We sold our Denali pick up after discovering a niche market in Germany and the guy has it running on propane now 
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All those African kids mining the lithium is an issue also. Disposal of batteries, etc
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EV is heavily subsidized by the government, not only on the research and development, but also on rebates. With our 34 Trillion dollar debt, our economy will soon correct. As electric prices rise, the free recharge is going to end. EV owners can start to expect paying fees or charging at home. States are loosing tax revenue and are in the process of adding fees to the licensing of EVs. The honeymoon is over, and sales are plumetting. The torque available from an EV can’t be matched, even with most current muscle cars. Diesel locomotives use the engine to generate electricity to power electric motors to drive the train. The technology isn’t new, it needs to be newer. When it gets there, it’ll be because some entrepreneur had an idea and wanted to make money. Then it’ll be expensive, but practicle. People cam afford $8,000 TVs and then the price drops to $1,800. Next comes the $15,000 TV and people buy it. People love technology, but they need to trust it and want it.
How could I evacuate during a fire if I can’t charge?
I would not mind a second vehicle being electric but we have e-bikes and use those for around town.
I worked for 44 years for the worlds largest locomotive manufacture and you are correct locomotives have been hybrid for over 100 years. A lot has changed just over my 44 years and it has all surrounded efficiency. I was sent out west once years ago to talk to a railroad about their wish list of things we could work on that would convince them to buy new locomotives or replace old locomotives. The one two things that stuck out were the comparison in cost by shipping by rail and trucking per ton. It was enormous. Pointing out our real competitors were not other locomotive makers as much as what was happening in trucking. The main thing I remember that shocked me was them talking about fuel prices and how much a one cent per gallon increase in diesel cost them per year. The inverse was their point if we could make our locomotive one cent more efficient per gallon it would save this one railroad enough to purchase something like 100 new locomotives.
We made hundreds of improvements over the year some of the biggest being measuring wheel slip and modulating power between the six axles at the first sign of slipping, another major change was producing AC drive motors replacing the DC ones that were used from the time of Edison. All this was done at the same time pollution standards were being increased every year.
Americans know how to do things or we did at one time not long ago. The low point in my 44 years was when the company in order to sell a few locomotives and locomotive kits in the 80s to China signed into a technology transfer agreement. They sent over 100s of their best people to not just understand everything about the product but also the process. I worked with these guys and they sucked every last drop of information they could get. Right down to why we had vending machines for the workers in the break rooms how short a lunch half hour was. The feeling in upper management at least what we were told is don’t worry they won’t comprehend 10% of what we show them.
China advanced 150 years in the 20 years following that in rail transportation.
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Railroads received large public subsidies in the early years (Pacific Railway Acts of 1862 and others) while the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act (1956) essentially paved the way (
) for today’s OTR trucking industry. Now, however, the railroads are obliged to bear most of the costs associated with maintaining and improving their infrastructure (railbeds, etc) while the trucking industry’s infrastructure (highways) is mostly maintained by taxpayers. With such a huge comparative advantage, is it any surprise that trucking has thrived while rail has struggled in recent decades despite the latter’s cost advantages per ton-mile?
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The above quote was from 1998 a quarter of a century ago.
Going back to the original scientific article that started this thread I see only 4 clicks on the link. I also see only 4 clicks on the link that GergofDelaware posted from which I quoted above.
Rather what has happened is the science was ignored in favor of reasons why not to take significate action to prevent the loss of biodiversity. I believe this is because most folks have little understanding or interest in ecology or biodiversity and how the various components of our biosphere interact. So, they blow the science off and make it about geopolitics and vent about US politics and corruption. Often using over the top hyperbole like going back to the stone age or life span limits etc. Pointing the blame on China and India while we are at the top of the list of CO2 polluters. I haven’t posted on this thread in quite a while because it has strayed far off the original topic.
To sum it up discount the science then air complaints about other topics to divert the topic in another direction, because change is difficult. Just keep on keeping on because we won’t be here tomorrow. Pass the consequences on to the future generations. This is why I don’t think we will manage to prevent what is coming down the road.
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I read and hear about climate change non-stop and how it will impact mankind. There are warnings coming at me constantly about what is coming if we don’t do this or that.
I can’t recall ever hearing the warning on mainstream media of the real problem being the demise of phytoplankton and the consequence being loss of half the O2 in the atmosphere and that leading to the loss of human life on earth. The warning was made 26 years ago so it surely has had time to be well worked into fabric of our society. Why aren’t all the advocates of stopping CO2 emissions and reversing the atmospheric saturation warning us of this more than say sea level rise.
