Just like any other vehicle, you can just remove the spare tire and store other things in that space. It's entirely a matter of preference and calculated risk.
It's an alternative to mounting the spare underneath the vehicle like most pickups, which makes that volume is completely unusual for general storage. =Smidge=
> If we can get the energy per unit volume within an order of magnitude of gasoline, propane, or other fossil fuels, transportation would be radically changed.
That would be amazing, but not really necessary. If to consider that an electric vehicle is typically three times more efficient (or more), you only need a third of the total energy on board to get the same performance.
If you're not pissing away 4/5th of your energy stores, you don't need to take as much with you. =Smidge=
> The pickup you can't put an 8x4 sheet of something in.
I've seen more pickup trucks that can't do this than those that can, so that's not entirely an EV thing. With the tailgate down, the bed is 4'-6" wide by 6'-10" long which isn't much shorter than the F150 unless you get the long bed option. In other words, it's pretty average for a crew cabin pickup.
In terms of total storage, the pickup version has:
330 liters (11.6 cu.ft.) "Frunk" (Storage under the front hood) 350 liters (12.4 cu.ft.) "Gear Tunnel" (Storage behind the rear seat) 250 liters (8.8 cu.ft) Dry storage under bed (Spare tire compartment)
I can't find any depth on the bed but ball-parking Probably over 575 liters (20.3 cu.ft.) with the tailgate up and bed cover closed. None of that includes the actual passenger compartment, which I couldn't find any information on other than it seats five adults.
The SUV version has the same "Frunk" but only 180 liters of underfloor bin storage (spare tire). No other information is available other than the seating folds flat. =Smidge=
5-ton towing capacity, 400+ miles non-towing so depending on *what* you're towing and where, at least 200+ miles. Pretty respectable TBH. Estimated base price ~$68K (without EV rebates) which is pretty competitive given the performance numbers. =Smidge=
No vaccination is 100% effective. There will always be a small percentage of people who get vaccinated but do not become fully immune. With measles I believe it's 2-3 percent, which is still tens of thousands of people.
Even if you are immune, you can still potentially carry the virus with you. Measles virus can survive outside the body for several hours and still be infectious.
And you contradict yourself within three sentences:
1) "You do not endanger others if you are not vaccinated" 2) "You could spread it to other people who are not vaccinated"
So which is it? Are you not endangering others, or can you spread it?
A white pine can grow up to 4 feet per year, and reach maturity (more or less max height) in about 10 years. "First few years" easily covers this time span.
It's also not really height, but mass. A tree that is 20+ years old will, for most species, have reached full size and not be putting on a lot of mass. A relatively young tree will be growing both in height and width, adding lots of branches, and absorbing much more carbon in doing so.
A giant sequoia may absorb 3.5 tons of CO2 per year, but it will also weight over 1300 tons, so it's absorbing less than 0.3% of its own weight per year. A mature pine tree soaks up nearly ten times that much.
If you're interested in using trees for carbon sequestration only, your best strategy is to use fast growing species and cut them down after "a few years" (e.g. 5 to 10 years) and do something with the wood that will lock the carbon away. =Smidge=
> Why? Seriously, what's the resulting benefit from unemployed people worrying about money?
Because if they're not desperate, they can't be exploited! How can I underpay and overwork my employees if they have the financial security to quit on the spot! Or worse... take their time finding a job that's right for them! They might even try to start their own business and compete with me!
All I'd have left to keep the proletariat in check is employer-provided health insurance, and they're trying to rob me of that, too! =Smidge=
> The only way any of these technologies doesn't produce CO2 is if they use nuclear.
While the plant itself might produce negligible CO2 emissions, the fuel cycle as a whole does not. Nuclear produces at least twice the CO2 per unit of energy output as solar, wind or hydro when you account for all the inputs and outputs. Fuel and waste processing is very expensive in that respect. Everyone moans about the emissions from manufacturing solar panels and wind turbines but nobody likes to talk about uranium mining and enrichment...
> Solar and wind are far far far to energy sparse (ie not energy dense) to provide enough heat to power these processes.
This makes no sense. If it's raw temperature you're after, solar thermal can hit 1200C at several megawatts... but that's immaterial. Once you have the power, you can make just about any temperature you need.
