This study had very few participants and therefore cannot be relied upon for anything conclusive. What it does demonstrate is a need to investigate the effects of marijuana further. In order to do so we'd need to see marijuana rescheduled. As it is now marijuana is in a class of drugs deemed having no medical use when in fact this is known to be false.
People may debate if using marijuana medicinally is a good idea or not but we should at least allow people the ability to research this without the threat of going to jail. I don't know how they were able to even perform this study because of the federal laws against it. I assume they did the study in a state where there is no federal enforcement, as in the state legalized it and the federal government decided to turn a blind eye.
The federal government deciding to no enforce federal law based on which state one lives in is unsustainable. At some point this will become a legal problem that will have to be addressed in the courts or legislature. As it is now we have the executive just making law on its own, and that is not how a republic is supposed to work.
The mention of future clean energy does not mention any nuclear energy source, which mean we either won't have energy, won't have clean energy, or we won't have a future.
Wind and solar exist in the marketplace because of subsidies. Those subsidies are possible because of fossil fuels and nuclear, they fund the market so that they can produce taxes for the wind and solar companies to stay in business. To those that claim nuclear, coal, and oil are subsidized I will concede that is true. What I will point out is that even if the subsidies go away we'd still be using coal, oil, and nuclear fission. If the subsidies for wind and solar go away then so does the wind and solar manufacturing.
In fact I'd like to test my theory. Let's end all energy subsidies and let the market figure it out. Not only do I believe that wind and solar would nearly disappear but I believe that nuclear would gain. If I'm right or wrong then we all win with a freer market and cheaper energy.
With more and more people getting out of huts made of grass and mud and into houses made of brick and wood we are going to see these same people with the means to do more than hike, bike, or ride a horse to get somewhere. With economies of scale aircraft have been getting cheaper, aided by more automation, improved materials, etc. to bring costs down. I thought it nearly inevitable that at some date we'd see more point to point aircraft services to the point that nearly any grass strip is an airport.
What problem I see is a regulatory resistance. People getting pilot's license won't be the problem. Neither will the increased air traffic. The regulatory resistance will come from the TSA being unable to poke through the luggage of people taking off and landing at privately owned airports.
I've flown from some small airports before on commercial flights and the TSA cannot even keep up with that. I've boarded a plane without having gone through a TSA checkpoint only to have to do so *AFTER* I got off the plane and landed at a larger airport. What was the point of that? I already completed my flight? The only answer I could come up with is that the TSA had to make itself "useful" and/or impose its control on air traffic or someone might get the idea that the TSA is useless.
Well, the TSA is useless. Expect them to kill point to point air travel only to "prove" they are providing a useful service.
My brother in law is in training to become a pilot and has many private pilot friends which has given him plenty of experience on how useless the TSA is in providing security. An example is that just about anyone can drive up to a gate to the tarmac, claim to be a pilot going to their own plane, and be waved through. Their truck was not searched and even though they were carrying 200 pounds of equipment on the plane no one looked at it. They flew to a private airport, where there was no TSA, to unload their delivery. Upon return they flew back to the same airport, got back in their truck, and drove out of the tarmac gate slowing down only enough to wave at the "security" guard.
Another thing that I realized is that the TSA is not about keeping us, the flying public, safe. What the TSA is there to do is prevent another plane from landing on a building in DC. That's what the policy makers fear. They don't care about us dying in a hijacked plane, they just don't want the plane to land on their laps while they sit in the US Capitol. Privately owned aircraft is a problem for them, especially after that retired postal worker landed his autogyro on the Capitol lawn.
There is no problem with energy consumption so long as it is done sustainably, such as with nuclear power. Airbus claims that these helicopters will be electric, something I find improbable. Electric storage is much larger, heavier, and potentially more fragile than an internal combustion engine. Hydrocarbon fuels synthesized from nuclear power is feasible and as much a "carbon free" energy source as wind and solar.
People have pointed out that nuclear power plants require so much concrete, steel, etc. that it cannot be "carbon free". These same people ignore the concrete, steel, etc. that wind and solar require. If wind and solar can be called "carbon free" then so can nuclear power.
Helicopters require much more energy per mile than fixed wing craft but, again, if we use nuclear power to synthesize the fuel or charge the batteries then we are still carbon free. If the power is cheap enough then it is potentially no more expensive than any other transportation since the energy costs become a fraction of other costs in the system.
Using nuclear power is essentially required for this to become feasible as even as plentiful as wind and solar may be in theory nothing can match what nuclear power can provide in practice.
Try again. You are comparing the energy per volume which has little to do with vehicle performance, at least on land. What matters is energy per kilogram.
Gasoline provides about 45 MJ/kg Lithium ion battery provides about 0.55 MJ/kg
That's roughly a 100x advantage for petrol. This is using top of the line lithium-ion batteries too, something that would be in a laptop and not necessarily a car. These expensive batteries might be in a Tesla or Cadillac while more affordable vehicles will use lower grade lithium-ion or some different chemistry. Future advancement might provide some gains on that, or bring the price down a bit, but it won't make batteries 100x or even 10x better. Even if someone can make a battery that can give a 2x gain the weight of the petrol will still be 1/50th the weigh for energy provided.
We are at a point of diminishing returns, we've made such leaps in battery technology before because there was a lot to learn even a decade ago. Now we've figured out a lot and there is not much room to gain any more.
"It turns out there are not so many people like that hence the article. It's about size of niche and not total world domination."
It just seems to me that the 90% claim is overambitious, or rather that even though 90% of drivers would be content with owning an EV that does not necessarily translate to these people buying an EV. There are many aspects to car ownership besides cost and driving capability. For example, SUVs are (or at least were) popular for many reasons, to reach this market there must be an electric SUV on the market. By the very nature of EVs I do not believe such a vehicle will be offered.
