They are only cheaper to run at the moment, and only compared with the very high statistical average of the US vehicle fleet. They are not cheaper to run than a well tuned k-car with an ICE, and they are less efficient in terms of thermal units per km (well to wheel). As you mention, there is also much less road tax on them and also electricity is relatively cheap compared with petrol. There are over 250 million vehicles in the united states. If you convert that entire fleet to electric how long do you think the price of electricity will stay down? Care to do the math on mWh excess on the national grid vs that required for 250 million vehicles, or the math on how many square km of solar panels that will require? If the fleet were converted, and the grid wasn't massively expanded, you would just end up with all the petrol being burned in power stations anyway, although with the state of the current fleet that might not be much of an efficiency loss. Not to mention if the tax isn't raised on them the government will be unable to maintain road infrastructure.
I understand how attractive the dream is, I am just saying face facts: for now, cars of any kind are unsustainable as a form of mass transit. Sure in a few decades if we get the energy issues sorted out and improve out battery technology we may be looking toward electric vehicles as the way of the future. I look forward with hope to that time, and urge everyone to focus on the energy task now, the cars are looking polished enough and battery research takes time.
That doesn't sound like a theory, just a conspiracy.
No it is a theory, or a collection of theories. Mostly the theories deal with specific details rather than just "A conspiracy to execute a false flag attack on our own citizens in order to justify taking control of some of the largest oil reserves on the planet?", just like gravity is fairly evident but a theory about the specifics from a major physicist can still be highly valuable and informative. Perhaps gravity is a bad example. I still wouldn't totally discard the box cutters theory either. While it may be obvious that the US government are very keen on oil and the Iraq war was based on lies, it is equally clear that they are incompetent with security and foreign policy, and that intelligence sharing is a shambles.
The only thing that is clear to me is that no one is telling the whole story, whether it be because they don't know it, or for other reasons.
Actually, in 32 MPH stop-and-go traffic, you'd probably get more like 400+ miles range... Stop and start causes loss of efficiency...
Right.... so a loss in efficiency causes the range to increase.
Not to mention Tesla has consistently exaggerated the range of their vehicles. Not to mention headlights, heater, ac all subtract from range.
Even then I really don't see how a $50,000 electric sports car is really the solution to anyone's energy crisis. Sure it will make rich California businessmen feel better about their carbon footprint, and thank god... wouldn't want them to feel guilty or anything. I don't have anything against Tesla specifically, I just don't like seeing a car ad on a news website, and then hear people cooing over it like a newborn baby as though it is the solution to the worlds woes rather than just an expensive and wasteful toy for rich people.
This conversation is about ACTA. I know your petty partisanship seems mighty important to you, but the reality is it is not relevant to the wider picture at all. I believe there are numerous partisan argument forums on the web, please retire to one of those and let this thread be about something that actually matters at all.
The land speed record was held by a steam car until 1909, the record was just over 200km/h (almost 130 mph). Something that few people know however is the date that the first electric car held the land speed record. 1898. That is not a typo, in fact an electric car established the first land speed record.
As far as the article is concerned... all we need now is to increase world coffee production by several billion percent and all our energy worries will be gone. What was it they were trying to prove again? Electric cars are not the solution, steam cars are not the solution, hydrogen cars are not the solution, coffee powered cars are not the solution. In fact the reduction in use of the one thing that all those non-solutions have in common is probably one of the easiest and most effective short term solutions.
Why would anyone steal credit card details, and then use them to buy mp3s? It boggles the mind, given that mp3s are so much easier to steal and harder to trace. It would lead me to a conspiracy theory if it weren't for the fact that I really don't care enough about the issue to waste my time thinking one up.
a future where war is limited to robots killing other robots, and not humans killing each other, is a GOOD THING.
That is true in a naive way, the question is which countries is the US going to attack that can afford drones? The reality is going to be drones killing brown people with ak47s, and of course people with random objects that resemble ak47s, and people who are standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like the status quo I guess.
Actually this is not news, the first salinity based power station prototype was built in 2009. What the summary should say is "Hydrogen proponents pretend to invent yet another technology". It seems to me that people in the hydrogen lobby produce a lot of stories in the vein "new inventions mean hydrogen IS in fact viable" whereas in reality all they are talking about is advances in electricity production or minute increases in the efficiency of hydrogen production which bring it closer to 50% thermal efficiency than before.