> That's why nothing has been done with them even though we've be able to do these types of chemical processes for decades in some cases.
Nothing is being done with them because they're too expensive. Fossil fuels are still very cheap and unless and until the cost can be brought to par with these technologies one way or another, alternatives won't be widely deployed. =Smidge=
FYI, There's another car fire reported in the US roughly every three minutes.
If you normalize the data by total miles driven to account for the difference in numbers on the road, it works out that a gasoline powered car is about ten times more likely to go up in flames.
It's also worth noting that the vast majority of Tesla fires involved severe accidents that totaled the car as a whole. These are usually not counted in comparisons because any vehicle is at severe risk of fire when they're that badly damaged. of those that remain, we have two or three major road debris strikes (now mitigated by better undercarriage plating) and one incident where a fire started at a faulty wall receptacle. As far as I know there are only two or three incidents that have been confirmed to be due to an actual fault in the construction.
Meanwhile, recalls prompted by fire risks routinely reach into the hundreds of thousands. You'd think that multi-billion dollar manufacturers, who have been making cars for decades, using technology that's been around for over a century, would manage to get it right. =Smidge=
>Every drop of oil Norway pumps is burned. That's the world we live in. Doesn't matter whether it's burned domestically or elsewhere, it will be burned. Norway could pump less oil, but someone else would just pump more.
You're correct in this statement.
> Reducing oil consumption in China and India as those economies emerge is all that really matters.
You are incorrect in this one. Every drop not burned is a drop that's not burned, and it doesn't matter who is the first to cut back.
And for the record, China has been doing more than most countries to curtail their reliance on fossil fuels... not for environmental reasons, but because they understand that it's politically and economically advantageous to not rely on an energy source they have to import, and thus have no control over, and which will only get more expensive as time goes on. =Smidge=
> But this is entirely offset by Norway being one of the biggest net contributors to CO2 emissions world wide through their oil exports.
Oil is a fungible commodity. If Norway wasn't supplying it, someone else would be (or we'd be burning more natural gas to make up the balance)... so CO2 would not be significantly impacted if they weren't exporting it.
But they are moving away from burning it themselves, which is a net positive. They are also demonstrating viability of the technology, while establishing a market that both advances development and reduces cost of that technology. This is all good news. =Smidge=
> radically decrease the severity of other types of potential nuclear accidents, is to start moving spent fuel rods from pools to dry cask storage.
They do.
When the spent fuel rods are removed from the reactor, they are still highly radioactive and still produce a significant amount of heat. They will continue to output significant amounts of heat for years (About 5 years IIRC). To keep them cool, they are stored in water. The water has the additional benefit of shielding much of the radiation
After the most radioactive elements in the spent fuel have decayed away, and they rate of heat generation is low enough that air cooling is sufficient to keep them from melting, they are removed from the pool and put into dry concrete casks.
It's not feasible to go directly to dry storage. There's too much heat, too much radioactivity, to store or transport the material in any significant quantity.
It's worth noting that the potential for accident is extremely low for the storage pools. The pools are large enough (at least in the US) that they do not need to be actively cooled. This is by design. The biggest threat is keeping the reactor core cool, which will always require active pumping of coolant and is thus vulnerable to prolonged power loss. =Smidge=
Drugs ARE a possible treatment for psychological disorders. The fact that medication is used does not make the illness any less psychological in nature.
Anxiety, depression, schizophrenia... all mental disorders, all treatable by tweaking the chemistry of the brain. Why not add Chronic Fatigue Syndrome to the list? =Smidge=
If exercise is one possible treatment for clinical depression - a bona-fide psychological disorder - then it can possibly be a treatment for other psychological disorders. It doesn't matter if it *actually* does anything, merely the act of trying with the expectation that it will help can be helpful in and of itself. The best part? Even if the patient is told it's a placebo, it usually still works! =Smidge=
>You don't solve a problem by trying to tip the scales in the other direction. You solve it by doing things in a balanced way from now on so that over time, the net result is balanced.
You don't avoid a crash by stepping on the brakes or turning the wheel in the other direction! You just take your foot of the gas, go limp and hope everything works out!