"Ever had to get an engine block out of a car:) I'll leave that as an example that "any" just doesn't quite fit." And batteries are light as a feather?
"I saw a hybrid at a mine site in 1986 - seemed to be solved for a lot of situations and the solutions have just kept on improving." A hybrid car? You mean as in it has an ICE in addition to the electric motor? It seems to me then that the solution to the shortcomings of an EV is to bolt on an ICE. In other words with all the improvements in EV technology we are still not much better than what we had 30 years ago.
Fuel cells are always a "few years" away, they've been that way for something like three decades now. Mr. Lovins is certainly a charismatic and convincing lecturer. I've seen him speak on YouTube and he's quite the salesman. After seeing other people, just as qualified as Mr. Lovins, counter what he's said I now see just how full of BS he is.
How long will these EV subsidies last if 90% of commuters buy EVs? How much of an advantage will access to the car pool lanes be then?
Your perks of EV ownership will last only so long as they do not become popular. Enjoy this while it lasts. At some point you will be paying the tolls like everyone else or you are going to have a very pot hole filled commute everyday.
Many of these cost savings will last only so long as EVs remain the minority. When the tax rebates, reduced tolls, and car pool access privileges go away then I expect that there will be a shift back to ICE vehicles.
EV subsidies still take money from the poor and give it to rich people to buy something that they'd quite likely buy even if there was not a subsidy.
I do not believe it is in my best interest for my tax money to go to someone that just bought a $65000 Cadillac ELR. That is someone that either does not need another $7500 to buy that car or someone that should consider a Chevy Volt instead.
Must be very convenient for you but I suspect that you are in a very small minority. When I drive to work or class I see many many cars parked on large and, except for white and yellow painted lines, featureless spans of concrete. While I may park at these spots for many hours at a time there is no means for me and many millions of others to find an electrical outlet near any of these parking spaces.
I'm sure that given enough demand that people will provide parking spots with electrical outlets. We have a bit of a chicken and egg problem though, don't we? People won't drive their electric car to work if they cannot charge it there, and employers are not likely to provide electrical outlets if no one drives an electric car to work.
It would seem they are making some assumptions that I'm not so sure will prove to remain true over time. One thing they assume is that the price and capability of electric cars will remain stable or improve.
I have little doubt that we'll see battery technology improve. What I do see is that batteries are hitting some very real physical limits. The way batteries work means that there are limits to how much energy that one can store per mass and volume. Add on top of this the need to withstand considerable forces, over long periods of time, and remain safe enough that people can be within arms length of it. I suspect everyone reading this has seen videos of exploding laptops, read stories of laptops self immolating, and of house fires caused by faulty batteries in everything from cordless tools to those wheeled skateboards that college kids enjoy so much these days.
It's not just the safety of high density batteries but the cost. Some advancement in batteries is due to chemistry changes, but much of it is from increased complexity. Adding complexity adds cost. The chemistry comes at a cost too. Lithium is a popular material for batteries but that element is not especially plentiful. I'm not suggesting we'll run out of the stuff only that with increased demand comes increased cost.
Then there is the assumption that hydrocarbon fuels are somehow problematic. With few exceptions the demand for electric cars comes from a belief that hydrocarbon fuels are "bad" for us. While I do share the belief that we should find alternatives to importing oil into the USA I do not believe we need to dispose of the hydrocarbon fueled vehicle to do it.
I will say that I do not believe that burning fossil fuels will bring catastrophic climate change. I believe that the problem of burning oil is economic. The USA should be able to produce all the oil it needs domestically if only the federal government would allow us to do so. But let's ignore that as I will concede that fossil fuels are problematic if it means we move to finding viable alternatives.
The reason I've been saying "hydrocarbon" fuel instead of "fossil" fuel is for two reasons. First is that I believe that oil from the ground is primarily from chemical processes within the earth, not from long dead plant and animal life. Second is that we can produce hydrocarbon fuels without having to pump it out of the ground.
We know of ways to produce hydrocarbon fuels from things like sewage, waste products that we'd normally landfill, and seawater. What it takes is an energy source that is other than carbon we dig up from the ground. The best source is nuclear power. The US Navy has been researching ways to get hydrogen and carbon from the sea and use that to synthesize hydrocarbon fuel. By doing this we close the loop on carbon. The hydrocarbon fuel from this process will, when burned, return to carbon dioxide and water. The rain will return that CO2 and H2O to the sea where it can be reconverted to fuel again. This means no more drilling for oil.
I see the solution in synthesized hydrocarbon fuels. We do this and people won't have to compromise with electric vehicles to reduce the carbon added to the atmosphere. I see the solution in nuclear power, not electric vehicles.
Suppose this synthetic fuel technology never does work, that still leaves us with electric vehicles getting charged up with electricity from coal and natural gas. Nuclear power is cheap, plentiful, reliable, and safe. We cannot say the same for solar and wind. If we all agree that "fossil" fuels are bad then that means we need to replace it with something just as cheap, plentiful, and reliable. That means nuclear power. Anything else is suicidal and/or wishful thinking.
Right, you will rent a car three times a year for those times where an electric car does not have enough range. I would imagine the same for much of the US. I also imagine that those three times a year land on or about Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. If what you propose catches on then enjoy being able to rent a car while you can because you might find yourself wanting to rent a car and none will be available.
This just tells me that there is a sort of saturation point for electric vehicles and it's not 90%. I don't know what the ratio might be exactly but I believe that electric vehicles will never exceed 50%.
My calculations on this are far from rigorous but just a general idea on how people in the USA drive and how many vehicles a typical family owns tells me that quite a few people would not be satisfied with an electric vehicle as their only means of transportation. EVs might be nice for a second car, or for childless people with short commutes, but for those that want to take those long trips a few times a year they'd likely buy a hydrocarbon powered vehicle.