I know I am not supposed to feed the trolls but this is just too much. Not to mention the comment has +3 insightful. "Government is evil by it's very nature" right... I assume this is coming from an even more warped understanding of the popular lie "more government means less freedom" so I will rebut that. Rebutting the original quote is barely worth the few seconds it takes to say 'what the fuck are you on?'
If more government so obviously correlated with less freedom, we should be able to see that in evidence. Lets take the measures of government to be number of employees, number of pages of legislation, and amount of yearly government revenue. According to this the countries with the most government are all the old countries, ie western and northern Europe and the UK, and also the newer country, the USA which has been adept at enlarging it's government faster than most. Now we compare these countries to the countries with the least government: Somalia, DRCongo, Southern Sudan, Afghanistan, cambodia, haiti etc. These countries have almost no government. As you can see, less government correlates with less freedom, and also more violence. Does anyone have any evidence whatsoever that points the other way?
I can explain why this is in a historical context and what government is actually for, for those of us like Archangel Michael here who failed political studies. Government used to be small and simple, there was a ruler called a king (there are many other titles as well but they all mean roughly the same thing) and in essence just one law: 'the kings word is law'. Some people thought this was unfair, and decided to invent the idea of the constitution, which provided a set of laws that the state and king were bound to governing people's basic rights. This worked so well that the idea caught on and got expanded upon, creating more and more laws to protect the rights of individuals and societies from the abuses of unchecked power. From this came such freedoms as emancipation, suffrage, tolerable working conditions, social welfare, healthcare, police protection, a fair judicial system, etc. The list goes on. The logical fallacy here is that government is being equated with power. More power is indeed correlated with less freedom. But less government results in fact in more unchecked power. Taking away the government does not reduce the amount of power being wielded, it merely takes away the controls on how that power is wielded.
With regard to the tax question, I think someone on this thread should point out that almost a quarter of us children and young people are living in poverty. Perhaps we should contact the UN world food programme.
I love this attitude that saying the word "kool-aid" automatically makes you right and whoever is disagreeing with you wrong. Especially while claiming to want a proper debate. While I agree the media is a giant hype machine and any complaint against that is valid, I don't think the radiation spills are all about deaths on the site. One reactor workers death is not more important than one coal miners death in itself. But I doubt your statistics take into account the long term deaths from various cancers and other radiation related illnesses caused by nuclear industrial incidents, because these numbers are not really known to anyone. The incident at chernobyl for example has 31 deaths directly attributed to it, with the UNSCEAR claiming another 64 confirmed deaths from the radiation leaks. These are the numbers that make the nuclear industry death statistic posted earlier. However the WHO estimates 4000 radiation deaths not including clean up workers, the TORCH report estimated 30-60,000 deaths from cancers as a result and other organisations have estimates as high as 900,000. It seems a bit dishonest to quote the 31 deaths in statistics and ignore the rest. The truth is we don't know how many people have died from or will die in the future from the large industrial nuclear accidents. We will likely never know, as the cause of cancer is near impossible to ascertain. The reason one confirmed death in a nuclear accident is more newsworthy than a coal miner's death is that each one represents many other untold victims.
So what is your 20 word cure all answer for those of us opposed to both coal and nuclear? Once you are done screaming "you are hypocrites" to the coal lobby, perhaps we could have a general debate on safe energy solutions.Perhaps you also think that murderers should be let off because they kill less people than wars?
insurgencies who hide within the local population to avoid retaliation, not implying that there were no innocents.
You realise this is a propaganda line right? In reality they are the local population defending their patch of fields. Not all of the civilians join the fight but those that do can not be said to be "hiding" among their friends and family. Where else could they go? Did the US military offer to buy them all fancy uniforms before the war kicked off, and build them nice military barracks with the national flag flying on the roof?
What happened to all the pseudo-skeptical "magnets have no effect on living tissue" hysteria? Seems it wasn't so long ago that people were being laughed out of this forum for claims like this. People should stick to their guns.
Actually uv has it's own colour on the spectrum, it is similar to blue/violet but not. The human retina can perceive this colour just like all the others, but the lens of the eye is opaque to ultra violet, so most people cant see it. You can get an operation to strip the opaque layer so you can see ultra violet but it is not recommended as the uv light destroys retinal cells, so you won't see any colours after looking at uv too long.
Surprised I am the first to mention it. Garbage reactors turn biological waste into either heat or natural gas. I think in the freezing cold of an alaskan winter nice reactor connected to heat exchanger or a gas burner would make everyone feel a bit bitter. The trouble is it takes a while to get the reaction going, if this is a one day project idea that might not work. A small reactor will fit in light aircraft when empty though.
