Oddly enough throughout all of human history we have seen people find new work as automation has replaced human labor. I grew up on a farm and I remember spending a lot of time moving hay bales around. Now farmers don't do that, at least not nearly as often. Our farm was one of the more advanced for the time, we had conveyors and such to move many of the bales around. Some of out neighbors went a bit further by having balers that would throw the bale into a wagon so that a person did not have to stack it. With those two technologies combined one person could easily do the work of five. Being as we had such a nice set-up on our farm to move bales around my brothers and I would work on the neighbor's farms to stack bales.
We could see the shift of labor happening. A farm owner would need five laborers to handle the daily chores. With bigger machines and more of them it shifted to about two laborers. It got to a point that a person would not want to work on the farm alone even if they could handle all the work so the farms got bigger instead of the work crew getting smaller. A lot of family farms went out of business or consolidated into much larger farms. Where did all those people go that were lifting hay bales?
I know, they ended up as engineers, chemists, factory workers, school teachers, telephone operators, truck drivers, and so much more. Quite a few of these jobs did not exist before. Some of the jobs existed, like school teacher, but the class sizes got smaller.
As more and more jobs get automated it frees up people to do things that society as a whole could not afford to do. I foresee a future where this automation will bring about jobs that many people right now view as luxuries. I can imagine more people entering medicine to the point that having a family physician is the norm, as in their only patients are the mom, dad, and their children. This person might not be educated to the level of an MD, at least not for most people, but they'd be able to write prescriptions as well as perform most tasks that a general practitioner would do. Given that something like 70% of the US population is taking some type of prescription medications that we are not already too far from this.
Another place people would find work is as educators. If skilled labor is cheap enough then having personal tutors for someone's children as the norm is not too far off. We are seeing this already with a movement to home schooling and small charter schools.
People hate talking to a machine on the phone. Expect some of this automation to reverse itself as people take jobs in customer service. A lot of this can be automated but it is real hard to get a computer to show sympathy for a poor experience with a product or service.
Expect to see more people enter the entertainment sector. With plenty of free time and wealth from automation then people will be able to seek entertainment. Sure an iPod and a PA system can play music but there is a lot of entertainment from seeing someone play a piano on a stage and interact with the audience. Expect more people to find employment as a player in team sports. Movies are great and I don't expect them to go away but if people have more money and time to spend then I expect to see live performances of plays, music, dancing, whatever.
With enough people and resources then I expect people to start leaving this rock and colonizing other planets in the solar system. If you can't find a job on Earth then perhaps you can dig ditches on Mars.
I seem to recall some famous person saying something about the amazing computational abilities of a human, and that they can be produced with unskilled labor. History doesn't repeat but it does rhyme, said another famous person that I cannot recall.
I don't know if it is airline policy or just some of the airline staff that give a damn. I can remember a couple times I approach the ticket counter and the person behind the desk says something like, "I'll get you an exit row seat." Oh, did I mention I'm in the 1%? I'm taller than 99% of the US population.
Another time I was seated in the most rear seat on the plane. There was a bulkhead directly behind the seat so it was a bit closer to the one in front and it could not recline. One of the cabin crew asked if I wanted a different seat. At this point the plane was already moving, the flight was near capacity, and it was only about a 45 minute hop in the plane. I refused a different seat, I didn't want the plane to stop because a passenger wasn't buckled in.
Those were some of the better flights. I had a rather memorable flight where I was in a window seat in a rather small plane. The curvature of the cabin was such that I could not put both of my size 15 feet on the floor. I spent the entire flight shuffling my feet around looking for a comfortable position. Also, the walls were barely insulated, I was freezing.
I learned a few things. First, bring some big poofy headphones to block out the noise. I got some rather expensive headphones that are excellent at blocking out the noise and they sound great. During the few moments I had to take them off to talk to the crew about drinks or food made me realize just how noisy those planes are. Then I put my headphones back on and re-enter my own little world.
What also helps in staying in my own happy little world is not far from you idea of getting sedated and tossed in as cargo. I make sure to bring my prescription pain meds with me. Not that I think I'll be in pain, the calming effect of a narcotic keeps me sane. I perhaps, just maybe, forget when I took my last pill and take another just in case. Add in some over the counter stuff and I'm in la-la land for the duration of the flight.
Okay, so our flight just landed and I'm siting near the back of the plane, not far from the galley door. As we are taxiing to the jetway the pilot gets on the PA and says something about the weather outside and where we can get our bags. We hear him hang up the mike but it's still active. The next thing we hear is the pilot saying to the co-pilot, "Man, what I could use right now is a hot coffee and a blow job." I see the stewardess in the galley go running to the flight deck door. I yell up to her as she passes, "Lady! You forgot the coffee!"
Normally twice every week but if I'm traveling then it can be twice per day. A tank of gas can carry me about 300 miles, which also happens to be a bit short of how many miles I am willing to drive in a day. Add in that I would not wish to run the tank dry before filling it up and I might stop for fuel three times in a day.
In my truck I can go from any level of fuel, including bone dry empty, to full in five minutes. If in a BEV it might be possible to go from 10% to 80% in thirty minutes or less, if the battery isn't too hot. "Topping off" a BEV too often can damage the battery, attempting to charge while the battery is too hot can damage the battery, attempting to charge too quickly can damage the battery. This only adds to the "range anxiety" of the currently quite limited range of a BEV.
I have some level of "range anxiety" in my truck due to it's relatively small tank and higher fuel consumption rate, at least compared to my previous vehicles, but I cannot imagine owning only a BEV because of it's limitations. I suspect that a very high percentage of the BEV owners in the USA also own another ICE powered vehicle.
Assuming I wanted to own only a BEV and not change my driving habits significantly I'd have to know that on any long trip that there would be a quick charge station at the same locations where I'd like to stop to eat, for wherever I may go. That way I could leave home in the morning, drive for 4 or 5 hours, stop to eat and recharge, then continue driving for another 3 or 4 hours, and then have a place to recharge at my destination or an overnight stay. Rinse, lather, and repeat for two or potentially three days if I'm making an especially long trip.
Potentially we could see this range anxiety disappear if only there were places to recharge a BEV at nearly everywhere someone might stop on a lengthy trip. Restaurants would need recharge points at nearly every parking spot if they wish to have clients that are not locals. Since locals might use those recharge points as well the recharge points would have to be plentiful or they would be nearly worthless. Hotels would need them too to get BEV owners to stay. This might be less of a problem for infrastructure since they'd likely have more control on where people would park.
For BEVs to become more than an oddity we'd need a very significant shift in infrastructure, or a battery that can be recharged in a short period so that our current filling stations can merely replace a pump or two with BEV chargers.
"BioSolar's research also indicates that the new polymer enables batteries to charge and discharge rapidly while far outlasting the lifecycle of conventional lithium-ion energy storage."
Can these batteries recharge at a rate comparable to refilling my truck with gasoline? I doubt it. I can refill my truck in about five minutes, there is no way a battery can transfer that kind of energy in that amount of time, even if we account for the poor efficiency of an ICE to the high efficiency BEV and adjust energy needed accordingly.
