WSOP Windfall... What is a boy to do?!?!

[ChromePony]

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JA or anyone,

The bit about hybrids being bad for the environment....leveling right?

If not, someone exlain plz.

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No leveling about the hybrids. Basically, PITTM's right - there is an enormous amount of energy that goes into making and properly disposing of the batteries. Batteries are horribly toxic and high-energy. This is not good. The batteries have an approximate lifetime of 100K miles. They are a fraud at this point. Of course, time may change this and one could argue that you are funding the development and improvement of battery/hybrid technology by buying them now. Then again, an efficient car or even a high-end diesel gets nearly the same mileage and most hybird owners get nowhere near the EPA MPG's quoted in real practice.

At a talk that I attended given by Nate Lewis (Caltech), probably the top electrochemist in the world and a global energy expert (adviser to many presidents), somebody asked about hybirds. He said that he wouldn't comment on the hybrids themselves (he was avoiding all political arguments in his talk, to his credit), but he would say that the additional energy required to MAKE a Prius (discounting the disposal, even), EXCEEDS THE AMOUNT OF ENERGY THAT A HUMMER H2 USES DURING 100K MILES OF DRIVING. That's pretty sick if you ask me.

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i believe sucker, cuz hes the man, but does anyone have any sort of link to anything that says anything remotely close to this?

if its true id obv like to people to point people towards some facts...

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I don't mean to derail this thread, and admit that I don't know a ton about this sort of thing, but I do want to point out that purely saving energy is not necessarily what a hybrid is all about. You need energy to create a car, you need energy to drive it, theres no avoiding that, but what you can do is replace where that energy comes from. Therefore a hybrid car would in theory reduce fossil fuel emissions and our dependence on oil by allowing energy produced by nuclear/hydroelectric/etc to take its place. The US isn't exactly short on energy in the broad sense, were more worried about gas and emissions created by highly inefficient car engines. Ultimately however, cutting down total consumption would be pretty ideal as well. I dont know how all of this plays into the numbers mentioned earlier, but its just something else to think about.

Anyway, sorry for that. Congrats on your score, I would think that your best and simplest bet for investment is to set up an account with some index funds. The people in Finance/Investing can help you with allocations based on your risk profile.

Real estate is not what it used to be, but to make a blanket statement that it is a bad investment is somewhat short sighted IMO, there are still deals to be had. However, it takes a little more knowledge and luck to find a deal that is worthwhile these days. If you are interested in getting into real estate, just be sure to do your homework so you know what youre getting yourself into. Depending on your situation you may be better off renting as opposed to buying a place, as it allows you to have your money working for you more productively elsewhere.