I really don't have time to contact the author and ask them about the correlation between their approach and the more complicated approach and what data exists on it. Which would be the logical next step. Feel free to do so yourself and post the results of the discussion.
The Younger Dryas was severe in Central and Western Europe and the Eastern, Central and Western parts of North America.
The strongest effects were in Greenland and Iceland. Lesser but still major effects were in western Europe and northeastern North America. There were still lesser ripple affects all across the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. However, the global average temperature decline during the YD is estimated at only 0.6C. It was a change in heat transport event.
I don't know about you, but I'd call having a veritable freshwater sea the size of California suddenly drain into the ocean to be a pretty radical event.
Oh, don't forget the Huelmo/Mascardi Cold Reversal in the Southern Hemisphere started slightly before the Younger Dryas and ended at the same time.
And was much slower and milder. IMHO, it's pretty hard to call it the same event.
The early 20th century warming is a combination of several factors -- first, a strong shift in the PDO, and then followed by not only a decline in PDO, but a rapid increase in global industrialization. The latter might seem like it would have just the opposite effect, but you have to remember that until the 1960s/1970s, there was very little regulations on power plant emissions. While CO2 causes warming, it has to accumulate for this to happen. Far more rapid is the cooling effects of chemicals like sulfur dioxide, which were emitted en masse until the first world started mandating scrubbers on its power plants. While SOx has a relatively short (compared to CO2) residency, so it's really just a masking of the real climate, its affects are quite powerful.
Not at all. The *reasons* for the warming involve a breakdown of the strength of dozens of different forcings factors, and then looking at them and figuring out why they're changing. I can go into more detail if you'd like.
Which would be a valid argument if that's what scientists were actually doing. The early 20th century warming is a combination of several factors -- first, a strong shift in the PDO, and then followed by not only a decline in PDO, but a rapid increase in global industrialization. The latter might seem like it would have just the opposite effect, but you have to remember that until the 1960s/1970s, there was very little regulations on power plant emissions. While CO2 causes warming, it has to accumulate for this to happen. Far more rapid is the cooling effects of chemicals like sulfur dioxide, which were emitted en masse until the first world started mandating scrubbers on its power plants. While SOx has a relatively short (compared to CO2) residency, so it's really just a masking of the real climate, its affects are quite powerful.
The "Younger Dryas" is only well defined and was only severe within a rather small region -- namely, the tail end of the Gulf Stream. The abrupt termination is likely due to a sudden drop in flow from the Gulf Stream due to a massive, catastrophic disruption of the planet's climate system caused by the draining of a lake holding more water than all of today's lakes combined, after a glacial dam burst. Current data suggests that there was no Younger Dryas event in much of the southern hemisphere, and most northern hemisphere signatures are weak and offset. But indeed, it was extremely severe for the areas it affected.
If it's about averages, then you have to set the bar for the average. You can say a 30 year average is significant, or a 60 year average, or a 600 year average, or a 6,000 year average.
No, that would be called "making things up". Statistical significance requires statistical evidence. And we have ample evidence that the planet's temperature is dominated on the inter-annual scale by ENSO, and to a lesser extent, by other factors, but is dominated by AGW on the multi-decadal scale.
We have tons of data on ice extent. Most people know that, back to 1979, we have a beautiful record of satellite readings with only small holes. But there's a lot more.
Before that, we have sailing logs and logs from Arctic cities for the arrival and departure of ice. A particularly good source of data is the records from the US and Soviet navies' submarine fleets, which has been made available to researchers. There's direct written records from sailors all the way back to the dark ages, although these progressively become much patchier and are usually only good for localized ice extent.
From coastal records, the data dates back as far. Starting in the late 1800s, it becomes very good, and is near complete starting in the 1950s. Iceland has a good 1,200 year record.
Probably the best long-term record we have is that of sediment cores, and just recently we've started getting an increasingly number of papers on the subject (due to the hostility of the region, only readily have many cores become available). Here's a good review. There are several types of sediment proxies.
The first includes the deposition of ice-rafted debris. Large grains of minerals don't just appear in the middle of the ocean. They're too big to blow and too heavy to float. We observe the process of ice rafted debris being deposited in present day. The debris comes in two types: smaller grains from coastal margins, and larger grains from icebergs. The size, shapes, chemical signatures, and surface characteristics of the grains bear hallmarks of their origins and of the type of ice conditions at the time.
A second source of data in sediment cores is that of microfossils. Different types of plankton have different habitats in which they can live (i.e., some can live under ice, others can't) and known sedimentation and preservation rates. A third, and similar, technique involves the fossils of bottom-dwelling organisms. This may seem odd, as they're not directly affected by the ice -- but they're *hugely* indirectly affected. Very little organic matter, which such organisms eat, is deposited beneath the ice sheet; however, vast quantities are deposited around the edges of the ice, and a normal amount beyond it. Their populations are shown to well correlate with ice cover.
