)

Peace,
Sam

P.S. Another great site for doing little bits of off the cuff research: http://www.nationmaster.com, lets you generate all sorts of cool graphs and comparisons and stuff. Statistic lover's dream. ;)

Well, the problem with Biodiesel is the amount of cropland needed to grow appreciable amounts of oil crops for biodiesel conversion.....Like dino if it gets too popular you will find yourself paying healthy prices to buy waste oil if you can find it.

If you know and Biodiesel guys in my area send them my way....I need a mentor to help set up a plant and to get me started to make biodiesel for my car and truck.

Oh, and China......remember most of rural chinas heating and cooking is from burning anything they can find that burns.........multiply that by 1.X billion people by your stats thats a LOT of CO2 and whatnot going into the air. Much the same for India.....and how are they going to figure out numbers for that?????

Everything I know about Kyoto sounds like it was written by the UN, and 100% biased against the USA as a result, that makes it a Humpty Dumpty treaty, too broken to fix. And WAY too one sided.

If diplomats treated things like that as you would anything that deals with multiple racial groups in effect writing them in an anti-discriminatory manner then I would be more inclined to be willing to listen, and I would venture a guess far more other people too.

Somebody once posted a link to an article written by some profesor who said that we could produce all the biodiesel that we ever needed from algae growing in the deserts of Arizona. Very interesting.

Here's the link:
http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/alternative-fuels/95301-widescale-biodiesel-production-algae.html?highlight=biodiesel+algae

But won't the eviromentalists be harping to save the Arizona sand mite then? :eek:

Diesel prices may also be affected by the fact that
 

its almost the same as home heating oil...in fact, they used to add red dye to home heating oil to keep it out of the tanks of road-use vehicles.

I also wonder how much military step-up has affected the amount of diesel available for the civilian market...although a surprising amount of unlikely military vehicles actually burn a version of aviation fuel.

It would be interesting to find a "dinosaur juice for dummies" book on how the domestic fuel market works.

The dsl we use is #2. Home heating oil is #1 a higher refined dsl. In AK I ran my comercial fishing vessel on #1 in winter. More money but less gell probs.
A lot. JP4/5 is still in the dsl family as is kerosene and jet fuel is just a higher refined form of the other. All comes from the same hole in the ground. You bet all the tanks, APC's, helos, jets, ships, cargo aircraft and whatever is working in Iraq now has increased oil consumption. Just look at all the MSC civilian ships supporting the war making runs back and forth. Wars run on oil....ours or theirs it doesn't matter it all effects the market.

Just as a side note, biodiesel is now so proven that even the military is now using it in their diesel vehicles in some parts of the country. In other words, even the military now believes in this form of energy independence. So why the govt isn't doing more to create a larger market for biodiesel is beyond me. Instead of encouraging farmers to grow biodiesel-ready crops, we basically put them on welfare to grow other crops in surplus, crops for which there is no domestic market, which are then shipped to other countries at an additional cost to the environment.

I've been saying this for a while now. Especially with the algae setup, IMHO we could eventually produce enough biodiesel to completely cover the U.S. market. Why this hasn't been done...IMHO they're putting too much faith into the hydrogen fuel concept, and as a result are not bothering with looking seriously into anything else. Given how far away hydrogen fuel appears to be from being a feasible power source for everyone, to me, this is a really bad idea...

I hope that someone in the Bush administration will realize this and take action to allow it to happen...be nice if something good came out of the next 4 years...

Strictly business...are there enough diesel vehicles out there to
 

make commercial biodiesel economically worthwhile for a company to invest in producing / distributing? Would it be something passenger cars or over-the-road trucks, tractors, and other machines could use? Would it be interchangeable with dino diesel from the pump? Would it work in existing diesels, or just in some power units yet to be developed? How close is this stuff to ethanol?

This needs to be a proposition where somebody can make a few bucks.

Don't want people pulling up next to me at a light and asking if "...I'll have fries with that"?

Jim I see that you have much reading to do about biodiesel. Biodiesel can be used in any diesel engine and with about 60 billion gallons of diesel used annually in the US (and twice as much gasoline) it sure would be useful to have more biodiesel. And more people may start switching to diesel-powered vehicles as a result.

Papa don't preach...if biodiesel could be integreted into the
 

existing petroleum product supply infrastructure, and be something I could buy at the pump (for a fair price), somebody in the gas and oil business will jump on the idea...or pay you to keep it quiet, like they did with that engine that runs on tap water.