KTM ELectric Motorcycle

[JETZcorp]

On noise, I think it might be worth pointing out that the 96dB is child's play compared to the 130 that's been measured by some four-strokes doing fly-bys on the gas. They're much louder on the track than when they're doing their "official" testing, and much louder than two-strokes. I've heard many people say they stopped going to motocross because of the increased noise created by the 4T. Sure, the 2T isn't silent, but it's much quieter than the competition.

As for hemp, it is certainly a great resource. I had a friend who wrote a paper on it last year, and it made a damn convincing case. Using hemp for paper, rather than trees, takes far less land, time, and money as well as producing a better overall product. However, I don't think it's as good for fuel as algae is. I mean, one of the main advantages of hemp is that it grows like a weed, right? Hell, in bygone days it flat-out was a weed, of the sort that had to be dug out of one's yard every so-often. How can algae compete with that? Well, consider this. The harvesting cycle for trees is several years, I recall for hemp it's once or twice a year, but for algae it's once every ten days. This is the stuff that goes from being literally invisible, to turning your fish tank totally green in a few weeks. Compared to biofuel crops like rapeseed and corn, algae can produce as much as 300 times as much usable product per acre. And like I pointed out before, you can feed algae with saltwater, which would have the benefit of being extremely cheap, and wouldn't have to compete with other crops and cities for precious freshwater resources. Additionally, algae need nutrients like all organisms, but they happen to be partial to things like wastewater from sewage and agriculture and such. It needs to be processed by bacteria and stuff first, but it would be away to turn costly waste into a marketable product. "Buy our shit!"

I'm not against hemp, like I say, I am a big believer in it for many, many applications. However, I think algae has the run on fuel.

[ddmx]

Would hate to put the big oil and gas companies out of business for a more efficient and cheaper fuel...would probably destroy the entire government from the inside out.

[yzmxer608]

The government can suck a (insert word of your choice here).

[eSAyeM]

The government can suck a wang.

[JETZcorp]

The big oil and gas companies employ millions of people. Putting them out of bidness means that a lot of people need to find jobs elsewhere. While this doesn't necessarily mean unemployment, because an equal number of new jobs would be created by the replacement resource, it would be a large and uncomfortable shift to make for many people in many countries around the world, including anyone who owns stock in these companies. They would surely lose their ass on it. That's not a big reason to support algae fuel, but it is a small one to ponder.

The big advantage to keeping the oil companies is infrastructure. To switch to hydrogen, you have to build an entire new infrastructure to support it. We're talking about new sources of natural resources to get the hydrogen from, new energy usage in extracting it from said raw resources, new facilities to process it into an easily-transportable form, new trucks, ships, and railcars to safely transport the stuff thither and yon, and then new fuel station facilities to handle it. Oh yeah, and then you also need to come up with a marketable car to use it that DOESN'T cost half a million dollars. On top of that, unless you outlaw the other fuels, you'll still have to retain a lot of the gasoline and diesel infrastructure. Now we have two entire sets of fuel infrastructure in the country. Is it impossible? No, of course not. Is it outrageously expensive? You bet. With algae, you just have to get rid of the oil drilling and tankers going back and forth to the Middle-East, set up your algae facilities, then you just use existing infrastructure from there, because the crude oil from algae is... well... crude oil. It's the same stuff. No adjustment required. It means that I don't have to buy a new car, it means that I can still run my two-stroke, and it means that the powerful roar of motorsport doesn't have to turn into the soft whir of motorsport. Algae is unique in that the product it creates is not unique in any way, shape, or form. That means an easy transition for everyone from fossil-fuels into cheap and renewable energy.

Besides, if the government were destroyed from the inside-out, it would be the best thing to happen to the economy since Adam Smith.

[Axle McOctane]

Amen dude.

Want to go into business with me?

Going to sell frozen custard, pitbike parts, and now crude oil from algae.

[Red619]

How clean does algae burn though. Dose it still produce alot of pollution when burnt. If it does then theres no point, replacing a dying source with another that has the same effects.

[DJ99X]

I think you need to go and reread the part about algae again mate...

Re: jetzcorp. You say all that as if they would plan to do that all overnight. A shift like that would happen in a timeframe of decades. By the time oil companies were out of business, alot of people would have already started working in these other fields, and stockholders would realise that its probably a good idea to pull out once they begin to see the shift in technology.

[JETZcorp]

Right, it wouldn't be a violent change, but it would a change and there would be effects. For example, when steam locomotives were replaced with diesel, the process took decades. However, you still see on history shows (or, you used to, back when people actually cared about trains!) about how many people lost everything. People who grew up with the railroads, became an apprentice boilermaker at an early age, worked his way up, and eventually became a master boilermaker just like his father and grandfather before him... well suddenly his job doesn't exist anymore. He's got to twist screws in some sweatshop or man the drive-thru at McDonald's. What I think is more likely, though, is that if hydrogen did become the dominant energy source, the big players in hydrogen would be the same guys who played big in oil. I seem to recall seeing the grand unveiling of a gas-station-style hydrogen pump, with a big Shell logo on it.

