(Crib Sheet essays may contain spoilers for the book in question. Previously I refrained from writing them until the book was published in paperback, typically 12 months after first hardcover release. However, times are a'changing. In the UK, Orbit released the paperback of Dead Lies Dreaming only six months after the hardback. And in the USA, Tor.com is an ebook-first publisher; while they issue my books in hardcover, there will probably never be a paperback release unless for some reason they decide they need a trade paperback. (The mass market paperback channel for trade fiction has been dying by inches since about 2005, as ebooks supplant it.) Dead Lies Dreaming came out in October 2020, and I figure you've had time to read it by now: so I'm releasing this particular essay a few months earlier than I would have done for previous books.)
I wrote Dead Lies Dreaming in 2018-2019, during a difficult time in my life when I was unable to grapple with the book I was supposed to be writing (Invisible Sun, which got finished a short time later). Dead Lies Dreaming happened almost by accident—it wasn't on my to-do list at all, let alone planned with the idea that it might be the start of a whole new series (book 2, Quantum of Nightmares, is with the copy editor right now: it comes out next January 11th). That, and the chaos caused by the arrival of COVID19, probably account for it being marketed in hardcover as Laundry Files book 10, which it most certainly is not: but it's set in the same world as the Laundry Files, the world of the New Management, and that's why it says "New Management book 1" on the spine of the UK paperback.
I'm insisting on the distinction because the New Management books are not about the government agency known to its staff as the Laundry. Nor do any Laundry Files characters—with the significant exception of His Dread Majesty, the Prime Minister—show up in the first two books of the new series. As the first Amazon reader reviews predictably complained about the lack of Bob, Mo, and the Laundry, I want to make it quite clear: Dead Lies Dreaming is set some time (six months to two years) after the end of the final, not-yet-written (or titled) Laundry Files novel. Spoiler: the Black Pharaoh, N'yar Lat-Hotep, is still Prime Minister of the UK, and CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN is ongoing (if not actually getting any worse). There may or may not be survivors and revenants from SOE Q-Division and Continuity Operations. We will get to briefly see Persephone Hazard again in book 3. But that's not relevant ot the plot of this book, which kicks off a whole new series.
The previous series turned out to be impossible to continue as of 2018-2021, a period during which British politics became so bizarre as to be impossible to satirize. I promise I'll get back to it eventually! But if I was to write more stories in the same setting, I had to drop the political/civil service angle, which meant dropping the Laundry and moving the spotlight to focus on civilian life under the New Management.
So what happened to trigger this unexpected attack novel?
My father died in 2017, leaving my mother, aged 88 and very infirm, behind. They lived in Leeds, a city roughly 200 miles from Edinburgh by road or rail. In July 2018 my mother had a stroke, and was admitted to hospital. While hospitalized she had another brain bleed and was left semi-paralysed, speech impaired, and with difficulty swallowing. I've always been quite close to my parents: consequently I shed a bunch of other committments to spend time with her (and give me other siblings—who lived much closer—some respite). She stayed in the hospital for more than three months, before finally being discharged to a nursing home that was able to provide the 24x7 support she needed. She never recovered, but spent roughly 15 months in the nursing home before she finally succumbed to one last stroke, a few weeks after her 90th birthday.
During the 18 month period I commuted weekly by train (it's much faster than driving, and less tiring). But despite the commute being tolerable, the experience was exhausting. Dealing with death or terminal illness is stressful, as I discovered during my father's terminal illness (which killed the book I was working on at the time). I had just begun to recover, by way of taking a long-postponed six month sabbatical, when my mother became ill: at that point, I recognized that my conscious attempt to take time off and recharge was a bust, I couldn't work to deadlines either while stressed out, and so I downed tools for the duration.
But my subconscious is terrible at handling idleness, and even if I can't make deadline targets, I can still do tentative, exploratory work. So after a few weeks I gave myself license to indulge in creative writing, something I hadn't done for years. This freed me to start something new, or rather, to cannibalize something old and repurpose it to deal with the emotional pain of visiting my mother's bedside.
The last time I tried to do something new and unplanned, I hatched the first 30,000 words (or about a third) of a new weird/contemporary fantasy novel titled Ghosts in the Dreamhouse. GitD was to be the story of a millennial couple who rent the attic of a big, old, plausibly haunted house from a sick old lady and gradualyl discover that far from being the bargain they'd hoped for (two bedrooms! A separate bathroom and living room of their own! All for low, low rent and some decorating expenses!) they'd stumbled into a grotesque family curse that had hung fire as the dynasty of sorcerors who owned the house had failed to breed in the past generation.
Ghosts in the Dreamhouse is never going to be published. But I cannibalized it for parts which show up in Dead Lies Dreaming (Imp and Eve's family curse, and the top floor of their house) and Quantum of Nightmares (Amy, Ade, and the whole supermarket deli counter plot).
To start something new, I ripped the haunted house out of GitD and dumped it into the universe of the Laundry Files, where it plausibly belonged. Then I decided to send off for some new protagonists and a bit more detail about the New Management.
The New Management parodies the dark undercurrent of performative, theatrical cruelty that is baked so deeply into British culture that it leaks into our politics. Our tabloid newspapers and much of our reality TV culture is built on sly bullying and cruelty, with a veneer of prurient denial: "I'm not a racist, but ..." meets transphobia and calls to bring back the death penalty in an oddly worrying, non-specific way that might pertain to hanging serial killers but might equally well apply to being wilfully homeless or wearing a loud shirt in a built-up area. Additionally, the post-CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN world is overflowing with dubious magic, some of which sticks of people who really shouldn't be allowed to run with scissors, never mind being gifted with superpowers. We met some of them in The Annihilation Score, as minor characters: I've had a yen to do a supervillain story for some time, so examining superpowered crime and punishment was an obvious direction to go in.
I was also working through issues to do with grief and death in the family. British culture offers a rich buffet of classics to choose from, and I decided that, to start a new series, I'd go with a pastiche of one of the classics: Peter and Wendy by J. M. Barrie (which you can find a free downloadable ebook of via Project Gutenberg—note that this is the 1911 novel, not the 1904 stage play). Peter and Wendy is the original source for Peter Pan, but if your only experience of Pan is the saccharine Disney version, you'll get a nasty shock. Barrie's Pan is a sly sociopath, a feral demiurge divorced from even his own shadow, who steals children away to Neverland (and thins the numbers of Lost Boys if they have the temerity to try to grow up). Barrie's play and book were wildly popular, but like much Victorian morally uplifting Kidlit they smuggled a bitter subtext in under the twee surface. Back in 1900, roughly 20% of children died before they reached the age of 5 years, for there were few effective treatments for most modern diseases of childhood. This was a huge improvement compared to the infant mortality of 1800, but still: almost every parent had at some point to explain to their surviving children that a sibling wasn't ever coming home.
Like the best modern kidlit, Peter and Wendy also had something to say to the adults who would be reading it to the children: it stands up to a modern reading, although the usual content warnings apply (racism and sexism to a degree you would expect of Edwardian Engliand, i.e. unthinking and obnoxious).
So I decided to tackle a New Management setting Peter and Wendy, with some metafictional twiddles. Imp (our Pan) is actually a magically enhanced film director wannabe, who is obsessed with Peter and Wendy and intends to make his own post-cyberpunk motion picture version of it. Problem: Imp is financially challenged and not anything like as gifted as he thinks he is. Second problem: the charitable trust who own the rights to Peter Pan in the UK will not approve of Imp's intended treatment, to put it mildly. Third problem: because of their use in making field-expedient Basilisk Guns, the New Management has banned the unlicensed sale or rental of high definition camcorders, and there's a six month waiting list to rent a film camera. (The book is set in a dreamlike 2016 that diverged from our own reality some time after 2012: plausibly, smartphone camera resolutions are limited by law, harshly enforced.)
Imp and his crew are squatters (a highly illegal practice). They're also criminals. The New Management has reacted to a spike in magical crime by reintroducing the Bloody Code (a typically British violent and cruel over-reaction), but has—equally typically—failed to increase police funding or provide for enforcement; indeed, they've outsourced it all to the private sector by bringing back the very real 18th century Thief-takers, who are in turn employed by the usual big government contracting corporations (like the real world Serco and G4s: in the New Management setting, you can blame it all on HiveCo Security or their rivals, the Wilde Corporation, named after this guy—who show up in Quantum of Nightmares). Cruelty can be monetized, magically, via ritual human sacrifice (of which executions are a very useful subtype), and Imp's crew are the sort of outcasts who the machinery of the New Management won't miss: none of them are straight, two of them are non-white, one is transgender, and all of them are (strictly speaking) criminals. But they're not the villains here.
So we have our thieves. We have a sketchy outline of our police (the heroine of Peter Pan was Wendy Darling: it is not a coincidence that the thief-taker with a heart of gold in Dead Lies Dreaming is one Wendy Deere). Who are the victims? Well obviously, the law exists to protect the rich. But Richy McRichface—or Rupert de Montfort Bigge as he is called in this series—is not exactly a sympathetic protagonist. (At least, not until he gets to explain what he's doing in an epic supervillain monologue in book 3.) So we zoom the focus in on Eve Starkey, the aforementioned Imp's elder sister, who is not-coincidentally employed as Rupert's executive assistant.
In the interests of avoiding spoilers for Quantum of Nightmares and the not-yet-properly-titled third book, I'm going to pass over certain aspects of Imp and Eve's relationship, Eve's relationship with Rupert, and Rupert's Grand Plan. For now, you'll have to settle for Rupert as a sexually abusive, moustache-twirling billionaire scumbag and human-sacrificing Cult high priest. Rupert can quite literally get away with murder because he's a pillar of the establishment and richer than Croesus, greedy beyond anyone's wildest imagining, and totally depraved. (Or at least that's the version of himself he puts on display for Eve.) At the end of Dead Lies Dreaming Eve is reasonably confident that she has fatally outmaneuvered him. But Rupert has a better handle on Eve than she on he, and his plans are much deeper, nastier, and more subtle than is obvious from Dead Lies Dreaming: he may be out of sight but death gods and necromancers have a disturbing tendency to come back from the grave, and Quantum of Nightmares is all about the mess Eve uncovered after his disappearance.
Other tid-bits: the four groups traipsing after each other in Whitechapel are a deliberate shout-out to the hunting scene in Peter and Wendy (where: the Pirates are hunting the Lost Boys, the Lost Boys are stalking the Indians, the Indians are hunting the Wild Animals, and the Wild Animals are hunting the Pirates).
Imp's house is very close to, but not actually the same as, the house where J. M. Barrie wrote Peter and Wendy.
The Mister Bond is purely Rupert's affectation: Bond is an archetype, and for the discerning depraved villain who has everything (even an island lair!), what better accessory than a suited and booted Bond to assassinate his enemies?
The Channel Island of Skaro does not exist, but if it did it would be near to Guernsey and Sark, only a bit smaller and much, much weirder. (We get to see more of it in Quantum of Nightmares.)
"Gammon" is a particularly tasty cut of quick-cured hind leg of pork, best eaten as a steak (grilled or fried). In current British parlance, it's also a term applied to a rosy-faced, bald, shouty middle aged man, and to a lesser extent to their younger angry male counterparts. (America has MAGAs who cover the same sort of political base, but Gammons are specifically middle-aged and right wing males: famous examples would be Piers Morgan or Andrew Neil.) Eve is misapplying the term slightly by using it for Rupert's bullet-headed thuggish guards, signifying contempt.
Eve's mother fell foul of the Golden Promise Ministries (Laundry Files: The Apocalypse Codex, The Delirium Brief). Eve's ambition is to go after Raymond Schiller with a pointy stick, but she's been so busy slaving 120 hours a week for Rupert that she hasn't noticed Schiller's disappearance. She will be most annoyed when she realizes the New Management has deprived her of her long-planned revenge ...
Dead Lies Dreaming was originally going to be titled Lost Boys (after Peter Pan's gang of minions, and Imp's movie). However, in 2019 I discovered that one of the US cable networks had begun airing a TV show based on a reboot of the 1986 cult movie of that name. In general, it is a really bad idea to give a novel the same title as a current movie or TV show, so my story had to be retitled ... and by the time it was published, the TV show had been cancelled. Feh!
Quantum of Nightmares was originally titled Dead Meat (due to the Sweeney Todd subplot). Then my agent pointed out that if my publishers' marketing folks dislike the book, they'd make sure it was dead on arrival, and vetoed it. (Apparently it's a bad luck title. Who knew?) So it went through Flesh Lies Bleeding (sub-optimal) then became, for a while, In His House. That aliterated with Dead Lies Dreaming/In His House and carried on the non-archive Lovecraftian tone, but ... nope, UK marketing didn't go for it. So Quantum of Nightmares was the final short-notice compromise title, which cannibalized the working title of the third book (which was to be Bones and Nightmares), so I'm now looking for a title for that book. Luckily it isn't finished yet, so there's plenty of time ...
You must have Questions. Ask them in the comments below, and I'll try to answer! (But I won't spoiler the other books in the new series.)