Why hasn’t Paul Falkowski been debating this the last 26 years with every scientist that has a more moderate view on man-made climate change? This if correct is a big deal and one would think this research would have been built upon by dozens if not hundreds of follow up studies. 26 years later and we have been moving in the wrong direction of the Falkowski warning what is the recent numbers of where we are at?
I became intrigued and started digging deeper into Dr. Falkowski’s videos and research. He looks to be a brilliant man of science and has won the Tyler Prize the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for his field of study. I watched several videos he has made and will attach one that is about 3 years old not 26. It is only about 30 minutes long and not overly technical, and he spoke of all the history of CO2 and impacts on the seas etc. I would have thought if the eventual short term or even long term extinction event of the human race was in question he would have put forth a dire plea and or even a plan to avoid it or at least mitigate it. I don’t really know maybe it was in some of the graphs I didn’t comprehend. If you can point out what I missed I will watch it again.
There is a little more to the story. Truckers and trucking companies pay their fair share of road usage taxes and fuel taxes along with permits and god knows what else that are above all the taxes we as personal car owners have to pay. I know a guy that owns an excavation business and he and his drivers as we live in PA but close to NY and OH have to record every mile outside of the state and buy special permits and pay taxes and stuff. Every time he runs his low boy rig I believe he told me he has to get a special permit in advance from the state that isn’t cheap.
I agree the roadbeds of the railroads in this country are failing and maintained to a freight type of standard. They are in a bind as we could provide them much more speed that would improve profits along with efficiency, but for the most part crossings are not designed for it even if the rail were. When the government decides to help it is billions for some pet project rail line connecting a couple cities with passenger service that everyone will drive between anyway as they need a car at the other end. Or worse yet two cities no one travels between.
The railroads are designed around moving raw material the way the country used to be self-sufficient. Now we move containers from ports as we don’t make much ourselves any longer. It is hard to make a transportation plan when every 4 years the scope of what our country is changes. Business small and large try and resolve what to do and progress is constantly halted. That slows down the supply chain and drives up cost of everything.
Talk to anyone under 40 and they don’t remember a time when you only got to eat fresh strawberries 2 weeks out of the year. About a month you got fresh sweet corn.
We are a country in for a big surprise if God forbid we had to for some reason roll the clock back even 75 years.
“Debate” among Ph.D.'s occurs almost exclusively in print, and sometimes it’s even quite nasty. But to see that kind of back and forth, your training in that specific field is your ticket. Falkowski’s article from 1998 has been cited 360 times since it’s publication. That’s quite a lot of debate, if you want to call it that.
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Exactly on point. Gas prices were raised to force us to accept electric transportation. When the ignorant masses fail to do what tou want them to do, you force them artificially. I don’t care about energy prices. I drive less, so I don’t contribute to the economy of locations that rely on my travel. All the training, expertice and specialty tools acquired on internal combustion engines will be worthless - so what, that’s the mechanic’s problem. Gas station owners are out of luck - so what! They’re all a minority. For the next 11 years, people who have to drive distance to work or school or take kids to activities and shop for the family can just pay the price artificially inflated price and stand in line waiting for fuel, while they fly around on a private jet and stocked with the best liquor and we have to pay for the inflated airfare and stand in line for a strip search. The imposition hits home when you’re sitting next to a passenger still in damp clothes , with no ID other than a subpeona, is holdingba paid for bording pass, but it really hits hime ehen you realize that air marshals are being transfered to Texas and Arizona to change diapers.
So I don’t have to drive. I don’t work and my kids are gone - so what to all the people who have to drive. Can’t find baby formula, I don’t have any babies anymore. Were a divided class and the ones who get what they want don’t care about those who sffer. I think it’s almost comical how naive the public is. One guy bragged about traveling every weekend between DC and his home, riding like a peasant on AMTRAC. Bragged about hitting one million miles of rail travel. He had a clueless son who could avoid nose candy and got fired from a prestigious job as an officer in military setvice, but ends up on the board of directors at AMTRAC. Nobody looked at what perks came with that job, or what favorable benefits extended to family members in exchange for legislation. Eh, trains travel anyway, loaded or empty. What difference does it make who rides free. You pay for it one way or another. If the powerful can force you to walk, you might decide to buy a train ticket or ride the bus and fill the empty seats. Not a bad trade, give a decision maker free train rides and his son a seat on the board, it might grow business. Beside everybody wants a clean planet. I do. I retired so I didn’t feel like I was being gouged ever time I drove to work. I had a part-time job that I enjoyed, but had to quit. Couldn’t afford the drive. So what! It just makes me feel creepy, used, and dirty.
In particular to the topic drift as @castoff said.