Actually the whole archive was already available on piratebay, and we had the discussion about how bad it was to let that happen yesterday. The fact that the documents were available means that anyone who wanted to do anything unpleasant to any of the informants etc. in them was going to already. People who want that kind of information would have been the first to know. The only difference wikileaks is making by releasing it now is that the general public who dont know how to torrent can see them too.
Please name the solar cell manufacturer that uses solar cells to power their factories. They have everything going for them, and people that buy their product get all those benefits plus more subsidies.....
You wouldn't have to stop pirating. The law only covers peer to peer and torrent protocols, so as I recommended to my sister who lives in NZ, you just need to rely on streaming, file hosting sites and the sneakernet. The sneakernet is where most of her piracy happens anyway.
C is not higher resolution that F. So I don't think that is the argument for changing. To be honest all temperature measurements are pretty arbitrary. Let's not even get started on inches feet miles and gallons though.
With regard to the solar hydrogen technology, this is a waste of time. We can already convert solar to hydrogen, by connecting a solar panel to normal electricity driven hydrogen cracker. The problem is efficiency. As the article never mentions efficiency once, I can only assume that this system is no better. The article also doesn't claim that it is cheaper than a solar panel. You will have a hard job convincing me that this is anything other than a feel-good PR plug for the 'please ignore the elephant in the room'(TM) modern energy policy.
If your computer can handle it, you can have a pretty huge embark area. Bigger than what you get with the player range in MC. Nevertheless I apologise to those who felt my comment was too scathing, they are different games. Still megaprojects were always a major feature of DF, and although the ones in minecraft are more colourful and often more detailed in shape, DF has always been lightyears ahead in terms of moving parts and functional structures. Each to his own of course, I enjoy minecraft too.
This explains why the US is all over this. Manning outed spies, which is considered treason and is punishable by death. Personally, I think that we should put manning and W Bush on the firing platform.
You mean because Bush('s administration) committed the same act of treason?
Slashdot Mirror
They are only cheaper to run at the moment, and only compared with the very high statistical average of the US vehicle fleet. They are not cheaper to run than a well tuned k-car with an ICE, and they are less efficient in terms of thermal units per km (well to wheel). As you mention, there is also much less road tax on them and also electricity is relatively cheap compared with petrol. There are over 250 million vehicles in the united states. If you convert that entire fleet to electric how long do you think the price of electricity will stay down? Care to do the math on mWh excess on the national grid vs that required for 250 million vehicles, or the math on how many square km of solar panels that will require? If the fleet were converted, and the grid wasn't massively expanded, you would just end up with all the petrol being burned in power stations anyway, although with the state of the current fleet that might not be much of an efficiency loss. Not to mention if the tax isn't raised on them the government will be unable to maintain road infrastructure.
I understand how attractive the dream is, I am just saying face facts: for now, cars of any kind are unsustainable as a form of mass transit. Sure in a few decades if we get the energy issues sorted out and improve out battery technology we may be looking toward electric vehicles as the way of the future. I look forward with hope to that time, and urge everyone to focus on the energy task now, the cars are looking polished enough and battery research takes time.
That doesn't sound like a theory, just a conspiracy.
No it is a theory, or a collection of theories. Mostly the theories deal with specific details rather than just "A conspiracy to execute a false flag attack on our own citizens in order to justify taking control of some of the largest oil reserves on the planet?", just like gravity is fairly evident but a theory about the specifics from a major physicist can still be highly valuable and informative. Perhaps gravity is a bad example. I still wouldn't totally discard the box cutters theory either. While it may be obvious that the US government are very keen on oil and the Iraq war was based on lies, it is equally clear that they are incompetent with security and foreign policy, and that intelligence sharing is a shambles.
The only thing that is clear to me is that no one is telling the whole story, whether it be because they don't know it, or for other reasons.
Actually, in 32 MPH stop-and-go traffic, you'd probably get more like 400+ miles range ... Stop and start causes loss of efficiency ...
Right.... so a loss in efficiency causes the range to increase. Not to mention Tesla has consistently exaggerated the range of their vehicles. Not to mention headlights, heater, ac all subtract from range. Even then I really don't see how a $50,000 electric sports car is really the solution to anyone's energy crisis. Sure it will make rich California businessmen feel better about their carbon footprint, and thank god... wouldn't want them to feel guilty or anything. I don't have anything against Tesla specifically, I just don't like seeing a car ad on a news website, and then hear people cooing over it like a newborn baby as though it is the solution to the worlds woes rather than just an expensive and wasteful toy for rich people.