What really holds back electric vehicles is not just the limited range alone but the recharge rate. If I can recharge a BEV at the same rate I can refill my dinosaur burning truck then I would not have a problem with them. A five minute stop every so often on a road trip is usually not an issue for people, people typically have to stop anyway for biological reasons. A four hour stop, or even a 30 minute stop, can be a problem for people.
Assuming we can find a battery that can take a charge comparable to the energy transfer of a roadside gasoline pump the problem then becomes creating a system to move that many electrons safely on something that must move down a road.
Keep your state secrets off of internet connected systems and the only way that someone can steal those secrets is with a "Mission Impossible" team sneaking in and crawling through the duct work.
Oh, and maybe you shouldn't have a duct running to your super secret computer room that is large enough for a human to crawl through. Just a thought.
"In the next few years, the total-cost-of-ownership advantage will continue to lie with conventional cars, and we therefore do not expect EVs to exceed 5% of light-duty vehicle sales in most markets -- except where subsidies make up the difference," Morsy said. "However, that cost comparison is set to change radically in the 2020s."
Subsidizing the dinosaur burning car industry is "corporate welfare" but subsidizing EV ownership is... what exactly?
I had my liberal friends tell me that the big automakers in the USA had to be bailed out years ago because those companies were "too big to fail". Now we have to subsidize EVs to compete with these companies. I say we would have had a lot more EVs on the market if we allowed the dinosaur burners to go out of business so that the EV makers could have bought up the factories at fire sale prices, re-tooled them to make EVs, and re-hired all those factory workers.
The problem is that EV makers don't seem to hire union labor. Funny that, we'll bail out the unions at the expense of the EVs. It will be interesting how this dynamic will play out. Liberals want to see the makers of dinosaur burners keep union workers working. Liberals also want to see the makers of those same dinosaur burners go out of business.
Get some popcorn, this is going to be a show as the liberals eat their own kind.
The gains we've made in battery technology have been to improve on the cost, size, and weight of pretty much the same chemical reactions. At some point this technology will hit some very real limitations on improvements that can be made to battery technology. I wonder if we have not met those limitations already.
Like many technologies humans have made and improved upon over time the limits of physics start to come into play. At that point any gains start to come at a cost somewhere else. We might be able to make a battery that stores more energy but at the tradeoff that it stores it for a shorter amount of time, as a potential example.
I'm sure we'll see prices lower due to economies of scale but I think we've got about as much as we can from battery technology.
The one problem that is not likely to be overcome easily is the recharge rates of a battery. The faster a battery is charged the hotter it gets. The hotter it gets the more energy is lost as heat. If it gets too hot then it can be damaged.
A battery swap technique might work to address this problem on recharge rates but then we are back to the same problem as EVs have now, a shortage of places to recharge. A typical EV may have a means to plug into a common household outlet but that gives a very long recharge rate. A less common way to charge would be a plug much like one would see for a household oven or clothes dryer, those still take a long time to charge. A quick charge station will need a new kind of electrical plug and/or a battery swap mechanism. The cars would also have to support either, likely in addition to the common household charging plugs for the owner to charge at home, work, or wherever.
I predict that in ten years half the cars on the road today will still be on the road. I recall reading that the half life of a typical automobile is ten years or so, maybe as low as eight. So, even if the only factor in buying an electric car for the public was price we'd still be a long way from moving our national vehicle fleet off of fossil fuels.
I predict that in ten years the price of gasoline will be within 10% of what it costs now, not in dollars but in hours per day that the average working person works in a day/week/year. Dollars are a poor measure of wealth, productivity, or value. The value of a dollar is based much on what the government decides it does through mechanisms like a minimum wage, interest rates, and government bonds. What does not change much is how much is how much time a person is able to provide productive work in their life. Put the price of bread, gasoline, milk, or whatever is worth in hours worked and you have a measure that can hold up through time. There is a lot of oil still in the ground and we'll keep finding ways to drill for it.
I predict the government will still be transferring money from the poor to the wealthy so that they can buy shiny new four door penises... I mean electric vehicles. Who buys electric cars? It's not the plumbers, carpenters, and farmers in this nation. It's the DINKs (dual income, no kids). People with a lot of money to spend but not a lot of miles to carry tools, building material, salable goods, or kids. We'll be taxing those "rich" farmers that make $250,000 per year but have $240,000 in expenses to send their kids to college, put a new roof on the barn, and fix the "gas guzzling" truck used to haul livestock to market.
I'm sure second hand electric vehicles will make it to market for those less wealthy to buy, but then isn't this the "trickle down economics" that Reagan was pilloried over?
I predict that in ten years we will start to see a renewed interest in nuclear power. While this might seem like a way to make electric cars cheaper it has other benefits too. Cheap electricity means cheap aluminum, because aluminum refining is such an energy intensive process the price of aluminum is closely coupled to the price of energy. Cheap aluminum opens the door to lighter, cheaper, and more energy efficient vehicles. This benefits both EVs and dinosaur burners. A gas car has a large portion of its weight in the frame, engine, and body panels which are often made of steel, if made from aluminum that car gets much lighter. A big part of the EV weight is the battery, which does not benefit from cheap aluminum since they are not currently made from steel.
A huge problem with batteries is recharge time. Range limits alone would not be an issue if it only took five minutes to "refill" like a dinosaur burner. If for some reason my prediction on continued cheap oil fails then I have another prediction. I predict that we'll see cars fueled from ammonia, liquified/compressed air/nitrogen, or even wound up springs before electric cars win out. Assuming nuclear power makes gains in ten years (which I think is more like twenty) then what we will likely see is synthesized fuels. Synthetic fuel could be hydrocarbons, which is good for keeping some very expensive commercial airplanes flying. We could see synthetic ammonia as a fuel.
In warm climates liquified air can have longer range, shorter refuel times, better performance, and cheaper construction than anything electric. A bonus to driving a liquid air car on a hot day is that the faster you drive the better the air conditioning works.
In cold climates electric vehicles use a lot of range to heat the cabin. Liquid dinosaurs will reign in powering vehicles there. If we get enough nuclear power on line in ten years then synthesized fuels become viable.
If we are going to see a big shift in how we turn energy into transportation then we need to look at scales of thirty years. A typical commercial jet plane, ship at sea (cargo or military), and ma
The answer to bad speech is not controls on speaking, it's more speech. However the liberals out there don't want more speech because that means that logic wins out over feelings. The liberals' answer to "bad" speech is "shut up".
While I find Apple bowing to political pressure in China for the government to be able to snoop on their citizens I do acknowledge the difficult position that Apple, or any technology company really, must be in.
There is a reason that we see a lot of electronics built in China. Their rules on mining of rare earth minerals makes them very cheap. In the USA and most other nations the mining of rare earth minerals is inhibited on the rules of handling radioactive materials. What does radioactive materials have to do with making cell phones? The valuable minerals needed to make power dense batteries, strong magnets (for speakers, buzzers, and microphones), and such tend to collect in the same places as thorium and uranium. If you mine one then you are mining the other.
