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The EV market isn't growing because people want EVs. It's growing because of massive goverment subsidies and CARB regulations requiring a certain percentage of automaker's sales be ZEV (zero emissions vehicles). EVs are currently the only viable ZEV, although Toyota has sold a few hydrogen vehicles (friend of mine has one - it too has massive subsidies). If you can't meet the ZEV percentage, you get banned from selling vehicles in California. And since about a dozen states automatically adopt CARB's rules (including New York), you end up banned from selling cars to more than a third of the U.S. population.

So every automaker makes and sells EVs regardless of whether or not it's a good idea. (Or buys ZEV credits from a manufacturer who sells excess EVs, like Tesla - this is what keeps Tesla afloat). This is the most massive experimental social engineering program I've seen in my lifetime. We don't yet know if EVs are the right solution to clean energy for transportation, but people in government have decided that it is and are mandating them. You see, EVs (and hydrogen vehicles) aren't truly zero emissions. The energy to push these vehicles forward has to come from somewhere. EVs don't eliminate pollution, they merely transfer the pollution production to a power plant somewhere. So as long as we're generating electricity from fossil fuels, EVs will be powered by fossil fuels.

There is one technology which truly is zero emissions - ethanol. It's a closed cycle. Use plants to gather solar energy, they extract raw materials from the atmosphere and use sunlight to convert it into sugars and starches, use bacteria to ferment it into alcohol, burn alcohol in a vehicle for energy releasing its constituents back into the atmosphere, which plants extract to form more sugars and starches. Brazil produces ethanol (using cane sugar) for about 83 cents/gallon, which puts it at about the same price per mile as EVs powered by coal-generated electricity (3.6 cents/mile). And the best part is, you don't need to build new infrastructure. The existing gas stations and pump technology works just fine as ethanol stations. And internal combustion engines can run ethanol with slight modifications.

Unfortunately, (1) because burning ethanol releases CO2, CARB doesn't classify them as a ZEV even though unlike fossil fuels, that CO2 came from live plants and will be re-used by live plants. And (2) the ethanol program in the U.S. got hijacked by the corn industry. Corn is not ideal for ethanol production at our latitude (sugar beets are). But to prevent starvation we subsidize corn to make sure there's an excess supply. It's always a challenge to get rid of the excess corn - foreign aid, feed for cattle, high fructose corn syrup. And in the 1970s someone came up with the idea of converting it to ethanol. That's a great way to get rid of excess corn - its production costs are a sunk cost so you're not getting it back. Better to use the corn for something rather than let it rot in silos feeding rodents. But the corn industry took over the program and now we're wasting money growing corn for the express purpose of converting it to ethanol. The result is ethanol fuel which is more expensive than electricity and in some cases more expensive than gasoline per mile. What we should be doing is researching sugar beets for ethanol production, or how to modify sugar cane so it'll grow at our latitudes, or how to convert cellulose into sugar (it's basically a bunch of sugar molecules glued together end-to-end making it hard for animals to break apart into sugar, though a few bacteria have figured out how).

• Coal costs about $50/ton and contains about 24 GJ of energy. That's about 0.21 cents/MJ.
• Gasoline costs about $3/gallon and contains about 120 MJ/gallon. That's about 2.5 cents/MJ.

Gasoline is about an order of magnitude more expensive than coal per unit of energy. This is why Hawaii has the highest electricity prices in the U.S. - they generate most of their electricity by burning oil, not coal.

This is what a lot of EV proponents seem to miss - EVs do not have zero emissions. All they do is shift the emissions from the tailpipe to an electrical power plant. If you then simultaneously eliminate the cheapest sources of electricity (coal and gas), the cost of EV "fuel" will go up. Likewise if every garage has an EV charging in it overnight, the overnight price of electricity will go up. (Also, the EPA's decision to base MPGe rating on battery capacity, although necessary to normalize for differences in how electricity is generated, completely cuts out inefficiencies at the power plant, transmission, and battery charging. It's like measuring ICE mileage starting with engine power output, instead of how much fuel was burned. So EV MPGe is not directly comparable to ICE MPG. From an energy efficiency standpoint, EVs use almost as many Joules per mile compared to ICE vehicles; it's tough to peg an exact comparison because most EVs use things like skinny low rolling resistance tires which typically aren't found on ICE vehicles.)

Brazil produced cane sugar ethanol for about 83 cents/gallon a decade ago. Ethanol contains about 79 MJ/gallon (66% of gasoline), so this works out to 1.05 cents/MJ.