Okay, let's get this to 300...
You forgot to mention the Memory Palace. That was rather cool.
I'm a little unclear on something. Have you axed the whole Sweeney Todd subplot, or just the Dead Meat title?
Although the sentence "Magic is a branch of applied mathematics" does appear in DLD, and at least one character is I gather a gifted mathematician, it doesn't really have the feeling of a plot that hinges on computer and math nerds, and on magic being done by communicating Platonic truths across universes. That, to me, was the respect in which DLD seemed most un-Laundry Files-like.
Not saying I didn't enjoy it -- I did, a lot. But it didn't have that special sauce that makes The Laundry Files The Laundry Files. It felt more like the Popular Science version of the Laundry Files, aimed at the large audience of folks who Don't Like Math.
Here's a direct link to Peter and Wendy on a Project Gutenberg mirror that will not block users with a German IP address: http://www.gutenberg.lib.md.us/2/6/6/5/26654/
Im sure the marketing people know best, but your next book could be titled: "Nigel Farage is a fantastic lover and should be Prime Minister" and i would buy it.
I took great delight in Rupert being the feudal overlord of an island called Skaro, though a little disappointed that there were no Mk III Travel Machines animated by Night Feeders...
I think that with Case Nightmare Green so close, so much is leaking through from other worlds/dimensions as the stars align, that even people with the most limited of mathematical skills, those who are totally reliant of the use of fingers and toes in counting, are able to channel powers from the interstices of the universe or become hosts for any one of a plethora of unnatural "things". One thing I would imagine the New Management would ruthlessly crack down on would be compute power and mathematical geniuses.
Just the title. But the main pastiche subplot of Quantum of Nightmares is Mary Poppins (again: the P. L. Travers original, not the grotesque Disney abomination).
...so I'm now looking for a title for that book.
The House of Nightmares?
I always applied Gibson's quote to the spread of magic in the Laundryverse; "The street finds it's own uses for things."
There is a time travel subplot in book 3, but no blue police box shaped objects ...
As for CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN, it's like anthropogenic climate change. We learn to live with it to some extent, but mitigate the most obvious effects. (The New Management are probably happy for most people to have a dumbed-down-tablet-computing experience, where they can only install apps from a state-approved app store and can't write their own software, but general purpose computing? That's something you need a driving license equivalent before you can use.)
Philip Kerr wrote a nasty post-Soviet-era thriller called Dead Meat. Out of print, alas.
I'm uninterested in collecting reader suggestions for titles.
(Plz keep the comments clear for actual Q&A for now.)
The Mary Poppins books were among my favorites when I was a kid. Hated, hated, HATED the Disney movie. It could not have more completely misrepresented the personality of the book version of Mary Poppins.
The Channel Island of Skaro Two things - Sark is occupied/dominated by people I suspect of being necromancers anyway & "Skaro" - really? Skaro is the Home-World of the DALEKS
"Gammons" are also extreme Brexshiteers, IIRC?
Not so much questions as observations:- 1) I liked the mention of the Baby Deltic. Any chance of adding either a Warship or a Hymek (subject to period) to the MPD? 2) Is "being possessed of a loud and offensive wife", or "looking at me funny" also an offence? 3) I rather liked the "house in L-space" and particularly the multiple libraries.
FWIW, my paperback copy arrived from the UK/EU just yesterday. I'm a good third of the way through it.
I liked it, in my mid-teens.
On the other hand, shortly after Capaldi became the Doctor, there was the episode with... 2d creatures? Anyway, they were in a subway, and Capaldi did it right: the Doctor as a DEEPLY SCARY ancient alien with unimaginable powers.
I went off Dr Who for many many years - having seen the ORIGINAL ...] But Capaldi had something that ( I think) none of the intermediates had - like Hartnell, he had that slight "edge" - he could be seriously creepy whilst apparently being "pleasant" one always got the impression of "something unseen"
I found the description of what happened to Imp and Eve's mother GENUINELY DISTURBING, although it was to be expected since we all know what GPM was up to (even before they escalated to TDB levels). It's different when you see some thing you know is Bad happening to random passers-by... it's much, much worse when it happens to a beloved family member and you, for all your proficience at ritual magic, are completely unable to cure it.
When Eve is done with the Bond in the elevator, how does she know it's time to leave the book behind? I know the plan is to have Rupert pick it up without being able to claim any ownership, but did she know he was on his way? How?
Oddly, nobody else (no test readers, no editors, and nobody else who's read the book) has asked that question.
Put it down to a missing exchange of text messages and pretend you're waiting for me to retcon it in book 3.
Well, FWIW it reads as she planned to leave it $somewhere in the house that was not readily accessible by anyone, ever.
As becomes clear at the beginning of Quantum of Nightmares, Eve was actually somewhat pissed that she didn't get the opportunity to murder Rupert herself.
(Then, as becomes clearer later on, someone or something has been messing with Eve's head, amplifying her worst, most violent impulses -- she's not entirely in control of herself. Who or what it might be is a plot twist in book 3.)
Is it coincidental that Quantum of Nightmares is kind of opposite to the Bond title Quantum of Solace? (Apologies if this is an obvious question which has been asked before.)
Yes, it's pure coincidence. (There is virtually no James Bond angle here at all, unless "Bad Bond Babe gets to explore Blofeld's Lair (after Bond and Blofeld have both disappeared) and uncovers heinous plan" qualifies.) It's just a side-effect of having
threemore like six working titles rejected and needing something to slap on the front of the book that kinda-sorta stood side-by-side with "Dead Lies Dreaming" (which was itself a third choice).I read the book as soon as it came out ... flowed pretty well.
My memory of it is a little foggy, but interestingly that's what stands out.
This 'memory London' - is it a permanent place that people can visit? Or does it only exist in a quantum sense, when people are looking upon it? Are the denizens really generated apparitions of humans with their own desires, or is the whole place more of a hallucination?
I get the sense of what you were building - maybe some kind of residual memory-place based upon people's feelings and expectations of Victorian London?
How far are you going to dwelve in the depths of paradoxes? How many time has history been rewritten? By whom? How much can Forecasting Ops understand about this before being forced to self-unestablish? How and how much is actually "scientific" magic better than "ritual" magic? What or who made one better than the other? And on behalf of whom? Can the two of them coexist? Safely?
So many questions, so little answers...
I enjoyed DLD, read it (mostly) in one sitting the week it came out, looking forward to QoN. Having followed discussion and updates here all through the time it was written I'm not surprised by the content of the crib sheet: it all makes sense. Makes me want to re-read it, but I'll defer this pleasure to December/January so it's fresh in my mind when QoN comes out.
The mechanics of using an already-defined universe are interesting, since the other examples of this show varying approaches. Discworld and the Culture are the obvious ones, I guess, where it's not always the same storyline, not always the same characters, and only Discworld comes to mind as involving specific story arcs within the overall universe. All the same the appealing thing is that it is economical, and not just for the author. It's a way to build on the existing world building capital in the heads of readers too. Demanding slightly less cognitive load for world building means more is available for adventurez and crimez and stuff.
A suggestion for Book Three of the Series: "The Master of Skaro"?
(As an hommage to Terry Nation.)
To me the right time to ditch that thing is “as soon as possible,” and that’s when she did.
How far are you going to dwelve in the depths of paradoxes? How many time has history been rewritten? By whom?
These questions get chewed over in book 3, which is the historical Laundryverse novel folks periodically ask me for.
(TLDR: magic comes and goes in waves, policy on magic oscillates between polite disbelief and "we must control and suppress this at all costs!", and -- of course -- the one tendency drives the other.)
Brendan, that's an interesting question. Of course "this is based on our fictional memory" lets OGH riff on whatever he wants, and gives plausible deniability against historical nitpickers.
That said though, I'm not clear whether that's reliably true. (We know all his narrators are unreliable! :) As Charlie led off with, it's almost impossible for us to understand today just how bad life was for your average Victorian slum-dweller, and how close every Victorian was to death. However grimdark you make your Victorian setting, it's almost guaranteed that you're underplaying it. (Unless any major actors have tentacles or are squamous and rugous...)
I'm about half-way through; just got to the part where the treasure map is revealed & where the book is hidden.
Is it revealed how the book got hidden where it is & who hid it there?
I expect there's an island called Sodor in the Irish Sea, too, where they wall up misbehaving shoggoths in tunnels.
Is it revealed how the book got hidden where it is & who hid it there?
Can't remember, but if it's not revealed in DLD then it's a trilogy-level spoiler for the untitled third book.
Too bad the memory palace demanded a sacrifice each generation to maintain access. It could have been much more interesting had it been run like Singularity Sky, where the price of being a customer with borrowing privileges is bringing in something new and shiny every time for the keepers to curate. If you don't access all the collections regularly (on a ritual basis, say), they get neglected in favor of stuff that does get used, and in the absence of humans, the memory palace will start catering to the needs of whatever customers are available: mice, rats. Cockroaches. Ants.
Going into an abandoned memory palace could be...ummmm. Very, very ummmm.
Guess I'll have to think about this some more. But accessing a memory palace formerly used by humans and taken over by ants? Oh yeah.
What we currently "know" is: that the book might have been placed in the memory palace in about 1880 and that it might have been done by Imp's Great-Grandfather (add a few more "Greats" as needed).
I'm more interested in how Rupert Bigge knew where to look and who set up the auction...
I'm more interested in how Rupert Bigge knew where to look and who set up the auction...
At risk of spoilers: wait for book 3.
Only if Charlie thinks that he needs multiple copyright suits to "make his life more interesting".
Do not talk to me about IP lawsuits. (The delay in "Escape from Puroland" is entirely down to the need to take emergency action to head one off before it has a chance to happen.)
I am aware; I was saying that the message I responded to was likely to generate another 3 or 4.
Charlie,
Have you considered that the title of a book may be significantly more valuable than the contents? My college bridge partner ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_DeWitt ) was paid a cool £250K for the film rights to her book "The Seventh Samurai" -- primarily because Holywood thought it could use the title.
I wonder if there's a copyright equivalent of version control. Could you bag the titles by publishing blank First Editions, and then fill in the words afterwards? Perhaps those First Editions could become non-fungibles?
ps I certainly didn't want an answer to my query on Bigge's sources -- it was pretty obvious you'd be filling in the details later.
I'm fairly certain book titles can't be copyrighted. At least not in the US.
Book titles can't be copyrighted. Most likely the film rights to your friend's book were sold because someone thought they could film it -- but they ended up filming something else and slapping the title on it. (See also "Blade Runner", the Alan E. Nourse book, which got chucked away while they slid a rather more opaquely-titled Philip K. Dick story under it.)
Thanks for pointing that out about the Victorian era.
I always found the millennial Steampunk craze, and especially the generalized nostalgia for the Victorian era at the turn of the millennium, to be somewhat perplexing.
Oh, I understand that reasons for it. I do.
But it was an unbearable era for many commoners, and in fact things had been like that for many in England since about the time of the enclosures.
Everyone, looking back at these times, seems to think they would be the one driving the airship, or at the ball.
I think there was an episode of "Bob's Burgers" where there is some kind of 1890s party or such, but the partygoers are surprised to find themselves playing the part of maids and other menial jobs. Only a fraction of people would be the nobility depicted in paintings.
Anyway, I can see the narrative benefits of how the memory London was established...good point there. What still eludes me is if the place even exists if people aren't visiting it. And how much agency people there have. Which of course brings up philosophical questions of its own.
Ultimately, I agree with Heteromeles that we need a memory palace taken over by the needs of the ants.
But it was an unbearable era for many commoners
As was most of the past. But most people imagine that they would be on top of the heap.
Just as in the recovered memory/past lives community everyone is a reincarnated noble, no one a peasant dying of infection or woman dying in childbirth — even though those are much more likely. At least the SCA knows they're ahistorical…
Totally Off-Topic Quote from "Private Eye" [ Indicating why I will never vote Green or identical problems about "Purity" with the Corbynistas .... ] Sea levels rise, California burns & BoZo dithers, but the Green Party is being torn apart by the issue that matters most to its leaders - gender-critical feminism Let's have a faction-fight for "purity" & DEMAND that the best is the enemy of the good enough. Right.
Whilst the fascists sail merrily onwards, dooming us all.
I happen to agree that the classism of Imperial England is fun but rather galling at times.
That's why I'm fiddling around with the "Lincoln, Albert, and Kaiser Fred II lived" scenario, wherein, politics in the late 19th Century swung towards what Lincoln considered radical republicanism. So I'm giggling through the quaint possibility of an "All Men Are Created Equal" Party pushing for suffrage, unionizing former slaves, and unionizing immigrant Chinese and Hispanic along with whites, so that no one can be exploited by industrialists paying bottom level wages. Oh, and the whole flood of European immigrants to the US tapers off, because they've realized that organizing at home might work better than seeking their fortune elsewhere. Perhaps Lady Liberty stands on Angel Island, welcoming Christian Chinese refugees from the Tai Ping aftermath, instead.
