I wonder if anyone has the courage to do anything about human population growth that surely exacerbates all the other ills?
And no, I don't mean start a thermo-nuclear war.
And no, I don't mean start a thermo-nuclear war.
General / Off-Topic Electric cars are stupid.
- Thread starter [PS4] Lorenzo Waringos
- Start date
Maybe a three stage evacuation using space arks. We could have all the elite's on say an A-Ark, the workers on a C-Ark, and the useless people on a B-Ark... and of course launch that one first...
What could possibly go wrong?
Of course, in the ED Universe too, we did this... The Elites went to Achenar, the Workers went to Mars and the Useless people went to Alioth.
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My car was doing it's bit for the environment today, I took it for a drive to McDonalds to treat myself to some breakfast. On the way back it decided that the best way to travel was like this:
Much better MPG than the 25-30 it normally produces from it's 2.0L lump...
Already there. I think it's supposed to have better charge and energy density too.
Gelion launches zinc bromine gel battery to take on lithium mainstays
Sydney-based Gelion sets sights on $70bn global battery market with launch of zinc bromine gel battery technology it says will soon undercut lithium-ion on cost.
reneweconomy.com.au
Traffic cam imagery of me on the way to work this morning:
Should I feel bad?
Should I feel bad?
![[PS4] Lorenzo Waringos](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/234/234580.jpg?1612617334){kind=avatar}
Except when it comes to bugs in ED on PS4
LOL, just teasing! (Kinda)
Traffic cam imagery of me on the way to work this morning:
Should I feel bad?
Working on a Sunday? You should feel awful.
Someone had to contribute to the GDP
Someone had to contribute to the GDP
Working more than 4 hours per day is an absurdity
Working more than 4 days per week is also an absurdity.
Ah, a government employee
Unfortunately I do not have that chance.Ah, a government employee
I was just doing a little bit of philosophy.
Sure, someone might also come up with a cold fusion device the size of a baseball, but it is highly unlikely, and currently we don't have such a thingy. What about the Easter Island? They ran out of a resource. I don't think they knew that when they started cutting down the trees, but they probably figured out on the way? Try and ask people who design batteries how likely the think it is, considering electrochemistry and energy density.
Nuclear energy is great, as long as they don't build the plant in your backyard, and as long as the benefit of safety is not valued against the cost. It always is. Also anyone who argue that nuclear energy is safe, should of course also volunteer to be a liquidator in the case that something goes wrong. The Golden Rule, you know. We currently have had 4 core meltdowns since we started using nuclear energy (~1970), and nuclear energy account for ~1/25 of the global energy consumption. To account for all of it we would need 25 times more plants. So to cover all the energy demand with nuclear power we could expect something like two Chernobyl's each year? Sound like a good idea...
A nuclear war likely wouldn't be very effective… you'd get a few big hits scoring maybe tens of Millions of casualties in developed nations, and make it one or two hundred Million in the long run. That's far less than 10% of the current population, so you wouldn't even decimate it. Am economic collapse in the aftermath might help a little, but it's not a long-term solution.
You'd need to come up with something that reduces population to maybe 3–5e9 over a few decades and keeps it stable.
We could also agree to share the resources we have and use them more wisely, but people don't seem to like equality. It's bad for business that needs incitement for growth. With the current living standard (not including the expected rise in living standards in poorer countries), a carrying capacity of 3-5 billion humans seems slightly optimistic. Without fossil energy for for the food production and distribution, less than one billion seems more likely. Time will show...
A nuclear war would probably be the end of humanity. Some species will survive, but Homo Sapiens won't be one of them, even though we are good at adapting to a changing environment. During the cold war any kid knew that, and the grown ups even joked about it, but nowadays that knowledge seems to have vanished.
Even accounting for transportation and storage losses, power from any vaguely modern fossil fuel power plant is significantly cleaner, joule for joule, than from any modern automobile engine. A big coal or oil fired boiler and a large steam turbine/generator system have way better thermodynamic efficiency.
