Climate in the 21st Century

Will Humankind see the 22nd Century?

  • Not a fucking chance

    Votes: 44 27.5%
  • Maybe. if we get our act together

    Votes: 42 26.3%
  • Yes, we will survive

    Votes: 74 46.3%

  • Total voters
    160

Sativied

Well-Known Member
Being skeptical is just prudent most the time.
I hope so, but I’m referring to the opposite of the attitude Obama pushed, when it comes to addressing climate change too many people lack a “Yes we can” attitude, while it’s literally a matter of life and death. Too often obstacles that human in the 21st can overcome are presented as impenetrable walls.

I don't know anything about this guy or the company (and still really don't, is he starting from scratch, because that is a whole lot of infrastructure he is using so some serious money is behind him) I just really appreciate the innovation and effectiveness.
From the top of my head, he won some contest where people could submit ideas. That also started the pushback, people claiming he shouldn’t have won cause his idea was supposedly a pipedream. Winning it allowed him to do a test run, which contrary to the expectations of many experts worked pretty good enough to continue development. Some of the plastic is recycled and used to make sunglasses and other items, but yes there is serious money involved, donations from people, governments and commercial sponsors. As soon as he was in all the talkshows it quickly became clear it’s a special kid.
 

hanimmal

Well-Known Member
I hope so, but I’m referring to the opposite of the attitude Obama pushed, when it comes to addressing climate change too many people lack a “Yes we can” attitude, while it’s literally a matter of life and death. Too often obstacles that human in the 21st can overcome are presented as impenetrable walls.


From the top of my head, he won some contest where people could submit ideas. That also started the pushback, people claiming he shouldn’t have won cause his idea was supposedly a pipedream. Winning it allowed him to do a test run, which contrary to the expectations of many experts worked pretty good enough to continue development. Some of the plastic is recycled and used to make sunglasses and other items, but yes there is serious money involved, donations from people, governments and commercial sponsors. As soon as he was in all the talkshows it quickly became clear it’s a special kid.
I think what you are describing is more 'sour grapes'.

It is a great idea, and awesome they gave this guy the opportunity, because what he described in that video you posted (everything being an iterative process) is exactly right, and the computer modeling that they were doing allows them to make leaps the better the data they can put into it gets. And you can only get that by actually getting your hands dirty in the real world.

This kind of ingenuity is why I still have so much hope/faith in humanity.
 

Roger A. Shrubber

Well-Known Member
Too often obstacles that human in the 21st can overcome are presented as impenetrable walls.
they are impenetrable, if you listen to those who are financially invested in the status quo...that will be the hard part, MAKING those with large investments in gas and oil, large investments in dirty businesses everywhere, stop being dirty. they're choking the entire world with their crap, and it has to stop. it may take violent revolution, a disconnect between politicians worldwide and dirty money companies. it will certainly take protest, but i doubt that protests will be even close to sufficient. this will get ugly, until enough major polluters are burned to the ground for the rest to see that it is in EVERYONE'S interest for them to knock it the fuck off.
 

DIY-HP-LED

Well-Known Member
Though not as energy dense as lithium, these cells will last 20 years of daily charge and discharge! They can increase in capacity and longevity too and use cheap materials. They operate at low temps and we will see them in cheap EVs and bicycles in the years to come. They also look like an option for grid storage and home renewable storage and prices should drop with mass production a generation or two down the road. Anything remote that used renewable energy and needed to be maintenance or replacement free for decades could use these long-life cells. I can see them going cheap used in the future, as they outlive the EVs and other things they powered over a decade and still have another decade of life in them.

Maybe people will be offered the cheaper battery-less model and move the old battery to the new car, since some of the ones a few years down the road might deliver 200 Wh/kg+ and over 9000 charge cycles before the battery is shot.

 
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DIY-HP-LED

Well-Known Member
By incorporating other breakthroughs in their batteries, they could probably increase the energy density and longevity considerably. The most important points are production begins in 2024 and they have 300 wh/kg energy density, though the total charging cycles could be better.


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StoreDot 30Ah silicon-dominant EV battery cell (Credit: StoreDot)
 

DIY-HP-LED

Well-Known Member
Maybe it will in 30 years or more, even if it works out, I think deep geothermal power using gyrotrons has better odds of success much quicker. Both are essentially engineering problems with the theoretical stuff and math already done and backed up by experimental research. Don't get me wrong, fusion energy and research is of value in of itself, even if deep geothermal energy was to solve our energy issues on earth eventually. In the end its dollars and cents, if both technologies work out, it would be much cheaper to convert thermal electric power plants to deep geothermal or make new power plants from scratch, than to build fusion reactors. Only a miniscule fraction is currently spent on deep geothermal compared to fusion but pending experimental bore holes could see that situation rapidly change with increasing government and private interests.