To those that believe EVs will catch up with ICEs in time I will tell you that physics are against it. Batteries, fuel cells, capacitors, or any other electrical storage device you can think of simply cannot compete with hydrocarbons in energy density. Additionally, any technology that can make an electric car lighter can be applied to a hydrocarbon powered car. Making cars out of aluminum instead of steel, or whatever, to make a car lighter makes gains on every fuel type. Given the energy density problem with electric storage this means that EVs are just as likely to lose with technology advancement as they are to gain.
This energy density problem is not a matter of being ten times heavier than gasoline but more like hundreds or thousands of times. This is a matter of physics that no foreseeable technology can solve. I won't say that it cannot be solved since we've been surprised before. I will say that the chances of this being solved in our lifetimes is very very small.
I found the article quite interesting, mostly because of the mention at the end about the use of beasts of burden on land to carry an explosive to a target.
I'm reminded of something I read a long time ago about some sort of college experiment, competition, or whatever of people trying to race horses by remote control. They strapped a kind of robot to the back of a race horse that could handle a harness and a whip. I don't recall the point of doing this, or at least what point they had in mind, but with reading this article I can see the potential utility.
There are a lot of questions about whether a horse, ox, mule, or whatever would be an improvement over using some sort of mechanical transportation device. There are certainly some ethical questions, as touched on in the article. I will say that if strapping a bomb to a mule, have it wander into enemy territory, and then blow it and enemy asse(t)s to pieces does save the lives of our warriors then I'm all for it. I'm not going to place the value of a mule over that of human lives.
There is certainly value in this research, if only to know what an enemy combatant might be capable of and how to counter it.
A much bigger issue with this: if you can get this program onto the air-gapped machine in the first place, haven't you already compromised it?
The rules on taking data into or out of a secured location is a bit like a roach motel, you can bring things in but taking anything out is difficult. For example, I set up an air gapped system and as I recall there was little I had to do to bring in the software and source code. All I had to do was run any media through a virus check. Taking anything out meant I had to log what was taken, when, and for what reason. It came down to me just making a mental note that I would take nothing off the system, I'd leave that to my superiors as I just did not want to bother.
This was a logical way to handle the data, as well as a near necessity. We'd have to bring in a lot of data to do our work from source code, to test data, and so forth. If we had to take as much care as what went in as much as we did to the care on taking things out we'd be spending a lot of time writing logs and not getting our work done. Also, if nothing left the system then we can be quite certain no sensitive data had left. We'd spend months or years on a project where nothing left except at the very end where the finished project was written to a disk or tape, the project shut down, and the system re-tasked to some other project.
I've been looking to return to programming after years of doing firmware development, doing some IT work since, and now going back to school to update my skills. In order to see what I should focus on in school I've been looking at what languages are seen most often on job postings. In no particular order I see JavaScript, SQL, PHP, Python, and Perl at the top of my list. There's some demand for C++, C#, and Ruby. I'll see some demand for things like R, Matlab, and some statistical tools, but those seem to be jobs at the local university which should not be a surprise.
What I've figured out is that there is demand for people that can program web based applications. This means JavaScript and its various libraries, PHP, Python, and perhaps some Java and C++. If we are stretching the programming languages a bit then we get into things like HTML, XML, CSS, and other markup languages. Looking at the programming course I have this fall I see it will be taught using Java, Ruby, or Scala. I don't recall even seeing Scala until today so this could be interesting.
I once did the math on what it would take for me to live off the grid. I assumed I could have a solar panel the size of my roof, any bigger and I'd run into building code problems. In the summer I'd have enough electricity to run the house and charge up an electric car for my then short commute. I didn't recalculate since then for my now longer drive to work. In the winter though I'd have enough power for lights, refrigeration, entertainment, and maybe to run some large appliances. I'd have to rely on some sort of fossil fuel for heat and transportation in the winter months, or grid electricity.
I don't recall exactly how large the battery I needed, which is somewhat arbitrary anyway since it depends on how much of a reserve a person is comfortable with. I recall the battery being a meter tall, one meter deep, and five meters long. This was with off the shelf sealed lead acid. The battery alone would cost as much as my house. I believe this gave me a three day reserve of electricity. The cost of the solar panels, battery chargers, etc. was more difficult to calculate since prices for such are rarely advertised outright. I could get a price if I solicited a bid and had someone come for a site survey. Since this was for a curiosity and not a serious effort I made no effort to seek such and estimated as best I could. This gave a price for the panels and electronics that, again, cost about as much as my house.
I found this thought experiment quite enlightening. The cost of the batteries, panels, etc. scale with the size of the house and the cost of the house scales with its size. Therefore the "rule of thumb" I came up with is that going off grid will cost twice as much as the house. This does not, as pointed out before, remove the need for fuel for winter heating and transportation. Some of that will be offset by having excess in summer to power an electric car.
With residential combined heat and power being a thing now it opens up new possibilities. It may be possible to reduce the size of the battery pack, or keep an electric car running for a greater portion of the year, or whatever.
Point is that I do not believe anyone can be truly energy independent and still live anything approximating a modern lifestyle. I live the the US Midwest, which granted does make for some cold winters. People north of me will certainly have greater energy issues. People south of me may be able to live on the sun hitting their property, and still be able to drive an electric car for most or all of their daily commutes. Much of the energy consumed will still come in the form of the products and services we buy, like food, clothing, entertainment, public transportation, and durable goods. The energy consumed in making the solar panels will have to be paid back somehow. That might be more solar power but it comes from somewhere.