If you mine anything radioactive in the USA then it must be cataloged, traced, secured, and disposed of in facilities designed to contain radioactive materials. This is in spite of the fact that this radioactive material is already present in the ground and the miners have no intent of doing anything with the radioactive material other than put it back in the ground where they found it. These radioactive elements typically exist as oxides, something much like glass, sand, or clay. This stuff does not dissolve into ground water, blow away in the wind (it is very dense), or react significantly with plants or animals. Most of this radioactive material is radioactive in an almost theoretical sense, the half life of this stuff is in the millions or billions of years, and poses no real hazard to the public.
China has leveraged this near monopoly on rare earth elements and demanded that it not be shipped out in its raw form in any significant quantity. If you want to make a cell phone that is light, inexpensive, fast, small, and durable then you have to make them out of rare earth metals and do so where the country that supplies them allows you to use them. That means China also has a near monopoly on the manufacture of cell phones.
If the US federal government changed the rules on the handling of rare earth metals and the radioactive minerals that come with it then Apple would not have to play nice with China. Apple and everyone else could be building cell phones in the USA. Apple could also leverage that position to perhaps get the Chinese government to play nice with its citizens. Apple could demand that China allow them to sell the wiretap proof phones like we get in the USA or they don't get the latest tech. Then China would have to choose between treating their citizens more like those in the USA or more like those in North Korea.
As a bonus to some sane laws on handling thorium in the USA, beyond bringing technology manufacturing to the USA, is that perhaps we could see a renewed interest in nuclear power. Thorium is a great fuel for a molten salt reactor. Thorium is also worthless for making weapons. The US government knows this, at least on some level, since they tested thorium and uranium-233 (an isotope derived from thorium) in nuclear weapons a long time ago. The thorium and U-233 bombs were considered duds. If the bombs did not also contain an ample amount of U-235 or plutonium the bombs would not have detonated at all. An interest in liquid thorium fuel reactors (LFTR) should also created interest in a related technology, the waste annihilating molten salt reactor (WAMSR).
LFTR can destroy existing nuclear waste by using it as a small portion of the fuel but WAMSR runs on existing spent nuclear fuel with little added to the mix to make it work. What is holding up the development of these technologies is US federal government policy on mining thorium.
Oh, perhaps I should mention that China is stockpiling their mined thorium in open air pits, because thorium does not blow away, wash away, or dissolve away. They fully intend to build LFTR style reactors before the USA does. If that happens then they gain leverage on emerging nuclear energy technologies.
Citizens of the USA, there is your federal government at work. They fuck you once by forcing phone makers to allow them to listen in on your phone calls and then fuck you again by keeping cheap, clean, and reliable nuclear energy from you.
As far as the university is concerned I am classified as a "minority". I am a military veteran with a documented disability, basically I screwed up my feet and knees while in the US Army. You'd think a "minority" like myself should feel free to speak up, but I don't. I'm a white Christian heterosexual male so that must make me one of the most hated people on campus. Anyone affiliated with the "military industrial complex" such as someone that served in the US Army doesn't gain me any points in some circles.
What probably makes me the most hated is that I believe in a limited government bound by the constitution that created it.
What also burns me a bit is that for me to get my tuition paid for I had to serve in the military while others get their tuition paid for because they showed the financial aid office that they are 1/8th African, Hispanic, or Native American.
I have to sit in class with these people that get their tuition for free for being a minority. About half of them see this as a means to party it up for four years before they go back to the hell hole they came from to live on welfare for the rest of their life. The other half see this free tuition as a path from the hell hole they came from so that they don't have to live on welfare like their parents and grandparents.
I once had a computer science professor spend about half of one class hour talking about how war is bad. I thought about telling her that as a military veteran that I'd rather not be lectured about war from someone that has not served while in a class that is supposed to be discussing computational mathematics. But I didn't say anything. I just thought about how that would look to the other students in the room. It would be me, a large white male with a buzz cut and combat boots, telling a college lecturer with a doctorate in mathematics about how she should conduct her class. Did I mention that the instructor was a woman?
If you want to use your government funded education to go out and improve yourself and the world around you then good for you. If you want to use your government funded education to protest on how "the man" (meaning me) keeps you down and must pay, financially, for how "they" (again meaning me) wronged you in the past then I say fuck off and die.
I've been in college before, studying engineering, and I didn't see much "indoctrination" like many claimed that colleges have. I saw hints of it with groups speaking on campus, flyers hung on billboards, but nothing in class. While in engineering I felt largely insulated from the liberal nonsense that I was told would surround me in college. In engineering we were there to solve practical problems such as accurately simulating a circuit, estimating the yield of a manufacturing process, and properly encoding a message and then decoding it on the other end.
My how things have changed now that I'm studying statistics and computer science. In one statistics text an example was made on the Bush v. Gore election fiasco in Florida, it showed how Bush "stole" the election. That same text likes to give examples on how global warming is affecting the ice pack, water levels, and so forth. If the other examples had not tipped me off on the left leaning authors I might not have thought much about the study they highlighted on HPV vaccines. If they are going to pick on Presidents named Bush, oil companies, then why not pick on those that advocate abstinence and put an HPV vaccine study in there.
I had a computer science professor spend half of a class lecturing us on how war is bad. She had to know that it is quite likely that half of her class will end up working in the "military industrial complex" that she was speaking about. Not all of them are going to be coding iPhone apps and online shopping websites. Quite a few of them are going to be designing crypto communication systems, deadly accurate navigation, ballistic prediction software, and what not.
I've had other courses that discussed probabilities, algorithms, and so forth like these statistics and computer science courses. What they didn't do is work politically loaded examples into the coursework. Examples on statistics and probability while in engineering involved problems of fruit flies interbreeding, noise in a communications channel, cards/dice/coins, letters in the alphabet, and just generally examples that were practical to getting a job done or curiosities of physics.
Why give a statistics example on Bush v. Gore? Why not choose something like people's favorite ice cream flavor? Perhaps give examples in astronomy, biology, a manufacturing process. Instead we get to look at climate change, election results, income inequality, gender roles, and so on.
These statistics and computer science courses are just as much about creating the next generation of social justice warriors as it is about teaching practical skills.
At least my math and music courses haven't tried to indoctrinate me into a way of thinking. At least not yet. Courses on calculus, matrix algebra, and numerical analysis might not be conducive to social justice indoctrination. My music lessons are on folk songs and Christian hymns, which might have something to do with a long shared history between "Western" music and Christian churches. All the instruments we commonly play, and the way we note music, in the "Western World" draws from a time and place where Christianity was prevalent. If you are going to learn to play the piano then you are not going to find a lot of pieces to play that the "diversity police" can impose upon you. While I would not be opposed to learn some music from around the world at least I know I won't be considered "insensitive" for wanting to play a Christmas hymn for my semester end recital.
There are some things I'd like to discuss in class but I fear I might be considered being "micro-aggressive" if I speak up. This can be stressful and I feel like I have to just shut up and keep my head down or I might find myself being retaliated against. Oh, I'm a white Christian male that also happens to be a veteran of the US Army. Being that I'm quite tall I kind of stick out in a crowd, people remember me.
Since I'm considered disabled because of an injury while in the Army I am considered a "minority", it's not a very visible disability, I just walk with a bit of a limp. I get the e-mail announcements from the "office of diversity" or whatever its called that invite me to certain events. I have not yet gone to any events because I doubt I'd be welcomed.