We're already at the point where natural processes are starting to take hold that will continue to warm the planet even if all human activity were to stop tomorrow. Darkened polar regions, thawing permafrost, warming oceans... shit's gonna get a lot worse before it gets better. We need to not merely stop making it worse, but take an active role to mitigate the problems we've already caused. =Smidge=
While true, that also means that it would have to wait until you actually copy/type the password in order to steal it, and there is still the task of identifying the password out of all the other data you copy or words you type through out the day.
Or, since you have access to the RAM, just snag it from the password manager whenever the process appears. Then you get all the passwords at once, along with usernames or other important info, and you don't have to sift through junk data to find them. =Smidge=
And when you burn gasoline in a real-world engine only about 1/5th of the energy makes it to the wheels. Bulk energy storage is only part of the story; what matters in the end is how much useful work you can do with the energy you're able to store. If you can use the energy more efficiently, you can do the same work with less.
The "hydrocarbon advantage" isn't as large as you might think, because the relative efficiencies of gasoline vs chemical battery goes a LONG way to close the gap. =Smidge=
That's 41% relative increase. This means that if you take two people who have an equal chance of getting this cancer, and one is given a "high exposure," they are now 41% more likely to get this cancer than the other, unexposed person.
So if *everyone* got a "high exposure" the rate of this particular form of cancer would increase from 19.4 per 100,000 to 27.4 per 100,000.
That's still an eye-raising increase, but try to keep it in perspective. This does NOT mean 41% of people exposed get cancer. =Smidge=
Gah! The paper itself is paywalled.There's some supplemental data that teases how they considered different energy grids - how much CO2 is produced during recycling is strongly dependent on the CO2 released generating the energy for the process. I'm glad they properly considered that, and it's not a terrible spread; US average, RFCM (Michigan, which is the third of fourth worst grid in the US), and NWPP (Northwest continental US, fourth or fifth cleanest in the US).
But my question is not fully answered... what if the recycling process exclusively used energy sources of negligible CO2 emissions? In other words, how green could it be? =Smidge=
> Eventually they'll have to buy the latest version to continue using it with the latest hardware.
My dad still uses Lotus 123.
Old software runs on new OS/Hardware amazingly well. The only way to stop this is to intentionally break things to prevent it, which is probably a large part of why Microsoft was so ham-fisted getting people onto Windows 10... you can't avoid buying new software if the software you already own and paid for doesn't work anymore. =Smidge=
If a customer BUYS your software, then you get paid once but you still have to support it for years.
If the customer RENTS your software, Software-As-A-Service, you get them to keep paying you annually or even monthly.
Kind of a no-brainer for Microsoft, really. An owned copy of the software costs what, $200-$250? They keep you subscribed for two and a half years and that's covered. Relatively few people will BUY new software every year when the old versions work just fine, so you absolutely make more in the long run through subscriptions. =Smidge=
So for "New Coal Stations" you cite an article that talks about (as the first example) a coal plant that's been in planning and construction for over a decade, and as of now (nearly 8 months after that article was written) still isn't commissioned and won't be for at least another year. Meanwhile, that project is to build a 4th unit to replace the three that were decommissioned years ago. Three out, one new. That's a net decrease innit?
The other examples are even dumber; A plant that was completed in 2013, one that was completed in 2015, and a plant that's been in construction since 2008 with no completion date yet.
I suppose the time travelers didn't succeed in telling the planners not to bother.
The article closes with a few paragraphs about a plant commissioned in 1996 that is nearing end of contract and presents it as an opportunity to replace it with something other than coal power.
So instead of "Germany is building new coal plants" your article just demonstrates that Germany has built coal plants - past tense - and that even some of those may never see operation. Forgive me if I'm not as convinced as you are on this point. =Smidge=
Slashdot Mirror
Just like any other vehicle, you can just remove the spare tire and store other things in that space. It's entirely a matter of preference and calculated risk.
It's an alternative to mounting the spare underneath the vehicle like most pickups, which makes that volume is completely unusual for general storage.
=Smidge=
> If we can get the energy per unit volume within an order of magnitude of gasoline, propane, or other fossil fuels, transportation would be radically changed.