Oh, and living in the country so you can put up a windmill may not be wise. The windmill will produce more power but then it will take more power per day to commute. A windmill will also produce power when the sun does not shine but then that is another cost and still will not eliminate the need for fossil fuels for anyone that experiences a real winter. I have a heat pump, as does my sister, and my brother. We all needed a backup. I have a natural gas furnace, my sister has a wood stove, and my brother has a propane furnace.
There was a time during the transition from the age of sail to the age of steam where a type of ship called a windjammer proved economical. A windjammer is a large steel hulled cargo sailing ship with as many as five large masts, called a windjammer as it was so fast and efficient it seemed to make the wind stop.
Such a ship was expected to circumnavigate the globe in 8 months, making as many cargo stops along the way as it could. Such ships would often carry bulk commodity goods since they could afford taking the slow boats. They were typically capable of carrying between 2000 and 5000 tons of cargo but the largest were able to carry about 8000 tons.
The ships did have steam engines on board to power the systems that moved the sails and rudder, as well as provide electricity for lights and radios. Without the need for vast coal reserves for fuel to power the ship they could use that space instead for cargo.
A modern windjammer might be feasible, using the wind to propel the ship, solar power for electricity, and quite likely a small diesel engine for emergency power and propulsion. Hybrid ships have been proposed before, with sails augmenting diesel power.
I was on a team in college that built a solar powered car for competition. Calling it a "race" is a misnomer as there was a speed limit for safety of the crew. The car would have to be charged up from sunrise to the start of the "race" and then drive for one hour to four, depending on conditions, and then charge until sunset. This car carried just the driver, at a max speed of 50 miles per hour, without air conditioning or other comforts. The estimated cost of the car would be many hundreds of thousands of dollars with some competitors having donations of money and materials in the millions. These cars had no bumpers. We could not use an off the shelf car horn as those would typically consume more power than the main motor. There were no headlamps since that would drain the battery considerably. LED headlamps did not exist then but even today a solar powered car is not likely to be feasible.
Wind power at sea will always beat solar power in the air for speed and cargo capacity. Solar power for a car is something for college science projects. Solar power in an aircraft will not ever be feasible for passenger service.
It would be fun to see a competition between a solar powered airplane and a sailing ship. Perhaps even leave the competition open, given X dollars and Y months to build create a zero fuel vehicle that can circumnavigate the globe. Give points for fastest time, cargo carry ability, cost savings, and wildcard creativity points just for laughs.
Rather than just looking for what Google gave as a definition for "gross negligence" I went to a legal resource: https://www.law.cornell.edu/we...
"A lack of care that demonstrates reckless disregard for the safety or lives of others, which is so great it appears to be a conscious violation of other people's rights to safety. It is more than simple inadvertence, and can affect the amount of damages."
Clinton did not seem to give any regard to how her handling of state secrets might affect others, that fits the definition of gross negligence to me.
They claim to have a process to convert sunlight "directly" into synthesized fuel but in the photos and the description we see a common off the shelf photovoltaic cell in the process. Therefore this process is tied to the efficiencies of photovoltaics, and that the process can be driven by other electricity sources, such as wind, hydro, or nuclear.
I've seen something very similar being investigated by the US Navy, the difference is that the Navy powers the process from nuclear power. They might have some new materials, techniques, etc. where they take the electricity to make the synthetic gas but the solar powered half of the process can be trivially replaced with a different electricity source.
IMHO, they used the solar power aspect of this to "greenwash" it so that they can more easily get federal funding. Had they used a more practical and reliable electricity source, like hydro, coal, or nuclear, or had they left the electricity source unmentioned, then they'd not get the publicity they have. Don't get me wrong, I'm hating the game, not the players. They played the game admirably. Now they just need to get the attention of the US Navy and then they can get some real funding.
"Gross negligence, while not the best defined of legal terms, has always implied mens rea."
Wrong. Try again.
Murder is the act of intentional homicide, manslaughter is the lesser offense of homicide through negligence. What differs here is that the law makes no distinction between negligence and intent in the securing of classified data. Whether Clinton intended to break the law or not is irrelevant. Paragraph (f) that I pointed to above spells out that negligence is also a crime, other paragraphs before it address intentional leaking of data. The question of intent is frankly moot, the FBI found classified data on her unsecured computers so therefore she broke the law.
What the FBI has done is claim that they interpret the law to require intent and that they were tasked with investigating an intentional release of secured data, but since no intentional release was found then therefore they cannot recommend pressing charges. The claim that Clinton did transmit classified information on unsecured systems, but there was no evidence of it being intentionally transmitted to an adversary, means that she was negligent. Therefore, I assume, if the FBI was asked to investigate unintentional release of classified data that they'd have to recommend charges.
At best Clinton may be able to merely claim she was incompetent, not that it matters in this case, she still broke the law. However by claiming ignorance and/or incompetence she might be able to dodge a greater charge of treason but that does not save her from being barred from holding public office.
Whether she is ignorant, incompetent, stupid, or a traitor should not matter for her run for POTUS. She belongs in Miramar, not DC.
I did look it up and Hillary Clinton did commit several felonies, one specifically being 18 USC Sec. 793(f). Look it up.
Through negligence she has permitted national defense secrets to exist outside of a properly secured system. Intent is irrelevant, it is not important that she intended to expose state secrets to potential adversaries only that she has not taken care to prevent the secrets from being discovered by an adversary. Additionally, there does not need to be proof that an adversary has discovered this information, only that it is possible for them to do so.
You have said nothing that contradicts what I have said. I did not say that nuclear cannot be replaced by unreliable energy sources, I said that doing so would be at a greater cost of life and property.
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This study had very few participants and therefore cannot be relied upon for anything conclusive. What it does demonstrate is a need to investigate the effects of marijuana further. In order to do so we'd need to see marijuana rescheduled. As it is now marijuana is in a class of drugs deemed having no medical use when in fact this is known to be false.
