The Documentary Thread

Xarpolis_sl said:

That's also E-10 and E-15. The Flex-Fuel they're talking about is E-85. That said, I didn't actually read any of those links so I don't know if they speak about E-85. I'll read them shortly.

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The only thing they talk about is Ethanol, these cars can actually run on 100% ethanol, or 50% ethanol 50% gasoline, or any mixture thereof.

Khane_sl said:

I feel like you're not actually reading any of my posts.

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It's funny, I get the exact same feeling from you when you ramble on about new American cars being fine, when I'm saying that European and Japanese ones of even very recent vintage are in some cases NOT fine at all, and that virtually all vehicles that are much more than 5-10 years old have very legitimate concerns regardless of where they were made. No shit American cars are mostly fine, it's one of the few jurisdictions in the world where nearly all of the gasoline supply has ethanol in it, because of a huge corn lobby. That's not the case for the Euros or Japanese, hence why they've been slower to make sure all of their vehicles will be fine with ethanol. I mean shit, you even got confused about the environmental concerns about ethanol I raised, and seemed to think I was implying that different types of ethanol are better or worse for engines and fuel systems.

Whatever man, I'm not saying that ethanol as a whole is good or bad. I'm saying that there's valid concerns in particular cases in regards to damage to vehicles, and further, that not all ethanol is created equally in terms of environmental benefits/damages.

Carry on.

Sorry, one further thing:

We need choice at the pump and the technologies have existed forever,there is no reasonwe shouldn't have mass amounts of electric cars or cars that run off various kinds of alcohol or natural gas on the road.

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Yes, there are VERY real reasons why electric and natural gas cars are not common. Battery technology and capacity is only today becoming good enough that electric cars are worth a shit. And even then, range limitations remain very real, as do charging times. Not to mention entrenched infrastructure (filling/charging stations). That alone is huge. Natural gas is similar. For one, prior to fracking and the shale boom, natural gas was far more expensive than it presently is in North America, not to mention the pricing being more volatile. It's also not as easy to transport large quantities to remote fueling stations without pipelines, as compared to gasoline. The tanks themselves are heavier and far more expensive than gas tanks, given the explosiveness of natural gas and the pressure it has to be stored at. The energy density of it is also much lower.

Personally I think that the future of personal transportation is likely going to be battery powered cars, and I for one really look forward to it. But it's going to take decades for that transition to happen because of the reasons above. Only in the past 6 months has it even become viable for me to drive a Tesla around Alberta for example, with a couple super charger stations finally opening. There are literally going to be three of them in the entire province, meanwhile hundreds if not thousands of gas stations. Given our climate, I'd still not be comfortable taking one to the mountains for the weekend in the winter because of the loss of range due to the additional battery draw from heating/defrosting.

And finally, it's also highly ironic that you're complaining about entrenched interests driving competing ideas out of the marketplace,when the main reason that there is a huge amount of ethanol in the US gasoline supply is because of the entrenched interests of the corn belt lobby.You know why there's a surplus of corn in the US? BECAUSE OF THE SUBSIDIES.

I read the post. The E-10 one. Here's the gist of what it says regarding corrosion.

The fuel itself isn't corrosive. Well, it "was", but only to a certain type of rubber. Automotive manufacturers have since stopped using that type of rubber as a direct result. The corrosion comes as a side effect. The ethanol in fuel attracts water. The combination of water and ethanol causes bacteria to form. If the fuel sits too long (You don't fill your gas tank every 2 weeks), the bacteria starts absorbing the ethanol and releasing an acidic concentrate in the process. That's what destroys the vehicle. So if you don't let the same tank of flex-fuel sit in your car for long periods of time, you have nothing to worry about. But if it's like a motorcycle that you don't ride very often, or you park it for the winter with the flex-fuel still inside, the eventual bacteria will wreck shit.

I found it interesting enough.

Eomer_sl said:

It's funny, I get the exact same feeling from you when you ramble on about new American cars being fine, when I'm saying that European and Japanese ones of even very recent vintage are in some cases NOT fine at all, and that virtually all vehicles that are much more than 5-10 years old have very legitimate concerns regardless of where they were made. No shit American cars are mostly fine, it's one of the few jurisdictions in the world where nearly all of the gasoline supply has ethanol in it, because of a huge corn lobby. That's not the case for the Euros or Japanese, hence why they've been slower to make sure all of their vehicles will be fine with ethanol. I mean shit, you even got confused about the environmental concerns about ethanol I raised, and seemed to think I was implying that different types of ethanol are better or worse for engines and fuel systems.