A fourth technique, like the above, involves the amount of organic matter itself deposited. Beyond just quantity, you can look at chemistry -- for example, there are chemical biomarkers for diatoms that live in sea ice.
At the coasts, you have a lot more data, as sea ice has significant affects on the land when it touches. This affects everything from whalebone to large mollusks to driftwood to plant matter and so forth. Even arctic tree records provide significant data, as arctic trees do not survive along coasts perennially lined with ice.
Concerning driftwood: wood cannot pass through ice. Driftwood floats, becomes waterlogged, and sinks in open water. Driftwood entrained in sea ice collects in quantity at the ice margin, and corresondingly sinks in quantity at such locations. Massive quantities of driftwood fossils are available.
Various types of sea mammals closely correspond with the ice margins -- polar bears, various species of seals, walrus, narwhal, beluga, and bowhead. T
Ooh, Watts -- everybody's favorite college-dropout electrical engineer who likes to play climatologist and who pretends to be a certified meteorologist!
What a great link -- is it Lets Cherry Pick Data And Then Pretend That It Overrides Peer-Reviewed Analysis time again already?
The author, of course, conflates finding crops growing in modern Greenland to assuming that they could have grown back then, but notes the strong evidence that little, if anything, was ever successfully grown back then but hay and possibly limited amounts of flax (and the only evidence for that is pollen studies, which failed to turn up traditional food crops). Contemporary writings noted that most Greenlanders lived their whole life without ever seeing wheat, a piece of bread, or a mug of barley beer. The earliest settlers reportedly tried growing barley, but there was virtually no success.
The average temperature at the peak of the last glaciation was 8-9C colder than the modern era. In one century, the "business as usual" scenario will lead to over 5-7C warming (our current rate of rise is about 2C per century, but not only are emissions rising, but we're currently having to overcome the planet's thermal inertia).
It's not *that* the temperatures are rising that's the problem. It's the *rate* that's the problem.
Ah, this old yarn! As another poster has already mentioned, it was named "Greenland" to lure settlers. But more importantly, there *were* places in Greenland that were green. Those same places are still there, and are even bigger today. Despite attempts to, the Vikings were unable to grow any crops on Greenland, and the only non-animal sources of food in their diet were wild berries, grasses, and seaweed. Today, Greenland cities can grow beets, rhubarb, and other cold-weather plants that the Vikings were unable to.
And, BTW, ice cover has increased since 2007... is that a sign of Global Cooling?
Oh, I just love this argument. It's based on the fact that arctic sea ice is declining to unprecedented levels according to studies using every piece of data and proxy data known, as documented in dozens of peer-reviewed studies, but at the same time, Antarctic ice is increasing, and at times, the combined average is higher than the previous combined average. Never mind that Antarctic sea ice increase is a *forecast* of AGW due to the increased snowfall and increase in flow rates of its glaciers, while Artic sea ice is declining, as expected.
The argument can basically be summed up as this:
Nurse: Doctor! The patient in room 1 has a temperature of 103.6! And the temperature of the patient in room 2 is down to 93.6! Doctor: Perfect -- they average out to normal!
The conversation was about whether EVs are as useful as current gasoline powered. Your response indicates that you believe they are if we change equality to mean different. Point is, I don't have to stop in any of those little places (as in a couple of buildings) with my current Yukon XL or my wife's Saturn L300 if I don't want to.
Wait -- so your argument is that we shouldn't adopt EVs because there are obscure roads out west which have gas stations that charge more than you'd like for gasoline? Am I getting this correct?
FYI, but electricity is 1/3 the price of gasoline. So if your argument is about how much you'll pay... Yes, for rapid charging, you need to cover the extra capital costs, but the capital costs are pretty similar to gas station capital costs even at today's prices.
The reason that most people don't notice it is that they're mainly used to batteries in laptops and cell phones. The problem is that instead of choosing longer lifespan, laptop and cell manufacturers simply decrease battery size and increase power consumption. So the users fume that they don't get any more life out of their packs that they used to.
Have a look at crossing Wyoming: Cheyenne to Evanston is 357 miles and most stations in between charge about 25% more for gas than stations in those two towns.
Wait, what? The question is whether there's a place to fill up, not how much they cost. California charges more for gasoline than Iowa, but that's offtopic, too. That route has many dozens of gas stations along it.
or look at Las Vegas, NV to Ely, NV which is 246 miles and nothing in between.
Yeah, nothing. Except for Moapa Piaute Travel, Alamo Truck Stop, R Place Food Store, Jerry's Service, Y Service Station, and A&B Service.
Did you even check these routes before you posted?
Do you think charging stations in the very small towns would not charge well above the rates of the ones in the larger towns
Again, how again is this even remotely relevant to the discussion?
Take a different route because my preferred one is not to your liking. And here I was thinking that progressives were all about personal choice and personal freedom.
How is the freedom to charge what you see fit in a free market taking away "personal choice and personal freedom"? I'm really baffled by your post.