“To sum it up discount the science then air complaints about other topics to divert the topic in another direction, because change is difficult. Just keep on keeping on because we won’t be here tomorrow. Pass the consequences on to the future generations. This is why I don’t think we will manage to prevent what is coming down the road.”
My opinion is that when it comes to topics of great change to how we live our lives as a society of course the science is important, but equally important is what the required demands do in every other realm of existence.
Sure it is simple 2+2=4. CO2 is manmade in part, we scientifically feel we need to drastically and quickly need to limit manmade CO2 = We need to stop burning fossil fuels right now to save the human race. Problem solved, what’s next.
Wait a minute someone says. If we do that we will save the human race but in the process we will kill 80% of the human race and set the other 20% back 200 years. No you are just deflecting away from the science to muddy the water.
Maybe you are correct we may not be able to stop what is coming down the road. I happen to think we will correct things and even come out the other end better off.
One thing for sure we won’t solve the problem without working together as one team pulling the rope in one direction together. Half pulling one way and half the other nothing will get done. Scientists need to understand economists need to understand politicians etc etc.
For that reason it is a topic that should let itself pour out in a thousand directions. One direction is trust and that’s a direction that is sorely lacking for a lot of people on both sides.
I appreciate that independent truckers and trucking companies pay significantly more in road-related fees and taxes. Whether it constitutes their “fair share” considering the damage heavy trucks do to highways (vs light trucks and passenger cars) is different question. Comparative studies between almost parallel limited access highways in the same climate, one that allows trucks and one that doesn’t (I’m thinking of the Connecticut Turnpike (I-95) and the Merritt Parkway), suggest the extra fees assessed to trucks don’t come close to covering the cost of extra maintenance and more frequent replacement. I am not arguing for higher taxes & fees on trucks, but the shortfall should be recognized as another component of the public subsidy we as a society give to trucking that railroads do not enjoy.
Having fresh berries in January is a treat for sure, but would we continue to buy them if we had to pay the full price at retail? I don’t know the answer, but the question is worth asking IMO.
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I agree it is not the scientific scholars causing the debate. I’m sure if I went down thru the 360 times the scholars went back and forth I would see disputes about something happening 50 million years ago and no it happened 60 billion years ago.
The problem is the media and groups of people that are not scientists cherry picking the research and finding some juicy tidbit that fits their narrative like reading “human extinction” in a passage. Where is the question asked of Dr. Falkowski in the interview, What year do you think the human extinction will be complete? Will we suffer for a while and then die or will we all go quickly? Do you think it possible that the world survives with today’s population and today’s lifespan and today’s quality of life if by 2050 we curtail the whole world burning one drop of fossil fuel and we go full in wind and solar but not nuclear? His answers would be worth hearing. I so far in all the videos I have watched seen no such questions.
I think we agree and talk to any trucker they will tell you if they add anymore they will be out. Then again a truck load of goods is accomplishing something for the common good. What percentage of people driving around is really accomplishing much of anything.
If you live in Buffalo and I near Erie you will know up north the biggest assault to our roadways is salt and plowing. The big rigs just finish the job the salt and plows start. Interestingly about a dozen years ago I designed and got a patent on a new type of snowplow. I even built several prototypes. The design saved both considerable fuel and road wear along with improved safety and could be retrofit to older equipment. I spent a good deal of money getting it to that point and had no way or desire to be a manufacture. As they say build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door. I can affirm that is not true. Almost zero interest in changing the status quo. But if you watch shark tank someone makes a million off a better chocolate chip cookie.
PS i didn’t mention it also greatly reduced road wear.
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I’m now in northern Wisconsin but did three stints in NY between1974 and 2015, and I recall I-90 through Erie County PA as being one of the worst stretches of Interstate Highway anywhere. If people knew the hidden costs of road salt, they’d be shocked and outraged - from the huge costs of premature car rot and disintegrating concrete, to ruined shoes and carpets, to dead trees along the roadways, and polluted surface and ground waters … and most of it completely unnecessary. A little sand, good tires, and a lighter touch at the wheel works better than salt under most conditions, but as your snowplow story underscores, change is hard for most people and d#mn near impossible for bureaucracies.
I recall, in the run-up to the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics, Gov. Carey decreed that roads be kept black during the games to help visiting flatlanders stay between the ditches. Well, 40+ years later, they’re still flinging salt and brine at the first snow flake. 