This is mostly true, but you didn't mention batteries, the manufacture and disposal of which are possibly the least ecologically sound aspect about most electric vehicles.
I'm not sure I know of anyone who has an electric vehicle who doesn't believe they contribute to pollution by purchasing and using it, but depending on a variety of factors, they may indeed have less of an environmental impact than a conventional vehicle of vaguely similar capabilities.
Even if the annihilation of humanity was the goal of a major nuclear power, it would be exceedingly difficult to achieve and most credible nuclear war scenarios, short of a hostile AI, or extraterrestrial invaders, do not feature entities whose primary goal is mass murder...that's just a side-effect.
In most nuclear war scenarios, most people would survive.
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The real problem is overpopulation but the loony left have ring fenced that as an untouchable subject so we just continue to evacuate our bladders into the wind.
I'm really peeved off with all the adverts about saving energy with kids chastising their parents/elders.....when these kids have so many electric/battery powered gizmos and there's way more kids now than at any time in history.
Oh, btw. We are also using an alarmingly increasing amount of energy for computers, smartphones and the internet, so now I'll shut down my PC and go and do some manual labor
I'm really peeved off with all the adverts about saving energy with kids chastising their parents/elders.....when these kids have so many electric/battery powered gizmos and there's way more kids now than at any time in history.
I recently did a quick back of the envelope calculation (using Excel
) on the energy consumption related to IT. The amount of bits flipped worldwide follows Moore's Law, but IT becomes more and more energy efficient. However, these two developments doesn't have the same rate of change, so combined the calculation showed, that if we were to continue the current development, in ~27 years, we would have to use energy corresponding to the current total global energy consumption, just to run our IT. A few days later I read about a group of researchers that had done a similar calculation. They ended up with a time estimate of 30 years.A phone uses very little power and a laptop or game console aren't really guzzling electricity either.
Kids in the 80s and 90s almost certainly used more electricity than the do now, despite spending less time in front of screens...incandescent bulbs and CRT displays would have ensured that.
Even by the standards of questionable quackery like World Overshoot Day, half the current population may be sustainable. The number has to stay low though.a carrying capacity of 3-5 billion humans seems slightly optimistic. Without fossil energy for for the food production and distribution, less than one billion seems more likely. Time will show...
The thing about fossil fuels is that we could in theory replace a big part of the non-fuel use by synthetics (start from CO or CH₄ and add energy until you have the proper oils), but that would require binding a lot more solar energy within the atmosphere as heat by using wind/tidal/solar instead of burning oil.
MOSTLY BUNK
Even if the electricity is produced in a coal plant, an EV is significantly more efficient (even with all losses) than burning oil in a tiny combustion engine. This is the mpg-e rating.
You also have the possibility to improve or replace that coal-plant with better tech in the future, thus gaining any improvements "for free".
So in the first instance you have at doubled the efficiency and in the second instance you have the possibility of improving the environmental impact significantly in the future.
BUNK
Ok, probably true (haven't looked at the actual stats) but a tyre is a tyre. Gasoline-guzzlers have the same requirements. So it's like-for-like.
Someone commented on buying a new car is the CO2-equivalent of running it over its lifetime. So.... everybody has to stop buying new cars? Otherwise how is buying an EV different to buying a new gas car?
DISCLAIMER: I don't own an EV. In fact, I haven't owned a car since 1996. I do have a motorcycle though. Which runs on gas. Which I use in a purely selfish manner for enjoyment, not commuting. These days I commute by walking (I appreciate not everybody has the luxury to live close enough to their work to be able to do so).
Not entirely sure what's gotten you irate - the mere existence of EVs? The threat of EVs to gasoline cars? The smugness of eco-warriors? The perceived threat to the gasoline industry? Are you pro-gas-cars and anti-EVs, or anti-cars entirely?
Would be good to know what your actual stance/point is apart from just a rant against EV's.