Yes, rapid charging stations are not for at home -- just like with gas stations.
Rapid charge stations are, per-charger, about as expensive as gas stations are per-pump, although with a much broader range, since there really is no solid cutoff on what defines "rapid" charging. Usually $30-$125k each, plus several thousand in energy storage per charger if you want a battery buffer.
They are not "really heavy" either. Think vending machines. As for the install, even if you count the weight of a battery buffer, there's way less mass that needs to be hauled in when you consider all of the excavation equipment and concrete for installing the underground gas tank for the gas station.
On-site storage and feed power is proportional to how many vehicles stop by and how frequently. If you want to talk about really remote places, which is what you seem to want to talk about, you don't need much storage at all so long as you have a trickle-charge grid connect. On the other hand, if you only have a couple cars a day (say, sales of 100kWh, ~3 cars), you don't even need a grid connect; in the desert you could permanently safely meet that demand with a high statistical availability with ~200 m^2 of solar panels (assuming capacity factor of 0.2, 20% efficiency, etc; at $5/w installed (high for non-rooftop), that's about ~$200k installed and will generate 192kW on an average day) and 500-1000kWh storage (enough to store 5-10 entirely pitch black day's worth of energy -- say, a ~$100k vanadium redox system, with a lifespan measured in decades and only needing periodic inspections to look for corrosion) (note that even cloudy days, rare as they are in the desert, still generate some power). Add to that the $125k for a 300kW charger (very fast). Add other costs, say, $75k, and you're up to $500k total. For a system that requires no employees and largely takes care of itself, and for which you don't even have to pay for fuel. Assuming $25 per fillup and a station lifespan of 30 years, you'll take in $822k. And that's with *solar power* and *current prices* and *no subsidy*.
I agree the battery packs are and will be installed in different locations in different cars.
Which makes the notion of standardization a pipe dream.
Even so I don't think the cost for the swapping station really comes in to play.
Of course it does. PBP's already cost a fortune and they're about as simple as it gets. You're talking about basically turning them into a factory of multi-configuration 6-axis robots rated for holding tonnes of weight. Something like the $100,000 Kuka KR1000 Titan. *Just for the battery disconnects/reconnects* -- never mind the inventory management hardware. The cost of the inventory itself would be in the millions and take up a tremendous amount of space. Here's just one Leaf battery pack. And the Leaf isn't all that long range.
You personally don't need to own one and businesses will recover the capital over time.
No, they won't; that's the point. The costs are just way too high.
With swappable batteries you need to be able to access them from the outside of the vehicle, but that's about it.
That's not "about it". They're an integral part of the structure of the vehicle. It's like saying "To remove the frame of the car, you have to be able to access it from outside of the vehicle, but that's about it". Only that the battery pack is an even larger percent of the vehicle's mass than the frame. It's a structural element. It's the most important part of the car's CG. It's what the entire EV is built around. It's not "about it".
If Better Place is able to achieve reliable coupling with their scheme, I wouldn't think say 5 smaller couplings would be unworkable. When you increase the number of couplings, you decrease the amount of current each has to carry, making each one cheaper.
That's not how battery packs work. If you knew anything about the industry, you'd be aware of the huge disparity between the cost of the cells and the cost of an assembled battery pack. The smaller you make a pack, the greater the disparity. A pack is not just cells. It's cells, casing, charge management, wiring, connectors, cooling, hard point attachments, cell failure isolation, fuses and crash-triggered disconnects, etc, plus a ton of labor.
Also for the cost of the pack, you would be leasing them anyway.
Cost is cost. It will always have to be borne by someone. Available money is finite.
You listed a few profiles for batteries; two in fact. High power and low power.
Not at all. There are entirely different voltage curves, heat management profiles, lifespans under different conditions, charge rates, discharge rates, energy densities (there's a 3x spread, from ~70Wh/kg titanates to ~220Wh/kg nickel-cobalt li-ions), and price per unit energy (10x spread, from $300/kWh junky Chinese cells to $3/kWh AltairNano cells).
Quick charging is, while also solvable, a completely different beast.
Not "solvable". "Solved." As in, "in vehicles today". As in, "today's best li-ion batteries can literally charge in just a couple minutes without relevant lifespan problems if you give them sufficient power and cooling."
With the swapping stations you can charge the batteries a bit slower anticipating demand, with less need for expensive high-voltage high-amperage infrastructure all over the place when compared to ubiquitous quick charging.
That's not how quick charging works except on the lower end in isolated stations. On the mass scale, rapid chargers are run from a battery bank which is trickle charged -- just like with a battery swap station, but without all of the massive complications, allowing
Shape of the pack? Why not have multiple smaller packs in each vehicle?
Split a pack up into, say, 10 separate packs which can go into arbitrary locations, and you 10x the connection problem, double the combined cost of the battery packs for the vehicle (because of the overhead on packs as small as you'll end up with), increase its weight, and increase the cost of the pack swapper several times over.