People may debate if using marijuana medicinally is a good idea or not but we should at least allow people the ability to research this without the threat of going to jail. I don't know how they were able to even perform this study because of the federal laws against it. I assume they did the study in a state where there is no federal enforcement, as in the state legalized it and the federal government decided to turn a blind eye.
The federal government deciding to no enforce federal law based on which state one lives in is unsustainable. At some point this will become a legal problem that will have to be addressed in the courts or legislature. As it is now we have the executive just making law on its own, and that is not how a republic is supposed to work.
The mention of future clean energy does not mention any nuclear energy source, which mean we either won't have energy, won't have clean energy, or we won't have a future.
Wind and solar exist in the marketplace because of subsidies. Those subsidies are possible because of fossil fuels and nuclear, they fund the market so that they can produce taxes for the wind and solar companies to stay in business. To those that claim nuclear, coal, and oil are subsidized I will concede that is true. What I will point out is that even if the subsidies go away we'd still be using coal, oil, and nuclear fission. If the subsidies for wind and solar go away then so does the wind and solar manufacturing.
In fact I'd like to test my theory. Let's end all energy subsidies and let the market figure it out. Not only do I believe that wind and solar would nearly disappear but I believe that nuclear would gain. If I'm right or wrong then we all win with a freer market and cheaper energy.
It's probably galvanized steel, a mid grade steel plated with zinc to prevent corrosion.
With more and more people getting out of huts made of grass and mud and into houses made of brick and wood we are going to see these same people with the means to do more than hike, bike, or ride a horse to get somewhere. With economies of scale aircraft have been getting cheaper, aided by more automation, improved materials, etc. to bring costs down. I thought it nearly inevitable that at some date we'd see more point to point aircraft services to the point that nearly any grass strip is an airport.
What problem I see is a regulatory resistance. People getting pilot's license won't be the problem. Neither will the increased air traffic. The regulatory resistance will come from the TSA being unable to poke through the luggage of people taking off and landing at privately owned airports.
I've flown from some small airports before on commercial flights and the TSA cannot even keep up with that. I've boarded a plane without having gone through a TSA checkpoint only to have to do so *AFTER* I got off the plane and landed at a larger airport. What was the point of that? I already completed my flight? The only answer I could come up with is that the TSA had to make itself "useful" and/or impose its control on air traffic or someone might get the idea that the TSA is useless.
Well, the TSA is useless. Expect them to kill point to point air travel only to "prove" they are providing a useful service.
My brother in law is in training to become a pilot and has many private pilot friends which has given him plenty of experience on how useless the TSA is in providing security. An example is that just about anyone can drive up to a gate to the tarmac, claim to be a pilot going to their own plane, and be waved through. Their truck was not searched and even though they were carrying 200 pounds of equipment on the plane no one looked at it. They flew to a private airport, where there was no TSA, to unload their delivery. Upon return they flew back to the same airport, got back in their truck, and drove out of the tarmac gate slowing down only enough to wave at the "security" guard.
Another thing that I realized is that the TSA is not about keeping us, the flying public, safe. What the TSA is there to do is prevent another plane from landing on a building in DC. That's what the policy makers fear. They don't care about us dying in a hijacked plane, they just don't want the plane to land on their laps while they sit in the US Capitol. Privately owned aircraft is a problem for them, especially after that retired postal worker landed his autogyro on the Capitol lawn.
There is no problem with energy consumption so long as it is done sustainably, such as with nuclear power. Airbus claims that these helicopters will be electric, something I find improbable. Electric storage is much larger, heavier, and potentially more fragile than an internal combustion engine. Hydrocarbon fuels synthesized from nuclear power is feasible and as much a "carbon free" energy source as wind and solar.
People have pointed out that nuclear power plants require so much concrete, steel, etc. that it cannot be "carbon free". These same people ignore the concrete, steel, etc. that wind and solar require. If wind and solar can be called "carbon free" then so can nuclear power.
Helicopters require much more energy per mile than fixed wing craft but, again, if we use nuclear power to synthesize the fuel or charge the batteries then we are still carbon free. If the power is cheap enough then it is potentially no more expensive than any other transportation since the energy costs become a fraction of other costs in the system.
Using nuclear power is essentially required for this to become feasible as even as plentiful as wind and solar may be in theory nothing can match what nuclear power can provide in practice.
Try again. You are comparing the energy per volume which has little to do with vehicle performance, at least on land. What matters is energy per kilogram.
Gasoline provides about 45 MJ/kg
Lithium ion battery provides about 0.55 MJ/kg
That's roughly a 100x advantage for petrol. This is using top of the line lithium-ion batteries too, something that would be in a laptop and not necessarily a car. These expensive batteries might be in a Tesla or Cadillac while more affordable vehicles will use lower grade lithium-ion or some different chemistry. Future advancement might provide some gains on that, or bring the price down a bit, but it won't make batteries 100x or even 10x better. Even if someone can make a battery that can give a 2x gain the weight of the petrol will still be 1/50th the weigh for energy provided.
We are at a point of diminishing returns, we've made such leaps in battery technology before because there was a lot to learn even a decade ago. Now we've figured out a lot and there is not much room to gain any more.
"It turns out there are not so many people like that hence the article. It's about size of niche and not total world domination."
It just seems to me that the 90% claim is overambitious, or rather that even though 90% of drivers would be content with owning an EV that does not necessarily translate to these people buying an EV. There are many aspects to car ownership besides cost and driving capability. For example, SUVs are (or at least were) popular for many reasons, to reach this market there must be an electric SUV on the market. By the very nature of EVs I do not believe such a vehicle will be offered.
