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the cost for an EV will probably never come down to a parity with ICE cars

Most experts think that once the cost of a battery comes down, battery electric vehicles will cost less than ICE vehicles. Some people are claiming that BEVs are already cheaper than ICEVs if you take total cost of ownership into account.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/01/electric-cars-already-cheaper-to-own-and-run-than-petrol-or-diesel-study

I have seen several people repeating the claim that when lithium batteries for cars drop below $100 per kilowatt-hour, BEVs will cost less than ICEVs and consumers will start switching to them to save money. Elon Musk has in the past said that 2020 could be the year this happens. (For Tesla, anyway, since Tesla built its own battery factory just to get the lowest cost on batteries.)

https://electrek.co/2017/01/30/electric-vehicle-battery-cost-dropped-80-6-years-227kwh-tesla-190kwh/

the only hope is for some type of battery that does not involve lithium

I'll bet you that BEVs will boom in the next few years, still using lithium batteries. The high price of lithium is sending a signal to the free market, and as a result more development of lithium resources is happening. If prices are high enough, lithium and other metals can be recovered from sea water, and we aren't running out of sea water anytime soon. Also, we haven't really started recycling lithium car batteries yet, but that's coming too.

According to this article a Tesla Model S only needs 15 pounds / 7 kg of lithium, about as much as a bowling ball; and experts think that just the lithium available from mining would be enough for 185 years.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-lithium-battery-future/

Tons of research is going into batteries, but it is way too early to bet on a winning horse at this point.

For years I have been interested in batteries big enough to run an entire city ("grid-scale" batteries). I was assuming that something unusual like the liquid metal battery technology or flow batteries would be needed, but Tesla has started selling grid-scale lithium battery packs to Australia. So maybe lithium is even getting inexpensive enough for grid-scale. My understanding is that the Tesla battery in Australia can only supply power for a very short time, so I haven't lost interest in liquid metal or flow batteries.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/12/26/teslas-enormous-battery-in-australia-just-weeks-old-is-already-responding-to-outages-in-record-time/

http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/liquid-metal-battery-inventor-questions-lithium-ion-as-grid-scale-storage-solution-2017-03-29

There was a company in South Africa that did a project to make Biodiesel from Algae called De Beers Fuel (which has no connection with diamond company De Beers). The idea was to franchise the biodiesel manufacturing plants said to produce tens of thousands of litres of fuel per day. After being interviewed by the investigative programme Carte Blanche it became clear that there was no real plants built and no biodiesel being produced. http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/print-version/lsquodeadrsquo-biofuelfromalgae-initiative-leaves-a-stink-2007-06-15

"Before humans, was there ever an atomic explosion on the surface of this planet?"

Volcano's and Asteroids have put *way* more heat out than the atomic explosions we humans have set off.

"Before humans, was there a way for animals on the opposite end of the planet to communicate with each other?"

thats like saying Before flying animals could creatures go higher in the atmosphere to breath out their CO2?

"So why is it so hard to believe that humans could be raising the average temperature of the planet by a few degrees every year?"

A few degrees every year? we would all be dead. The fact is the 'rapid' temperature curve we were on is petering off and reversing

" During 2006, the doomsters were predicting that 2007 would be the hottest year on record, so why have we seen no reports about this?

        The answer is simple - 2007 turned out to be the coolest year for 30 years. It is also the case that there has been no global warming since 1998. In fact, since 1998, there has been steady cooling.

        Even more dramatic is the fact that the most recent computer model predictions indicate that there will be no more global warming for the next ten years. But the doomsters say that, after this ten-year period, global warming will come back with a vengeance. Why?

        Certainly, mankind's production of carbon dioxide (CO2) has continued to increase since 1998 and will continue to increase, particularly since countries such as China and India say that their economic growth comes first, so they do not intend worrying too much about CO2 production."

http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/there-is-no-evidence-man-made-co2-causes-climate-change-2008-07-04

This is zealotry:

The world is a bridge; pass over it; but build not your dwelling there.

Look. We live in a litigious world. Although it's good guidance to tell programmers to avoid getting involved in discussions of, or reading, patents and their applications, it's a different thing to choose to be ignorant of your field, its history and the decisions surrounding it. The law is the law and it's a waste of time to develop applications that have been obviated by lawyers.

God bless the lawyers. Gently may they swing.

Instead of port security, the feds do Marine Infrastructure Recovery Program (MIRP), and SSA Marine - a major port handler announces awhile back it is moving its HQ from Seattle, WA, (USA) to Arizona (USA), presumably to be better positioned for any possibility of port operations in Mexico, when the NAFTA Super Highway gets built; and

While the Carlyle Group, several years ago purchased Trenstar, Inc., which has expertise in RFIDs with regard to container shipping, while the US-Oman Free Trade Agreement was recently passed, making legal foreign ownership of the ports.....see something suspicious going on here?????

...is actually ahead of the US - Amazing!

PS - For the people who don't know what i am talking about, South Africa has a history of taking a very long time to deploy advances in telecoms - mostly due to our EVIL incumbent Telco, Telkom making sure they are able to rape the South African Internet population for all they are worth. Which means that typically our Internet connectivity options plainly suck. For some more information on how bad they suck, you can visit Hellkom or MyADSL.

However, we have actually had 3G technology over here for quite a couple of months already.