And like I said, the oil companies thing isn't that big of a deal. The market can restructure itself efficiently so there's not much to worry about, and there certainly isn't anything anyone should do to change the way things are going to turn out. If they make the right choice, it's no big deal, because the market would've chosen that anyway. If they make the wrong choice, we'll all be screwed over with higher prices, inferior product, more pollution, or a combination of the above.

And as for the clean-burning thing, I've mentioned it before, but here's a quick run-down. Basically, the products you're getting are exactly the same. The gasoline made from algae will be pretty much identical to the gasoline we're burning now, so emissions will not change. However! The carbon and other pollutants resulting form today's gasoline had to come from somewhere, and that somewhere was the air... a few hundred million years ago. Algae (yes, algae) took in sunlight and CO2 from the atmosphere, and created oil just as today's algae, except back then there was a lot more CO2 in the atmosphere and thus a lot more algae, and a lot more oil being produced. That's the oil we drill and pump out of Texas and Saudi today, which means that we are importing carbon from the past and into the present. With algae fuel as I'm advocating, the algae takes sunlight and carbon from TODAY'S atmosphere, and then it gets put back when burned. For every molecule of CO2 your car puts into the atmosphere, some glob of algae will remove a molecule of CO2 from the atmosphere. Thus, regardless of how much fuel is burned, the vehicle will still be carbon-neutral.

One thing to keep in mind, though, is that you still can't just have 30 million cars in the same place getting 5mpg, because all of the pollution crap will be concentrated and be a public health problem, if not longer a "natural" environmental problem. Thus, it's still important to seek greater efficiency in vehicle technology for health reasons, as well as economic reasons (gas ain't free, no matter how it's made). That's where I think electric vehicles come in, because as their advocates will be first to tell you, they will do 90% of the commuting work for 90% of everybody, and don't create emissions in the places they are used. The emissions that do result from electric vehicles stem from the fact that fossil fuels still run a large proportion of our power grid, which means total resource consumption for electric vehicles are about half of what they are for current prehistoric-gasoline burning vehicles.

Also, I advocate clean energy sources for that electricity, chiefly nuclear power. Nuclear power is safe (0 people have died from it in the US, against how many coal miners?) and has zero emissions whatsoever. The smoke you see coming from the big scary towers is pure water, and the nuclear waste is sealed in containers that can, and have been hit by trains and survived, and then if that weren't enough, we seal them inside a mountainous bunker. Other alternatives exist, but I think things like Solar and Wind power will take up a huge amount of land, and may be a little unreliable because of weather, but I haven't looked into how costs would compare to nuclear power. Also, I've seen people propose that algae pellets can be burned as a fuel source, and there's nothing to keep our providers of algae-gas from making fuel-oil for power plants as well.

In the long run, economic forces will determine the winner. No one should be able to sit in a chair and say that X will be the future because of reasons X, Y, and Z, because any single person can always be wrong. I think the best system would be to allow environmental lawsuits to apply to the air, for once. This is actually how things worked in the ye olde days, but then it was decided that "the common good" as delivered by industry was more important that a person's measly little rights, and the government stopped awarding victories to environmental lawsuits. This meant that polluters didn't have to face any consequences for putting soot and gases into the air, or from their trains lighting peoples' laundry on fire, or any of that. It would be a painful re-adjust to bring the system back, because it would mean that polluting wouldn't be the road to profit anymore, and there would be a mad dash to find cleaner solutions. Anyone who didn't find a clean solution would go out of business by the costs incurred by environmental lawsuits. Major polluters such as GM and Chevron might not survive on this basis. But, the environmental benefits from this shift would, I think, be worth the chaos it causes.

Damn, I write too much.

[Red619]

Wow, You should read "a peoples history of the unitied states" by:howard zinn. Maybe it will answer some of those question we all have about the USA and maybe the world. But when it answered one of my questions, it just gave me 5 more questions. I think this book should be a must read for all American citizens.

[HAMMERDOWN]

just for this creation i want to punch ktm in the face so hard

[DJ99X]

Just for that comment, I'm calling you a stupid spode moron face

[JETZcorp]

Aw snap, it's on!

(I'm being modern today, don't worry, I'll be back in the '80s by tomorrow.)

[HAMMERDOWN]

wow nice insult DJ. Your so cool now ill have to put you on the #1 coolest person in Australia list

1.DJ
2.Crocodile Dundee
3. Steve Irwin
4. Chad Reed
5.John Farnham
6.Ernie Dingo

Congrats DJ! Well Now that this is over should you and the Australia CSI should go find where your Dingo went

[ACMX]

Sorry, but I'm with hammerdown on this one. If we eliminate the sound, smell, and intensity, then we eliminate the atmosphere, when we eliminate the atmosphere we eliminate motocross. Because what is motocross after those factors are taken away? We will all be a handfull of spodes playing in dirt on electric mountain bikes.