"So what your saying is that because someone did something you disapprove of, then it's OK for that to become the norm? Is that really your argument?"
I neither approve or disapprove of this tactic, it is merely one means by which the party that controls the US Senate may assure that they have a justice that they find suited for the position. I merely wish to see the tactic applied equally. If election season SCOTUS appointments should be verboten then it should remain that way regardless of who sits in the Oval Office.
"That's not what they are threatening. They have been very public in stating they will not even debate the nominee. "
Under the Senate powers to advise the President on who gets to sit on the Supreme Court it would appear that they have the authority to advise the President that eight justices is sufficient for the time being. I am not aware of any obligation of the Senate to keep nine justices on the court, it's merely tradition.
They want to use this technology to turn rotten apples into carbon anodes for electric batteries? I have what I believe to be a better idea. A process that uses consumable carbon anodes is aluminum refining. Right now they are made from coal, but if made from fruit this closes the carbon cycle on that process and we won't be digging up carbon any more to just dump it in the air.
There are some crazy people out there that think we shouldn't be using aluminum anyway, but also use wind and solar power. What nut jobs, what do they think that solar panels and windmills are made from? Apples?
Use the rotten apples to make aluminum. Keep digging up aluminum for windmills and wires. The stuff left over from the aluminum mining can be mined further for uranium and thorium. Put the uranium, thorium, and spent nuclear fuel from all those old nuclear reactors into a waste annihilating molten salt reactors. Those molten salt reactors will destroy the old waste, produce energy, and give us vital radio isotopes for medicine and industry. The energy from the reactors can be used to make more windmills, synthetic fuels, and leave the ethanol for making wine, whiskey, and beer.
"No matter how far we push science and technology we still have an urgent need to limit births are we simply will all perish"
Or we could use nuclear power and not burn our food for fuel. Not nuclear power like we did fifty years ago but waste annihilating molten salt reactors that consume the waste from those old reactors, produce plenty of energy, and produce valuable radioactive isotopes for medicine and industry.
Add that plentiful energy from uranium and thorium to a synthetic fuel technology like what the US Navy is working on, turn seawater into jet fuel. That closes the carbon loop, no more carbon footprint, no nuclear waste, plenty of food and energy. Then when the Earth can't take any more human births we will have the energy and technology to colonize Mare and Uranus.
A funny thing about a republic is that no one can vote away another person's rights.
Let's say we do live in a true democracy. I get enough people to agree with me on something, like perhaps that people that take welfare should not get to vote. If you don't pay a net income to the government then you cannot have a say on how that money is spent. Then next year I get a smaller group of people to agree with me, only landowners get to vote. Why not? If you don't actually own the land then why should you get to vote?
Now that I've narrowed the field quite a bit I might have to be a bit more careful on picking my allies. I might be able to find a majority of men that think that women should not be able to vote. Perhaps I make this a religious cause. Those that do not pray to the great pasta in the sky should not be allowed to vote. Then I keep redefining who gets to vote year after year until it's just me and my inner circle of friends. We used democracy to become what is effectively a monarchy.
But it doesn't have to be a vote on who gets to vote. It could be a vote on who gets the guns. No guns for you and yours, we'll just leave you to fight off the armed thugs with your fists, feet, and teeth. Perhaps I vote away your healthcare, let you die off from a lack of shots against tetanus, flu, and meningitis.
Or here's an idea, I vote away your right against unwarranted search and seizure. I'm trying to protect you from the evil terrorists in the world. So I go about listening to phone calls, poke around your backyard. If I find a wild marijuana plant then I can assume you're growing the stuff in your basement, then I take your house. Your kid thought it would be "cute" to fashion a bong in art class, obviously you are selling drugs so I take your house. I think you bought too much cold medicine, so I lock you up for five years. I think you bought too much diesel fuel, ammonia, and fertilizer, I don't care if you have 600 acres of farmland, you are obviously making bombs and meth. I take your farm and lock you up.
Oh, wait, maybe we don't live in a republic any more.
A republic means that an individual has rights, in spite of what removal of those rights might mean to the benefit of the whole. If we can vote away the rights of any one person, even if we think that person is evil incarnate, then no one's rights are safe. The FBI lost the ability to snoop on us as it wished through a series of gains in technology and civil rights cases. They want that back. If we believe we live in a democracy, and lose the basis of a republic in our laws, then we'll have the government prop up one bogeyman after another to convince us to vote our rights away.
Those that choose security over liberty will get neither. I think a wise man warned us about this many years ago.
"You're moving the goal-posts here. Earlier you only said electric vehicles, not battery electric."
I compared the energy density of batteries to diesel fuel and then you reply with diesel electric vehicles. If you read what I wrote in the first place you'd see that I was clearly speaking of battery electric vehicles.
"Incorrect. As long as they have an electrified rail available,"
When they run out of electric rail the train stops. If the electric rail is there the train can still run on diesel if, for example, there is a grid failure.
" See 'subways', they don't even have diesel engines."
Actually they do. The maintenance trains are diesel. I seem to recall a failure of the electric train that runs through the Chunnel, to get the train and passengers out a diesel prime mover was brought in.
"Or do you consider consumer automobiles 'novelty items'? Chop the price of battery packs down to 1/2-1/3rd of where they are now"
While you have engineers bringing down the price of batteries there are other engineers working on improving the ICE. Battery electric vehicles are aiming at a moving target, and one with a massive lead. Any improvement on things like lighter automotive frames, aerodynamic shapes and coatings, energy optimizing electronics, can all be applied to the ICE as well as the BEV.
Let's assume that someone builds a car frame from aluminum so that the ICE car now weighs 1/2 what it did before. A comparable BEV will only see a reduction of 1/4 or so. Those batteries will still be made of lithium, nickel, or whatever, and will not get any lighter. So, barring some leap in battery technology the ICE will win out on price, performance, range, and comfort.
The nutrients can be returned but by breaking down the straw the erosion control properties are lost.
Bio-fuels are a waste of time. We can do better with nuclear power driving a synthetic fuel process. The sooner we learn that the better.
Let's assume we can make bio-fuel from straw without the problems of reducing the quality of the soil. Then we get back to the problem of having to farm much more land to get enough sun to make our food and our fuel. That means plowing up even more land, forced irrigation, more artificial fertilizers, reduced bio-diversity, and all kinds of other environment impacts. That's assuming you live in a country with enough land mass to grow all these crops. If a given country does not have enough land then that country is now reliant on trade for their survival. That is a political problem that no nation wants to be in.
What of all the oil that the USA imports? The USA has enough oil to fuel its economy and then some, the federal government merely believes it is doing it's citizens a favor by placing those reserves off-limits. Also, just about any nation has access to enough fissile material to produce all the fuel it needs with hydrocarbon fuel synthesis. This is absolutely true for any nation with a port open to the sea.
bio-fuels are a distraction, the real solution is nuclear.