Plus steam-powered spaceships, because who needs to stop at just one planet?
But let's get back to Dead Lies Dreaming, please.
"Gammon" is a particularly tasty cut of quick-cured hind leg of pork, best eaten as a steak (grilled or fried). In current British parlance, it's also a term applied to a rosy-faced, bald, shouty middle aged man, and to a lesser extent to their younger angry male counterparts. (America has MAGAs who cover the same sort of political base, but Gammons are specifically middle-aged and right wing males: famous examples would be Piers Morgan or Andrew Neil.) Eve is misapplying the term slightly by using it for Rupert's bullet-headed thuggish guards, signifying contempt.
Some notes from the non-euclidean realms: there was a minor spat some years ago betwitx Author and one of those Prime Gammons. £60,000,000 later and what can only be described as "a Hindenburg of a Media Launch" and the fastest taking of Leave Time (did you see what we did there?) in Corporate History and ... the Prince of Hammark's entire media career has ended in pathos, bathos and universal hilarity.
We did warn you all about the Faery Rings and Wishes. Or, actually, what's actually our thing, totes 100% no bullshit: Hubris. Tasty-Pork-Barrel-Gammon-Steak.
Not sure about modern monetary conversion principles: one insult = £60,000,000 loss seems fair game when they're putting 14 years in Prison if you squeak about their Crimes / Deals in Public? Who knows, but you'd better start playing this seriously, they're not fucking around about it, are they?.
Here's the response: "We liked the Books (more than we liked the TV station)" (this is a GME joke)
Oh, Lore Ipsum, kudos to Host.
And, er... Dead Meat is ... Ok, if you can answer why having the Ace of Spades tattooed on your person (notably ankle or wrist) is probably not a great idea if you don't know the context, well then. Like biohazard signs on the chest / upper arm. (We're so old, we remember when Leather Hats were Kink, not tombstones. Joke is dark, is intended. Yes, yes, we've been there).
-Sneaking in a real point: on the QT the UK plan is for average person (peon, sub £50k / annum, remember they control the wage economy) to only eat meat 3-4 times a week with a whole load of other stuff. Like Petrol - should look up Petrol shortages, gonna be big soon[tm]. For Real. Big Time Crunchy-Crunchy "what good are 20 million of our population for compared to IN / CN" type discussions. And yes, you have to drink through them.
Note: Some People (aka, people like P.Cross and Other Intel Agencies and various Abrahamic Fundamentalists) have been altering wikipedia again - this name is the correct usage: it's part of a much larger effort (major cases in India vrs Southern Brahmic spellings vrs Northern (BJP) users)
Yes: even when they've screwed up the NI border and now want a New Deal (Old Deal was ...) they're purging actual English on Wikipedia.
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/Bean+Sidhe
Question:
Contractually you put yourself through one of (not the most, but in the top 20) heinous production cycles in SF currently. Why? (Ignoring funding drug habits, off-world jaunts, secret anti-TERF railroads and so on).
Oh, and +++points if you know the ancient cartoon book of Prince Of Hammark (??) which is a pastiche of Hamlet. Throw an extra ++++ if you can remember King Kanut and the Great Horned Cheese.
Kinda cool.
Waaay before Tiny-Winky got Disney Sponsorship cool.
That's bothered me, too, about steampunk. The last con I was at that had a steampunk ball, a few years ago, I did my cord suit and Greek fisherman's cap, and announced I was a socialist and a union organizer, not some lord.
Which is why I tell the joke of "the busiest woman in the afterlife".
I agree with Heteromeles that we need a memory palace taken over by the needs of the ants.
It's been kicking around in my head for a while that something like that is plausible, though as far as we know it doesn't happen in nature.
Consider how many insects communicate by scent; we find many realtime signals and enduring trail markers in nature. It's no great leap to imagine enduring local signals in particular places along a path, encoding information into the shape and composition of the hive itself.
Such a thing wouldn't be very much like a classical Turning machine; the software would look more like a very messy funge. But it would give vastly increased intelligence to social insects without needing the individuals to do anything radically new.
The 'wisdom' of a hive could endure long past the lives of its original inhabitants, if their successors used compatible encodings.
So yes, I find an "ant memory palace" completely reasonable.
Ace of Spades possible contexts - Highest scoring card in the deck, in games using fixed trumps in the English speaking world: Motorhead album : Title track and hit single from same : VMA-231 USMC.
"Deep Mind" - Protein folding problems greatly reduced, at the least LINK This is ... IMPORTANT - to say the least.
a memory palace taken over by the needs of the ants. "Anthill Inside" ...++ Out of Cheese Error ++ Ridcully: "What does Hex say, Ponder?"
There's a reason my standard reply to people who ask what I "would have been" in $PAST_CENTURY is "dead at 14". (Quite possibly younger, of course, from some disease C20th-me got vaccinated against, but acute appendicitis is the earliest thing I know actually happened which would have killed me without modern medicine.)
Well, if childhood bronchitis hadn't killed me by 18 (rather than being cured by steroid powder), haemodialysis wasn't even invented until 1943, so I'd be recently (last 6 months) dead from renal failure.
Memory palace taken over by ants
There's something not-dissimilar in Bruce Sterling's brilliant 1990s SF novel Holy Fire, which depicts the world of a post-plagues 22nd century ruled by a medical gerontocracy. Memory palaces after a fashion have become ubiquitous -- they're the VR digital repositories everyone ends up accumulating all their online crap in. One of our protagonist's friends dies, leaving her as their executor: they also leave behind a somewhat-uplifted companion-animal -- a dog, which is driven mad by the memory palace riding around in/on its implants.
Greg: what appears to be happening with the English/Welsh Greens is that they're in the process of ejecting a couple of noisy GC/TERF types. After the model of the Scottish Green party, which kicked them out, re-asserted that human rights are non-negotiable, and went back to green politics. Also after the model of the SNP (hint: Salmond's Alba took 90% of their residual right-wing and TERF contingent out of the party.)
This is not the topic for a discussion of contemporary British political hate-politics, other than to say that as transphobia spreads (with a huge amount of media attention) it's been adopted as the current xenophobic campaign by the extreme right, as hating on Jews/Non-whites/Muslims is still marginally unfashionable among the non-fash. So it's hardly surprising that the more left-aligned parties are kicking out the members who drifted into alignment with neo-nazis.
(I am not planning on tackling TERFery in the Laundryverse other than to note that at least one of the characters in "Dead Lies Dreaming" and "Quantum of Nightmares", Game Boy, is trans (and his experiences of discrimination are based on the accounts of people I know).
In my case, likely dead by 3. Acute dysentery while living in Cairo - it was only some antibiotics our doctor happened to have that kept me out of hospital. My mother really thought she'd lose me - I couldn't keep anything down, not even water.
I've always been absurdly healthy, so I might have survived, but I must give due credit to vaccines and antibiotics, which at the very least have saved me a certain amount of trouble.
Ditto.
But listening to my parents, grandparents, and their contemporaries talk about their life growing up... well no thanks.
Out houses, hand pump wells, frozen water in the morning water bowl to splash your face, running to the barn when it's below freezing outside and still dark in the early morning to milk the cow, and on and on and on.
Just no thanks.
And this is from people born in the later 1800s into the early 1900s. A bit earlier was even more fun. At least the people I could talk to grew up with SOME electricity and communications.
Charlie,
What you say about copyright is what I thought, too.
I'd recalled a bit of a furore about Helen's book, but that stuff is now more than twenty years old. Much of it was the envy from more established authors, but that's par for the course in LitFic circles.
On her web site for the book "The Seventh Samurai" ( http://helendewitt.com/dewitt/samurai.html) we have the following cryptic comment:
Reading between the lines, my guess is that the two film companies had a bidding war over the book -- without either of them reading it first! Had they known that there was more Wittgenstein than Kurosawa, they'd probably have ignored it.
Agreed completely. No thanks to the more primitive methods of living.
A big part of the problem here is that people have forgotten history. The idea that vaccines are the biggest part of why we don't have 50 percent child mortality simply isn't something most people know. So maybe we all need to live a little bit of that shittiness.
Life before... yeah. I remember my father talking about how he hated, during the depression as a teen, helping my grandfather pull a cart up and down the hills in Roxborough (part of Philly), peddling, in all kinds of weather. And me... let's see, I'd be dead in '01 (cancer), and any time now, I'd have a heart attack (open heart surgery this past Feb before I had it).
Re: Memory Palaces. I'm using that as a shorthand for the other world in DLD, but in case some of you missed the curve, here's the background.
Memory palace (aka the Method of Loci, aka Songlines, aka...) is a technique for memorizing information in the absence of paper and pencil. It's a basic human technique that's been discovered and rediscovered an unknown but probably huge number of times.
The basic trick is that humans normally don't have good RAM: give us lines or tables of words or numbers, and we're garbage at remembering them, especially compared with a computer. The problem only gets worse with long-term storage.
And no, there is no such thing as photographic memory. Those people who claim it turn out, on examination, to have figured out how to do a memory palace. I'll leave the savants out of this discussion.
Humans are better at remembering other things: songs, dances, bad jokes, places, even familial relationships. Now each person differs: an athlete is better at remembering movement, a musician better remembers songs, a comedian better remembers jokes, and so on. They're not mutually exclusive.
The memory palace works for people who have decent working spatial memory. The trick is to remember specific information with specific locations. The classic example from ancient Rome is where the roof collapsed on a dining hall, killing everyone except the poet who was orating at the time. When asked which mangled body was whose, he reconstructed in his mind where everyone was sitting, helped put names on corpses, and created the Method of Loci from that. Roman architecture was actually designed to help Roman orators remember their speeches, since speaking from notes was frowned upon. Similarly, Shakespearean plays were memorized by assigning lines to different parts of the Old Globe Theater, and the actor walked through the theater to remember lines. This may be why replicas of the Old Globe crop up elsewhere.
Anyway, let's get back to DLD via European ceremonial magic. Rome had a thriving memory craft, and public figures were expected to have excellent memories. Then the Medieval period made this even more important when Europe got shut out of the trade in Egyptian papyrus and had to make do with parchment. Suddenly, a papyrus book a slave copied that was sold in the market was worth a small car, when slowly copied onto parchment. A lot of the illumination in Medieval manuscripts wasn't just to gild these precious objects, it was to help the readers memorize each book. They couldn't take the copy with them, so they had to memorize the darn things. Oddities like Bestiaries were also mnemonic devices, whole books of them.
Then we got paper, and the printing press, and it was increasingly cheaper to store knowledge outside people's heads. Much of the old knowledge of the memory palaces got repurposed, first for religion and then for ceremonial magic. Memory palaces got appropriated as fairy lands, and mnemonic devices became daemonic or demonic, or monsters. A lot of this creative repurposing got jammed into Dungeons and Dragons of all places, where stuff grubbed up from courses in Medieval art history became monsters in the game (Demogorgon being only one example).
Getting to DLD, where we've got an otherworldly memory palace holding a real book. This gets to an interesting problem for modern fantasists:
If otherworlds are memory palaces, and we want characters to physically enter them...how is that supposed to work? This seems to be an area where, as with the novel magic systems of the past 40 years or so, there's quite a lot of room for innovative solutions.
OGH's proposal is that the memory palace only continues to work so long as someone sacrifices a child to the librarians every generation. One can wax eloquent on librarians who want to eat children, but I won't. It's a legitimate solution, and in line with the Laundryverse.
Another one that's quite traditional is use it or lose it. That's the way memory palaces actually work, although they require less work to maintain than crammed short term memory. This is part of why groups like the Australian aborigines spend so much time traveling their songlines and doing the rituals. They're preserving their memories, which include things like what to harvest when how to deal with a drought, and stuff that turns out to be critically useful for rare disasters and would get forgotten otherwise.
This is where the idea of ants taking over a memory palace comes from. If memory palaces are magically real spaces, and if those that run the spaces need to be cared for or they'll abandon the space, then what happens to an abandoned space? What happens when someone else, or something else, finds an abandoneed space, starts caring for it, and those that run the space start catering to the new tenants and abandon the memories of the older tenants?
There are many possible answers to that question, just as there are many answers to the ways mnemonic devices become magic--rituals, other worlds, mnemonic gods and spirits, magical memory equipment, enchantments that consist of mnemonic chants using props, etc. I'll just pitch this as something story writers might want to add to their fiction.
And since ants obviously have spatial memories, as do rats and likely cockroaches, they probably could take over a human memory palace. Likely most animals could.
Have you read John Crowley's Little Big? It's got an enchantress who uses a memory palace and a weird country house that does strange things with architecture. (The prose is delicious!)
I'd have died before I was one. Not certain of what — my mother has never explained (and maybe doesn't remember details) — but I went from a chubby baby to a skinny runt and never regained my weight after the illness.
A big part of the problem here is that people have forgotten history. The idea that vaccines are the biggest part of why we don't have 50 percent child mortality simply isn't something most people know.