 

DIY-HP-LED

Well-Known Member
A lot of the arguments against EVs are frozen in time, they assume all electricity will be generated by the current dirty means. Many also assume that battery technology will remain static or somehow only slightly improve or the lithium is the only electrochemistry that will be used and that there will be no new ways of extracting and refining lithium. Perhaps they believe things like cobalt and lack of rare earth magnets will stifle growth, all those limitations have been overcome.

 

cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
A lot of the arguments against EVs are frozen in time, they assume all electricity will be generated by the current dirty means. Many also assume that battery technology will remain static or somehow only slightly improve or the lithium is the only electrochemistry that will be used and that there will be no new ways of extracting and refining lithium. Perhaps they believe things like cobalt and lack of rare earth magnets will stifle growth, all those limitations have been overcome.

You also tend to view very speculative predictions as almost a done deal. Until I can buy it with a cheap long-term warranty, it’s vaporware in my eyes.

The one thing I won’t like is megawatt-plus charging. Last summer a kWh at the margin was 64 cents.
 

DIY-HP-LED

Well-Known Member
You also tend to view very speculative predictions as almost a done deal. Until I can buy it with a cheap long-term warranty, it’s vaporware in my eyes.

The one thing I won’t like is megawatt-plus charging. Last summer a kWh at the margin was 64 cents.
A lot of research is hyped in the press and by university PR departments, but the emerging industry and its associated publications are getting good at winnowing down to the more realistic probabilities. Much of what I've posted about batteries concerns things in production or preproduction, like sodium-based batteries or even graphene aluminum. Much of this research has pragmatic applications and the breakthroughs in silicon and Sulphur based lithium chemistries are seeing almost direct application. The sheer volume of work being done, and the numbers of people involved now are leading to more rapid advances, there is real big money on the line and large-scale battery factories are springing up all over North America.
 

cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
A lot of research is hyped in the press and by university PR departments, but the emerging industry and its associated publications are getting good at winnowing down to the more realistic probabilities. Much of what I've posted about batteries concerns things in production or preproduction, like sodium-based batteries or even graphene aluminum. Much of this research has pragmatic applications and the breakthroughs in silicon and Sulphur based lithium chemistries are seeing almost direct application. The sheer volume of work being done, and the numbers of people involved now are leading to more rapid advances, there is real big money on the line and large-scale battery factories are springing up all over North America.
Until it carries a cheap long-term warranty that isn’t a promotional loss leader, it’s not mature tech.
 

Roger A. Shrubber

Well-Known Member
Where rightwing lunatics will destroy them, "We don't need no stinkin socialist EV's"! Red states will pass laws banning them! The Texas power grid would crumble under the load.

there are already 40k in place across the south...do you read stories daily about them being sabotaged or vandalized?
you know i live in the south, do i seem like the kind of guy who would do that, without a very good reason?
i sometimes think this is the map you use...
how-japan-sees-america.jpg
not every hillbilly is a bad person...we do not all fuck our close relatives, we don't all drink moonshine and cook meth...
and we don't blow up gas pumps or ev charging stations for no good reason...
there are a few people like you describe, and they do stupid shit, but they're a slowly shrinking minority, not a vast majority.
you need to come down here and take a vacation...actually meet some of the people you know so well
 

DIY-HP-LED

Well-Known Member
there are already 40k in place across the south...do you read stories daily about them being sabotaged or vandalized?
you know i live in the south, do i seem like the kind of guy who would do that, without a very good reason?
i sometimes think this is the map you use...
View attachment 5235344
not every hillbilly is a bad person...we do not all fuck our close relatives, we don't all drink moonshine and cook meth...
and we don't blow up gas pumps or ev charging stations for no good reason...
there are a few people like you describe, and they do stupid shit, but they're a slowly shrinking minority, not a vast majority.
you need to come down here and take a vacation...actually meet some of the people you know so well
Sometimes I just like to poke the stick Roger and play up the stereotypes. ;-) We have them here too, assholes are everywhere, just more visible in America since Trump.
 

DIY-HP-LED

Well-Known Member
Here is something we should see more of delivery vans and light trucks for small and medium sized businesses, work during the day and charged at night at the depot, vehicles that operate on a regular schedule. Urban buses should be an obvious choice too and could charge at the end of routes or enroute using trolly pantographs with overhead wires on part of their routes to recharge batteries. Electrifying delivery vans should be a logical first step to reducing delivery costs and increasing profits as the technology comes online with battery mass production and they are building the factories all over North America for them now.