I somewhat see our point with the voltage/discharge profile, but the other things are quite manageable. Even then, at least at the beginning, there can be just a few types.
No, there can't. Here, let's list the first EVs that come to my mind and then look at their pack needs:
Nissan Leaf: As a five-seater sedan, the pack exists between the belly pan and the floor near the center of the vehicle, which is a very efficient use of space (and is the sort of thing that Better Place is trying to do for swapping). Since it's a pure EV, it needs a high energy, low power battery. Since it's a low-end EV, the pack is short-range (a nominal 100 miles) Chevy Volt: As a narrow four-seater designed for a lot of internal room without a high profile, the pack can't fit under the floor. So the pack is T-shaped, running down the center tunnel and under the back seats. Since it's a plug-in hybrid, it needs a high power, low energy battery (these cells are typically more expensive). Aptera 2e: As an unusual shaped composite two seat three wheeler (to get aerodynamics far superior to conventional cars, albeit with less mainstream looks), the CG must be kept very low and fit within the contours. The pack goes under and behind the two seats of the vehicle, next to the rear taper of the underbelly. Toyota RAV4: No details announced yet, but as an electric SUV, its pack will need to be larger and deliver more power than sedans need, but as a mass-market vehicle, it will still need to be made from an affordable chemistry. Tesla Roadster: Since it's rear-wheel drive, you need the weight over the rear wheels. As a consequence, the battery pack is located in the rear and takes up part of the trunk space. As a high-end vehicle, the nominal ~250 miles range requires a pack more expensive than most people in lower-end cars could afford. Since the market is high end consumers, a shorter lifespan chemistry is acceptable so long as the vehicle delivers on its range and power needs (and hence, that's what's used). Tesla Model S: Rear-wheel drive, but an entirely different shape and weight distribution profile, which the battery must be matched for. Three pack size options are available depending on how much the consumer wants to pay (160 to 300 miles range). Lightning GT: Since this car is all about high performance and extremely short charge times, they need to use a chemistry like the titanates. These are very low energy density, extremely high power output, and very expensive -- not a general purpose battery pack.
I can keep going if you'd like. The simple facts are that even if you freeze battery tech in time, you can't come close to starting to standardize. Let alone what happens as battery tech continues to advance.
And the main issue is that it's Totally Unnecessary. The concept has been effectively supplanted by rapid charging, which has no inventory or standardization problems. There are some companies with money invested into the notion that are holding out, but it's a tech proposal with no impetus behind it any more.
First off, that's a stupid comparison. The is not a 1960's Datsun 1200. It's a modern electric car that happens to be in the frame of a datsun. So stop using that as a for of appeal to emotion.
How is a homemade conversion running on lead-acid batteries "a modern electric car"?
What will really sell is an electric car that can take a family of 4 with luggage 300 miles and charge in less then 5 minutes, and is comparably priced to current gas models. We also need to deal with the problems with range due to temperature. Meaning, the 3000 miles but be 300 miles MINIMUM under the worst condition.
I'm curious as to why you set those particular standards on range. Just because they're what today's gasoline cars get? Gasoline cars have tanks sized the size they are to minimize the gross inconvenience of having to go to gas stations periodically in your everyday life -- something EVs don't do. 300 miles at 60 mph is six hours of driving straight. Yes, people do that, but you're not supposed to; for safety, you're supposed to take at least 5-10 minutes break every 2 hours.
Also, even the most desolate place in the continental US doesn't need that sort of range to get between gas stations. For example, what's a particularly desolate route -- say, Boulder City, NV to Kingman, AZ? That's 80 miles. As far as I can tell from gasprices.mapquest.com, the worst gas availability in the continental US on a state highway or better is something like the ~170 miles from Ely, NV to Tonopah, NV -- and nobody says you have to take that particular route even if you're going to one of those places (there are stations in Eureka, Austin, and Round Mountain if you take US 50 instead). Interstate gas stops are rarely more than a few dozen miles apart even in the most desolate areas. Plus, it's far easier to put a charging station in the middle of nowhere than a gas station. Gas stations require excavation, periodic deliveries, and people on hand, and hence are much less economical when you have a low traffic volume. A solar powered charging station with a battery bank can be hauled in on a palette to the middle of nowhere, set down, and will hum along with almost no mainteance on its own.
That's not it at all. The main problem with swapping battery packs is an infrastructure management problem.
First off, if there was only one type of battery pack, that would be rough enough. Stations would have to have large stores of surplus battery packs, which cost $10k or more each, take up a large amount of space, and weigh hundreds of pounds. But there's not ever going to be just one kind of battery pack, and it's not for a lack of interest. Different vehicles have different needs. Luxury car owners can afford better, longer-range battery packs than owners of economy cars. RWD cars need the weight in the rear, taking up part of the trunk area. Depending on the layout, a sedan either needs a pack under the floor or in a T-shape down the center tunnel. Pickups have different layout needs than SUVs than cars and so on. Want to try to fit an SUV pack into a motorcycle?
