In The News...

I thought it was common knowledge to keep your kids home and your head on a swivel the day after dirt was discovered on any democrat.
 
Any of them want to go on the record? Why couldn't they find them when they were investigating in the house for impeachment? Meanwhile the race is on for plea deals in Georgia.... turns out the voter fraud was simply republicans, big surprise.
 
If a battery lasts for 100k miles and the break even point (which exists because of said power plant and supply chain) is 50k, every battery they make is halving the carbon emissions. It's an actual workable solution that can be implemented today to start lowering emissions, which science is and has been screaming for decades that we must do. I get that you don't believe in said science, but you are overwhelmingly in the minority there. Humans are moving forward again, just like when we stopped using leaded gas, child labor, asbestos, slaves, etc. It's arguably mankind's hardest problem that we've ever attempted to solve, this is just a baby step in the right direction.
 
Tree09 said:
If a battery lasts for 100k miles and the break even point (which exists because of said power plant and supply chain) is 50k, every battery they make is halving the carbon emissions. It's an actual workable solution that can be implemented today to start lowering emissions, which science is and has been screaming for decades that we must do. I get that you don't believe in said science, but you are overwhelmingly in the minority there. Humans are moving forward again, just like when we stopped using leaded gas, child labor, asbestos, slaves, etc. It's arguably mankind's hardest problem that we've ever attempted to solve, this is just a baby step in the right direction.
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It's not that I don't believe in the science, it's just that I was intentionally giving the factory a really hard time for humor's sake. I realize it sounds ridiculous at first glace, but that the actual issue is far more complicated and complex. To be honest, I sort of skimmed the article, which isnt something I normally do. Obviously, despite utilizing coal for fuel, by virtue of the fact that they are building EV batteries, they are going to greatly reduce emissions through the vehicles those batteries end up being installed in. Again, believing the science isn't the issue...I honestly do not know what the particular science is that you are referring to.

Next time I'll refrain from utilizing slap-knee style, low brow humor and desist from skimming an article if I'm going to make a post about it.
 
Tree09 said:
If a battery lasts for 100k miles and the break even point (which exists because of said power plant and supply chain) is 50k, every battery they make is halving the carbon emissions. It's an actual workable solution that can be implemented today to start lowering emissions, which science is and has been screaming for decades that we must do. I get that you don't believe in said science, but you are overwhelmingly in the minority there. Humans are moving forward again, just like when we stopped using leaded gas, child labor, asbestos, slaves, etc. It's arguably mankind's hardest problem that we've ever attempted to solve, this is just a baby step in the right direction.
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If they really cared about emissions, most vehicles including all semis would be hybrids, at least to a small extent, as of 20 years ago, because the technology existed then. Then, every time someone uses the brakes, they would recover as electrical energy what would have been lost fossil fuel energy, and use that recovered energy to accelerate to speeds where the fossil fuel engine becomes efficient again. They would also have invested more in making diesel cars available because of how fuel efficient diesel can be, and they would incentivise local jobs and recreational events, so people don't frequently make long distance trips that really are unnecessary.
 
There's engineering issues on hybrids, far more complex having 2 separate and intertwined systems, but i agree. We also thought we still had more time, but the rate that things are changing and how is effecting other stuff we didn't anticipate shows it could really snowball quicker than we could adapt to. It's becoming apparent that as this gets worse that we're going to find ourselves completely unable to support the population. Remember the last snow crab you ate? I hope so because it'll likely be your last. Temps increased very incrementally and the entire population just collapsed. While i personally believe we would be better off developing ways to convert our existing infrastructure to a renewable sources, this is what they're determining to be the most viable option at this point. I imagine funding for fusion research will increase exponentially soon, as that's looking like a hail mary if we could implement it in time.
 
Before we get too carried away with how EVs will save the world, have any of you actually seen a lithium mine? How about a lithium fire? There's some pretty serious issues that need to be discussed and addressed with EVs.