Um, have you forgotten clean water? Because childhood mortality was dropping before we got vaccines for childhood diseases…
http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/children-and-water-sanitation-and-hygiene-evidence
It is often stated that vaccination has made the greatest contribution to global health of any human intervention apart from the introduction of clean water and sanitation, but this is a claim that needs some qualification. Study of the pattern of infectious diseases in industrialized countries from the end of the nineteenth century onwards shows that there was a large and progressive decline in child mortality, owing largely to a reduction in mortality from infectious diseases, prior to the development and deployment of vaccines. This was associated with improvements in housing, nutrition and sanitation.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4024226/
Not much disagreement there. Clean water was important, and pasteurized milk was also a huge factor. But "anti-pasteurized milk campaigns" are not currently threatening millions.
The comment about "state run app stores" alludes a particularly thorny problem that new management, and actually most coverments would have to solve. Especially with American tech companies being coopted for nefarious purposes. How do you deal with the fact that the software on just about every phone in the world is controlled by two American companies that have the ability to push out updates on a whim. The security and access controls on a device are useless when it's not necessary to actually access any information on the phone, or access any of the hardware. All that's necessary to do a lot of damage is the act of running a program. Imagine Google decides to push out an update that executes a human sacrifice or summons some sort it jibbering horror.Perhqps only on one geographic region. At the very least it would be a good way to create total chaos.(most especially with all the Apple Polishers smugly proclaiming "Maybe they should have bought an iPhone")
Why go with Android when Apple's gibbering horrors are user fiendly?
Not much disagreement there. Clean water was important, and pasteurized milk was also a huge factor. But "anti-pasteurized milk campaigns" are not currently threatening millions.
Clean water shenanigans, on the other hand...
Clean water shenanigans, on the other hand...
Providing contaminated drinking water, to an entire city, for years can cost less money than safe water, and money driven systems have trouble resisting doing things that give short-term profits even when they cost human lives later.
Of course you would then be denounced by the other socialists as a "mere trade unionist or gasp or an "Economic Marxist"
I'me kind of assuming we are around the time of the fourth congress of the Second International.
For those so inclined: https://deepmind.com/research/open-source/alphafold They ask that their Nature paper be cited if you publish findings using the source code.
I am not very social and had not noticed these in person, so immediately hit the google: A biohazard tattoo should be easy even without knowing or looking it up. (Hint: less than 40 years old) An ace of spades tattoo (and related, queen of spades) on a white female is supposedly a symbol indicating interest in black males. There are many other usages, of course. I have been playing mentally with Laundry Universe tattoos last night/today. Some fun possibilities. (Does Game Boy have any tattoos? I don't recall; kindle search doesn't find anything.)
"Non-Revisionist Bean Sídhe (non-Trf allied)" at 51 Been enjoying watching Big Gammon flail. What is the non-revisionist meaning of Bean Sidhe? I looked through a lot of the wikipedia history and it was not obvious to me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handkerchief_code
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08070j8 appeared on PBS this week, and it's just a fractional hint of how bad things were. Helped to understand why the lead character in THE NEVERS would jump in the Thames to end it all.
Yeah; my point was that attempting to draw a socio-sexual cultural implication from "Ace of Spades" was fraught with possibilities for misunderstandings...
Made me look. Now will watch all of it.
Yep. Truly awful how most people had to live.
If really poor, renting space to sleep on a hang over bench. Or if you can't afford that on a rope with no bench.
I understand New York was similar in the same time. I have to wonder just what people were fleeing in central and eastern Europe to make this look attractive.
My grandfather was born in a one room house/cabin 1885 yet I suspect he had a much better life in his first 10 years than these folks. (His grandfather settled the land in 1824.) My grandfather apparently really got the farm going and improved his standard of living. He opened a small slaughter house in 1911 (which might finally close this year) and when my father was young (born in 1925) they had a small saw mill going.
That meaning of the ace of spades may well be US-only. (I certainly haven't run across it before ...)
From Wikipedia, "The ace of spades is used as a symbol for people who are both aromantic and asexual."
Providing contaminated drinking water, to an entire city, for years can cost less money than safe water, and money driven systems have trouble resisting doing things that give short-term profits even when they cost human lives later.
Yep.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkerton_E._coli_outbreak
If you read the story it doesn't look like profit motive, but the Koebels' motive was keeping their well-paid and (relatively) cushy jobs.
The neocon government had also privatized a lot of the testing and pushed oversight down to municipalities from the province. There was a minor scandal at the time that one of the private companies the Ministry contracted testing to (after their own labs were ordered closed) had not tested all the water samples provided and simply reported good results.
I have to wonder just what people were fleeing in central and eastern Europe to make this look attractive.
Starvation and pogroms, in many cases. Also encouraged by immigration agents who talked up the streets of gold in the new land…
"how bad was it in Central/E Europe in the 1880's? Try This Film - which I have seen. A funny & also dark parable of how (bad) things were.
I was going to post a joke I tell about my own family leaving Russia, then decided it was in bad taste. Then went to BoingBoing and encountered their write-up of a new video game about healing Hitler through psychotherapy.* After that saw a report of the NSO Group CEO telling us that "Law abiding citizens have nothing to be afraid of..." Very tempted to rant like the Seagull this morning, but will finish coffee instead.
Jesus Fucking Christ on a Solar-Powered Pogo Stick, do we ever live in a fucked-up world!
Well, yes: but they didn't all go to the USA; my paternal grandfather's family fetched up in Yorkshire and Lancashire instead. (It made a lot more sense to them as they weren't penniless refugees but moderately successful wool merchants, which was thriving in Lancashire and Yorkshire back then.)
How no pissed-off heads of state have so far ordered their military to whack the board of directors of NSO Group in retaliation is beyond my ken. Even if NSO's customers include most of the developed world intelligence services, they must have pissed someone off, and you do not want to personally come up on Kim Jong-Un's radar.
Agreed. I'm increasingly reminded of Heinlein's "Crazy Years."
Charlie The problem with the NSO spyware outrage is ... You simply cannot at any price, miss one, or leave any behind, to start it up again, in a more shielded location. You have to KILL THEM ALL & make sure of it .. ( "Do not leave a live enemy behind you!" ) Which will probably mean "collateral damage" & quite few innocents getting wasted Um, err ... now what?
US government orders Israel to "KILL THEM ALL"? BUT- are NSO a front for the USA operating out of Israel? Entirely possible - likely? Um, errr ... now what?
And so on, vanishing rapidly up your own orifice
whitroth @ 80: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handkerchief_code
So, what's the code for "I've got a bandana in my pocket so I'll have something to wipe sweat with when I'm working out-doors? Why does everything have to be a signal?
Greg Tingey @ 93 US government orders Israel to "KILL THEM ALL"?
BUT- are NSO a front for the USA operating out of Israel? Entirely possible - likely?
Um, errr ... now what?
According to Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSO_Group - the founders were ex-members of Unit 8200 of the Israeli Intelligence Corps ... Israel's version of GCHQ or the NSA. Seed money came from an Israeli venture capital firm.
The company was bought by an American (multi-national) private equity firm in 2014, and a 60% stake was sold back to the founders (with the money being provided by a British private equity firm) in 2019. The American involvement appears to be GREED HEADS rather than government backed.1
But, since the primary targets that have been revealed so far are journalists & human rights activists, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Trumpolini's DoJ and/or FBI had purchased (and used) the software.
And ... if you think the Israeli government does what the U.S. government tells them to do, you've got another think coming.
1 My guess is NSO Group didn't have as much in the way of strippable assets as the GREED HEADS expected to find, so they were reduced to jacking up the price before selling it back.
JBS Righty-ho ... given that history Kill them all, anyway?
Why does everything have to be a signal?
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar?
Greg: You simply cannot at any price, miss one, or leave any behind, to start it up again, in a more shielded location.
Wrong.
You don't even need to kill them; just make sure they know that they could be killed, that there is a line in the sand which, if overstepped, will result in the over-steppers being treated as hostiles in wartime, and that it will be enforced.
(Nor is the goal specifically to shut down NSO; rather, it's to deter other folks from starting up similar businesses.)
And ... if you think the Israeli government does what the U.S. government tells them to do, you've got another think coming.
It's a bit more complex than that.
I tend to think these days that the relationship between Israel and the USA -- at a diplomatic/military level -- is rather close to what the British establishment think their relationship with the USA is (but hasn't been since, oh, 1956 or thereabouts). In other words, it's a special relationship where the parties are frenemies -- they have certain interests in common but the one is not a client state of the other, and sometimes they come to loggerheads over stuff that doesn't align with their common interests. And the common interests in question are: keeping the Arab world from unifying against Israel.
(This is obviously Israel's objective. It's less obvious why the US might do this unless you put on your cynic's cap and view Israel as a barely-leashed attack dog that the US can rely on to intimidate the OPEC oil exporters. Then the US state department can step in and pass themselves off as mediators, quietly pay the Israeli government off, calming things down in return for political concessions. In other words, it's a game of good cop/bad cop.)
Note that this was how things operated from the mid-1970s through to the Arab Spring. Now we seem to be at or past peak oil, electric vehicle sales passed 15% in Japan and are on the way up, and the ground rules have changed. Hmm.
Um, this deserves a properly elliptical answer.
You may want to peruse the works (or at least the Wikipedia entries upon) an American named Alfred Thayer Mahan.
You may then want to look at a map of global trade, particularly for medium to large cargo vessels. As a hint, look for choke points and proximity to key American suppliers.
And then you may want to meditate upon the United States need to have those ships move efficiently and effectively.
And then the US relationship with Israel, along with the US relationship with a number of other small countries, formerly including the Kingdom of Hawai'i, might make itself a bit more apparent.
Suez, Panama, yeah. (Also Hawaii because: trans-Pacific trade.) And maybe Chile/Argentina and South Africa because of the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn, but neither of those are quite as important as it's possible to detour around them.
But I gather than thanks to belt and road, the cost of shipping a container from China to Europe by rail is now only about double the price by sea ... and it travels at twice the speed. Hence all sorts of new railway construction in Siberia and the Near Abroad, even before we get into Russia trying to get the North East Passage navigable all year round using mammoth nuclear icebreakers.
It's less obvious why the US might do this unless you put on your cynic's cap and view Israel as a barely-leashed attack dog that the US can rely on to intimidate the OPEC oil exporters.
This, plus the fact that Israel is right there and very much in the public awareness. This distracts the angry hotheads - of which the Middle East has plenty, for too many historical reasons - and as long as they're wound up shouting about Israel blatantly existing and wearing a loud shirt, they're not wound up shouting about whatever The Great Satan did this week.
I must thank the Memory Palace thread contributors. It’s inspired me to have another go at Serpents Reach by Cherryh. It’s the only one of hers I’ve bounced off hard multiple times.
H Agreed Which makes US actions in 1956 even more counter-productive, from their - the USA's - p.o.v. ( I'm not saying that would have been the "Right" thing to do - it's Realpolitik)
My take on Serpent's Reach is that it's 10,000 in Gehenna with ants instead of lizards, if that helps. To unpack that, she's experimenting with people altering their social structures to fit into nonhuman systems.
For whatever reason, 10,000 in Gehenna is my favorite story of that universe. It shows my low taste, I suppose.
But I gather than thanks to belt and road, the cost of shipping a container from China to Europe by rail is now only about double the price by sea ... and it travels at twice the speed. Hence all sorts of new railway construction in Siberia and the Near Abroad, even before we get into Russia trying to get the North East Passage navigable all year round using mammoth nuclear icebreakers.
Don't forget the South China Sea (Philippines) and the Singapore Strait (Indonesia).
As for China and the US, we've got another iteration of the Great Game on, with China trying for overland hegemony while the US goes for oceanic control, while China contends for that, too. Fortunately, even though China is repaying us for the opium wars with a flood of interesting drug precursors coming in through Mexico and Fedex, we've got a better item to balance trade than opium for tea: We're shipping in blockbuster Hollywood pictures, cleaned up for the Chinese market, in return for consumer goods. Compared with Mexican/Andean silver or Afghani opium, this is comparatively humane (/snark).
As for spreading hegemony to the Arctic Ocean, this is an excellent test of how not serious certain billionaires are. Colonize Mars? Set up corporate aristocracies in the Arctic first, specialized in servicing trade and settlement up there. If you can't do that, going suborbital is just rocket porn.
Charlie Stross @ 99:
It's a bit more complex than that.
It's certainly not as simple as Israel being a puppet of the U.S. as Greg appears to think.
I tend to think these days that the relationship between Israel and the USA -- at a diplomatic/military level -- is rather close to what the British establishment think their relationship with the USA is (but hasn't been since, oh, 1956 or thereabouts). In other words, it's a special relationship where the parties are frenemies -- they have certain interests in common but the one is not a client state of the other, and sometimes they come to loggerheads over stuff that doesn't align with their common interests. And the common interests in question are: keeping the Arab world from unifying against Israel.
(This is obviously Israel's objective. It's less obvious why the US might do this unless you put on your cynic's cap and view Israel as a barely-leashed attack dog that the US can rely on to intimidate the OPEC oil exporters. Then the US state department can step in and pass themselves off as mediators, quietly pay the Israeli government off, calming things down in return for political concessions. In other words, it's a game of good cop/bad cop.)