Here is one to be sold in Japan and other countries, but when we have cheap batteries, we will have cheap BEVs, since they would be cheaper to make with fewer parts than an ICE vehicle. Cheap sodium-based batteries promise decades of use in the near future and are starting to be made now in mass quantities. Economics determines what gets adopted in the end, for everyday use, it might not be the latest and greatest. However, the emerging battery market is stimulating a lot of innovation and research because of the technical demands such batteries impose and the immense profits to be gained by a better battery made from cheaper materials and manufactured more easily, or with the maximum amount of automation.

 

Roger A. Shrubber

Well-Known Member
Here is something we should see more of delivery vans and light trucks for small and medium sized businesses, work during the day and charged at night at the depot, vehicles that operate on a regular schedule. Urban buses should be an obvious choice too and could charge at the end of routes or enroute using trolly pantographs with overhead wires on part of their routes to recharge batteries. Electrifying delivery vans should be a logical first step to reducing delivery costs and increasing profits as the technology comes online with battery mass production and they are building the factories all over North America for them now.

Here is one to be sold in Japan and other countries, but when we have cheap batteries, we will have cheap BEVs, since they would be cheaper to make with fewer parts than an ICE vehicle. Cheap sodium-based batteries promise decades of use in the near future and are starting to be made now in mass quantities. Economics determines what gets adopted in the end, for everyday use, it might not be the latest and greatest. However, the emerging battery market is stimulating a lot of innovation and research because of the technical demands such batteries impose and the immense profits to be gained by a better battery made from cheaper materials and manufactured more easily, or with the maximum amount of automation.

yeah, i know about engineering and blahblahblah....so why the fuck can Honda make a $7,300 electric van, and a tesla costs 47 thousand fucking dollars?....i'm sure the tesla has nicer upholstery, and a stereo....but 40k worth of seats and radio?
 

cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
Here is something we should see more of delivery vans and light trucks for small and medium sized businesses, work during the day and charged at night at the depot, vehicles that operate on a regular schedule. Urban buses should be an obvious choice too and could charge at the end of routes or enroute using trolly pantographs with overhead wires on part of their routes to recharge batteries. Electrifying delivery vans should be a logical first step to reducing delivery costs and increasing profits as the technology comes online with battery mass production and they are building the factories all over North America for them now.

Here is one to be sold in Japan and other countries, but when we have cheap batteries, we will have cheap BEVs, since they would be cheaper to make with fewer parts than an ICE vehicle. Cheap sodium-based batteries promise decades of use in the near future and are starting to be made now in mass quantities. Economics determines what gets adopted in the end, for everyday use, it might not be the latest and greatest. However, the emerging battery market is stimulating a lot of innovation and research because of the technical demands such batteries impose and the immense profits to be gained by a better battery made from cheaper materials and manufactured more easily, or with the maximum amount of automation.

wake me when it’s CA legal
 

DIY-HP-LED

Well-Known Member
wake me when it’s CA legal
It's not legal in America, but it might help to lower gas prices there one day, since oil is a global commodity. It did get me thinking about who would profit from such a delivery van built for this market. I've been reading about the introduction of sodium-based batteries by a couple of companies, and I'm interested by the possible implications of their extremely large number of charge and discharge cycles, they could last for decades and would be cheap to make, outliving the vehicle probably by a couple of times over!
 

cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
It's not legal in America, but it might help to lower gas prices there one day, since oil is a global commodity. It did get me thinking about who would profit from such a delivery van built for this market. I've been reading about the introduction of sodium-based batteries by a couple of companies, and I'm interested by the possible implications of their extremely large number of charge and discharge cycles, they could last for decades and would be cheap to make, outliving the vehicle probably by a couple of times over!
still, for me to care it has to work here.
 

Sativied

Well-Known Member
yeah, i know about engineering and blahblahblah....so why the fuck can Honda make a $7,300 electric van, and a tesla costs 47 thousand fucking dollars?....i'm sure the tesla has nicer upholstery, and a stereo....but 40k worth of seats and radio?
At least 5K worth of leg space.

Screen Shot 2022-12-09 at 17.56.44.png

Not fit for European legs.

The actual production version not nearly as sexy.
Screen Shot 2022-12-09 at 17.58.15.png

Sat in one of these at dealer, not sure if I'm a fan of all the screens and the wood's a mismatch, I'd prefer a Shelby Cobra dashboard.
Screen Shot 2022-12-09 at 18.00.48.png

Never use maps or navigation apps/devices anyway.
 
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