That would be amazing, but not really necessary. If to consider that an electric vehicle is typically three times more efficient (or more), you only need a third of the total energy on board to get the same performance.
If you're not pissing away 4/5th of your energy stores, you don't need to take as much with you.
=Smidge=
> The pickup you can't put an 8x4 sheet of something in.
I've seen more pickup trucks that can't do this than those that can, so that's not entirely an EV thing. With the tailgate down, the bed is 4'-6" wide by 6'-10" long which isn't much shorter than the F150 unless you get the long bed option. In other words, it's pretty average for a crew cabin pickup.
In terms of total storage, the pickup version has:
330 liters (11.6 cu.ft.) "Frunk" (Storage under the front hood)
350 liters (12.4 cu.ft.) "Gear Tunnel" (Storage behind the rear seat)
250 liters (8.8 cu.ft) Dry storage under bed (Spare tire compartment)
I can't find any depth on the bed but ball-parking Probably over 575 liters (20.3 cu.ft.) with the tailgate up and bed cover closed. None of that includes the actual passenger compartment, which I couldn't find any information on other than it seats five adults.
The SUV version has the same "Frunk" but only 180 liters of underfloor bin storage (spare tire). No other information is available other than the seating folds flat.
=Smidge=
Maybe watch the video? There's an SUV and a pickup version with the same drivetrain.
So yes, it's an SUV.
=Smidge=
Not a VW of course, but tow-rated EVs do exist: Rivian is the example that comes to mind;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
5-ton towing capacity, 400+ miles non-towing so depending on *what* you're towing and where, at least 200+ miles. Pretty respectable TBH. Estimated base price ~$68K (without EV rebates) which is pretty competitive given the performance numbers.
=Smidge=
No vaccination is 100% effective. There will always be a small percentage of people who get vaccinated but do not become fully immune. With measles I believe it's 2-3 percent, which is still tens of thousands of people.
Even if you are immune, you can still potentially carry the virus with you. Measles virus can survive outside the body for several hours and still be infectious.
And you contradict yourself within three sentences:
1) "You do not endanger others if you are not vaccinated"
2) "You could spread it to other people who are not vaccinated"
So which is it? Are you not endangering others, or can you spread it?
=Smidge=
A white pine can grow up to 4 feet per year, and reach maturity (more or less max height) in about 10 years. "First few years" easily covers this time span.
It's also not really height, but mass. A tree that is 20+ years old will, for most species, have reached full size and not be putting on a lot of mass. A relatively young tree will be growing both in height and width, adding lots of branches, and absorbing much more carbon in doing so.
A giant sequoia may absorb 3.5 tons of CO2 per year, but it will also weight over 1300 tons, so it's absorbing less than 0.3% of its own weight per year. A mature pine tree soaks up nearly ten times that much.
If you're interested in using trees for carbon sequestration only, your best strategy is to use fast growing species and cut them down after "a few years" (e.g. 5 to 10 years) and do something with the wood that will lock the carbon away.
=Smidge=
> Why? Seriously, what's the resulting benefit from unemployed people worrying about money?
Because if they're not desperate, they can't be exploited! How can I underpay and overwork my employees if they have the financial security to quit on the spot! Or worse... take their time finding a job that's right for them! They might even try to start their own business and compete with me!
All I'd have left to keep the proletariat in check is employer-provided health insurance, and they're trying to rob me of that, too!
=Smidge=
> The only way any of these technologies doesn't produce CO2 is if they use nuclear.
While the plant itself might produce negligible CO2 emissions, the fuel cycle as a whole does not. Nuclear produces at least twice the CO2 per unit of energy output as solar, wind or hydro when you account for all the inputs and outputs. Fuel and waste processing is very expensive in that respect. Everyone moans about the emissions from manufacturing solar panels and wind turbines but nobody likes to talk about uranium mining and enrichment...
> Solar and wind are far far far to energy sparse (ie not energy dense) to provide enough heat to power these processes.
This makes no sense. If it's raw temperature you're after, solar thermal can hit 1200C at several megawatts... but that's immaterial. Once you have the power, you can make just about any temperature you need.