• Gasoline ICE: 35 MPG @ $3/gallon = $8.57 per 100 miles
• EV: 30 kWh/100 miles @ 12 cents/kWh = $3.60 per 100 miles (ignores charging losses so actual cost is slightly higher)
• Ethanol ICE:23 MPG (66% of gasoline) @ $0.83/gallon = $3.60 per 100 miles

So the story isn't over yet for ICE vehicles. Ethanol (produced from the right source, not corn) can potentially beat EVs in terms of fuel cost. But without the headaches of developing battery technology, having to haul a massive battery around, replacing existing gas station infrastructure, waiting 30 minutes for a supercharge, installing an overnight charger in your garage, figuring out a new way to implement road maintenance taxes. What's missing is a way to scale ethanol production up without dramatically impacting food production. If someone cracks how to produce ethanol from cellulose (all the weeds, brush, and spoiled vegetables which we currently throw away), then EVs are dead.

His qualifications are here: https://www.wilsoncenter.org/person/todd-kuiken

He seems to have degrees from BA to PhD in environmental policy (not science). His publications are all about science policy, which is the boring version of science fiction and bad science journalism: more recent titles (nothing listed after 2013) include "Four steps to avoid a synthetic biology disaster" and "Cleaning up contaminated waste sites: Is nanotechnology the answer?" In other words, the shit "science" blather you find in Newsweek, only with footnotes.

His picture is worth a thousand words. He can't even knot his tie correctly. Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover.

Not Ukraine. Historically it was never part of Ukraine.

Except for the fact that Russia gave it to Ukraine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/p...

They are competitors NOW. https://web.stanford.edu/group... https://www.wilsoncenter.org/a... You simply haven't been search very hard, or honestly it seems.

Snowden has offered to help Brazil investigate US intelligence. Is that the patriotism you were referring to?

Why, yes, Yes it is.
Any spying on Brazil was for economic reasons, probably at the behest of corporations, not due to any threat to the US.

Smug AND clueless. Nice. Nice.

THE NEW CHINA-BRAZIL AXIS
http://prospect.org/article/new-china-brazil-axis
"Last week, an interview at a Brazilian defense website revealed that China and Brazil had come to an agreement regarding the training of Chinese naval personnel on board the Sao Paulo, Brazil's only aircraft carrier. Brazil is one of the only four countries in the world to possess an aircraft carrier capable of launching and recovering conventional aircraft; the others are France, Russia, and the United States."

China Carrier Starts Second Round of Jet Tests
http://news.usni.org/2013/06/19/china-carrier-starts-second-round-of-jet-tests
"The People’s Liberation Army Navy has conducted a second round of jet tests aboard its aircraft carrier with its J-15 carrier-based fighter on Wednesday, according to a report from the Xinhua news agency.
The Chinese are being trained in carrier aviation —the most complicated military aviation operations — by a cadre of Brazilian carrier pilots."

Brazilian Nuclear Cooperation with the People's Republic of China
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/brazilian-nuclear-cooperation-the-peoples-republic-china

Brazil, China build military industry ties
http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Security-Industry/2009/11/17/Brazil-China-build-military-industry-ties/UPI-86341258474208/

Brazil builds Russian defense ties with missile plan
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/16/brazil-russia-idUSL1N0I61NC20131016

Brazil’s Iran Diplomacy Worries U.S. Officials
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/15/world/americas/15lula.html?_r=0

Proposed Russian-Cuba-Venezuela Space Cooperation Raises Many Questions
http://jasonpoblete.com/2008/09/22/proposed-russian-cuba-venezuela-space-cooperation-raises-many-questions/

Yep, nooooo reason at all to be interested there.

Ethanol is an extremely inefficient way to "store" solar energy.

Corn ethanol is an extremely inefficient way to "store" solar energy.

This whole boondoggle started because the U.S. always runs a corn surplus. The U.S. doesn't want a repeat of the 1930s, where crop failures led to hunger and near starvation, so the government deliberately subsidizes food production (mostly corn) to insure there's an oversupply. The question then becomes, what to do with all this extra corn? A lot of it is sent overseas as foreign aid. A bunch of it is converted to high fructose corn syrup, as a substitute for cane sugar. More still becomes grain feed for livestock, to satisfy our appetite for beef, milk, and cheese. And a few decades ago someone got the bright idea of converting it into ethanol to help ease the country's dependence on foreign oil.