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Oddly enough throughout all of human history we have seen people find new work as automation has replaced human labor. I grew up on a farm and I remember spending a lot of time moving hay bales around. Now farmers don't do that, at least not nearly as often. Our farm was one of the more advanced for the time, we had conveyors and such to move many of the bales around. Some of out neighbors went a bit further by having balers that would throw the bale into a wagon so that a person did not have to stack it. With those two technologies combined one person could easily do the work of five. Being as we had such a nice set-up on our farm to move bales around my brothers and I would work on the neighbor's farms to stack bales.
We could see the shift of labor happening. A farm owner would need five laborers to handle the daily chores. With bigger machines and more of them it shifted to about two laborers. It got to a point that a person would not want to work on the farm alone even if they could handle all the work so the farms got bigger instead of the work crew getting smaller. A lot of family farms went out of business or consolidated into much larger farms. Where did all those people go that were lifting hay bales?
I know, they ended up as engineers, chemists, factory workers, school teachers, telephone operators, truck drivers, and so much more. Quite a few of these jobs did not exist before. Some of the jobs existed, like school teacher, but the class sizes got smaller.
As more and more jobs get automated it frees up people to do things that society as a whole could not afford to do. I foresee a future where this automation will bring about jobs that many people right now view as luxuries. I can imagine more people entering medicine to the point that having a family physician is the norm, as in their only patients are the mom, dad, and their children. This person might not be educated to the level of an MD, at least not for most people, but they'd be able to write prescriptions as well as perform most tasks that a general practitioner would do. Given that something like 70% of the US population is taking some type of prescription medications that we are not already too far from this.
Another place people would find work is as educators. If skilled labor is cheap enough then having personal tutors for someone's children as the norm is not too far off. We are seeing this already with a movement to home schooling and small charter schools.
People hate talking to a machine on the phone. Expect some of this automation to reverse itself as people take jobs in customer service. A lot of this can be automated but it is real hard to get a computer to show sympathy for a poor experience with a product or service.
Expect to see more people enter the entertainment sector. With plenty of free time and wealth from automation then people will be able to seek entertainment. Sure an iPod and a PA system can play music but there is a lot of entertainment from seeing someone play a piano on a stage and interact with the audience. Expect more people to find employment as a player in team sports. Movies are great and I don't expect them to go away but if people have more money and time to spend then I expect to see live performances of plays, music, dancing, whatever.
With enough people and resources then I expect people to start leaving this rock and colonizing other planets in the solar system. If you can't find a job on Earth then perhaps you can dig ditches on Mars.
I seem to recall some famous person saying something about the amazing computational abilities of a human, and that they can be produced with unskilled labor. History doesn't repeat but it does rhyme, said another famous person that I cannot recall.
I don't know if it is airline policy or just some of the airline staff that give a damn. I can remember a couple times I approach the ticket counter and the person behind the desk says something like, "I'll get you an exit row seat." Oh, did I mention I'm in the 1%? I'm taller than 99% of the US population.
Another time I was seated in the most rear seat on the plane. There was a bulkhead directly behind the seat so it was a bit closer to the one in front and it could not recline. One of the cabin crew asked if I wanted a different seat. At this point the plane was already moving, the flight was near capacity, and it was only about a 45 minute hop in the plane. I refused a different seat, I didn't want the plane to stop because a passenger wasn't buckled in.
Those were some of the better flights. I had a rather memorable flight where I was in a window seat in a rather small plane. The curvature of the cabin was such that I could not put both of my size 15 feet on the floor. I spent the entire flight shuffling my feet around looking for a comfortable position. Also, the walls were barely insulated, I was freezing.
I learned a few things. First, bring some big poofy headphones to block out the noise. I got some rather expensive headphones that are excellent at blocking out the noise and they sound great. During the few moments I had to take them off to talk to the crew about drinks or food made me realize just how noisy those planes are. Then I put my headphones back on and re-enter my own little world.
What also helps in staying in my own happy little world is not far from you idea of getting sedated and tossed in as cargo. I make sure to bring my prescription pain meds with me. Not that I think I'll be in pain, the calming effect of a narcotic keeps me sane. I perhaps, just maybe, forget when I took my last pill and take another just in case. Add in some over the counter stuff and I'm in la-la land for the duration of the flight.
Okay, so our flight just landed and I'm siting near the back of the plane, not far from the galley door. As we are taxiing to the jetway the pilot gets on the PA and says something about the weather outside and where we can get our bags. We hear him hang up the mike but it's still active. The next thing we hear is the pilot saying to the co-pilot, "Man, what I could use right now is a hot coffee and a blow job." I see the stewardess in the galley go running to the flight deck door. I yell up to her as she passes, "Lady! You forgot the coffee!"
Normally twice every week but if I'm traveling then it can be twice per day. A tank of gas can carry me about 300 miles, which also happens to be a bit short of how many miles I am willing to drive in a day. Add in that I would not wish to run the tank dry before filling it up and I might stop for fuel three times in a day.
In my truck I can go from any level of fuel, including bone dry empty, to full in five minutes. If in a BEV it might be possible to go from 10% to 80% in thirty minutes or less, if the battery isn't too hot. "Topping off" a BEV too often can damage the battery, attempting to charge while the battery is too hot can damage the battery, attempting to charge too quickly can damage the battery. This only adds to the "range anxiety" of the currently quite limited range of a BEV.
I have some level of "range anxiety" in my truck due to it's relatively small tank and higher fuel consumption rate, at least compared to my previous vehicles, but I cannot imagine owning only a BEV because of it's limitations. I suspect that a very high percentage of the BEV owners in the USA also own another ICE powered vehicle.
Assuming I wanted to own only a BEV and not change my driving habits significantly I'd have to know that on any long trip that there would be a quick charge station at the same locations where I'd like to stop to eat, for wherever I may go. That way I could leave home in the morning, drive for 4 or 5 hours, stop to eat and recharge, then continue driving for another 3 or 4 hours, and then have a place to recharge at my destination or an overnight stay. Rinse, lather, and repeat for two or potentially three days if I'm making an especially long trip.
Potentially we could see this range anxiety disappear if only there were places to recharge a BEV at nearly everywhere someone might stop on a lengthy trip. Restaurants would need recharge points at nearly every parking spot if they wish to have clients that are not locals. Since locals might use those recharge points as well the recharge points would have to be plentiful or they would be nearly worthless. Hotels would need them too to get BEV owners to stay. This might be less of a problem for infrastructure since they'd likely have more control on where people would park.
For BEVs to become more than an oddity we'd need a very significant shift in infrastructure, or a battery that can be recharged in a short period so that our current filling stations can merely replace a pump or two with BEV chargers.
"BioSolar's research also indicates that the new polymer enables batteries to charge and discharge rapidly while far outlasting the lifecycle of conventional lithium-ion energy storage."
Can these batteries recharge at a rate comparable to refilling my truck with gasoline? I doubt it. I can refill my truck in about five minutes, there is no way a battery can transfer that kind of energy in that amount of time, even if we account for the poor efficiency of an ICE to the high efficiency BEV and adjust energy needed accordingly.
What really holds back electric vehicles is not just the limited range alone but the recharge rate. If I can recharge a BEV at the same rate I can refill my dinosaur burning truck then I would not have a problem with them. A five minute stop every so often on a road trip is usually not an issue for people, people typically have to stop anyway for biological reasons. A four hour stop, or even a 30 minute stop, can be a problem for people.