> That's why nothing has been done with them even though we've be able to do these types of chemical processes for decades in some cases.
Nothing is being done with them because they're too expensive. Fossil fuels are still very cheap and unless and until the cost can be brought to par with these technologies one way or another, alternatives won't be widely deployed.
=Smidge=
FYI, There's another car fire reported in the US roughly every three minutes.
If you normalize the data by total miles driven to account for the difference in numbers on the road, it works out that a gasoline powered car is about ten times more likely to go up in flames.
It's also worth noting that the vast majority of Tesla fires involved severe accidents that totaled the car as a whole. These are usually not counted in comparisons because any vehicle is at severe risk of fire when they're that badly damaged. of those that remain, we have two or three major road debris strikes (now mitigated by better undercarriage plating) and one incident where a fire started at a faulty wall receptacle. As far as I know there are only two or three incidents that have been confirmed to be due to an actual fault in the construction.
Meanwhile, recalls prompted by fire risks routinely reach into the hundreds of thousands. You'd think that multi-billion dollar manufacturers, who have been making cars for decades, using technology that's been around for over a century, would manage to get it right.
=Smidge=
>Every drop of oil Norway pumps is burned. That's the world we live in. Doesn't matter whether it's burned domestically or elsewhere, it will be burned. Norway could pump less oil, but someone else would just pump more.
You're correct in this statement.
> Reducing oil consumption in China and India as those economies emerge is all that really matters.
You are incorrect in this one. Every drop not burned is a drop that's not burned, and it doesn't matter who is the first to cut back.
And for the record, China has been doing more than most countries to curtail their reliance on fossil fuels... not for environmental reasons, but because they understand that it's politically and economically advantageous to not rely on an energy source they have to import, and thus have no control over, and which will only get more expensive as time goes on.
=Smidge=
"Don't be Evil" went out the door on August 19, 2004.
=Smidge=
> But this is entirely offset by Norway being one of the biggest net contributors to CO2 emissions world wide through their oil exports.
Oil is a fungible commodity. If Norway wasn't supplying it, someone else would be (or we'd be burning more natural gas to make up the balance)... so CO2 would not be significantly impacted if they weren't exporting it.
But they are moving away from burning it themselves, which is a net positive. They are also demonstrating viability of the technology, while establishing a market that both advances development and reduces cost of that technology. This is all good news.
=Smidge=
> radically decrease the severity of other types of potential nuclear accidents, is to start moving spent fuel rods from pools to dry cask storage.
They do.
When the spent fuel rods are removed from the reactor, they are still highly radioactive and still produce a significant amount of heat. They will continue to output significant amounts of heat for years (About 5 years IIRC). To keep them cool, they are stored in water. The water has the additional benefit of shielding much of the radiation
After the most radioactive elements in the spent fuel have decayed away, and they rate of heat generation is low enough that air cooling is sufficient to keep them from melting, they are removed from the pool and put into dry concrete casks.
It's not feasible to go directly to dry storage. There's too much heat, too much radioactivity, to store or transport the material in any significant quantity.
It's worth noting that the potential for accident is extremely low for the storage pools. The pools are large enough (at least in the US) that they do not need to be actively cooled. This is by design. The biggest threat is keeping the reactor core cool, which will always require active pumping of coolant and is thus vulnerable to prolonged power loss.
=Smidge=
Drugs ARE a possible treatment for psychological disorders. The fact that medication is used does not make the illness any less psychological in nature.
Anxiety, depression, schizophrenia... all mental disorders, all treatable by tweaking the chemistry of the brain. Why not add Chronic Fatigue Syndrome to the list?
=Smidge=
Placebo and Nocebo effects. Look into them.
If exercise is one possible treatment for clinical depression - a bona-fide psychological disorder - then it can possibly be a treatment for other psychological disorders. It doesn't matter if it *actually* does anything, merely the act of trying with the expectation that it will help can be helpful in and of itself. The best part? Even if the patient is told it's a placebo, it usually still works!
=Smidge=
> Your question is kind of like who will solve our energy problems if we drive all the perpetual motion cranks away?
Well, there are good mathematical, theoretical and experimental foundations to presume perpetual motion is a crank hobby and not real science.