"Ever had to get an engine block out of a car :) I'll leave that as an example that "any" just doesn't quite fit."
And batteries are light as a feather?
"I saw a hybrid at a mine site in 1986 - seemed to be solved for a lot of situations and the solutions have just kept on improving."
A hybrid car? You mean as in it has an ICE in addition to the electric motor? It seems to me then that the solution to the shortcomings of an EV is to bolt on an ICE. In other words with all the improvements in EV technology we are still not much better than what we had 30 years ago.
So the expectation is that the average person who leaves the city limits now and again has access to a second car with a gasoline engine.
So the 90% claim is more like 50%.
Fuel cells are always a "few years" away, they've been that way for something like three decades now. Mr. Lovins is certainly a charismatic and convincing lecturer. I've seen him speak on YouTube and he's quite the salesman. After seeing other people, just as qualified as Mr. Lovins, counter what he's said I now see just how full of BS he is.
How long will these EV subsidies last if 90% of commuters buy EVs? How much of an advantage will access to the car pool lanes be then?
Your perks of EV ownership will last only so long as they do not become popular. Enjoy this while it lasts. At some point you will be paying the tolls like everyone else or you are going to have a very pot hole filled commute everyday.
Many of these cost savings will last only so long as EVs remain the minority. When the tax rebates, reduced tolls, and car pool access privileges go away then I expect that there will be a shift back to ICE vehicles.
EV subsidies still take money from the poor and give it to rich people to buy something that they'd quite likely buy even if there was not a subsidy.
I do not believe it is in my best interest for my tax money to go to someone that just bought a $65000 Cadillac ELR. That is someone that either does not need another $7500 to buy that car or someone that should consider a Chevy Volt instead.
I can also charge at work.
Must be very convenient for you but I suspect that you are in a very small minority. When I drive to work or class I see many many cars parked on large and, except for white and yellow painted lines, featureless spans of concrete. While I may park at these spots for many hours at a time there is no means for me and many millions of others to find an electrical outlet near any of these parking spaces.
I'm sure that given enough demand that people will provide parking spots with electrical outlets. We have a bit of a chicken and egg problem though, don't we? People won't drive their electric car to work if they cannot charge it there, and employers are not likely to provide electrical outlets if no one drives an electric car to work.
It would seem they are making some assumptions that I'm not so sure will prove to remain true over time. One thing they assume is that the price and capability of electric cars will remain stable or improve.
I have little doubt that we'll see battery technology improve. What I do see is that batteries are hitting some very real physical limits. The way batteries work means that there are limits to how much energy that one can store per mass and volume. Add on top of this the need to withstand considerable forces, over long periods of time, and remain safe enough that people can be within arms length of it. I suspect everyone reading this has seen videos of exploding laptops, read stories of laptops self immolating, and of house fires caused by faulty batteries in everything from cordless tools to those wheeled skateboards that college kids enjoy so much these days.
It's not just the safety of high density batteries but the cost. Some advancement in batteries is due to chemistry changes, but much of it is from increased complexity. Adding complexity adds cost. The chemistry comes at a cost too. Lithium is a popular material for batteries but that element is not especially plentiful. I'm not suggesting we'll run out of the stuff only that with increased demand comes increased cost.
Then there is the assumption that hydrocarbon fuels are somehow problematic. With few exceptions the demand for electric cars comes from a belief that hydrocarbon fuels are "bad" for us. While I do share the belief that we should find alternatives to importing oil into the USA I do not believe we need to dispose of the hydrocarbon fueled vehicle to do it.
I will say that I do not believe that burning fossil fuels will bring catastrophic climate change. I believe that the problem of burning oil is economic. The USA should be able to produce all the oil it needs domestically if only the federal government would allow us to do so. But let's ignore that as I will concede that fossil fuels are problematic if it means we move to finding viable alternatives.
The reason I've been saying "hydrocarbon" fuel instead of "fossil" fuel is for two reasons. First is that I believe that oil from the ground is primarily from chemical processes within the earth, not from long dead plant and animal life. Second is that we can produce hydrocarbon fuels without having to pump it out of the ground.
We know of ways to produce hydrocarbon fuels from things like sewage, waste products that we'd normally landfill, and seawater. What it takes is an energy source that is other than carbon we dig up from the ground. The best source is nuclear power. The US Navy has been researching ways to get hydrogen and carbon from the sea and use that to synthesize hydrocarbon fuel. By doing this we close the loop on carbon. The hydrocarbon fuel from this process will, when burned, return to carbon dioxide and water. The rain will return that CO2 and H2O to the sea where it can be reconverted to fuel again. This means no more drilling for oil.
I see the solution in synthesized hydrocarbon fuels. We do this and people won't have to compromise with electric vehicles to reduce the carbon added to the atmosphere. I see the solution in nuclear power, not electric vehicles.
Suppose this synthetic fuel technology never does work, that still leaves us with electric vehicles getting charged up with electricity from coal and natural gas. Nuclear power is cheap, plentiful, reliable, and safe. We cannot say the same for solar and wind. If we all agree that "fossil" fuels are bad then that means we need to replace it with something just as cheap, plentiful, and reliable. That means nuclear power. Anything else is suicidal and/or wishful thinking.
Right, you will rent a car three times a year for those times where an electric car does not have enough range. I would imagine the same for much of the US. I also imagine that those three times a year land on or about Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. If what you propose catches on then enjoy being able to rent a car while you can because you might find yourself wanting to rent a car and none will be available.
This just tells me that there is a sort of saturation point for electric vehicles and it's not 90%. I don't know what the ratio might be exactly but I believe that electric vehicles will never exceed 50%.