Now factor in that battery chemistry is a huge moving target right now. Even drivetrains and inverters are a moving target. You can't standardize on a single voltage charge/discharge profile in such circumstances. Really, you're talking about stocking dozens of each of dozens of different types of battery pack at every station, and having these stations dense enough to support long distance travel. It's just not going to happen. And as if that's not bad enough, there's also some real engineering challenges, like making such an integral part of the vehicle's structure readily removeable and reattachable over many cycles, and especially the removal and reattachment of the electrical hookups.
Battery swapping was an idea envisioned when rapid charging was much more difficult. It no longer is. So there's no need for it any more. Modern li-ion cells can charge in minutes without ruining the pack's lifespan if you can provide sufficient A) power and B) cooling.
Slashdot Mirror
I really don't have time to contact the author and ask them about the correlation between their approach and the more complicated approach and what data exists on it. Which would be the logical next step. Feel free to do so yourself and post the results of the discussion.
The strongest effects were in Greenland and Iceland. Lesser but still major effects were in western Europe and northeastern North America. There were still lesser ripple affects all across the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. However, the global average temperature decline during the YD is estimated at only 0.6C. It was a change in heat transport event.
I don't know about you, but I'd call having a veritable freshwater sea the size of California suddenly drain into the ocean to be a pretty radical event.
And was much slower and milder. IMHO, it's pretty hard to call it the same event.
No, today's warming is faster.
The early 20th century warming is a combination of several factors -- first, a strong shift in the PDO, and then followed by not only a decline in PDO, but a rapid increase in global industrialization. The latter might seem like it would have just the opposite effect, but you have to remember that until the 1960s/1970s, there was very little regulations on power plant emissions. While CO2 causes warming, it has to accumulate for this to happen. Far more rapid is the cooling effects of chemicals like sulfur dioxide, which were emitted en masse until the first world started mandating scrubbers on its power plants. While SOx has a relatively short (compared to CO2) residency, so it's really just a masking of the real climate, its affects are quite powerful.
Ack -- most of that post was supposed to go in a reply to someone else. :P Oh well.
Not at all. The *reasons* for the warming involve a breakdown of the strength of dozens of different forcings factors, and then looking at them and figuring out why they're changing. I can go into more detail if you'd like.
Which would be a valid argument if that's what scientists were actually doing. The early 20th century warming is a combination of several factors -- first, a strong shift in the PDO, and then followed by not only a decline in PDO, but a rapid increase in global industrialization. The latter might seem like it would have just the opposite effect, but you have to remember that until the 1960s/1970s, there was very little regulations on power plant emissions. While CO2 causes warming, it has to accumulate for this to happen. Far more rapid is the cooling effects of chemicals like sulfur dioxide, which were emitted en masse until the first world started mandating scrubbers on its power plants. While SOx has a relatively short (compared to CO2) residency, so it's really just a masking of the real climate, its affects are quite powerful.
The "Younger Dryas" is only well defined and was only severe within a rather small region -- namely, the tail end of the Gulf Stream. The abrupt termination is likely due to a sudden drop in flow from the Gulf Stream due to a massive, catastrophic disruption of the planet's climate system caused by the draining of a lake holding more water than all of today's lakes combined, after a glacial dam burst. Current data suggests that there was no Younger Dryas event in much of the southern hemisphere, and most northern hemisphere signatures are weak and offset. But indeed, it was extremely severe for the areas it affected.
The last time that what we are recreating right now occurred was the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, 55.8 mya.
If it's about averages, then you have to set the bar for the average. You can say a 30 year average is significant, or a 60 year average, or a 600 year average, or a 6,000 year average.
No, that would be called "making things up". Statistical significance requires statistical evidence. And we have ample evidence that the planet's temperature is dominated on the inter-annual scale by ENSO, and to a lesser extent, by other factors, but is dominated by AGW on the multi-decadal scale.
We have tons of data on ice extent. Most people know that, back to 1979, we have a beautiful record of satellite readings with only small holes. But there's a lot more.
Before that, we have sailing logs and logs from Arctic cities for the arrival and departure of ice. A particularly good source of data is the records from the US and Soviet navies' submarine fleets, which has been made available to researchers. There's direct written records from sailors all the way back to the dark ages, although these progressively become much patchier and are usually only good for localized ice extent.
From coastal records, the data dates back as far. Starting in the late 1800s, it becomes very good, and is near complete starting in the 1950s. Iceland has a good 1,200 year record.
Probably the best long-term record we have is that of sediment cores, and just recently we've started getting an increasingly number of papers on the subject (due to the hostility of the region, only readily have many cores become available). Here's a good review. There are several types of sediment proxies.
