He is right.
We have the demonstration with Audi that will propose 30 models of electric car in 2025.
Bye bye oil.
General / Off-Topic Recycle or Die! (the elite environmental thread)
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He is right.
We have the demonstration with Audi that will propose 30 models of electric car in 2025.
Bye bye oil.
I hope no one assumes that I have any opposition to advances in clean energy or reducing dependence on fossil fuels or Electric vehicles - because I do not oppose any of that.
In fact, I'm hoping they are successful and are a positive for environmental quality.
But those changes need to be competitive in the marketplace and actually improve the lives of consumers by giving them better alternatives. If they do that it will indeed be progress. But it will be a long time before air travel and shipping can be moved off fossil fuels - if ever - unless there's a major breakthrough alternative, not yet on the horizon.
The proper use case development for electric automobiles is a good step to implement, but it remains to be seen how much it will improve the environment. It would certainly be a huge asset to cities like Mexico city, Los Angeles, New York, London, and cities of similar size.
How it would move the needle on a global scale is yet to be determined.
In fact, I'm hoping they are successful and are a positive for environmental quality.
But those changes need to be competitive in the marketplace and actually improve the lives of consumers by giving them better alternatives. If they do that it will indeed be progress. But it will be a long time before air travel and shipping can be moved off fossil fuels - if ever - unless there's a major breakthrough alternative, not yet on the horizon.
The proper use case development for electric automobiles is a good step to implement, but it remains to be seen how much it will improve the environment. It would certainly be a huge asset to cities like Mexico city, Los Angeles, New York, London, and cities of similar size.
How it would move the needle on a global scale is yet to be determined.
The advantage of companies making internal combustion engines is gone now. Who could catch up to 40-50 years of making such cars? It is hard to beat such experience with a new company.
It is possible for new firms to compete because electric vehicles are a new product. Some old car makers will not survive what is coming if they are too slow to adapt.
Putting small motors inside the wheels means we do not need an engine compartment so we could make much shorter vehicles, or move the boot/trunk to the front and change the back. Losing a heavy engine, fuel tank, gear transmission, exhaust system, will make performance much much better than in old ICE builds.
It's not that I don't share your criticism of the "climate debate" to a certain degree, and I even agree with Peterson on some of his views on Terror Mangement Theory (TMT)
The climate has all the focus these days, but as I wrote, the climate is just one of the alarm whistles. Earth is a ball of rock somewhere in outer space, with a biosphere close to the surface. Therefore it can be seen as a closed system, and that's why the concept of sustainability should be everybody's priority number one. Well, it isn't.
I recently handed in a master thesis on the subject. I started out looking at running out of phosphate rock, and as considered good scientific practice, I read as many arguments for and against a "peak phosphorus" scenario that I could find. The ones arguing against running out of phosphate rock were mainly from economists. Interestingly enough, one of the other disciplines of science being part of the Replication Crisis is economics.
I knew little about agriculture when I started working on the thesis, but the more I read about it, the more I realized that it's perhaps one of the most important parameters for our survival and well being. Then I started looking at the limiting factors of the global food production. Climate is only one of them. Using system dynamic modelling and biophysics, it became more and more clear to me how the system works, and how much we're up the creek with regards to energy. You simply can't produce food enough for 8-12 billion people without fossil energy, unless you have an alternative, and that's one of the areas where people are fantasizing wildly. We can't get an alternative up and running, before we'll see a decline in oil production, even if we disregard the climate and keep burning the remaining reserve. That will lead to less food available while the population is expected to grow. It simply doesn't match up with basic biology.
The professors I had as thesis supervisors said I must had made a miscalculation somewhere, so we went through the models and the calculations, but they couldn't find any errors. Then they said something like: "You're probably right, but no one wants to know. How 'bout lunch?". Another professor I discussed my work with said "You HAVE to stay positive!". As I've said before, you can't eat positive attitudes. With most scientists they try to keep the positive mindset, but confronted with the facts, they have no solution to a very simple problem. The carrying capacity of Homo Sapiens has been pumped up to an unsustainable level, because of our use of external energy, and once that runs dry, we're... Well I'm not allowed to use that word.
The essay from Franzen in The New Yorker, the one the climate scientists hated for being too pessimistic, only consider climate. Add running out of energi, minerals, food, water, economic growth and denialism, and you got a nasty stew, but you can't eat that either. If you know about TMT the denial of "extinction" is really not that mysterious, but denial is not the solution.
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I agree here. The biggest gains with electric cars are going to be air quality in major metropolitan areas.
Excellent! And the quality of life as less noise, less pollution, less cancer, less stress of the inhabitants etc ... should be much better.
Yes, bit also I think there will be positive repercussions on the entire planet.
Noise, cancer, stress ...
One might think that in a Spaceship Game, people who SEE this all the time might have adopted the perspective.
One would be wrong.
Ignorance, tribalism, misogyny and superstition are all found in abundance here. I-got-mine-screw-you thinking , appropriate for a colony of cockroaches or the Zerg, is characteristic of many Governments.