My calculations on this are far from rigorous but just a general idea on how people in the USA drive and how many vehicles a typical family owns tells me that quite a few people would not be satisfied with an electric vehicle as their only means of transportation. EVs might be nice for a second car, or for childless people with short commutes, but for those that want to take those long trips a few times a year they'd likely buy a hydrocarbon powered vehicle.
To those that believe EVs will catch up with ICEs in time I will tell you that physics are against it. Batteries, fuel cells, capacitors, or any other electrical storage device you can think of simply cannot compete with hydrocarbons in energy density. Additionally, any technology that can make an electric car lighter can be applied to a hydrocarbon powered car. Making cars out of aluminum instead of steel, or whatever, to make a car lighter makes gains on every fuel type. Given the energy density problem with electric storage this means that EVs are just as likely to lose with technology advancement as they are to gain.
This energy density problem is not a matter of being ten times heavier than gasoline but more like hundreds or thousands of times. This is a matter of physics that no foreseeable technology can solve. I won't say that it cannot be solved since we've been surprised before. I will say that the chances of this being solved in our lifetimes is very very small.
Now this, gentlemen, is what a well crafted troll looks like.
Agreed. It pushes all the right buttons.
I found the article quite interesting, mostly because of the mention at the end about the use of beasts of burden on land to carry an explosive to a target.
I'm reminded of something I read a long time ago about some sort of college experiment, competition, or whatever of people trying to race horses by remote control. They strapped a kind of robot to the back of a race horse that could handle a harness and a whip. I don't recall the point of doing this, or at least what point they had in mind, but with reading this article I can see the potential utility.
There are a lot of questions about whether a horse, ox, mule, or whatever would be an improvement over using some sort of mechanical transportation device. There are certainly some ethical questions, as touched on in the article. I will say that if strapping a bomb to a mule, have it wander into enemy territory, and then blow it and enemy asse(t)s to pieces does save the lives of our warriors then I'm all for it. I'm not going to place the value of a mule over that of human lives.
There is certainly value in this research, if only to know what an enemy combatant might be capable of and how to counter it.
A much bigger issue with this: if you can get this program onto the air-gapped machine in the first place, haven't you already compromised it?
The rules on taking data into or out of a secured location is a bit like a roach motel, you can bring things in but taking anything out is difficult. For example, I set up an air gapped system and as I recall there was little I had to do to bring in the software and source code. All I had to do was run any media through a virus check. Taking anything out meant I had to log what was taken, when, and for what reason. It came down to me just making a mental note that I would take nothing off the system, I'd leave that to my superiors as I just did not want to bother.
This was a logical way to handle the data, as well as a near necessity. We'd have to bring in a lot of data to do our work from source code, to test data, and so forth. If we had to take as much care as what went in as much as we did to the care on taking things out we'd be spending a lot of time writing logs and not getting our work done. Also, if nothing left the system then we can be quite certain no sensitive data had left. We'd spend months or years on a project where nothing left except at the very end where the finished project was written to a disk or tape, the project shut down, and the system re-tasked to some other project.
I've been looking to return to programming after years of doing firmware development, doing some IT work since, and now going back to school to update my skills. In order to see what I should focus on in school I've been looking at what languages are seen most often on job postings. In no particular order I see JavaScript, SQL, PHP, Python, and Perl at the top of my list. There's some demand for C++, C#, and Ruby. I'll see some demand for things like R, Matlab, and some statistical tools, but those seem to be jobs at the local university which should not be a surprise.
What I've figured out is that there is demand for people that can program web based applications. This means JavaScript and its various libraries, PHP, Python, and perhaps some Java and C++. If we are stretching the programming languages a bit then we get into things like HTML, XML, CSS, and other markup languages. Looking at the programming course I have this fall I see it will be taught using Java, Ruby, or Scala. I don't recall even seeing Scala until today so this could be interesting.
I once did the math on what it would take for me to live off the grid. I assumed I could have a solar panel the size of my roof, any bigger and I'd run into building code problems. In the summer I'd have enough electricity to run the house and charge up an electric car for my then short commute. I didn't recalculate since then for my now longer drive to work. In the winter though I'd have enough power for lights, refrigeration, entertainment, and maybe to run some large appliances. I'd have to rely on some sort of fossil fuel for heat and transportation in the winter months, or grid electricity.
I don't recall exactly how large the battery I needed, which is somewhat arbitrary anyway since it depends on how much of a reserve a person is comfortable with. I recall the battery being a meter tall, one meter deep, and five meters long. This was with off the shelf sealed lead acid. The battery alone would cost as much as my house. I believe this gave me a three day reserve of electricity. The cost of the solar panels, battery chargers, etc. was more difficult to calculate since prices for such are rarely advertised outright. I could get a price if I solicited a bid and had someone come for a site survey. Since this was for a curiosity and not a serious effort I made no effort to seek such and estimated as best I could. This gave a price for the panels and electronics that, again, cost about as much as my house.
I found this thought experiment quite enlightening. The cost of the batteries, panels, etc. scale with the size of the house and the cost of the house scales with its size. Therefore the "rule of thumb" I came up with is that going off grid will cost twice as much as the house. This does not, as pointed out before, remove the need for fuel for winter heating and transportation. Some of that will be offset by having excess in summer to power an electric car.
With residential combined heat and power being a thing now it opens up new possibilities. It may be possible to reduce the size of the battery pack, or keep an electric car running for a greater portion of the year, or whatever.
Point is that I do not believe anyone can be truly energy independent and still live anything approximating a modern lifestyle. I live the the US Midwest, which granted does make for some cold winters. People north of me will certainly have greater energy issues. People south of me may be able to live on the sun hitting their property, and still be able to drive an electric car for most or all of their daily commutes. Much of the energy consumed will still come in the form of the products and services we buy, like food, clothing, entertainment, public transportation, and durable goods. The energy consumed in making the solar panels will have to be paid back somehow. That might be more solar power but it comes from somewhere.
