My mistake, and apologies. In that case, I guess you could say American manufacturing is largely centered around heavy equipment, highly engineered electronic components, aerospace, metals (steel and the like, of which America still has a good chunk of world manufacture) and generally things that wouldn't have a sticker on them. I know that caterpillar has almost half of it's manufacturing plants still in the USA. Things like that.

Generally speaking assembly isn't a big money maker and I imagine alot of countries try to move away from that as quickly as possible. Owning the design makes you much more money than fabbing the parts, which is what i'd imagine the main reason for our manufacturing decline is.

That being said, the western world is still a powerhouse of design and cutting edge technology. Even if third world nations become manufacturing powerhouses, they're still going to need stuff to manufacture, sure China maybe a giant in manufacturing but alot of the big ticket stuff they put into the higher quality products they build are still designed over here, and that's where a lion's share of the money is, which is why the first world hasn't gone bankrupt due to horribly expensive labor yet. We earn our keep on the global scale, designing stuff people still need, and want to buy.

Aren't alot of the chips in the computers we use fabbed in the USA, atleast? Big ticket items, for sure. How about cars? The united states manufactures crap tons of cars. Harley's are probably made in the USA, too. By necessity, you're house was made in the USA. All Boeing jets are made in the USA, but it's not practical to own them. While probably not 'manufactured' i'm willing to say that a good deal of the food you eat was probably processed in the USA just due to logistical reasons, and packaged here.

I've heard that very little of total spending of the american consumer actually goes to chinese goods manufacturing costs.

I don't quite understand, electric heating CAN be more efficient than direct fire heating, when you use heat pumps. Alot of heatpumps have very good effifcency ratings. Are you saying that France is encouraging using Resistance heating?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audi_R10_TDI

Audi R10 TDI was the first diesel Audi to win at Le mans.

Or you could pocket the money you saved on the solar installation, put it into a 20 year bond, and have $40,000 minus the $8000 in electricity for that interval. Just saying.

A big reason why alternative energy is not taking off, is because the economics are not attractive yet. If the economics were attractive, then there would be a massive demand for solar and wind, and that isn't happening very quickly

killowatts is still a valid measure of power, so if you want to get technical, it still consumes about 20kw cruising down the highway. ~700w=1HP.

It's just that some of those killowatts are derived from gasoline combustion rather than battery storage.

I concede the point though, I wasn't aware that the volt was on gas power at 80MPH. Had forgotten about it.

Even at the beginning of the word?

rat=at?
rate=ate?
rum=um?

You're calculations are wrong. If the volt used 110kw to run at 80MPH, it would drain it's 16kwh battery pack in about 6 minutes, giving it a range of about 11 miles.

If you use this website

http://www.wallaceracing.com/Calculate%20HP%20For%20Speed.php

And plug in the relevant numbers for the volt (0.28cod, 25 sqft frontal area, ~3800lbs) you'll see that the volt only consumes around 24kw cruising at 80MPH.

The main reason cars have multiple hundred horse power engines is because acceleration is power demanding.

I'm just curious, but why wouldn't cryogenic hydrogen work? It worked for the space shuttle... and it's a much lighter fuel per megajoule.

As far as I understand, water cannot be created out of nothing, it has to move there and this does so at a pace that nature sets. Thus, the water resources that we have are limited and are being consumed by agriculture, power generation, and domestic use.

We may not be running out of water now, but there are still water tables that are being drained at a rate faster than they are recharged, and when they go then agriculture in the area will suffer. Thus, total water usage is important.

This happened to China, which has to feed 1.3 billion people. The population did not become much larger, but they eventually had to start importing grain due to their agricultural productivity grounded in unsustainable ground water based irrigation.

However, as far as I know, water can always be transformed from it's non drinkable state into a drinkable state by water treatment plants, and more can always be built. If they are not, then other options may be taken, like using shower, tap, or washing-machine water dumped into a holding tank to flush the toilet. That would knock out 25% of domestic water consumption

So I see it as the reverse of what you're saying.