Horribly and with fatal consequences, those values infect the real world.
Until humanity gets this, and abandons its various stupid ideologies, we are in big trouble.
Faved, and respect to you WeComeInPeace.
ED reflects reality in so many ways.Earlier today I wrote the same as a comment to "Credits are worthless in Elite because they allowed exploiters to keep the credits they exploited".
I think my own basic understanding of the ball of rock in outer space started when I looked through a telescope for the first time. Then you realize how far away everything else is. Seeing Earth from outer space in ED is probably a primitive version of the feeling many astronauts return with after seeing Earth from orbit. They often see the light up there, and come back being a lot more environmentalists than when they left.
I'm pretty sure humanity never "gets that".
Great point - I haven't given much thought or seen much attention paid to the Phosphorous problem since visiting Nauru in the late 70's when I first became aware of the issue. It's certainly an issue that presents another challenge moving into the future.
But I think that's the way to look at it. Its another challenge to be overcome. A solution may not be evident now, but hopefully as resources become scare and prices rise, there will be economic incentives sufficient to motivate finding a way to overcome the problem.
Unfortunately for Nauru the demand for Phosphates has destroyed the island and left the inhabitants economically devastated.
Keep in mind that we've heard about "peak oil" and predictions of population collapse many times, and yet we've managed to keep moving forward with quite a bit of adaptation, technological breakthroughs, and ingenuity.
It does seem there's a wide range of the estimates of when Peak Phosphorus will be, from as soon as 2030 to as far out as 2092. Regardless, it's definitely a problem looking for a good solution.
Unfortunately, you lack such background.
Have we not established that neither of us is an eminent scientist in the climate field?
I'm sure your definition of "background" wasn't that, otherwise your previous comment would have made no sense.
Gregg, no offense, but you really need to work on your reading comprehension. You responses to me seem nonsensical in the context of my last few posts.
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The different estimates of the phosphorous peak, is caused by the USGS data. Around 2010 a group of scientists discovered that the USGS global reserve back then combined with exponentially growing production, except for a 10 year period after the collapse of the Sovjet Uninion, would lead to a peak around 2030. Then one Moroccan mine's resource was upgraded to reserve, which leads to a peak around 2070 in my models. My task were to model both scenarios, because the upgrade is highly controversial, so we probably will see a peak around 2050.
This makes peak phosphorus a problem on a similar scale as the climate +/-. I couldn't believe it when I found out, that it wasn't on everybody's front page, since another limiting factor of food production is soil nutrients that are being depleted. Next I found out that we have used most of the arable land available, that water shortage is increasing in many areas, and then I started looking at energy. They all add up to the green revolution, and they're all stressed close to the limit now.
On top of that, I became somewhat skeptical of the USGS reserves. If you look at the official reserve for lithium, we can roughly replace the current cars, but we don't recycle lithium, so the EVs will last for hopefully a few decades, and then we can start walking. We also need energy for tractors and harvesters etc. and Tesla's truck is still as much scifi as Elon's escape to Mars. I think we have way more lithium than USGS states. If I iterate a standard logistics function to the historic production data it seems that we wont see a peak lithium before 2050.
2050 keeps popping up in my models. All over. I find that rather alarming. If Earth was expected to be hit by a comet in 2050 people would be a lot more on their toes than they are now. But 30 years is still something to work with.
Not that I care, you should improve your "background" and come back to discuss.
Yes, and the whole article i linked is very interesting, and very positive. When it is the top people that run our economies telling us they understand we have to move to green economies, or watch them collapse (he quotes the CEO of Morgan Stanley in the article), that is about 90% of the battle won.
AGW is real, despite the deliberate confussion spread by Big Oil (and seen here in this thread in a number of peoples incorrect opinions on the subject!) to stall the realisation on how important it will be for future human socitiey to adapt to their role in causing AGW. The money (economy) is doing the talking here and it will just be a matter of time until that leads to everyone playing from the same play book. We need to adapt to AGW, reduce CO2 output (in our economy and lives) and develope green tech and systems for running our countries.
The top levels of global finnance are now very clear in sending out that message, we just need to bring on-board all those that have had their opinions tainted by the decades of miss-information on the subject.
So overall i found the article very, very inspiring in that it seems from the top down (which it did not look like even a decade ago) they are understanding the changes needed, and that means we will get them and future humanity has a glimmer of hope of still being around centuries from now. It's great news
Ooops
www.iflscience.com
Seas Boiling With Methane On Scale “Never Before Seen” Reported In Siberia
Seas Boiling With Methane On Scale “Never Before Seen” Reported In Siberia
www.iflscience.com
'Renewable electricity overtakes fossil fuels in UK for first time':
www.theguardian.com
There is plenty of positives to be found alongside the evidence of just how bad AGW is (and is going to get).
Renewable electricity overtakes fossil fuels in UK for first time
New offshore windfarms opening in third quarter mark milestone towards zero carbon
www.theguardian.com
There is plenty of positives to be found alongside the evidence of just how bad AGW is (and is going to get).
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