Oh, and living in the country so you can put up a windmill may not be wise. The windmill will produce more power but then it will take more power per day to commute. A windmill will also produce power when the sun does not shine but then that is another cost and still will not eliminate the need for fossil fuels for anyone that experiences a real winter. I have a heat pump, as does my sister, and my brother. We all needed a backup. I have a natural gas furnace, my sister has a wood stove, and my brother has a propane furnace.
There was a time during the transition from the age of sail to the age of steam where a type of ship called a windjammer proved economical. A windjammer is a large steel hulled cargo sailing ship with as many as five large masts, called a windjammer as it was so fast and efficient it seemed to make the wind stop.
Such a ship was expected to circumnavigate the globe in 8 months, making as many cargo stops along the way as it could. Such ships would often carry bulk commodity goods since they could afford taking the slow boats. They were typically capable of carrying between 2000 and 5000 tons of cargo but the largest were able to carry about 8000 tons.
The ships did have steam engines on board to power the systems that moved the sails and rudder, as well as provide electricity for lights and radios. Without the need for vast coal reserves for fuel to power the ship they could use that space instead for cargo.
A modern windjammer might be feasible, using the wind to propel the ship, solar power for electricity, and quite likely a small diesel engine for emergency power and propulsion. Hybrid ships have been proposed before, with sails augmenting diesel power.
I was on a team in college that built a solar powered car for competition. Calling it a "race" is a misnomer as there was a speed limit for safety of the crew. The car would have to be charged up from sunrise to the start of the "race" and then drive for one hour to four, depending on conditions, and then charge until sunset. This car carried just the driver, at a max speed of 50 miles per hour, without air conditioning or other comforts. The estimated cost of the car would be many hundreds of thousands of dollars with some competitors having donations of money and materials in the millions. These cars had no bumpers. We could not use an off the shelf car horn as those would typically consume more power than the main motor. There were no headlamps since that would drain the battery considerably. LED headlamps did not exist then but even today a solar powered car is not likely to be feasible.
Wind power at sea will always beat solar power in the air for speed and cargo capacity. Solar power for a car is something for college science projects. Solar power in an aircraft will not ever be feasible for passenger service.
It would be fun to see a competition between a solar powered airplane and a sailing ship. Perhaps even leave the competition open, given X dollars and Y months to build create a zero fuel vehicle that can circumnavigate the globe. Give points for fastest time, cargo carry ability, cost savings, and wildcard creativity points just for laughs.
Rather than just looking for what Google gave as a definition for "gross negligence" I went to a legal resource: https://www.law.cornell.edu/we...
"A lack of care that demonstrates reckless disregard for the safety or lives of others, which is so great it appears to be a conscious violation of other people's rights to safety. It is more than simple inadvertence, and can affect the amount of damages."
Clinton did not seem to give any regard to how her handling of state secrets might affect others, that fits the definition of gross negligence to me.
They claim to have a process to convert sunlight "directly" into synthesized fuel but in the photos and the description we see a common off the shelf photovoltaic cell in the process. Therefore this process is tied to the efficiencies of photovoltaics, and that the process can be driven by other electricity sources, such as wind, hydro, or nuclear.
I've seen something very similar being investigated by the US Navy, the difference is that the Navy powers the process from nuclear power. They might have some new materials, techniques, etc. where they take the electricity to make the synthetic gas but the solar powered half of the process can be trivially replaced with a different electricity source.
IMHO, they used the solar power aspect of this to "greenwash" it so that they can more easily get federal funding. Had they used a more practical and reliable electricity source, like hydro, coal, or nuclear, or had they left the electricity source unmentioned, then they'd not get the publicity they have. Don't get me wrong, I'm hating the game, not the players. They played the game admirably. Now they just need to get the attention of the US Navy and then they can get some real funding.
"Gross negligence, while not the best defined of legal terms, has always implied mens rea."
Wrong. Try again.
Murder is the act of intentional homicide, manslaughter is the lesser offense of homicide through negligence. What differs here is that the law makes no distinction between negligence and intent in the securing of classified data. Whether Clinton intended to break the law or not is irrelevant. Paragraph (f) that I pointed to above spells out that negligence is also a crime, other paragraphs before it address intentional leaking of data. The question of intent is frankly moot, the FBI found classified data on her unsecured computers so therefore she broke the law.
What the FBI has done is claim that they interpret the law to require intent and that they were tasked with investigating an intentional release of secured data, but since no intentional release was found then therefore they cannot recommend pressing charges. The claim that Clinton did transmit classified information on unsecured systems, but there was no evidence of it being intentionally transmitted to an adversary, means that she was negligent. Therefore, I assume, if the FBI was asked to investigate unintentional release of classified data that they'd have to recommend charges.
At best Clinton may be able to merely claim she was incompetent, not that it matters in this case, she still broke the law. However by claiming ignorance and/or incompetence she might be able to dodge a greater charge of treason but that does not save her from being barred from holding public office.
Whether she is ignorant, incompetent, stupid, or a traitor should not matter for her run for POTUS. She belongs in Miramar, not DC.
I did look it up and Hillary Clinton did commit several felonies, one specifically being 18 USC Sec. 793(f). Look it up.
Through negligence she has permitted national defense secrets to exist outside of a properly secured system. Intent is irrelevant, it is not important that she intended to expose state secrets to potential adversaries only that she has not taken care to prevent the secrets from being discovered by an adversary. Additionally, there does not need to be proof that an adversary has discovered this information, only that it is possible for them to do so.
You have said nothing that contradicts what I have said. I did not say that nuclear cannot be replaced by unreliable energy sources, I said that doing so would be at a greater cost of life and property.