That's the reason the country started making corn ethanol instead of using a more energy-efficient crop like sugar beets. Unfortunately, somewhere along the line, it took on a life of its own, and under the influence of heavy lobbying we started growing corn for the sake of converting it into ethanol, rather than converting only excess corn into ethanol.

Ethanol, provided you make it from a sugar-rich crop, is actually a pretty good way to gather and store solar energy for transportation applications. The alternative (PV solar to electricity to batteries to electric vehicle) is horribly expensive. Wholesale cost of PV solar electricity is about $0.20-$0.25 per kWh, vs. about $0.055 (wholesale) for coal. The Leaf is rated at 34 kWh per 100 miles, or $6.80-$8.50 per 100 miles at wholesale PV solar electricity prices. To travel 100 miles requires 411 kg of batteries (EPA rage of 73 miles on 300 kg).

Brazil estimates its sugar cane ethanol costs $0.83/gal to produce. If you figure a Leaf-like car would get 35 mpg, modify that for ethanol's 70% energy density vs. gasoline, that would mean 4.08 gal per 100 miles, or a cost of $3.36 per 100 miles at wholesale cane sugar ethanol prices. The 4.08 gallons needed to move the vehicle 100 miles would only weigh 12.1 kg. So sugar cane ethanol is 2x - 2.5x cheaper and 34x lighter than PV solar (this ignores the engine weight, but I'm just following the criteria of this argument - "storing" solar energy).

Like I said, "denial and bluster". Re: Oppenheimer...just google around for or read the other books on Soviet Spying in the USA. It is not reasonable to assume I can't replicate the output of books into a Slashdot discussion! It's not like his wife and brother being communists is a secret. This link covers much of what knew: http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/Father%20of%20the%20A%20Bomb.htm Here is a link to a discussion that goes much further on Oppenheimer then I was willing to go: http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?doc_id=43900&fuseaction=topics.publications&group_id=13349&topic_id=1409 "His own party (the Democrats by the way - did you not even known that much?)" I lost track of who you are refering to with "His" If you mean Oppenheimer...I have no idea if he affiliated with the democrats or republicans. When he was younger (pre-WWII) he certainly identified as a communist for at least some time. For how long and to what degree that affiliation occurred, that is one of the questions at hand. If you mean McCarthy...he was Republican Senator from Wisconsin. "Communism was just the excuse for the populist witch hunt because..." More bluster and denial. The Soviet threat was real. The Soviets were pretty good at espionage and institutional infiltration. Are you denying this? Perhaps, I am just misunderstanding what you are saying. Is it just McCarthy's efforts/effects that were wrong? McCarthy sure does come across as a clown. The American left has used that to try to pretend that real Soviet activity was not going on. I have no idea if McCarthy correctly named any of the following types in USGOV: prior communists, secret communists, Soviet Agents/Spies, Soviet Agents of Influence. I say this because I don't who he named. He does seem clownish, so I imagine he made many mistakes. 100% mistakes? I have no idea. Blanket general assertions by left-leaning journalist, historians and movie makers (remember: "bluster and denial") do not convince me. I also don't have the time to do the research to see who he accused, and then to cross check that with what is known now. Some historian or journalist should. Heck, give me a grant fo r 6 months and I'll do it.

Perhaps you are not as well informed as you think you are:

http://www.wilsoncenter.org/topics/pubs/CWIHP_WP_45b.pdf

http://www.wilsoncenter.org/topics/pubs/CWIHP_WP_45b.pdf

Ah, the world is so much more complicated than you know, perhaps?

http://www.wilsoncenter.org/topics/pubs/CWIHP_WP_45b.pdf

That would be something I agree on. The way I see it there is only two ways the world could solve Africa's problems, with force or ignore it.

A third way is to stop supporting bad actors.

Next solution would be to basically wall off Africa, noting and nobody goes in or out. Cut them off from the rest of the world. Famine, war, and plague will pretty much take care of the rest.

Yea right. Not much can be done about the Sudan, the Chinese supports them because of the oil.

Yes, it's heartless and pretty fucking sick but its the best I can think of. We've poured hundreds of billions of dollars of aid in to Africa over the last 60 years and all it has done is make it worse.