There are also good clinical foundations for psychosomatic illness to be an actual thing.
So your analogy is really terrible...
=Smidge=
>You don't solve a problem by trying to tip the scales in the other direction. You solve it by doing things in a balanced way from now on so that over time, the net result is balanced.
You don't avoid a crash by stepping on the brakes or turning the wheel in the other direction! You just take your foot of the gas, go limp and hope everything works out!
We're already at the point where natural processes are starting to take hold that will continue to warm the planet even if all human activity were to stop tomorrow. Darkened polar regions, thawing permafrost, warming oceans... shit's gonna get a lot worse before it gets better. We need to not merely stop making it worse, but take an active role to mitigate the problems we've already caused.
=Smidge=
While true, that also means that it would have to wait until you actually copy/type the password in order to steal it, and there is still the task of identifying the password out of all the other data you copy or words you type through out the day.
Or, since you have access to the RAM, just snag it from the password manager whenever the process appears. Then you get all the passwords at once, along with usernames or other important info, and you don't have to sift through junk data to find them.
=Smidge=
And when you burn gasoline in a real-world engine only about 1/5th of the energy makes it to the wheels. Bulk energy storage is only part of the story; what matters in the end is how much useful work you can do with the energy you're able to store. If you can use the energy more efficiently, you can do the same work with less.
The "hydrocarbon advantage" isn't as large as you might think, because the relative efficiencies of gasoline vs chemical battery goes a LONG way to close the gap.
=Smidge=
That's 41% relative increase. This means that if you take two people who have an equal chance of getting this cancer, and one is given a "high exposure," they are now 41% more likely to get this cancer than the other, unexposed person.
So if *everyone* got a "high exposure" the rate of this particular form of cancer would increase from 19.4 per 100,000 to 27.4 per 100,000.
That's still an eye-raising increase, but try to keep it in perspective. This does NOT mean 41% of people exposed get cancer.
=Smidge=
Gah! The paper itself is paywalled.There's some supplemental data that teases how they considered different energy grids - how much CO2 is produced during recycling is strongly dependent on the CO2 released generating the energy for the process. I'm glad they properly considered that, and it's not a terrible spread; US average, RFCM (Michigan, which is the third of fourth worst grid in the US), and NWPP (Northwest continental US, fourth or fifth cleanest in the US).
But my question is not fully answered... what if the recycling process exclusively used energy sources of negligible CO2 emissions? In other words, how green could it be?
=Smidge=
> Eventually they'll have to buy the latest version to continue using it with the latest hardware.
My dad still uses Lotus 123.
Old software runs on new OS/Hardware amazingly well. The only way to stop this is to intentionally break things to prevent it, which is probably a large part of why Microsoft was so ham-fisted getting people onto Windows 10... you can't avoid buying new software if the software you already own and paid for doesn't work anymore.
=Smidge=
If a customer BUYS your software, then you get paid once but you still have to support it for years.
If the customer RENTS your software, Software-As-A-Service, you get them to keep paying you annually or even monthly.
Kind of a no-brainer for Microsoft, really. An owned copy of the software costs what, $200-$250? They keep you subscribed for two and a half years and that's covered. Relatively few people will BUY new software every year when the old versions work just fine, so you absolutely make more in the long run through subscriptions.
=Smidge=
So for "New Coal Stations" you cite an article that talks about (as the first example) a coal plant that's been in planning and construction for over a decade, and as of now (nearly 8 months after that article was written) still isn't commissioned and won't be for at least another year. Meanwhile, that project is to build a 4th unit to replace the three that were decommissioned years ago. Three out, one new. That's a net decrease innit?
The other examples are even dumber; A plant that was completed in 2013, one that was completed in 2015, and a plant that's been in construction since 2008 with no completion date yet.
I suppose the time travelers didn't succeed in telling the planners not to bother.
The article closes with a few paragraphs about a plant commissioned in 1996 that is nearing end of contract and presents it as an opportunity to replace it with something other than coal power.
So instead of "Germany is building new coal plants" your article just demonstrates that Germany has built coal plants - past tense - and that even some of those may never see operation. Forgive me if I'm not as convinced as you are on this point.
=Smidge=