Also, I'm really not cool with slave labor, or forcing children to work in deplorable conditions.

Also also, questioning science is how science moves forward, so let's stop treating it like some angry elder god. Science is neither bogeyman nor Savior, it simply is, whether you "believe" in it or not.
 
Tree09 said:
There's engineering issues on hybrids, far more complex having 2 separate and intertwined systems, but i agree. We also thought we still had more time, but the rate that things are changing and how is effecting other stuff we didn't anticipate shows it could really snowball quicker than we could adapt to. It's becoming apparent that as this gets worse that we're going to find ourselves completely unable to support the population. Remember the last snow crab you ate? I hope so because it'll likely be your last. Temps increased very incrementally and the entire population just collapsed. While i personally believe we would be better off developing ways to convert our existing infrastructure to a renewable sources, this is what they're determining to be the most viable option at this point. I imagine funding for fusion research will increase exponentially soon, as that's looking like a hail mary if we could implement it in time.
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I could be wrong, but to me it seems quite simple to have electric and gas drive systems intertwined. So simple that it could all be operated manually without a computer. The electric motor could be relatively small due to its low duty cycle as long as it gets proper cooling. Braking might be the hardest on it if it is forced to accept more power than it can easily produce, but I don't think that would be a problem.

I think you give too much credit to mankind being the source of climate change. They say we are coming out of a ice age, right? So we are in a warming cycle anyway. Then it just takes one big volcanic blast like in the 1800's if I remember correctly, and a bigger one in the 500's that caused practically a year or two long global winter.

It's both hilarious and sad how mankind keeps throwing more and more of his technology and philosophy at solving his and the world's problems that are caused by his technology and philosophy. If only there was a book with all the answers inspired by the creator of all who knows all, but we are too smart and full of pride for that.
 
If you factor in ALL of the impacts of EV's, it's easy to see that they are far worse than the current technology. i.e. mining & manufacturing; slave labor, environmental damage, pollution, waste by-products. Distribution; trains, trucks, jets all using fossil fuels. Electricity produced mostly by coal-fired power plants. Disposal of used batteries. Plus, the fact that our electric grid cannot handle the increased load. Tell me how all of this is going to save the planet.
edit: about 60% of electricity is from fossil fuels.
 
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I'm not going to argue but this debate has been going on for a long long time, and climate change caused humans is accepted scientific fact. I'm not exaggerating, it's more universally accepted than our theories of gravity. It simply is. Everyone is entitled to their opinions on the matter, but that's all they are. It's simply a result of collective human civilisation (especially western civilisation) powering the growth of population and living standards we've seen in the last 150 years. It's also a completely predictable result, much like burning trees would lead to mass deforestation before we switched to coal and overfishing will lead to no more fish to eat. I simply cannot understand that although we've killed off over 70% of animal populations in the last 50 years alone, we're literally running out of water, yet we're somehow unable to burn enough fossil fuels to effect the atmosphere, even tho you can simply look at the concentration of co2 in the air and directly measure it and plot it out over the years, same as average temperature. We've made enough nuclear bombs to turn the 30 percent of the planet that's land into a fiery radioactive hellscape, but somehow we aren't changing anything by digging up everything we can and burning it.

Yup, most of our power today comes from fossil fuels, but if we wish to continue to have western (or frankly any) civilisation to leave to the next few generations we might want to change that. Saying that we get most of our energy from fossil fuels today so we should tomorrow too makes about as much sense as we use sails and horses to move goods so we don't need engines. By plugging evs into the grid more renewable energy will be stored and used, as well as excess energy made by fossil fuels, since all electricity on the grid is made in that exact moment, there's no provision for storing electricity in our modern grid. If everyone plugs a big ev battery in there will be tho, and i bet that's a large portion of where this ev thing will end up going towards in the end. It's about the only feasible way to add a ton of battery storage to the grid on a scale that will actually help with the intermittent nature of most renewable sources, so it's worth pursuing just for that.