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Everybody is convinced we can stop carbon poisoning. Nobody is even looking at thec35 trillion dollar budget that has bankrupted the economy. We can’t stop people just walking into the country, and everybody thinks its just grand to add so many unskilled people to the mix, when the skilled workers pay to get in. They add to the country’s intellectual mix, while the others are nothing more than indentured servants who make the employers wealthy. The US tried to free Afghanistan and Iraq from a butchering tyranical rule where a school girl was pulled from a bus and shot in the head for going to school. Women had fingers cut off for painting their nails. Thousands of Kurds and whole villages poisined with nerve gas after the armistice. Gays thrown from rooftops - and the US was the evil ones. Then the Russians let Ukraine have independence, only to decide its needed as a lamd bridge to sea ports, so the carnage goes on. Nobody can figurevout who’s wrong or right. North and South Korea and Vietnam. In both cases, the communist regime is just going to swoop in an take it, just take it. East and West Germany. West prospers, the East is drained and abandoned, so the West rebuilds, and turns to Russia for energy.
You guys see a world that I can’t see. The US is the evil empire. Gained Phillipines and Cuba in a war with Spain. Both were allowed to go independent. By the imperalist pigs in the US. This is messed up. I can argue about this convoluted lunacy. Do what you want, but I’m doing my own green movement. If everybody had their own movement, the lroblem would be solved. Thinking you can get a consensus or change the world is a sad joke.
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In Erie county and the city proper all water drains north into the great lakes. I now live about 30 miles south and right around here the watershed changes to south. We live on French Creek and it flows south ending in the Gulf.
When I was a kid there were mountains of plowed snow and many winters it became a problem with where to put it. They would load it on tri-axle trucks and dump it in the Erie harbor that is connected to Lake Erie. Somewhere around 30 years ago the salt was viewed as a pollutant and no longer allowed into the waterway in the winter. They started pushing it back and found new storage areas for it and all of them when it melts in the spring are connected to storm drains that empty back to the harbor. My guess is other than the little bit that kills the trees and soil along the roadways and sinks into the pot holes the rest ends up in Lake Erie and not a word is mentioned about it.
Here along French Creek it is just as bad. We have a conservancy here and no one seems to care about road salt but they are on the farmers nonstop with runoff. I know one farmer and I asked him about runoff and he said manure or fertilizer they are on me all the time about both. He said both are way to expensive and valuable to waste letting them get off the land. They came with a warning letter about manure and fecal matter coming from a wooded area adjacent to his farm. He told them it should be going down the Amish counted 509 deer in his field the other night when spotting and he gave them 25 red tags to thin them out. The guy from the conservancy said “What?” He told them he doesn’t put manure on that field because the deer and groundhogs have eaten 25% of his crop so he lets them fertilize the field. But he is willing to listen if they have a way of training them to not poop near the creek.
Salt is a dirty little secret and I’m with you go back to spreading the clinkers and fly ash they got free from the power plant when I was a kid. That worked great. Oh I forgot the closed down all the coal plants years ago.
Another secret well kept. They don’t just spread salt in the winter. All the salt brine from the gas wells is used all summer on the dirt roads to keep dust down. A new car around here doesn’t have a chance unless you take it to the corner garage guy that sprays the bottom a couple times a year with used motor oil.
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The summer application of salt solutions is common in CO. Not only is it promoted as dust suppressant, the claim is that it compacts the soil and prepares it for chipsealing that might or might not happen. Meanwhile, after the crap dries, the roads actually turn blinding white, and that stuff stays a long time, not to mention contaminating soils and water OFF the roadbed.
MgCl2 is used in some jurisdictions, but I’ve heard that the nasty stuff applied here is a byproduct of gas well operations. In other words, the industry gets to dump its toxic waste under the guise of helping the county road and bridge budget.
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Not all science makes it into mainstream media. The media tends to stress the climate aspect of CO2 you don’t see much in the media on how carbon cycles through the ocean. There are more aspects to the carbon cycle than just atmospheric. You also don’t see much in the media about the contribution of algae in the production of Oxygen. If your only contact with science is through the popular media, it will be limited to what sells copy or attracts viewers.
The atmosphere we have today is the result of a biological process. Before photosynthesis the atmosphere didn’t have an O2 component. You limit photosynthesis you limit oxygen. It’s a very simple concept. The early O2 in the atmosphere caused the great oxidation of iron (rust, red clay, red rocks, etc.). after which it began to accumulate in the atmosphere.
“Why aren’t all the advocates of stopping CO2 emissions and reversing the atmospheric saturation warning us of this more than say sea level rise.”
Because sea level rise is currently happening. The loss of phytoplankton however isn’t eminent by any means but a distinct possibility in the future.
Indeed, you are right, and the animal and plant realms are as important for humanity as are other human concerns and need to be part of the equation.
The point I have been trying to make is we are in the process of rapidly deconstructing the web of life. The very thing that makes for a habitable planet. You don’t get that back in a time frame that has any meaning for humanity.