Assuming we can find a battery that can take a charge comparable to the energy transfer of a roadside gasoline pump the problem then becomes creating a system to move that many electrons safely on something that must move down a road.
Air Gap.
Keep your state secrets off of internet connected systems and the only way that someone can steal those secrets is with a "Mission Impossible" team sneaking in and crawling through the duct work.
Oh, and maybe you shouldn't have a duct running to your super secret computer room that is large enough for a human to crawl through. Just a thought.
"In the next few years, the total-cost-of-ownership advantage will continue to lie with conventional cars, and we therefore do not expect EVs to exceed 5% of light-duty vehicle sales in most markets -- except where subsidies make up the difference," Morsy said. "However, that cost comparison is set to change radically in the 2020s."
Subsidizing the dinosaur burning car industry is "corporate welfare" but subsidizing EV ownership is... what exactly?
I had my liberal friends tell me that the big automakers in the USA had to be bailed out years ago because those companies were "too big to fail". Now we have to subsidize EVs to compete with these companies. I say we would have had a lot more EVs on the market if we allowed the dinosaur burners to go out of business so that the EV makers could have bought up the factories at fire sale prices, re-tooled them to make EVs, and re-hired all those factory workers.
The problem is that EV makers don't seem to hire union labor. Funny that, we'll bail out the unions at the expense of the EVs. It will be interesting how this dynamic will play out. Liberals want to see the makers of dinosaur burners keep union workers working. Liberals also want to see the makers of those same dinosaur burners go out of business.
Get some popcorn, this is going to be a show as the liberals eat their own kind.
The gains we've made in battery technology have been to improve on the cost, size, and weight of pretty much the same chemical reactions. At some point this technology will hit some very real limitations on improvements that can be made to battery technology. I wonder if we have not met those limitations already.
Like many technologies humans have made and improved upon over time the limits of physics start to come into play. At that point any gains start to come at a cost somewhere else. We might be able to make a battery that stores more energy but at the tradeoff that it stores it for a shorter amount of time, as a potential example.
I'm sure we'll see prices lower due to economies of scale but I think we've got about as much as we can from battery technology.
The one problem that is not likely to be overcome easily is the recharge rates of a battery. The faster a battery is charged the hotter it gets. The hotter it gets the more energy is lost as heat. If it gets too hot then it can be damaged.
A battery swap technique might work to address this problem on recharge rates but then we are back to the same problem as EVs have now, a shortage of places to recharge. A typical EV may have a means to plug into a common household outlet but that gives a very long recharge rate. A less common way to charge would be a plug much like one would see for a household oven or clothes dryer, those still take a long time to charge. A quick charge station will need a new kind of electrical plug and/or a battery swap mechanism. The cars would also have to support either, likely in addition to the common household charging plugs for the owner to charge at home, work, or wherever.
"Dumping" is just another way to say, "cut prices".
If the price of electric vehicles falls below that of dinosaur burners is this "dumping" or a "price cut"?
I predict that in ten years half the cars on the road today will still be on the road. I recall reading that the half life of a typical automobile is ten years or so, maybe as low as eight. So, even if the only factor in buying an electric car for the public was price we'd still be a long way from moving our national vehicle fleet off of fossil fuels.
I predict that in ten years the price of gasoline will be within 10% of what it costs now, not in dollars but in hours per day that the average working person works in a day/week/year. Dollars are a poor measure of wealth, productivity, or value. The value of a dollar is based much on what the government decides it does through mechanisms like a minimum wage, interest rates, and government bonds. What does not change much is how much is how much time a person is able to provide productive work in their life. Put the price of bread, gasoline, milk, or whatever is worth in hours worked and you have a measure that can hold up through time. There is a lot of oil still in the ground and we'll keep finding ways to drill for it.
I predict the government will still be transferring money from the poor to the wealthy so that they can buy shiny new four door penises... I mean electric vehicles. Who buys electric cars? It's not the plumbers, carpenters, and farmers in this nation. It's the DINKs (dual income, no kids). People with a lot of money to spend but not a lot of miles to carry tools, building material, salable goods, or kids. We'll be taxing those "rich" farmers that make $250,000 per year but have $240,000 in expenses to send their kids to college, put a new roof on the barn, and fix the "gas guzzling" truck used to haul livestock to market.
I'm sure second hand electric vehicles will make it to market for those less wealthy to buy, but then isn't this the "trickle down economics" that Reagan was pilloried over?
I predict that in ten years we will start to see a renewed interest in nuclear power. While this might seem like a way to make electric cars cheaper it has other benefits too. Cheap electricity means cheap aluminum, because aluminum refining is such an energy intensive process the price of aluminum is closely coupled to the price of energy. Cheap aluminum opens the door to lighter, cheaper, and more energy efficient vehicles. This benefits both EVs and dinosaur burners. A gas car has a large portion of its weight in the frame, engine, and body panels which are often made of steel, if made from aluminum that car gets much lighter. A big part of the EV weight is the battery, which does not benefit from cheap aluminum since they are not currently made from steel.
A huge problem with batteries is recharge time. Range limits alone would not be an issue if it only took five minutes to "refill" like a dinosaur burner. If for some reason my prediction on continued cheap oil fails then I have another prediction. I predict that we'll see cars fueled from ammonia, liquified/compressed air/nitrogen, or even wound up springs before electric cars win out. Assuming nuclear power makes gains in ten years (which I think is more like twenty) then what we will likely see is synthesized fuels. Synthetic fuel could be hydrocarbons, which is good for keeping some very expensive commercial airplanes flying. We could see synthetic ammonia as a fuel.
In warm climates liquified air can have longer range, shorter refuel times, better performance, and cheaper construction than anything electric. A bonus to driving a liquid air car on a hot day is that the faster you drive the better the air conditioning works.
In cold climates electric vehicles use a lot of range to heat the cabin. Liquid dinosaurs will reign in powering vehicles there. If we get enough nuclear power on line in ten years then synthesized fuels become viable.
If we are going to see a big shift in how we turn energy into transportation then we need to look at scales of thirty years. A typical commercial jet plane, ship at sea (cargo or military), and ma
The answer to bad speech is not controls on speaking, it's more speech. However the liberals out there don't want more speech because that means that logic wins out over feelings. The liberals' answer to "bad" speech is "shut up".
Andrew Klavan explains this well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
While I find Apple bowing to political pressure in China for the government to be able to snoop on their citizens I do acknowledge the difficult position that Apple, or any technology company really, must be in.
There is a reason that we see a lot of electronics built in China. Their rules on mining of rare earth minerals makes them very cheap. In the USA and most other nations the mining of rare earth minerals is inhibited on the rules of handling radioactive materials. What does radioactive materials have to do with making cell phones? The valuable minerals needed to make power dense batteries, strong magnets (for speakers, buzzers, and microphones), and such tend to collect in the same places as thorium and uranium. If you mine one then you are mining the other.