Note that this was how things operated from the mid-1970s through to the Arab Spring. Now we seem to be at or past peak oil, electric vehicle sales passed 15% in Japan and are on the way up, and the ground rules have changed. Hmm.
The main reason the U.S. supports Israel so strongly is because AIPAC has an even tighter grip on Congress's "hearts and minds" than does the NRA.
The main reason the U.S. supports Israel so strongly is because AIPAC has an even tighter grip on Congress's "hearts and minds" than does the NRA.
This is an anti-semitic minefield to trip through, sooo...
Thing to remember is that if you shade that wrong (or rather, Right), it comes across as anti-semitic, with the rich jews pulling strings.
And of course, they are pulling strings. Jewish history, to paraphrase a friend of mine who's Jewish, is paranoia reinforced by history. Making friends with the most powerful country on the planet, one that does have a history of suppressed anti-semitism, is important to Jews. Many, probably most, Jews want Israel to succeed, even though they may well wish Netanyahu completely gone and the settlements ended. Heck, I feel that way myself.
There are a couple of key differences between AIPAC and the NRA. The NRA is currently a morally and financially bankrupt entity that is an unholy amalgam of Far Right PAC and the wholly owned advertising arm of the American gun industry.
None of this applies to AIPAC. AIPAC is bipartisan, and I don't think bankrupcy is an accurate description of their actions, although I have some issues with what they do, as do many liberal types like me.
I'll just add this comment to the current discussion, and then I'll back off because I really don't want to get involved: I'd really like to be able (or for people in general to be able) to talk about Israeli politics without being marked as sionists or anti-sionists. One can claim a certain country's politics are right or wrong without necessarily loving or hating them. Just saying.
In the US it gets strange. As H mentioned it doesn't fit into the typical D/R divide at all.
I know plenty of Evangelical R's who basically will give any government of Israel a pass on anything they do. And there are plenty of Orthodox and Ultra O congregations who feel the same way.
I also know people of Jewish decent who even whitroth would consider to be liberal who feel the same way. Although the last 10 years of Bibi have given them pause.
H another iteration of the Great Game on, with China trying for overland hegemony while the US goes for oceanic control China will lose, provided the US & Europe remember Mahan What is now the USA was only "lost" because we forgot Mahan ( Yes - I know, but you see what I mean? )
JBS Actually, I think that the US is/was Israel's puppet, but the sock-control is going both ways, too. [It's complicated.] "Benny" hasn't helped & IQ45 certainly screwed with it...
Massimo It works both ways About 3 years back, I ran into someone I used to meet fairly often, then didn't see for about 15 years. Someone mentioned the "israel" problems & I commented that move No-1 was to get rid of "Benny" & go back to about the peace offer made way back when. ( "Land for peace" ) She immediately started into a total rant about the injustices of the foundation of Israel & how evul they were - pure ultra-"palestinian" propaganda. I backed off, as fast as I could & went & had a drink with other people ....
The main reason the U.S. supports Israel so strongly is because AIPAC
Yes, but why was AIPAC allowed to secure that death-grip on state policy? Compare with, for example, the Irish Republican lobby in Boston during the Troubles in NI, or the Cuban exiles in Miami -- AIPAC seems to have orders of magnitude more clout.
I'd suggest that AIPAC only got to where it is because it served the interests of the petrochemical industry, and the dominionist Christian lunatics (who believe all Jews have to return to Israel before the second coming can happen), and the state department (choke-points on shipping, as Heteromeles points out), and probably half a dozen converging interest groups. It's not as if there aren't also Arab-Americans who could potentially have formed a counter-lobbying group, but they were much more fragmented and -- a key point -- seen as targets for a colonial/imperialist relationship, because of a certain strain of racism running in US elite circles (remember, this shit goes back to the 1950s if not earlier).
Basically AIPAC were pushing at an open door with a welcome mat carefully positioned outside it by various other groups with an interest in shaping policy deniably.
I would have thought that was fairly obvious. Many supremos and countries regularly murder their own citizens, but very few regularly do so to other countries' ones, especially in the latter's home countries. The main exceptions are the USA and Israel, and the latter dominates all other countries in the covert murder of foreign citizens in their home countries.
If any pissed-off head of state ordered the elimination of the NSO board, there would be a high chance that Israel would arrange the same for the head of state's immediate clique, or even the head of state. The prevalence of irrationality (as distinct from evil) among such people is lower than is often claimed, and it would require a considerable degree of stupidity for them not to think of this downside.
EC Bollocks Putin Followed by Mossad, followed by the USA, maybe. OTOH, as Charlie has noted NSO have "made themselves known" to the God-King of N Korea ...
Brendan:
As someone who was fairly involved in US steampunk fandom at one point, I can speak on this.
At its peak, there were (and probably still are... I GAFIAted a few years back) two main camps of Steampunk fans.
The first was HIGHLY political and had Things To Say™ about imperialism, class inequality, and gender politics. They tended to focus on the literary side.
The second loved the aesthetic because it looked cool. There was a running gag in those days that "Steampunk is what happens when Goths discover brown." :D
There was some overlap, but much less than you'd think. After a while, the books got a bit tropey, and fandom moved on.
H: another iteration of the Great Game on, with China trying for overland hegemony while the US goes for oceanic control. China will lose, provided the US & Europe remember Mahan What is now the USA was only "lost" because we forgot Mahan ( Yes - I know, but you see what I mean? )
No, actually I don't know. Mahan was fairly religious, and I think he'd have a problem with being seen as a prophet of The Truth.
While I agree that: a) oceanic surface transport is likely to stay cheapest, and b) oceanic chokepoints are going to be geopolitically critical for the rest of our lives,
I'd also point out
c) with climate change, ports can be taken out by big storms that much more eaily. d) we're all going to have to do the managed retreat thing, as sea level rise is pretty much locked into at least one meter this century. e) Cislunar space is proving to be critical, not for living space, but for communication and weather satellites, without which that so-cheap shipping is going to suffer substantially more from storms.
So we're not entirely in Mahan's world any more, if we ever were (and he'd say we weren't I suspect)
Worse, from the perspective of Russia, China, and India, the big Eurasian powers: f) they've all been conquered by Mongols, and China got conquered by Manchus, and India by the Moghuls. From the land side g) while both have suffered incursions from the ocean, these haven't led to large-scale conquest, a la the Mongols (India is the exception with Britain), therefore h) China, Russia, and India would be daft to not work to control Central Asia.
As for the US rebelling against Britain, that was predominantly a land war (the US rebellion) abetted by French naval interference (making life miserable for the US navy). I'm not sure the British Navy could have retaken the colonies, as demonstrated in the War of 1812 and the Civil War. The US (and, uh, Canada and Mexico) have the same problem of long undefended terrestrial borders to deal with that China and Russia, and India do. While we've had our border wars (especially the US and Mexico), we haven't had the large scale takeover of one polity by another or both by nomadic forces, as in Asia. Probably that's due to our relatively shallow history compared with Asia.
If you haven't read the AIPAC Wikipedia page, you might want to do so.
It was founded in 1951, and I strongly suspect that the same thing that inspired Britain to donate a chunk of Palestine--The Holocaust--got Si Kenen his entrance into Washington DC as a lobbyist. AIPAC became powerful in the 1980s by backing winning candidates in US Senate races against sitting Senators who'd back pro-PLO and pro-Saudi legislation, but that's 30 years after they got into the system. Given the current mess with AIPAC being seen as increasingly right wing, I'd be shocked if they're not busy reaching out to progressive democrats and making amends. Especially now that BeBe is out of Israeli politics for the moment.
The interest goes back rather further than that specific organisation, though. A good deal of the British purpose in whipping up Zionism during WW1 was to encourage pressure from interests internal to the US for the US to enter the war and counter pro-German sentiment. After all the US already had a significant population of Jews who had fled from persecution; at the time Russia were the principal shits for that sort of thing, and there was a tendency for people who had experienced it to see Germany as the good guys for attacking Russia and to disapprove of entering the war on the other side. Britain wanted to give them a strong reason to change their minds, as they were already considered to have significant influence over US policy.
Everyone seems to see this stuff as being something that came along after WW2 for obvious reasons involving Hitler, but really the post-WW2 stuff is pretty much a rerun of the WW1-and-after stuff only this time on nitrous. We need to look at the least to before WW1, with persecution of Jews in Eastern Europe and Russia and the British navy deciding to switch to oil firing.
Heteromeles @ 108:
This is an anti-semitic minefield to trip through, sooo...
Thing to remember is that if you shade that wrong (or rather, Right), it comes across as anti-semitic, with the rich jews pulling strings.
No, the thing to remember is that these are AMERICAN Jews who have the same 1st Amendment right "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances" ... same as any non-Jewish AMERICANS.
And of course, they are pulling strings. Jewish history, to paraphrase a friend of mine who's Jewish, is paranoia reinforced by history. Making friends with the most powerful country on the planet, one that does have a history of suppressed anti-semitism, is important to Jews. Many, probably most, Jews want Israel to succeed, even though they may well wish Netanyahu completely gone and the settlements ended. Heck, I feel that way myself.
Exercising their 1st Amendment rights IS NOT pulling strings. I too hope Israel succeeds, but which Israel? My hope is for a post-Zionist, multi-cultural Israel at peace with their neighbors.
Which, BTW, is what I think is in the United States' best interest.
Greg Tingey @ 111: JBS
Actually, I think that the US is/was Israel's puppet, but the sock-control is going both ways, too.
[It's complicated.] "Benny" hasn't helped & IQ45 certainly screwed with it...
And that is no more true than was the assertion that Israel is/was the U.S.'s puppet.
the quaint possibility of an "All Men Are Created Equal" Party pushing for suffrage, unionizing former slaves, and unionizing immigrant Chinese and Hispanic along with whites, so that no one can be exploited by industrialists paying bottom level wages
The interesting real-world-timeline movement to compare with this is Chartism. It's slightly prior to the period you're considering and I suppose the labour movement features you mention were partly adapted from Chartism, but also brought additional features, like unionisation, together with the suffrage and democratic reform focus.
Note: in English, it's Zionism, not Sionism.
I would like to see Israel back in its original borders... as it was created in the late forties and early fifties. Anyone who starts on with Eretz Israel (I know people who do) can shove their heads down the toilet.
And claiming I have to support Likud to support Israel is like saying I needed to support The Former Guy to support the US.
Really? As I'm in real SF fandom, I never saw the subgroup that was political.
Interesting....
Charlie Stross @ 112:
Yes, but why was AIPAC allowed to secure that death-grip on state policy? Compare with, for example, the Irish Republican lobby in Boston during the Troubles in NI, or the Cuban exiles in Miami -- AIPAC seems to have orders of magnitude more clout.
I think Heteromeles does have a point about "Jewish history" ... being ... "paranoia reinforced by history". Part of why AIPAC is so strong is they got an earlier start.
When I was growing up and going to almost all white schools in the southern U.S. they taught about Hitler trying to murder all the Jews. There were still a lot of veterans around who had actually SEEN the camps. Holocaust denialism couldn't catch hold here in the U.S. while most of those veterans were still alive.
It's obvious why American Jews would strongly organize to rally around the State of Israel and why U.S. support for the State of Israel predates Suez; predates the current regime in Israel.
I'd suggest that AIPAC only got to where it is because it served the interests of the petrochemical industry, and the dominionist Christian lunatics (who believe all Jews have to return to Israel before the second coming can happen), and the state department (choke-points on shipping, as Heteromeles points out), and probably half a dozen converging interest groups. It's not as if there aren't also Arab-Americans who could potentially have formed a counter-lobbying group, but they were much more fragmented and -- a key point -- seen as targets for a colonial/imperialist relationship, because of a certain strain of racism running in US elite circles (remember, this shit goes back to the 1950s if not earlier).
I don't think it's ONLY because they serve the interests of the greed heads & the lunatics, although I can see how the greed heads & lunatics would try to use them ... the same way AIPAC are trying to use the greed heads & lunatics. I do sometimes wonder if American Jews who welcome the dominionist evangelical support really understand the depth of the dominionist's depravity.
It's not just that all the Jews are supposed to return to Israel, but they're supposed to build (rebuild?) the THIRD TEMPLE on the site of the previous temples sparking a nuclear war with the Arabs (or Persians, or Russians, or ...) which will complete Hitler's Holocaust, with any survivors converting to dominionist christianity (or only those Jews who have converted surviving). There won't be any Jews after the Second Coming of Jesus Christ! There won't be a state of Israel and there won't be a city of Jerusalem.
There's your REAL anti-Semitism, and I don't know if American Jews are sufficiently prepared for the inevitable betrayal.
Basically AIPAC were pushing at an open door with a welcome mat carefully positioned outside it by various other groups with an interest in shaping policy deniably.
I see it as two parades going in almost the same direction who got mixed together. Both found something useful in the other, but they're still only going in almost the same direction.
