On-the-fly Emissions Monitoring for Big Brother and… You!
Published: August 8th, 2007
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Let's see.. a gauge to tell you how fast you're going, a gauge to show you how much fuel you have left and a gauge to monitor how much damage you're doing to the environment. According to Gizmag, a team from The University of Manchester has developed a laser device that measures greenhouse gas emissions inside the car's exhaust system before it's loosed on the world. The eggheads' hope: if you see how much nasty stuff you're producing you'll adjust your driving style accordingly. Of course, if you don't, "this technology could also be used in roadside congestion charging systems, with less polluting vehicles being charged less." Yes, The University of Manchester is in England.
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David, I see your point, but still not sure I agree with you entirely. If we use water as a "fuel" to produce hydrogen, it'll most likely be liquid water, not atmospheric. That water would essentially be displaced as vapor into the atmosphere unnaturally. I'm trying to follow the logic of the human-induced global warming types. It just seems like the wrong direction by their logic. I don't know really, hell I work in the coal industry, so I must be the enemy to those folks. I also don't think economics will ever be able to justify hydrogen as a "fuel." Takes too much energy to produce than it yields when burning...
dean: You have more faith in the average person than I do. A little story: A couple of months back, one of our office assistants came up to me with a yardstick, and asked me which side was in inches and which side was metric. Both sides were in inches, so not only was she incapable of telling that both sides were the same, she also couldn't recognize an inch (or a centimeter) when she saw one. The same woman also asked me how many times the president could be re-elected, and told me that she was pretty sure Las Vegas was in the Midwest (she used to live in Texas, and thought Vegas was east of Texas). This woman graduated in the top half of her class, and is currently going to college...so if she represents the average person on the street, I'd be surprised if they didn't think that greenhouse gases were somehow emitted by greenhouses.
MaxHedrm: FYI, I was making a joke - I think you're taking things a bit too seriously.