If you mine anything radioactive in the USA then it must be cataloged, traced, secured, and disposed of in facilities designed to contain radioactive materials. This is in spite of the fact that this radioactive material is already present in the ground and the miners have no intent of doing anything with the radioactive material other than put it back in the ground where they found it. These radioactive elements typically exist as oxides, something much like glass, sand, or clay. This stuff does not dissolve into ground water, blow away in the wind (it is very dense), or react significantly with plants or animals. Most of this radioactive material is radioactive in an almost theoretical sense, the half life of this stuff is in the millions or billions of years, and poses no real hazard to the public.
China has leveraged this near monopoly on rare earth elements and demanded that it not be shipped out in its raw form in any significant quantity. If you want to make a cell phone that is light, inexpensive, fast, small, and durable then you have to make them out of rare earth metals and do so where the country that supplies them allows you to use them. That means China also has a near monopoly on the manufacture of cell phones.
If the US federal government changed the rules on the handling of rare earth metals and the radioactive minerals that come with it then Apple would not have to play nice with China. Apple and everyone else could be building cell phones in the USA. Apple could also leverage that position to perhaps get the Chinese government to play nice with its citizens. Apple could demand that China allow them to sell the wiretap proof phones like we get in the USA or they don't get the latest tech. Then China would have to choose between treating their citizens more like those in the USA or more like those in North Korea.
As a bonus to some sane laws on handling thorium in the USA, beyond bringing technology manufacturing to the USA, is that perhaps we could see a renewed interest in nuclear power. Thorium is a great fuel for a molten salt reactor. Thorium is also worthless for making weapons. The US government knows this, at least on some level, since they tested thorium and uranium-233 (an isotope derived from thorium) in nuclear weapons a long time ago. The thorium and U-233 bombs were considered duds. If the bombs did not also contain an ample amount of U-235 or plutonium the bombs would not have detonated at all. An interest in liquid thorium fuel reactors (LFTR) should also created interest in a related technology, the waste annihilating molten salt reactor (WAMSR).
LFTR can destroy existing nuclear waste by using it as a small portion of the fuel but WAMSR runs on existing spent nuclear fuel with little added to the mix to make it work. What is holding up the development of these technologies is US federal government policy on mining thorium.
Oh, perhaps I should mention that China is stockpiling their mined thorium in open air pits, because thorium does not blow away, wash away, or dissolve away. They fully intend to build LFTR style reactors before the USA does. If that happens then they gain leverage on emerging nuclear energy technologies.
Citizens of the USA, there is your federal government at work. They fuck you once by forcing phone makers to allow them to listen in on your phone calls and then fuck you again by keeping cheap, clean, and reliable nuclear energy from you.
God bless America?
Nearly every day.
As far as the university is concerned I am classified as a "minority". I am a military veteran with a documented disability, basically I screwed up my feet and knees while in the US Army. You'd think a "minority" like myself should feel free to speak up, but I don't. I'm a white Christian heterosexual male so that must make me one of the most hated people on campus. Anyone affiliated with the "military industrial complex" such as someone that served in the US Army doesn't gain me any points in some circles.
What probably makes me the most hated is that I believe in a limited government bound by the constitution that created it.
What also burns me a bit is that for me to get my tuition paid for I had to serve in the military while others get their tuition paid for because they showed the financial aid office that they are 1/8th African, Hispanic, or Native American.
I have to sit in class with these people that get their tuition for free for being a minority. About half of them see this as a means to party it up for four years before they go back to the hell hole they came from to live on welfare for the rest of their life. The other half see this free tuition as a path from the hell hole they came from so that they don't have to live on welfare like their parents and grandparents.
I once had a computer science professor spend about half of one class hour talking about how war is bad. I thought about telling her that as a military veteran that I'd rather not be lectured about war from someone that has not served while in a class that is supposed to be discussing computational mathematics. But I didn't say anything. I just thought about how that would look to the other students in the room. It would be me, a large white male with a buzz cut and combat boots, telling a college lecturer with a doctorate in mathematics about how she should conduct her class. Did I mention that the instructor was a woman?
If you want to use your government funded education to go out and improve yourself and the world around you then good for you. If you want to use your government funded education to protest on how "the man" (meaning me) keeps you down and must pay, financially, for how "they" (again meaning me) wronged you in the past then I say fuck off and die.
I've been in college before, studying engineering, and I didn't see much "indoctrination" like many claimed that colleges have. I saw hints of it with groups speaking on campus, flyers hung on billboards, but nothing in class. While in engineering I felt largely insulated from the liberal nonsense that I was told would surround me in college. In engineering we were there to solve practical problems such as accurately simulating a circuit, estimating the yield of a manufacturing process, and properly encoding a message and then decoding it on the other end.
My how things have changed now that I'm studying statistics and computer science. In one statistics text an example was made on the Bush v. Gore election fiasco in Florida, it showed how Bush "stole" the election. That same text likes to give examples on how global warming is affecting the ice pack, water levels, and so forth. If the other examples had not tipped me off on the left leaning authors I might not have thought much about the study they highlighted on HPV vaccines. If they are going to pick on Presidents named Bush, oil companies, then why not pick on those that advocate abstinence and put an HPV vaccine study in there.
I had a computer science professor spend half of a class lecturing us on how war is bad. She had to know that it is quite likely that half of her class will end up working in the "military industrial complex" that she was speaking about. Not all of them are going to be coding iPhone apps and online shopping websites. Quite a few of them are going to be designing crypto communication systems, deadly accurate navigation, ballistic prediction software, and what not.
I've had other courses that discussed probabilities, algorithms, and so forth like these statistics and computer science courses. What they didn't do is work politically loaded examples into the coursework. Examples on statistics and probability while in engineering involved problems of fruit flies interbreeding, noise in a communications channel, cards/dice/coins, letters in the alphabet, and just generally examples that were practical to getting a job done or curiosities of physics.
Why give a statistics example on Bush v. Gore? Why not choose something like people's favorite ice cream flavor? Perhaps give examples in astronomy, biology, a manufacturing process. Instead we get to look at climate change, election results, income inequality, gender roles, and so on.
These statistics and computer science courses are just as much about creating the next generation of social justice warriors as it is about teaching practical skills.
At least my math and music courses haven't tried to indoctrinate me into a way of thinking. At least not yet. Courses on calculus, matrix algebra, and numerical analysis might not be conducive to social justice indoctrination. My music lessons are on folk songs and Christian hymns, which might have something to do with a long shared history between "Western" music and Christian churches. All the instruments we commonly play, and the way we note music, in the "Western World" draws from a time and place where Christianity was prevalent. If you are going to learn to play the piano then you are not going to find a lot of pieces to play that the "diversity police" can impose upon you. While I would not be opposed to learn some music from around the world at least I know I won't be considered "insensitive" for wanting to play a Christmas hymn for my semester end recital.
There are some things I'd like to discuss in class but I fear I might be considered being "micro-aggressive" if I speak up. This can be stressful and I feel like I have to just shut up and keep my head down or I might find myself being retaliated against. Oh, I'm a white Christian male that also happens to be a veteran of the US Army. Being that I'm quite tall I kind of stick out in a crowd, people remember me.
Since I'm considered disabled because of an injury while in the Army I am considered a "minority", it's not a very visible disability, I just walk with a bit of a limp. I get the e-mail announcements from the "office of diversity" or whatever its called that invite me to certain events. I have not yet gone to any events because I doubt I'd be welcomed.