The second loved the aesthetic because it looked cool. There was a running gag in those days that "Steampunk is what happens when Goths discover brown." :D
Yep. They're modeling their look off of old sepia tone images. You're probably aware of what they don't care about - that the late 19th century was when humans really got the hang of chemical dyes and the era was full of screamingly bright colors.
SS I've done traditional Silver-Sulphide toning - bleach with pot Ferricyanide & then bathe in the sulphide salts .. I still have a 20x16" print of old photo taken in um, err, 1966? Of a NE-England colliery railway scene, toned. You have to look really carefully to realise that it wasn't taken in about 1916!
Similarly, it's the beginning of the era where black clothes were routinely "blued" to keep their blackness, lest they brown with age. And really rich black fabrics were still premium, so going brown is more or less going downmarket. OTOH it does make stuff for the goffier cosplayers and enthusiasts that's much more interesting (and potentially less harmful, frankly) than a lot of other things they might get up to. And brass-and-leather consumer items are more intrinsically repairable than plastic ones I guess...
Yeah, I learned about the color thing after the fact.
Personally, I always preferred a variation:
"Steampunk is what happens when Goths discover shiny." :D
Oh yes. Here's an example from a reputable source:
https://www.tor.com/2009/10/19/there-is-totally-punk-in-steampunk/
When I was growing up and going to almost all white schools in the southern U.S. they taught about Hitler trying to murder all the Jews.
When I started teaching in the 90s I got called anti-Semitic for pointing out that the Nazis also tried to murder other types of people*. I was also told I had to understand why the Israeli kids beat up one of my students who had a German last name.
Criticising the Israeli actions was met with accusations of anti-Semitism (or being a self-loathing Jew if you were Jewish), which still happens in the school system.
*Not a good time to be 'defective', homosexual, Roma…
the era was full of screamingly bright colors
Something I discovered when researching colour schemes for painting Space: 1889 miniatures. If you go with actual colours most people think you've got it wrong. :-/
Something I discovered when researching colour schemes for painting Space: 1889 miniatures. If you go with actual colours most people think you've got it wrong. :-/
Anyone can paint a locomotive black or grey. If you paint your locomotive green and red and blue and more green it will really stand out from the others!
Link to pic, please!
Punk "rebelling apparently without a cause"... I thought punk came in in the '80s, during Raygun, and "let's restart the Cold War", and tax the rich less, but tax social security and unemployment..." (I think they had reasons.)
Everyone seems to see this stuff as being something that came along after WW2 for obvious reasons involving Hitler
Not so much if you saw the play/movie "Fiddler on the Roof".
Not a good time to be 'defective', homosexual, Roma…
Or in disagreement.
Mother in law born in southern Germany in 1928. Her sister, 8+ years older, was in higher ed in 30s. Multiple friends vanished after talking about needed changes in government.
I thought punk came in in the '80s, during Raygun
Punk rock is a 70s phenomenon and started in at least 3 places independently (Brisbane, New York City, and London) and burst into the spotlight in roughly 1976. People refer to the famous Sex Pistols Free Trade Hall gig in the Manchester as the "birth of punk", but those people forget about The Saints and The Ramones, both being very widely influential. People refer to The Stooges (from Ann Arbor, Michigan) as proto-punk, and certainly Iggy claimed a certain proprietorship or elder-brother relationship to the punk movement, but there were plenty of precursors in the 60s. It's essentially an attitude more than anything else, and the weirdly paradoxical commercial opportunity it made for certain sorts of creative people of that era, who might have otherwise had pretty limited horizons. People deride the Pistols as a manufactured band, a somewhat alienated Monkees, but it's undeniable that they blew off the castle doors, so to speak, and let many talented people through in their wake.
It's not quite the same as "rebelling apparently without a cause", it's more a statement that "I don't know what the ideal society is, but this one here with these specific stakeholders and decision makers that is doing these specific things right now is fucked up and I don't like it". Which is to me possibly the most reasonable political thing anyone can say, anywhere anytime.
It's not quite the same as "rebelling apparently without a cause", it's more a statement that "I don't know what the ideal society is, but this one here with these specific stakeholders and decision makers that is doing these specific things right now is fucked up and I don't like it".
Punk wasn't (isn't? Punk never dies, after all.) a homogenous thing anyway. To my understanding, a lot of it was only style and attitude (musical or personal), and a lot of it was really rebelling without a cause. Musically some of the rebellion was against the complex and difficult direction much of popular music was going for.
Not all people were that much politically inclined. Some of them obviously were (and are!): Bad Religion, Dead Kennedys, and The Clash seem to be quite left-leaning. Then there were enough hard-right punks that the Dead Kennedys had a song called 'Nazi Punks Fuck Off' in 1981.
Then many of the Ramones apparently were, to my knowledge, more Republican, which does not quite gel with my impression of counter-culture, even in the Nineties. The Sex Pistols were partly a project for a clothing shop (of Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood) and were fuelled quite much just by shocking. Both of them obviously had some issues to talk about, but the message was quite garbled in many ways. They still had a great influence on the sound an aesthetics of other artists.
I'm a bit too young to be part of the first punk scene, but I still find it interesting, and have for quite a while. It's not even always easy to play as a music - for example, that Bad Religion, even though their gear is simple, is not especially easy to perform.
In Finland, we have (had) a punk scene for a long, long time, and it's been somewhat political, too. Sadly, just last week there's been quite a big #metoo fallout in the Finnish punk scene, with some big players' actions coming to light, and it's not that good, obviously. (Misogyny and violence are obviously the thing here...)
I may have some punk leanings, but I think a line from Bad Religion's '21st Century Boy' describes me well: 'My dad's a lazy middle-class intellectual'.
Loco Colours Green x2 / Black / White / Yellow / Terracotta & Scarlet? SECR Calss "D" 737 Or, for really over-the top: This
Whitroth SLIGHT problem It's a 20"x16" mounted print! [ IF I can find an A4 copy - there is one somewhere - I'll digitise & then electronic-tone it for you ... ]
I refer to the Holocaust as killing 11 million people. I think some Jews find this irritating, but I haven't run into a hard pushback.
There's your REAL anti-Semitism, and I don't know if American Jews are sufficiently prepared for the inevitable betrayal.
There are more Christian zionists in the USA right now than there are actual Jews, zionist or otherwise.
As for zionism -- speaking as a Jew here -- it's a classic example of 19th century European ethno-nationalism, the same stupidity that got us a century of warfare, ethnic cleansing, and genocide in Europe. There were other spatterings of it around the globe, notably Rhodesia and Apartheid South Africa: the form of Israel that Netenyahu's crew want is essentially an Apartheid state, and you'll find Jewish opinion outside and inside Israel is highly polarized both for and against that. (I'm strongly opposed: there's a reason I refuse to apply for an Israeli passport, despite all the fuck-uppery in the UK this century.)
With thanks to Martin Niemoller -
"First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews And I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me And there was no one left To speak out for me"
Niemoller, you will note, never mentioned the gays, the roma, or the disabled. In fact his list is entirely political except for the Jews, who were such a prominent target they were impossible to leave out.
Agreed, and, in fact I've seen much longer versions of "First They Came...", but I honestly don't know which is the original, which are shortened and which are lengthened from the original.
I refer to the Holocaust as killing 11 million people. I think some Jews find this irritating, but I haven't run into a hard pushback.
I have (depending on how you define "hard").
Apparently, as a gentile I have no right to an opinion on the Holocaust, because I don't know what it's like to sit down every year and see the empty place at the table laid for grandma who never came back home from the camp. (Which is true, because my family doesn't leave empty places at the table for the 2/3 who died in the camps, mostly Jewish but some gentile.)
My 'crime' was commenting that out of 11 pages of text on the school display on the Holocaust*, only one sentence mentioned anyone but Jews, and maybe we could do with a bit more historically accurate inclusion? Apparently mentioning anyone other than Jews 'diminishes the uniqueness of the Holocaust' and is antisemitic. So is pointing out that there were other genocides, and indeed other genocides still happening right now.
Interestingly, the year after I left that school the same person who accused me of antisemitism got a commendation for doing exactly what I had suggested**. Which leads me to believe that it was a political tactic to shut me up so that no one but her would get credit. If I'd stayed I strongly suspect nothing would have changed (and my career would have been very limited).
So my strongest attacker was apparently using accusations of antisemitism as a weapon to further her career, but mud sticks and I was labelled at that school. I've seen the same technique used multiple times in my teaching career — accusing someone of being anti-group-the-accuser-is-in to shut them up*.
This is probably more a commentary on academic political infighting than actual issues of antisemitism.
*Provided by Yad Vashem.
**Mentioning other targeted groups, noting that genocide still occurred and that 'never again' meant acting against genocides happening right now.
One of my colleagues was told that as a white male he knew nothing about fairness and had no right to complain. This happened in a 'discussion' where he was being ordered to agree to his classes being larger than in our contract*. He was so shocked (this came out of left field) that he didn't think to respond that as a gay person he was quite familiar with unfairness, even if he wasn't a straight Asian woman.
**We have hard caps that can be over-ridden if the teacher agrees. They don't have to agree, but many principals retaliate against teachers who refuse to agree.
Niemoller, you will note, never mentioned the gays, the roma, or the disabled.
Because when he wrote that, they were still legitimate targets?
in fact I've seen much longer versions of "First They Came...", but I honestly don't know which is the original, which are shortened and which are lengthened from the original
Interesting that the version in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum leaves out his reference to Communists…
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/martin-niemoeller-first-they-came-for-the-socialists
There have apparently been many versions, even from Neimoller. Some have added groups he never mentioned, such as industrialists.
https://marcuse.faculty.history.ucsb.edu/niem.htm
Yeah, that was a good series. If you know a bit of history then you know most of the statistics for Victorian slum living, but (as Stalin knew) putting faces on it makes it personal. Also some things I'd not heard of, like paying to sleep sitting up on a bench with a guard-rope to hold you up, just because it was somewhere out of the weather. The other similar series set in various parts of the 20th century have all been very good too, but this is the first one where recreating how people lived gave the participants the feeling of "be lucky or die".
It did skip over general criminality and gangs. The young boy wouldn't just be getting his costermonger's ticket for running round balancing crates or for street-selling - he'd probably also need to be the survivor of a few turf wars between rival gangs, and be seen to at least be hard enough that random thieves would think carefully before trying to rob his barrow. And of course no mention of prostitution, which is how most single mothers made their living, as well as a large number of girls (and not a few boys).
You can understand why - this was family viewing, after all, not "Peaky Blinders", and it already felt pretty grinding. Adding the fact that the kids of the family with the disabled grandad would probably be sucking cock on a street corner is just going to give them nightmares, even if it's true.
And of course no mention of prostitution, which is how most single mothers made their living
You must have missed it. It was brought up. 2 or 3 times as I recall. I had it playing while I did network configs and I got through 4 1/2 of the 6 episodes and can't remember which one. But I think it was the 1st or 2nd.
Basically the outlook for single mom's was so bad than over 10% went into the sex trade. As I remember what was said.
Also some things I'd not heard of, like paying to sleep sitting up on a bench with a guard-rope to hold you up, just because it was somewhere out of the weather.
I think I caught a reference to one level down from that. Just the rope and you stood. But I may have not remembered that correctly.
I haven't seen the show, but sleeping on your feet with a rope to hold you upright is the origin of the phrase "on the ropes". So the trauma lingers in folk memory long after the specifics are forgotten.
I haven't seen the show
I want noise in the background (and not always music) when I work. Doing software/network configs I can put a show like this on and only look at it when I notice something really compelling.
But if I made my living writing (and when I am writing emails and such) I'd have to turn it off. I suspect you wind up being much more selective in what plays in your background given your career.
Anyway, it's an interesting series. Only 6 episodes. Each covering a decade starting with the 1860 of life in the east end of London. It is done by taking small families / couples from around England of various backgrounds and having them act out set plays of how thing might have been for them in the time.
I liked that one lady said she always felt she grew up poor. She now says something to the effect she had no idea how much lower one could be on the poor scale back then.
One thing I found interesting and still happening today (at least in the US). At some point later in the 1800s the government started closing down the worst of the worst of the doss-houses (flop houses to those in the US). But they didn't address where those people would go. So many became homeless or street people as they were called at the time. After all, if they needed money they could just get a job was the feeling of those in power.
So "on the ropes" is not a reference to boxing? Interesting...
JBS Yes I've been accused of being at different times, a "communist" & a "fascist" simply because of my refusal to be "a dedicated follower of fashion"
Admittedly these are models -- and of post-1900 locomotives -- but they'll give any non-railway specialists an idea of what the pre-WW1 railway looked like.
http://www.gwr.org.uk/liveriesloco1900.html
Greg's image linked above is about the limit of British Edwardian Railway lunacy.
[*] Check out the second image: the Dean Goods was the standard light goods engine on the Great Western.
[**] And the 517 class was the "standard" branch passenger engine dating from about 1860 on the non-Broad Gauge Great Western.