Whatever man, I'm not saying that ethanol as a whole is good or bad. I'm saying that there's valid concerns in particular cases in regards to damage to vehicles, and further, that not all ethanol is created equally in terms of environmental benefits/damages.

Carry on.

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I see what the problem is:

Khane_sl said:

Just watched Pump on netflix. Pretty eye opening. I had no idea you can turn pretty much every carsold in America in the past ~15 yearsinto a flex fuel car just by "hacking" the computer and changing a few settings. I also had no idea that Henry Ford's original cars were all flex fuel and could run on either ethanol or gasoline.

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I said America and not specifically the United States, though that's what I meant and I'm pretty sure you knew that.

As for electric battery vehicles, do you not think that if we didn't abandon the technology 100 years ago it would have happened much, much sooner?

But really, I didn't mean to turn it into an Ethanol argument, I just think the documentary is very well done and they provide a lot of very compelling evidence.

Khane_sl said:

As for electric battery vehicles, do you not think that if we didn't abandon the technology 100 years ago it would have happened much, much sooner?

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Hard to say. I don't know much about battery technology or materials science, but I think it's likely that we wouldn't be much further ahead. Storage of electrical energy is useful to a whole shitload of other industries and products as well, and yet improvements in batteries are only a few percent a year on average.

I saw another Documentary today on my lunch break.

12 O'Clock Boys. It's about these biker gangs in Baltimore, and this young kid that aspires to be a member. It was a decent enough movie, but that main kid had some great lines.
Here's a trailer.

Eomer_sl said:

Hard to say. I don't know much about battery technology or materials science, but I think it's likely that we wouldn't be much further ahead. Storage of electrical energy is useful to a whole shitload of other industries and products as well, and yet improvements in batteries are only a few percent a year on average.

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I can't argue for or against because I really know very little about electric batteries BUT... It's 100% feels data but it seems crazy to me that men like Edison and Tesla could pioneer so much so quickly in the realm of electricity and then we get basically "nothing much" for almost 100 years after that.

And even if every single one of your worries about Ethanol is true it still makes no sense why we wouldn't at least have competition at our gas pumps because you could manufacture for each. You could have 100% Ethanol cars and 100% gasoline cars and you could fill them either way (just like Diesel vs Gas, except both fuels are made from crude) as long as the car was made for it. Why is that not an option?

It is an option in Brazil.

It seems that ethanol fuel isn't the best for cold weather. The "American standard" of E-85 means that it's 85% ethanol, 15% gasoline. However, in the winter months when weather drops to below freezing temperatures, they reduce it to E-70.

That said, it's still significantly less expensive than pure gasoline. In this area, 93 octane is $3.199/gal right now. E-85 appears to be $1.259 range, yet that runs 97-101 octane.

Xarpolis_sl said:

It seems that ethanol fuel isn't the best for cold weather. The "American standard" of E-85 means that it's 85% ethanol, 15% gasoline. However, in the winter months when weather drops to below freezing temperatures, they reduce it to E-70.

That said, it's still significantly less expensive than pure gasoline. In this area, 93 octane is $3.199/gal right now. E-85 appears to be $1.259 range, yet that runs 97-101 octane.

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Keep in mind that you'll get less mileage from E-85 than you will from straight gasoline. But how great would it be to give the middle finger to OPEC because we can actually choose how to fuel our vehicle?

Watched this:The Decline of Western Civilization (1981) - IMDb

much to my wife's chagrin last night. I really liked it, can't wait to watch the other two parts. Seeing little Pat Smear was just adorable. Of course with the context of 30 years it looks much different.

I watched Love and Mercy after so I've got White Minority and God Only Knows stuck in my head, shit is confusing.

Documentary on Iron Sheik called "The Sheik" is very good. Costs like 3-4 bucks and you can watch it through Google Play, YouTube etc.

I'm watching that one next weekend probably, very excited to see it.

Just sawMerchants of Doubt. Many details I didn't know, but the gist of it wasn't news. It's really well put together. If you liked Food Inc. you'll probably enjoy this too.

Probably covers pretty similar ground to The Denial Machine, which was a CBC documentary from 2007. For whatever reason it's not on their website, but you can watch a really shitty quality version here:The Denial Machine Video by david sasaki on Myspace

It was really interesting how so many of the people and ad/marketing agencies involved in denying climate change, are the exact same ones that were denying the harms and addictiveness of tobacco a few decades back.

Fred Singer is a truly evil man.

There's a documentary coming out in the next month or two about the rise and fall of Tower Records, and how them not wanting to sell singles is ultimately what ruined the business.
They were talking about it on the radio a little bit but aren't able to get into much more detail. I'll look forward to that.