"So what your saying is that because someone did something you disapprove of, then it's OK for that to become the norm? Is that really your argument?"
I neither approve or disapprove of this tactic, it is merely one means by which the party that controls the US Senate may assure that they have a justice that they find suited for the position. I merely wish to see the tactic applied equally. If election season SCOTUS appointments should be verboten then it should remain that way regardless of who sits in the Oval Office.
"That's not what they are threatening. They have been very public in stating they will not even debate the nominee. "
Under the Senate powers to advise the President on who gets to sit on the Supreme Court it would appear that they have the authority to advise the President that eight justices is sufficient for the time being. I am not aware of any obligation of the Senate to keep nine justices on the court, it's merely tradition.
As an honorably discharged Specialist in the US Army I say, "Go fuck yourself... Sir!"
How is this entirely different than what then Senator Joe Biden did in 1992?
I do believe that the power of "consent" includes the power to say no.
They want to use this technology to turn rotten apples into carbon anodes for electric batteries? I have what I believe to be a better idea. A process that uses consumable carbon anodes is aluminum refining. Right now they are made from coal, but if made from fruit this closes the carbon cycle on that process and we won't be digging up carbon any more to just dump it in the air.
There are some crazy people out there that think we shouldn't be using aluminum anyway, but also use wind and solar power. What nut jobs, what do they think that solar panels and windmills are made from? Apples?
Use the rotten apples to make aluminum. Keep digging up aluminum for windmills and wires. The stuff left over from the aluminum mining can be mined further for uranium and thorium. Put the uranium, thorium, and spent nuclear fuel from all those old nuclear reactors into a waste annihilating molten salt reactors. Those molten salt reactors will destroy the old waste, produce energy, and give us vital radio isotopes for medicine and industry. The energy from the reactors can be used to make more windmills, synthetic fuels, and leave the ethanol for making wine, whiskey, and beer.
"No matter how far we push science and technology we still have an urgent need to limit births are we simply will all perish"
Or we could use nuclear power and not burn our food for fuel. Not nuclear power like we did fifty years ago but waste annihilating molten salt reactors that consume the waste from those old reactors, produce plenty of energy, and produce valuable radioactive isotopes for medicine and industry.
Add that plentiful energy from uranium and thorium to a synthetic fuel technology like what the US Navy is working on, turn seawater into jet fuel. That closes the carbon loop, no more carbon footprint, no nuclear waste, plenty of food and energy. Then when the Earth can't take any more human births we will have the energy and technology to colonize Mare and Uranus.
A funny thing about a republic is that no one can vote away another person's rights.
Let's say we do live in a true democracy. I get enough people to agree with me on something, like perhaps that people that take welfare should not get to vote. If you don't pay a net income to the government then you cannot have a say on how that money is spent. Then next year I get a smaller group of people to agree with me, only landowners get to vote. Why not? If you don't actually own the land then why should you get to vote?
Now that I've narrowed the field quite a bit I might have to be a bit more careful on picking my allies. I might be able to find a majority of men that think that women should not be able to vote. Perhaps I make this a religious cause. Those that do not pray to the great pasta in the sky should not be allowed to vote. Then I keep redefining who gets to vote year after year until it's just me and my inner circle of friends. We used democracy to become what is effectively a monarchy.
But it doesn't have to be a vote on who gets to vote. It could be a vote on who gets the guns. No guns for you and yours, we'll just leave you to fight off the armed thugs with your fists, feet, and teeth. Perhaps I vote away your healthcare, let you die off from a lack of shots against tetanus, flu, and meningitis.
Or here's an idea, I vote away your right against unwarranted search and seizure. I'm trying to protect you from the evil terrorists in the world. So I go about listening to phone calls, poke around your backyard. If I find a wild marijuana plant then I can assume you're growing the stuff in your basement, then I take your house. Your kid thought it would be "cute" to fashion a bong in art class, obviously you are selling drugs so I take your house. I think you bought too much cold medicine, so I lock you up for five years. I think you bought too much diesel fuel, ammonia, and fertilizer, I don't care if you have 600 acres of farmland, you are obviously making bombs and meth. I take your farm and lock you up.
Oh, wait, maybe we don't live in a republic any more.
A republic means that an individual has rights, in spite of what removal of those rights might mean to the benefit of the whole. If we can vote away the rights of any one person, even if we think that person is evil incarnate, then no one's rights are safe. The FBI lost the ability to snoop on us as it wished through a series of gains in technology and civil rights cases. They want that back. If we believe we live in a democracy, and lose the basis of a republic in our laws, then we'll have the government prop up one bogeyman after another to convince us to vote our rights away.
Those that choose security over liberty will get neither. I think a wise man warned us about this many years ago.
"You're moving the goal-posts here. Earlier you only said electric vehicles, not battery electric."
I compared the energy density of batteries to diesel fuel and then you reply with diesel electric vehicles. If you read what I wrote in the first place you'd see that I was clearly speaking of battery electric vehicles.
"Incorrect. As long as they have an electrified rail available,"
When they run out of electric rail the train stops. If the electric rail is there the train can still run on diesel if, for example, there is a grid failure.
" See 'subways', they don't even have diesel engines."
Actually they do. The maintenance trains are diesel. I seem to recall a failure of the electric train that runs through the Chunnel, to get the train and passengers out a diesel prime mover was brought in.
"Or do you consider consumer automobiles 'novelty items'? Chop the price of battery packs down to 1/2-1/3rd of where they are now"
While you have engineers bringing down the price of batteries there are other engineers working on improving the ICE. Battery electric vehicles are aiming at a moving target, and one with a massive lead. Any improvement on things like lighter automotive frames, aerodynamic shapes and coatings, energy optimizing electronics, can all be applied to the ICE as well as the BEV.
Let's assume that someone builds a car frame from aluminum so that the ICE car now weighs 1/2 what it did before. A comparable BEV will only see a reduction of 1/4 or so. Those batteries will still be made of lithium, nickel, or whatever, and will not get any lighter. So, barring some leap in battery technology the ICE will win out on price, performance, range, and comfort.
The nutrients can be returned but by breaking down the straw the erosion control properties are lost.
Bio-fuels are a waste of time. We can do better with nuclear power driving a synthetic fuel process. The sooner we learn that the better.
Let's assume we can make bio-fuel from straw without the problems of reducing the quality of the soil. Then we get back to the problem of having to farm much more land to get enough sun to make our food and our fuel. That means plowing up even more land, forced irrigation, more artificial fertilizers, reduced bio-diversity, and all kinds of other environment impacts. That's assuming you live in a country with enough land mass to grow all these crops. If a given country does not have enough land then that country is now reliant on trade for their survival. That is a political problem that no nation wants to be in.
What of all the oil that the USA imports? The USA has enough oil to fuel its economy and then some, the federal government merely believes it is doing it's citizens a favor by placing those reserves off-limits. Also, just about any nation has access to enough fissile material to produce all the fuel it needs with hydrocarbon fuel synthesis. This is absolutely true for any nation with a port open to the sea.
bio-fuels are a distraction, the real solution is nuclear.