This conversation is about ACTA. I know your petty partisanship seems mighty important to you, but the reality is it is not relevant to the wider picture at all. I believe there are numerous partisan argument forums on the web, please retire to one of those and let this thread be about something that actually matters at all.
The land speed record was held by a steam car until 1909, the record was just over 200km/h (almost 130 mph). Something that few people know however is the date that the first electric car held the land speed record. 1898. That is not a typo, in fact an electric car established the first land speed record. As far as the article is concerned... all we need now is to increase world coffee production by several billion percent and all our energy worries will be gone. What was it they were trying to prove again? Electric cars are not the solution, steam cars are not the solution, hydrogen cars are not the solution, coffee powered cars are not the solution. In fact the reduction in use of the one thing that all those non-solutions have in common is probably one of the easiest and most effective short term solutions.
Why would anyone steal credit card details, and then use them to buy mp3s? It boggles the mind, given that mp3s are so much easier to steal and harder to trace. It would lead me to a conspiracy theory if it weren't for the fact that I really don't care enough about the issue to waste my time thinking one up.
hydrogen, because it is cheaper to make from fossil fuels, is exactly as clean and renewable as gasoline.
Actually as it is produced at a thermal efficiency of ~50% (excluding storage and compression) it is far less clean and renewable than gasoline.
a future where war is limited to robots killing other robots, and not humans killing each other, is a GOOD THING.
That is true in a naive way, the question is which countries is the US going to attack that can afford drones? The reality is going to be drones killing brown people with ak47s, and of course people with random objects that resemble ak47s, and people who are standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like the status quo I guess.
Actually this is not news, the first salinity based power station prototype was built in 2009. What the summary should say is "Hydrogen proponents pretend to invent yet another technology". It seems to me that people in the hydrogen lobby produce a lot of stories in the vein "new inventions mean hydrogen IS in fact viable" whereas in reality all they are talking about is advances in electricity production or minute increases in the efficiency of hydrogen production which bring it closer to 50% thermal efficiency than before.
I know I am not supposed to feed the trolls but this is just too much. Not to mention the comment has +3 insightful. "Government is evil by it's very nature" right... I assume this is coming from an even more warped understanding of the popular lie "more government means less freedom" so I will rebut that. Rebutting the original quote is barely worth the few seconds it takes to say 'what the fuck are you on?'
If more government so obviously correlated with less freedom, we should be able to see that in evidence. Lets take the measures of government to be number of employees, number of pages of legislation, and amount of yearly government revenue. According to this the countries with the most government are all the old countries, ie western and northern Europe and the UK, and also the newer country, the USA which has been adept at enlarging it's government faster than most. Now we compare these countries to the countries with the least government: Somalia, DRCongo, Southern Sudan, Afghanistan, cambodia, haiti etc. These countries have almost no government. As you can see, less government correlates with less freedom, and also more violence. Does anyone have any evidence whatsoever that points the other way?
I can explain why this is in a historical context and what government is actually for, for those of us like Archangel Michael here who failed political studies. Government used to be small and simple, there was a ruler called a king (there are many other titles as well but they all mean roughly the same thing) and in essence just one law: 'the kings word is law'. Some people thought this was unfair, and decided to invent the idea of the constitution, which provided a set of laws that the state and king were bound to governing people's basic rights. This worked so well that the idea caught on and got expanded upon, creating more and more laws to protect the rights of individuals and societies from the abuses of unchecked power. From this came such freedoms as emancipation, suffrage, tolerable working conditions, social welfare, healthcare, police protection, a fair judicial system, etc. The list goes on. The logical fallacy here is that government is being equated with power. More power is indeed correlated with less freedom. But less government results in fact in more unchecked power. Taking away the government does not reduce the amount of power being wielded, it merely takes away the controls on how that power is wielded.
With regard to the tax question, I think someone on this thread should point out that almost a quarter of us children and young people are living in poverty. Perhaps we should contact the UN world food programme.