[*] Note the varied colours. That's because the foreman in the painting shed had complete control of paint mixing. Some batches of paint had more of one pigment than others. There are apocryphal tales of engines whose painting spread out over a week-end. One side could be a completely different shade to the other!
if they needed money they could just get a job was the feeling of those in power
And still is, apparently.
Part of what's wrong with the world is that there's no place for refugees in general to go. This makes the existence of Israel seem rather crucial.
I actually have less connection to the Holocaust than a lot of other Jews because my family was out of eastern Europe in the 1880s.
I still don't think preserving the uniqueness of the Jewish part of the Holocaust is an important project, though I wouldn't mind having a word for the Jewish part (Shoah?) and another word for the whole thing.
Sometimes I bring up all the people killed in Hitler's war, too. People get cut too much slack for empire-building.
While I completely agree with both your statement and its sentiment, I will gently point out that getting 50-odd years of freedom from pogroms isn't nothing.
I'm not sure which of my several statements you're agreeing with.
America has a much better record on antisemitism than Europe.
I'd agree with that in depth of the "anti". But in breadth we're right there.
No ovens but plenty of "none allowed" here.
"No ovens but plenty of "none allowed" here."
When and where are you talking about?
David Baddiel talks about English antisemitism, which strikes me as considerably worse than the background level of American antisemitism.
Fair warning-- his angle is about antisemitism not being a concern for English progressives.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6QfW78Mtgo
Continental level is far too broad a brush when discussing antisemitism in Europe; Note my earlier comment about Garnethill synagogue in Glasgow, and compare with Clifford's Tower in York https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/York_Castle#Massacre_of_Jews .
When and where are you talking about?
All of the US. And while the anti has been declining a LOT in GENERAL for a decade or few it is still strong in many population groups.
I really need some more specificity. While I seem to have been exposed to much less antisemitism than the other American Jews I know, the stories I hear are more like having pennies thrown at them as children rather than being excluded as adults.
Well, briefly mentioned, but not in the kind of way that put it as front and centre as it would have been. For obvious reasons though you can't randomly assign one of your participants to be a street-corner prostitute, nor "right, you kid there, you're dying of typhus tomorrow". However grindingly awful it seemed for the participants, the reality would still have been so much worse.
@Charlie, at the risk of over-reliance on the internet, https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/on+the+ropes has a number of sources agreeing that "on the ropes" originated in boxing.
I tend to think these days that the relationship between Israel and the USA -- at a diplomatic/military level -- is rather close to what the British establishment think their relationship with the USA is (but hasn't been since, oh, 1956 or thereabouts). In other words, it's a special relationship where the parties are frenemies
...except that the British relationship is a bit closer; we haven't had a Jonathan Pollard incident, because we're part of the Five Eyes (see also the UK/USA sharing of nuclear weapons technology, or the trust involved in sailing a USMC F-35B squadron on a UK aircraft carrier).
Wow. And then there's the Flying Scotsman.
I was afraid you hadn't digitized it. Thanks, though.
Close down the flop-houses. U. Utah Phillips, "They're Running the Bums Out of Town". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prC9QNopgQ8
The late RBG mentioned seeing signs, when she was young, "no Blacks or Jews". And, of course, the KKK and their ilk were happy to kill Jews, too, and union organizers, and...
Greg Tingey @ 126: SS
I've done traditional Silver-Sulphide toning - bleach with pot Ferricyanide & then bathe in the sulphide salts ..
I still have a 20x16" print of old photo taken in um, err, 1966? Of a NE-England colliery railway scene, toned.
You have to look really carefully to realise that it wasn't taken in about 1916!
Ever tried hand coloring photographs with oils - print on traditional B&W paper and then "restore" the color by hand? That's how they did color photographs before color films & papers became readily available.
You probably already know that, but some of the non-photographers might not.
Nowadays you can do it with Photoshop, but it's not really the same.
The Pistols turned up in 1976 with Anarchy In The UK and were effectively gone by 1979. Clash turned up 1977 with White Riot and were winding down from 1982 onward - Rock the Casbah is amiable pop music.
Thinking back to Sham 69, The Clash, The Sex Pistols, Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Buzzcocks it was mostly over as a movement by 1980s by which time even the New Waves was starting to fizzle or mutate (Ultravox?) and we were into the New Romantics - who also didn't last long.
Punk had a long lasting impact on UK music and certainly gave the Prog Rockers a well deserved kick up the bum, which isn't to say I don't love Close To The Edge - but some of them really had forgotten the word "Rock" in their musical genre.
At the time I wasn't convinced that the US really "got" punk, but they produced a few bands that would pass for New Wave and do good singles certainly, but generally...
Despite the best effort of the NME/Melody Maker and Sounds, to my mind, Punk never really had a coherent political pitch beyond "We're pissed off and if you don't like it fuck you!". Some were socialist and antiracism, other were just skinhead yobs with guitars while some others just loved music and wanted to play - and punk was easy to play.
Certainly, hearing "God Save The Queen" and Magazine's "Shot by both sides" for the first time was great.
Robert Prior @ 130:
When I started teaching in the 90s I got called anti-Semitic for pointing out that the Nazis also tried to murder other types of people*. I was also told I had to understand why the Israeli kids beat up one of my students who had a German last name.
Criticising the Israeli actions was met with accusations of anti-Semitism (or being a self-loathing Jew if you were Jewish), which still happens in the school system.
*Not a good time to be 'defective', homosexual, Roma…
I probably wouldn't have learned about all the other people Hitler murdered if I hadn't been a voracious reader. The curriculum on European History that was taught in U.S. schools in the 50s & 60s didn't go much beyond 1492 other than when the U.S. was involved in the World Wars.
Re the Nazi genocidal program against the Romani (Porajmos), ROMANIES AND THE HOLOCAUST: A REEVALUATION AND AN OVERVIEW (Ian Hancock, 2004) It is a passionate(/fiery) essay. The author (Romani) lightly touches on some influential agenda-driven shoddy scholarship that attempts to minimize the Porajmos (the arguments affecting him personally and professionally); mainly it's a history piece, with references (worth a look), and widely cited. My attitudes towards genocide denial resemble those of Grey Area; I'll attempt to refrain from comment on such in this specific case. (You could say that Grey Area walked away from Omelas. Mostly, it was relentlessly curious.)
whitroth @ 134: Punk "rebelling apparently without a cause"... I thought punk came in in the '80s, during Raygun, and "let's restart the Cold War", and tax the rich less, but tax social security and unemployment..." (I think they had reasons.)
1950s - Gen-X don't like it, but the "Greatest Generation" invented punk.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4NkkAQllfo
Bit early for the boomers. The oldest were still in grammar school.
Urk, didn't preview an edit: Grey Area
Punk, as opposed to punk rock, was late forties/early fifties.
The war's over, but we remember the Depression, and something's just not right.
Charlie Stross @ 152: I haven't seen the show, but sleeping on your feet with a rope to hold you upright is the origin of the phrase "on the ropes". So the trauma lingers in folk memory long after the specifics are forgotten.
It's also apparently the origin of "hangover".
Hardcore U.S. Punks included X, Black Flag, Fear, Germs, and the Plasmatics.
Or if you want a band that's not punk, but formed in 1973, and doubtless a foundation for later punk music, there's always Devo, an American band from Akron, Ohio. ("Mongoloid" was first played in concert in 1975, and I find it difficult to argue that it wasn't punk.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGdxX5qzeW8
Wikipedia says punk goes back to "Louie Louie" in 1957...
Baddiel probably understates things. At a previous General Election, I told our Labour MP that "I wouldn't be voting for a fucking Anti-Semite (quote/unquote)". I got some hopeless guff about him personally not being anti-semitic, to which I replied that his inactions on this matter with regard to Jeremy Corbyn were a clear indicator that he -- personally -- had culpability. I may even have ended with "You don't actually expect Jews to vote for Labour do you?"
So, I've probably got one of those yellow stars against my name in the Labour Party Database -- despite not being Jewish.
Anyhow, ...
... having got that off my chest, ... before we go any further I'd like you to unpack the term "progressive" for me. In England I'd view it as a synonym for "Tankie" -- an old-style term of abuse used to describe people in the UK (mostly communists) who supported Russian Tanks in Budapest in 1956. And lest that be thought extreme, we did indeed have such people in my minor public school. One of whom is a journalist at the Guardian. He might have changed his views, I suppose, but his articles would seem to indicate otherwise.
I have had particular difficulty explaining the trope of the "English Public School Boy Communist" to my East European students. But it's common enough, and you'll note Agatha Christie had such an individual featuring in "Death on the Nile"; he was the poshest of the lot -- of course.
To me Seamus Milne is a useful case study. Father: Director General of the BBC, schooled at Winchester (for posh boys with some brains -- though noted for two centuries for the "Wykhamist Fallacy" -- that everyone's a good chap really) and Balliol (most leftwing college in Oxford).
And then we get to the missing photos at the Sochi Winter Olympics. Initially Pravda put up some nice photos of Putin enthroned on a dias with various functionaries bowing and "kissing the ring", amongst whom Mr Milne was one. To seal the case against him, those photos have been purged from the internet -- a bit like photos of Alexander de Pfeffle "Boris" Johnson and the rest of the Bullingon crew.
While I'm horrified at the description of football fans making hissing noises to express antisemitism (simulating gas in death camps), and none too pleased at Alice Waters' gross antisemitism getting a pass, the thing that chilled me most was the Jewish woman who just took it as normal to conceal that she's Jewish in England.
As for progressives, I use the word without precision. I see people call themselves progressives, they can have the word. As far as I can tell, they say they want Sweden, but they're very fond of Cuba. What do they actually mean in terms of policy if they have power? I have no idea.
I've met one person who was an apologist for Stalin, and another who was an apologist for Mao.
Nancy L & Dave L: The collection of conspiracist nutters is growing: It's why I won't trust J. Corbyn, because among others - there's his brother Piers C. + David Icke + Gillian McKeith + Katie Hopkins ... etc . Yeah
Ever tried hand coloring photographs with oils - print on traditional B&W paper and then "restore" the color by hand?
Apparently my aunt used to do that for my grandfather when she was a girl. She died of Covid last year, so no more details than that she hand-tinted pictures for him (and apparently his 'darkroom' was under the kitchen table with a black cloth over the top).
I've met one person who was an apologist for Stalin, and another who was an apologist for Mao.
Had lunch last week with an old colleague who was exposed to two different views on the Chinese Revolution. His wife's family owned some land and so were at the bottom after the revolution, and very against it and the communists in general. His teacher's family was so poor they sold his teacher into slavery for food for the rest of the family, and until the communists the poor were at the mercy of the rich (which may have been "anyone with enough to eat" to a child). His teacher looked at communists giving food to the poor and joined them in the fight against the Japanese.
I've met people who supported Marcos in the Philippines, because he sent wealth to their village (family connections).
I wonder a bit if most people will support anyone who gives them a decent life without worrying too much about the ethics of the leader?
they say they want Sweden, but they're very fond of Cuba
Sounds like the old joke about Americans saying they want Sweden, but voting to get Brazil…
Progressives....
Populist has come to mean white-wing rabble-rouser. Liberal has come to mean "nice" people (listen to Phil Och's "Love Me, I'm A Liberal"). A lot of people still have trouble in the US with calling themselves socialist.
So, progressive is it. Think New Deal, and you've got it.
New deal and maybe some Euro-Socialism; state-run medical care, pensions, and good vacation policies.
Reasonable sick and parental leave policies…
I remember my Pipe-Major telling us about agricultural employment in 1930s Argyllshire; hiring fairs, absolute dependence on the employer, only being paid if you lasted the whole year. Not quite indentured Labour, but close.
It went a long way to explain the Labour general election win of 1945 - although the Royal Army Education Corps has a claim to having educated the workforce during the war, along the lines of “there’s a better way”…
Graham@167 wrote, "sources agreeing that "on the ropes" originated in boxing."
Michael Crichton wrote a semi-historically based account of a sensational Victorian era crime, "The Great Train Robbery" in which he filled a lot of pages with research he'd done on living conditions in London of the 1800s. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Train_Robbery_(novel) Also made into a decent movie starring a much younger Donald Sutherland back in the 70s, dvd available at libraries or from netflix. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079240/ One scene took place in a sailors' hang, so called because of their rope clothesline arrangement to support sleeping homeless men upright by their armpits, which allowed maximum occupancy of available space by paying customers. This supposedly inspired the expression "hanging around." McNeil-Lehrer's "Story of English" claims Australians later modified it to "hanging around like a fart in a phone-booth." https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWBVMdB_505ikJyx8WtftmCAjN1GDZ4SE Makes sense, by the time public pay-phones were a thing, sailors' hangs had been long forgotten, so a plausible back-construction supplied missing context.
By the bye, whoever suggested a few online comics - the others I did not like, but Gunnerkrieg Court is brilliant.
So, progressive is it. Think New Deal, and you've got it.
Without the racism and classism. And with a good understanding of the limits imposed by climatee change.