The first includes the deposition of ice-rafted debris. Large grains of minerals don't just appear in the middle of the ocean. They're too big to blow and too heavy to float. We observe the process of ice rafted debris being deposited in present day. The debris comes in two types: smaller grains from coastal margins, and larger grains from icebergs. The size, shapes, chemical signatures, and surface characteristics of the grains bear hallmarks of their origins and of the type of ice conditions at the time.
A second source of data in sediment cores is that of microfossils. Different types of plankton have different habitats in which they can live (i.e., some can live under ice, others can't) and known sedimentation and preservation rates. A third, and similar, technique involves the fossils of bottom-dwelling organisms. This may seem odd, as they're not directly affected by the ice -- but they're *hugely* indirectly affected. Very little organic matter, which such organisms eat, is deposited beneath the ice sheet; however, vast quantities are deposited around the edges of the ice, and a normal amount beyond it. Their populations are shown to well correlate with ice cover.
A fourth technique, like the above, involves the amount of organic matter itself deposited. Beyond just quantity, you can look at chemistry -- for example, there are chemical biomarkers for diatoms that live in sea ice.
At the coasts, you have a lot more data, as sea ice has significant affects on the land when it touches. This affects everything from whalebone to large mollusks to driftwood to plant matter and so forth. Even arctic tree records provide significant data, as arctic trees do not survive along coasts perennially lined with ice.
Concerning driftwood: wood cannot pass through ice. Driftwood floats, becomes waterlogged, and sinks in open water. Driftwood entrained in sea ice collects in quantity at the ice margin, and corresondingly sinks in quantity at such locations. Massive quantities of driftwood fossils are available.
Various types of sea mammals closely correspond with the ice margins -- polar bears, various species of seals, walrus, narwhal, beluga, and bowhead. T
Ooh, Watts -- everybody's favorite college-dropout electrical engineer who likes to play climatologist and who pretends to be a certified meteorologist!
What a great link -- is it Lets Cherry Pick Data And Then Pretend That It Overrides Peer-Reviewed Analysis time again already?
First off, the frog thing is just a myth. Second, life can adapt, but only with time.
As a reference:
The author, of course, conflates finding crops growing in modern Greenland to assuming that they could have grown back then, but notes the strong evidence that little, if anything, was ever successfully grown back then but hay and possibly limited amounts of flax (and the only evidence for that is pollen studies, which failed to turn up traditional food crops). Contemporary writings noted that most Greenlanders lived their whole life without ever seeing wheat, a piece of bread, or a mug of barley beer. The earliest settlers reportedly tried growing barley, but there was virtually no success.
The average temperature at the peak of the last glaciation was 8-9C colder than the modern era. In one century, the "business as usual" scenario will lead to over 5-7C warming (our current rate of rise is about 2C per century, but not only are emissions rising, but we're currently having to overcome the planet's thermal inertia).
It's not *that* the temperatures are rising that's the problem. It's the *rate* that's the problem.
Right, because global warming predicts that all weather will cease to exist, right?
Seriously, what sort of idiot thinks that there will be no randomness from year to year? Climate is about *averages*. And the trends are clear.
Ah, this old yarn! As another poster has already mentioned, it was named "Greenland" to lure settlers. But more importantly, there *were* places in Greenland that were green. Those same places are still there, and are even bigger today. Despite attempts to, the Vikings were unable to grow any crops on Greenland, and the only non-animal sources of food in their diet were wild berries, grasses, and seaweed. Today, Greenland cities can grow beets, rhubarb, and other cold-weather plants that the Vikings were unable to.
Oh, I just love this argument. It's based on the fact that arctic sea ice is declining to unprecedented levels according to studies using every piece of data and proxy data known, as documented in dozens of peer-reviewed studies, but at the same time, Antarctic ice is increasing, and at times, the combined average is higher than the previous combined average. Never mind that Antarctic sea ice increase is a *forecast* of AGW due to the increased snowfall and increase in flow rates of its glaciers, while Artic sea ice is declining, as expected.
The argument can basically be summed up as this:
Wait -- so your argument is that we shouldn't adopt EVs because there are obscure roads out west which have gas stations that charge more than you'd like for gasoline? Am I getting this correct?
FYI, but electricity is 1/3 the price of gasoline. So if your argument is about how much you'll pay... Yes, for rapid charging, you need to cover the extra capital costs, but the capital costs are pretty similar to gas station capital costs even at today's prices.
The reason that most people don't notice it is that they're mainly used to batteries in laptops and cell phones. The problem is that instead of choosing longer lifespan, laptop and cell manufacturers simply decrease battery size and increase power consumption. So the users fume that they don't get any more life out of their packs that they used to.
Wait, what? The question is whether there's a place to fill up, not how much they cost. California charges more for gasoline than Iowa, but that's offtopic, too. That route has many dozens of gas stations along it.
Yeah, nothing. Except for Moapa Piaute Travel, Alamo Truck Stop, R Place Food Store, Jerry's Service, Y Service Station, and A&B Service.
Did you even check these routes before you posted?
Again, how again is this even remotely relevant to the discussion?