I love this attitude that saying the word "kool-aid" automatically makes you right and whoever is disagreeing with you wrong. Especially while claiming to want a proper debate. While I agree the media is a giant hype machine and any complaint against that is valid, I don't think the radiation spills are all about deaths on the site. One reactor workers death is not more important than one coal miners death in itself. But I doubt your statistics take into account the long term deaths from various cancers and other radiation related illnesses caused by nuclear industrial incidents, because these numbers are not really known to anyone. The incident at chernobyl for example has 31 deaths directly attributed to it, with the UNSCEAR claiming another 64 confirmed deaths from the radiation leaks. These are the numbers that make the nuclear industry death statistic posted earlier. However the WHO estimates 4000 radiation deaths not including clean up workers, the TORCH report estimated 30-60,000 deaths from cancers as a result and other organisations have estimates as high as 900,000. It seems a bit dishonest to quote the 31 deaths in statistics and ignore the rest. The truth is we don't know how many people have died from or will die in the future from the large industrial nuclear accidents. We will likely never know, as the cause of cancer is near impossible to ascertain. The reason one confirmed death in a nuclear accident is more newsworthy than a coal miner's death is that each one represents many other untold victims.
So what is your 20 word cure all answer for those of us opposed to both coal and nuclear? Once you are done screaming "you are hypocrites" to the coal lobby, perhaps we could have a general debate on safe energy solutions.Perhaps you also think that murderers should be let off because they kill less people than wars?
insurgencies who hide within the local population to avoid retaliation, not implying that there were no innocents.
You realise this is a propaganda line right? In reality they are the local population defending their patch of fields. Not all of the civilians join the fight but those that do can not be said to be "hiding" among their friends and family. Where else could they go? Did the US military offer to buy them all fancy uniforms before the war kicked off, and build them nice military barracks with the national flag flying on the roof?
What happened to all the pseudo-skeptical "magnets have no effect on living tissue" hysteria? Seems it wasn't so long ago that people were being laughed out of this forum for claims like this. People should stick to their guns.
Actually uv has it's own colour on the spectrum, it is similar to blue/violet but not. The human retina can perceive this colour just like all the others, but the lens of the eye is opaque to ultra violet, so most people cant see it. You can get an operation to strip the opaque layer so you can see ultra violet but it is not recommended as the uv light destroys retinal cells, so you won't see any colours after looking at uv too long.
And Congress won't act unless big stakeholders (read: big companies) make a stink
Such a pity that the public aren't considered a big stakeholder
Surprised I am the first to mention it. Garbage reactors turn biological waste into either heat or natural gas. I think in the freezing cold of an alaskan winter nice reactor connected to heat exchanger or a gas burner would make everyone feel a bit bitter. The trouble is it takes a while to get the reaction going, if this is a one day project idea that might not work. A small reactor will fit in light aircraft when empty though.
Water pollution, over fishing, deforestation.
Actually the whole archive was already available on piratebay, and we had the discussion about how bad it was to let that happen yesterday. The fact that the documents were available means that anyone who wanted to do anything unpleasant to any of the informants etc. in them was going to already. People who want that kind of information would have been the first to know. The only difference wikileaks is making by releasing it now is that the general public who dont know how to torrent can see them too.
Please name the solar cell manufacturer that uses solar cells to power their factories. They have everything going for them, and people that buy their product get all those benefits plus more subsidies.....
OK do wind powered ones count too?
You wouldn't have to stop pirating. The law only covers peer to peer and torrent protocols, so as I recommended to my sister who lives in NZ, you just need to rely on streaming, file hosting sites and the sneakernet. The sneakernet is where most of her piracy happens anyway.
C is not higher resolution that F. So I don't think that is the argument for changing. To be honest all temperature measurements are pretty arbitrary. Let's not even get started on inches feet miles and gallons though.
With regard to the solar hydrogen technology, this is a waste of time. We can already convert solar to hydrogen, by connecting a solar panel to normal electricity driven hydrogen cracker. The problem is efficiency. As the article never mentions efficiency once, I can only assume that this system is no better. The article also doesn't claim that it is cheaper than a solar panel. You will have a hard job convincing me that this is anything other than a feel-good PR plug for the 'please ignore the elephant in the room'(TM) modern energy policy.
If your computer can handle it, you can have a pretty huge embark area. Bigger than what you get with the player range in MC. Nevertheless I apologise to those who felt my comment was too scathing, they are different games. Still megaprojects were always a major feature of DF, and although the ones in minecraft are more colourful and often more detailed in shape, DF has always been lightyears ahead in terms of moving parts and functional structures. Each to his own of course, I enjoy minecraft too.
This explains why the US is all over this. Manning outed spies, which is considered treason and is punishable by death. Personally, I think that we should put manning and W Bush on the firing platform.
You mean because Bush('s administration) committed the same act of treason?
Once again minecraft shows itself to be dwarf fortress' inferior cousin. This is not the only example.