I agree that evs are not likely the answer, the line for charging illustrates the lack of infrastructure, which is only one of the many problems that will need to be overcome for it to be the answer. But it's an answer, which is better than no answer. And we're likely going to need more than 1 answer to pull this off, there's room for all, and having more than 1 answer is better because we don't truly know how well all this is gonna work yet. This is undoubtedly the hardest problem human civilisation has been faced with, and if we look at history we don't have a good chance of solving it honestly. I personally believe that switching to synthetic fuels made from bio waste streams and from industrially farmed fuel crops is far more achievable. Fossil fuels act as energy storage, one that has a power density higher than anything batteries can achieve with current technology, and with a fully mature infrastructure to support it on every corner of the globe. And that's not even counting the fact that everything we've built to date is designed to run on it, any new technology will require massive amounts of resources to switch everything over, which is something we are finding out isn't as infinite as we once thought.

We already have crops such as duckweed that doubles its mass every day, waste products that we either bury or burn or leave to rot, or treat with chemicals and dump in rivers. We should be channeling all of these and more into gasification plants to make syngas, which can then either be burned as is for power generation or used to make synthetic fuels. This of course sounds like it would be an amazing technological breakthrough if we actually were able to do this on a major industrial scale, and it was, during ww2 when Germany was cut off from the oil it needed to power its war machine. They did have ample coal resources, so they gasified the coal into hydrogen and carbon monoxide, used the water shift reaction to make even more hydrogen, and then made liquid fuels using chemical processes such as the fisher-tropsch process which makes synthetic low sulfur diesel fuel.

To make that a viable solution farming these kind of crops will have to be designed from the ground up as industrially as possible, and likely using either ground that's unfit for regular crop production or in/on the oceans. Tough, but doable, and with greater payouts than evs are since it's all carbon neutral, and could even be carbon negative by pulling biochar from the system rather than burning it all to ash. That biochar would need to be disposed of, but fortunately humans have already figured that out too, way back in 450 bc or so. The Amazon, one of the most fertile places on earth, is so fertile because of buried charcoal, which is called terra preta. The charcoal was formed by their slash and burn agricultural techniques, and the charcoal locks the carbon away in a stable form for thousands of years. So you won't need as many fertilizers either, which also come from fossil fuels, and we'll end up with far more arable and productive land by going this route. Doing that simply for better soil isn't sustainable today, but harvesting energy from wastes and intelligently designed energy crops makes it especially so.

But they didn't ask me or anyone else here, the people who designed these evs decided that their way was viable, but they've convinced enough investors and lawmakers to give them a shot. It's worth a try, and capitalism will help decide if it works, just like building a wall on the Mexican border is a dumb idea that's destined to fail but we're gonna try it anyways (they're building it again, Biden even overrode environmental concerns to allow congress to spend the money it allocated and continue construction). While both ideas are in my opinion dumb and a waste of resources that would be better used elsewhere, both will likely succeed in their objectives, less people will simply walk across the border and carbon emissions will be reduced by more people driving battery cars and plugging them in when they're not driving to store energy from the grid. While neither is even close to a good or complete solution to a complex problem, they both are something aiming towards the goal of solving said problem.
 
True, but thx to citizens united it's been completely legal, notice no one is trying to change that either. Also politicians know even less, so they have to make decisions based on others research, they are just the guy in front. I would almost bet my life that some scientists working for a governmental agency have done exhaustive feasibility studies on all this and have determined this is the best option at the moment. They've likely dedicated a career to it honestly. We've got a usda lab in town here, they do research like that to better our world, in fact it's where they discovered penicillin. A surprisingly large amount of advancements are actually discovered in a government lab, the government is often better equipped to do research on stuff that isn't as economically viable at the time to push innovation and growth. Who knows, maybe it will work after all
 
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