How is the freedom to charge what you see fit in a free market taking away "personal choice and personal freedom"? I'm really baffled by your post.
Yes, rapid charging stations are not for at home -- just like with gas stations.
Rapid charge stations are, per-charger, about as expensive as gas stations are per-pump, although with a much broader range, since there really is no solid cutoff on what defines "rapid" charging. Usually $30-$125k each, plus several thousand in energy storage per charger if you want a battery buffer.
They are not "really heavy" either. Think vending machines. As for the install, even if you count the weight of a battery buffer, there's way less mass that needs to be hauled in when you consider all of the excavation equipment and concrete for installing the underground gas tank for the gas station.
On-site storage and feed power is proportional to how many vehicles stop by and how frequently. If you want to talk about really remote places, which is what you seem to want to talk about, you don't need much storage at all so long as you have a trickle-charge grid connect. On the other hand, if you only have a couple cars a day (say, sales of 100kWh, ~3 cars), you don't even need a grid connect; in the desert you could permanently safely meet that demand with a high statistical availability with ~200 m^2 of solar panels (assuming capacity factor of 0.2, 20% efficiency, etc; at $5/w installed (high for non-rooftop), that's about ~$200k installed and will generate 192kW on an average day) and 500-1000kWh storage (enough to store 5-10 entirely pitch black day's worth of energy -- say, a ~$100k vanadium redox system, with a lifespan measured in decades and only needing periodic inspections to look for corrosion) (note that even cloudy days, rare as they are in the desert, still generate some power). Add to that the $125k for a 300kW charger (very fast). Add other costs, say, $75k, and you're up to $500k total. For a system that requires no employees and largely takes care of itself, and for which you don't even have to pay for fuel. Assuming $25 per fillup and a station lifespan of 30 years, you'll take in $822k. And that's with *solar power* and *current prices* and *no subsidy*.
Which makes the notion of standardization a pipe dream.
Of course it does. PBP's already cost a fortune and they're about as simple as it gets. You're talking about basically turning them into a factory of multi-configuration 6-axis robots rated for holding tonnes of weight. Something like the $100,000 Kuka KR1000 Titan. *Just for the battery disconnects/reconnects* -- never mind the inventory management hardware. The cost of the inventory itself would be in the millions and take up a tremendous amount of space. Here's just one Leaf battery pack. And the Leaf isn't all that long range.
No, they won't; that's the point. The costs are just way too high.
That's not "about it". They're an integral part of the structure of the vehicle. It's like saying "To remove the frame of the car, you have to be able to access it from outside of the vehicle, but that's about it". Only that the battery pack is an even larger percent of the vehicle's mass than the frame. It's a structural element. It's the most important part of the car's CG. It's what the entire EV is built around. It's not "about it".
That's not how battery packs work. If you knew anything about the industry, you'd be aware of the huge disparity between the cost of the cells and the cost of an assembled battery pack. The smaller you make a pack, the greater the disparity. A pack is not just cells. It's cells, casing, charge management, wiring, connectors, cooling, hard point attachments, cell failure isolation, fuses and crash-triggered disconnects, etc, plus a ton of labor.
Cost is cost. It will always have to be borne by someone. Available money is finite.
Not at all. There are entirely different voltage curves, heat management profiles, lifespans under different conditions, charge rates, discharge rates, energy densities (there's a 3x spread, from ~70Wh/kg titanates to ~220Wh/kg nickel-cobalt li-ions), and price per unit energy (10x spread, from $300/kWh junky Chinese cells to $3/kWh AltairNano cells).
Not "solvable". "Solved." As in, "in vehicles today". As in, "today's best li-ion batteries can literally charge in just a couple minutes without relevant lifespan problems if you give them sufficient power and cooling."
That's not how quick charging works except on the lower end in isolated stations. On the mass scale, rapid chargers are run from a battery bank which is trickle charged -- just like with a battery swap station, but without all of the massive complications, allowing
Split a pack up into, say, 10 separate packs which can go into arbitrary locations, and you 10x the connection problem, double the combined cost of the battery packs for the vehicle (because of the overhead on packs as small as you'll end up with), increase its weight, and increase the cost of the pack swapper several times over.
No, there can't. Here, let's list the first EVs that come to my mind and then look at their pack needs:
Nissan Leaf: As a five-seater sedan, the pack exists between the belly pan and the floor near the center of the vehicle, which is a very efficient use of space (and is the sort of thing that Better Place is trying to do for swapping). Since it's a pure EV, it needs a high energy, low power battery. Since it's a low-end EV, the pack is short-range (a nominal 100 miles)
Chevy Volt: As a narrow four-seater designed for a lot of internal room without a high profile, the pack can't fit under the floor. So the pack is T-shaped, running down the center tunnel and under the back seats. Since it's a plug-in hybrid, it needs a high power, low energy battery (these cells are typically more expensive).