That's because the aid was the wrong type of aid. Much of the aid was based on the Washington Consensus, it's predecessors, and followers like neoliberalism. One part of this was to get most of the population to move into cities then let large scale farms grow food, when the west didn't export food. So, many small hold farmers were basically driven off farms, the same thing happened in Central America. The "Wilson Quarterly" had a pretty good article on how small farms are increasing in numbers and are producing more food than large operations, "The Coming Revolution in Africa". Though not the same, Zimbabwe used to be the breadbasket of southern Africa. They used to produce enough food to feed everyone yet still had plenty of food left to export, food was Zimbabwe's major export earner. But now it's a basketcase and needs food aid.

Falcon

DDT didn't cause the thinning. It's still banned though, because people fear global warming and other such nonsense.

"In the 1950s, the World Health Organization (WTO) dropped DDT on the island of Borneo to control mosquitoes, resulting in two unexpected events. First, homes collapsed under the weight of hornets' nests that died and hardened from the DDT; and second, and more troubling, there was an outbreak of bubonic plague because the DDT affected the island's animal nutrient cycle. Small animals (lizards, insects, etc.) became sluggish, while larger animals such as cats ended up with toxic levels of DDT from consumption of smaller creatures. Eventually, all the cats died, leading to an increase in the rat population and an outbreak of bubonic plague. The WTO's solution--which worked--was to airdrop cats to deal with the rat problem, which, in turn, addressed the bubonic plague problem."

Amazing how someone can mention DDT spraying in Sri Lanka and yet fail to mention that Sri Lanka resumed spraying but the mosquitoes had developed resistance to DDT

How about mentioning what happened in Borneo:

"In the 1950s, the World Health Organization (WTO) dropped DDT on the island of Borneo to control mosquitoes, resulting in two unexpected events. First, homes collapsed under the weight of hornets' nests that died and hardened from the DDT; and second, and more troubling, there was an outbreak of bubonic plague because the DDT affected the island's animal nutrient cycle. Small animals (lizards, insects, etc.) became sluggish, while larger animals such as cats ended up with toxic levels of DDT from consumption of smaller creatures. Eventually, all the cats died, leading to an increase in the rat population and an outbreak of bubonic plague. The WTO's solution--which worked--was to airdrop cats to deal with the rat problem, which, in turn, addressed the bubonic plague problem."

You know of The Law of Unintended Consequences don't you?

And what of unintended consequences of DDT spraying?

"In the 1950s, the World Health Organization (WTO) dropped DDT on the island of Borneo to control mosquitoes, resulting in two unexpected events. First, homes collapsed under the weight of hornets' nests that died and hardened from the DDT; and second, and more troubling, there was an outbreak of bubonic plague because the DDT affected the island's animal nutrient cycle. Small animals (lizards, insects, etc.) became sluggish, while larger animals such as cats ended up with toxic levels of DDT from consumption of smaller creatures. Eventually, all the cats died, leading to an increase in the rat population and an outbreak of bubonic plague. The WTO's solution--which worked--was to airdrop cats to deal with the rat problem, which, in turn, addressed the bubonic plague problem."

Currently there's debate in Africa on whether to spray with DDT or not to spray. There are doctors and scientists who support bans on DDT and those who support the use of DDT.

Exception that's not actually what happened. DDT wasn't banned in the US until 1972, and yet some developing countries (Sri Lanka is the most widely used example) had already suspended spraying as a Malaria control measure in the 60's, as the mosquitoes had developed resistance to DDT, presumed to be from agricultural spraying. Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] has a reasonable (if short) summary.

There were two other unforeseen consequences of spraying with DDT: " In the 1950s, the World Health Organization (WTO) dropped DDT on the island of Borneo to control mosquitoes, resulting in two unexpected events. First, homes collapsed under the weight of hornets' nests that died and hardened from the DDT; and second, and more troubling, there was an outbreak of bubonic plague because the DDT affected the island's animal nutrient cycle. Small animals (lizards, insects, etc.) became sluggish, while larger animals such as cats ended up with toxic levels of DDT from consumption of smaller creatures. Eventually, all the cats died, leading to an increase in the rat population and an outbreak of bubonic plague. The WTO's solution--which worked--was to airdrop cats to deal with the rat problem, which, in turn, addressed the bubonic plague problem."

Since 1900, U.S. farmers have more than tripled wheat production per acre to 40 bushels in 1997, up from 12. For corn, the gains have been even larger--127 bushels per acre in 1997 versus 28 in 1900. But in the previous century, crop yields barely improved at all. In 1800, wheat yields were 15 bushels per acre and corn yields 25 bushels per acre.

'Between Coca and Cocaine' by Paul Gootenberg, a Professor at Stony Brook.