Aptera 2e: As an unusual shaped composite two seat three wheeler (to get aerodynamics far superior to conventional cars, albeit with less mainstream looks), the CG must be kept very low and fit within the contours. The pack goes under and behind the two seats of the vehicle, next to the rear taper of the underbelly.
Toyota RAV4: No details announced yet, but as an electric SUV, its pack will need to be larger and deliver more power than sedans need, but as a mass-market vehicle, it will still need to be made from an affordable chemistry.
Tesla Roadster: Since it's rear-wheel drive, you need the weight over the rear wheels. As a consequence, the battery pack is located in the rear and takes up part of the trunk space. As a high-end vehicle, the nominal ~250 miles range requires a pack more expensive than most people in lower-end cars could afford. Since the market is high end consumers, a shorter lifespan chemistry is acceptable so long as the vehicle delivers on its range and power needs (and hence, that's what's used).
Tesla Model S: Rear-wheel drive, but an entirely different shape and weight distribution profile, which the battery must be matched for. Three pack size options are available depending on how much the consumer wants to pay (160 to 300 miles range).
Lightning GT: Since this car is all about high performance and extremely short charge times, they need to use a chemistry like the titanates. These are very low energy density, extremely high power output, and very expensive -- not a general purpose battery pack.
I can keep going if you'd like. The simple facts are that even if you freeze battery tech in time, you can't come close to starting to standardize. Let alone what happens as battery tech continues to advance.
And the main issue is that it's Totally Unnecessary. The concept has been effectively supplanted by rapid charging, which has no inventory or standardization problems. There are some companies with money invested into the notion that are holding out, but it's a tech proposal with no impetus behind it any more.
Hmm, apparently I can't do simple math: 300 miles at 60mph is *five* hours.
First off, that's a stupid comparison. The is not a 1960's Datsun 1200. It's a modern electric car that happens to be in the frame of a datsun. So stop using that as a for of appeal to emotion.
How is a homemade conversion running on lead-acid batteries "a modern electric car"?
What will really sell is an electric car that can take a family of 4 with luggage 300 miles and charge in less then 5 minutes, and is comparably priced to current gas models. We also need to deal with the problems with range due to temperature. Meaning, the 3000 miles but be 300 miles MINIMUM under the worst condition.
I'm curious as to why you set those particular standards on range. Just because they're what today's gasoline cars get? Gasoline cars have tanks sized the size they are to minimize the gross inconvenience of having to go to gas stations periodically in your everyday life -- something EVs don't do. 300 miles at 60 mph is six hours of driving straight. Yes, people do that, but you're not supposed to; for safety, you're supposed to take at least 5-10 minutes break every 2 hours.
Also, even the most desolate place in the continental US doesn't need that sort of range to get between gas stations. For example, what's a particularly desolate route -- say, Boulder City, NV to Kingman, AZ? That's 80 miles. As far as I can tell from gasprices.mapquest.com, the worst gas availability in the continental US on a state highway or better is something like the ~170 miles from Ely, NV to Tonopah, NV -- and nobody says you have to take that particular route even if you're going to one of those places (there are stations in Eureka, Austin, and Round Mountain if you take US 50 instead). Interstate gas stops are rarely more than a few dozen miles apart even in the most desolate areas. Plus, it's far easier to put a charging station in the middle of nowhere than a gas station. Gas stations require excavation, periodic deliveries, and people on hand, and hence are much less economical when you have a low traffic volume. A solar powered charging station with a battery bank can be hauled in on a palette to the middle of nowhere, set down, and will hum along with almost no mainteance on its own.
That's not it at all. The main problem with swapping battery packs is an infrastructure management problem.
First off, if there was only one type of battery pack, that would be rough enough. Stations would have to have large stores of surplus battery packs, which cost $10k or more each, take up a large amount of space, and weigh hundreds of pounds. But there's not ever going to be just one kind of battery pack, and it's not for a lack of interest. Different vehicles have different needs. Luxury car owners can afford better, longer-range battery packs than owners of economy cars. RWD cars need the weight in the rear, taking up part of the trunk area. Depending on the layout, a sedan either needs a pack under the floor or in a T-shape down the center tunnel. Pickups have different layout needs than SUVs than cars and so on. Want to try to fit an SUV pack into a motorcycle?
Now factor in that battery chemistry is a huge moving target right now. Even drivetrains and inverters are a moving target. You can't standardize on a single voltage charge/discharge profile in such circumstances. Really, you're talking about stocking dozens of each of dozens of different types of battery pack at every station, and having these stations dense enough to support long distance travel. It's just not going to happen. And as if that's not bad enough, there's also some real engineering challenges, like making such an integral part of the vehicle's structure readily removeable and reattachable over many cycles, and especially the removal and reattachment of the electrical hookups.
Battery swapping was an idea envisioned when rapid charging was much more difficult. It no longer is. So there's no need for it any more. Modern li-ion cells can charge in minutes without ruining the pack's lifespan if you can provide sufficient A) power and B) cooling.