I'd almost say Green New Deal, but the kickoff meeting I attended on that was so badly run I walked out. Hopefully, if the GND gets off the ground, it will be with people who know their history enough not to blindly repeat the mistakes of the last three generations because they don't want to be schooled by old white fogies. The Opposition has spent most of a century fighting progress. If too many GNDers think that they can do a Galahad Gambit and win, not because they know what they're doing but because their intentions are pure, they're going to be chewed up and spat out like so many of their predecessors have been.
How do you think the state of Israel was established? That land wasn't empty; almost a million were expelled at gunpoint.
Nancy Lebovitz @ 166: I really need some more specificity. While I seem to have been exposed to much less antisemitism than the other American Jews I know, the stories I hear are more like having pennies thrown at them as children rather than being excluded as adults.
Maybe start here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_antisemitism_in_the_United_States
whitroth @ 170: Close down the flop-houses. U. Utah Phillips, "They're Running the Bums Out of Town". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prC9QNopgQ8
"Flop-houses" ... that's the word I was trying to remember.
there's no place for refugees in general to go. This makes the existence of Israel seem rather crucial.
Can you explain how that works? I thought Israel had been a net creator of refugees since day one? Unless you're one of the "Palestinians are not people" types.
whitroth / Troutwaxer The phrase is: Social Democrat
Keitmastersom Micheal Crichton is (was?) an ahistorical arsehole I got about 30 pages intio that novel & threw it away. Wall-to-wall lying impossible bollocks about C19th railway operation.
H but because their intentions are pure Being spat out is the GOOD option The bad option is that they succeed. And end up like Robespierre or Dzerzhinsky - their motives were "pure", too.
skulgun There's another narrative/story about that ... That the Arab countries surrounding Israel ordered "their people" out, so that they could genocide anyone left behind ... And promptly dumped them in Gaza (etc) to use, for ever after, as bleeding-heart bargaining chips
Note - I said "narrative" - not that it is/was true, or that yours is/was either. I don't know & the current narratives are ... muddied.
Meanwhile in the seriously bonkers-but-harmless stakes I mean a Jadgtpanther a torpedo & a flak gun (!) You what?
How do you think the state of Israel was established? That land wasn't empty; almost a million were expelled at gunpoint.
It's a lot more complicated than that.
Circa 1880 the land was lightly populated by Ottoman empire standards. Jewish settlers began to arrive, bought land, built settlements, proved the land was underpopulated, and the Arab population also began to increase. By the 1930s there were large populations of both Jews and Arabs (not just Muslims, but Christian groups also), and increasing tension which escallated to near-civil-war intensity by the mid to late 1940s.
Then the UN vote on what to do with the British Mandate arrived, the UN voted for partition (as did most of the planet) ... Israel declared independence within the partition borders, and was simultaneously attacked by Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and forces from Iraq and Libya (with whom there was no land border). Those nations (mostly despotic monarchies) announced they intended to throw the Jews into the sea; so, setup for an instant existential struggle.
Note that the State of Israel barely existed at that point, and there were multiple armed Jewish militias (or terrorist groups, depending on your perspective) arguing over policy. One group, Haganah, turned into the official armed forces and mostly focussed on defending their borders. A different, more extreme group, Irgun (the "Stern gang", per the British) decided to start up ethnic cleansing, as it was called in the former Yugoslavia, and started shoving the Arab neighbours out. Note that the leader of the Irgun was one Menachem Begin, later PM of Israel, and Bibi Netenyahu is his spiritual inheritor.
The invading nations announced that it was okay to avoid the Irgun, once they'd thrown the Jews in the sea everybody (the Arab displaced people) could go back to their homes.
Needless to say, things happened differently. Also, 73 years of politics happened and the fundamentals of the situation on the ground are irrevocably changed.
I can denounce the ethnic cleansing of the Nakbah and denounce the invasion of the UN-established State of Israel by its neighbours. I can denounce Hamas and denounce the Israeli army for shooting at unarmed civilians. I don't even need to draw a false equivalence here: the Israeli state is the bully with all the power, at least since roughly 1977, or 1982 at the latest. But what to do to fix the situation today ...? That's a much harder question which may not have any good answers.
Can you explain how that works? I thought Israel had been a net creator of refugees since day one?
You seem to have missed that, in the event of a Nazi takeover of the UK, Israel is the one place guaranteed to take me in, no (or minimal) questions asked -- under the Law of Return, if I ask for a passport, then as someone the Nazis would have defined as Jewish under the Nuremburg Laws, they're required to give me one (along with permanent right of residence).
If you're a member of a people with a history of being rounded up and murdered by their neighbours over a millennia-plus period, that's one hell of a life boat.
(And if given a choice between being murdered in a death camp and moving to an apartheid state, I'd probably hold my nose and move -- at least I'd be alive to vote for the anti-apartheid folks, right? Go on, tell me to hop in the gas chamber on a point of principle, I'm listening.)
Personally I think this should be a non-issue. If we don't get global citizenship and residence rights within the next century, far more people will die due to climate change than died during the 20th century as a result of war and ethnic cleansing. But that's a different consideration.
/PzKfg/PzKfw.
Very amusing, but your SQL injection attack won't work here!
:-) Although it was supposed to be a regex typo correction, but I muffed that too.
I really need some more specificity. While I seem to have been exposed to much less antisemitism than the other American Jews I know, the stories I hear are more like having pennies thrown at them as children rather than being excluded as adults.
Let's see. Coops keeping them out. Clubs of all kinds keeping them out. Local politics of all kinds keeping them out. Just like with those of darker skin but way more politely.[1]
Basically the Jewish were considered to have money and thus the redlining and other things of them was morally OK as it didn't take away their money. Unlike what was done to darker people.
I grew up in a very rural area of far western KY. No where near Appalachia. My blindness to all kinds of discrimination was baked into the society that raised me. So I didn't notice or even think about the single Synagogue in the town of 32K. But in hindsight I now remember various comments by the adults of other families that indicated "they" were not to be allowed to buy a house in OUR neighborhoods. And all kinds of other things. And being in the middle of SBC country, Catholics were almost as excluded.
It was just baked into the system. No lynchings or ovens but the discrimination was there.
[1] In my early teens there was a push by various family friends to put together a private swim club down the street. This was in the late 60s into around 1970. Only in hindsight do I see how this was a reaction to the only area public pool being de-segregated. It never happened but I THINK the only local small country club membership did go up.
And that's an over-simplification! I was unusual amoung my friends for supporting Israel's occupation of Palestine, Sinai and the Golan heights in 1967, as something they had no choice over, and said that it gave them the most wonderful opportunity for long-term peace.
Specifically, Israel should have asked for a UN protectorate, which it would have got, and administered the occupied territories accordingly (e.g. no dispossession or 'settling'). Many (most?) Palestinians actually welcomed Israel's occupation, as they were utterly fed-up with the corrupt and brutal PLO. Also, it should have asked for funds (mainly from the USA), and used those and its expertise to bring improved Palestine's economy and living standards.
However, the Irgun camp prevented that, and chose the path of repression,'ethnic cleansing' and worse; the end-game of that path is even worse.
As you say, what to do now is unclear. If we had a functional UN (damn the USA and UK for killing that), taking direct UN control (as described in several SF books) might work. I can't see anything else that would, not even the USA developing enough sanity and spine.
H. but because their intentions are pure Being spat out is the GOOD option The bad option is that they succeed. And end up like Robespierre or Dzerzhinsky - their motives were "pure", too.
Greg, you're so far below not even wrong...
This is a basic problem with the progressives: we don't read, we don't apprentice, we don't practice, and too often, we don't think. And also too often, we lose.
The basic problem is that few of the newly radicalized stop and think to ask if anyone's already tried what they're about to do, and whether it worked.
It's a standard trope that the cops spend more time reading up on nonviolence than the nonviolent actionists do. The kids read MLK, or Gandhi, or Thoreau, get inspired, and try their stuff. The cops have already read MLK, Gandhi, and Thoreau, know what they're in for, and roll it up. It's like kitting out with a nineteenth century soldier's gear and going up against a 21st century warfighter with M4s and air support.
But this approach is baked in to the GND I saw. People were randomly assigned to tables with strangers, given no more than 10 seconds to say anything, and asked kindergarten-level questions. This mixed a bunch of newbies in with more experienced people, and set it up to silence the experienced people. Then the most popular answers were taken and read to the room, where the most popular ideas in the room (Those of the newbies) became what people were expected to work on going forward. The experienced people got the message, shut up, and left, because they had no desire to see the same set of naive ideas fielded yet again. And that part of the GND foundered.
The intent was "pure," designed to make all voices heard in the interest of environmental justice and leveling the playing field. To me, racial justice involves the more experienced people (of all genders, races, and backgrounds) telling their stories about what worked and didn't, and everyone else learning. Then the agenda-setting starts.
The experienced people got the message, shut up, and left, because they had no desire to see the same set of naive ideas fielded yet again. And that part of the GND foundered.
I just walked away from a conversation about local recycling because the people talking the most didn't understand AT ALL what the reality was after the curbside pickup. So they were wanting to talk about how much better recycling would be if the schedule changed. Not believing what really happens after the truck dumps it at the recycling center.
That problem isn't limited to activists. I've seen it with engineers and teachers too. People are enchanted by the new-to-them; combine that with the tendency to fall in love with your own ideas, and you have the perfect recipe for iterated wheel-reinventing without much actual progress.
When you've just had a brilliant new idea and someone says "we tried that xx years ago and it didn't work" the temptation is to reply "you didn't do it right" rather than ask "what went wrong".
As you say, what to do now is unclear. If we had a functional UN (damn the USA and UK for killing that), taking direct UN control (as described in several SF books) might work.
I'm not sure that perspective is reflected by the evidence: look at the list of vetoed UNSC resolutions (link). You'll notice that the USSR/Russia are both the earliest, and the most frequent, users of the veto within the UN Security Council (link)...
My #181 and following.
I forgot to say -- for those not used to UK-style electioneering -- that the candidate comes around knocking on doors to drum up support; there's a spending limit of £7,000 for each constituency, so this is what they all have to do.
Next a big apology for the tone of 181, especially to you Nancy. My query about progressives was because I strongly suspect (and whitroth has confirmed) that usage is different in our respective countries. But racist scumbags -- or their enablers -- really piss me off.
Greg writes:
Greg, it's important to distinguish between powerless cranks (most of those on your list), and people with actual power conferred either by the ballot box or by having a big enough soapbox provided by the media. (Let's ignore the anti-vaxxer medics, for the moment, shall we? That's just financial scamming, with a perverted dark charisma.)
185 Robert Prior. Yes people can have different views about political leaders, and that's fine and dandy, especially if they actually lived under the system in question. My objection to the UK supporters of Stalin that I've met is that by and large they are have formed their opinions through the right motives, but have then failed to observe that their good intentions ("there should be more fairness") are being slyly subverted. It's the same with Westerners recruited into ISIS: starry-eyed idealists discovering too late what they've got into.EC @ 206 After the 1997 & '73 wars, Israel' then (& sane) government offered: "Land for Peace" - to EVERYONE. And was consistently rejected, with (almost) all the Arab countries determined to continue with attempted genocide ... one result of which was the "Entebbe" piracy & killings - which is how Bibi got into Israeli politics The Arabs have done it - all of it, every single bit of it - to themselves, since 1967, at any rate. And the Apartheid state that Israel has/is become is a result of that.
I like your idea of a UN Mandate - but would the Arab ultras have even accepted that, I wonder?
Robert Prior The people who REALLY screw-up with that one are politicians. "Oh, it didn't work - right lets just do it again, only HARDER ......" The list for that one is so loooooong....
Balls. The Palestinians were offered a piffling amount in return for unacceptable conditions. And may I remind you that referring to the Palestinians and many of the near-eastern countries as Arab is racist?
The vetoes have little to do with it - yes, they were and are used mostly for cold war politics, and were set up by the victorious powers specifically for that use. The emasculation of the rest of the UN was an almost entirely separate matter.
Happy to steer well clear of your discussion with Greg, but I really didn't realise calling Palestinians Arabs would offend. That's interesting I didn't realise that.
Which countries in that area should not be referred to as Arab?I thought most of them had joined the Arab league - obviously, Iran doesn't play well with others.
Thank you for the reminder of Devo. I recall a friend playing "Are We Not Men?" and hating it - I used to play him Six Wives of Henry VIII by way of revenge.
I had totally forgotten Mongoloid and see what you mean. I imagine the Arty, slightly cabaret presentation wouldn't have gone down well with UK punk rock audiences but they had a following at the time in the UK.
I checked out the Plasmatics again and they were better than I remembered - quite fun. Again a bit theatrical in their live gigs, but perhaps that was just the way to get noticed on the vastly bigger gig US circuit - that and Wendy. The other 3 I didn't know at all.
I think a good case could be made for the New York Dolls too - if you avoid the visuals.
Perhaps its best to think of UK Punk rock as a briefly popular and influential musical form that was itself heavily influenced by a previous musical form? :)
I had a very happy hour playing some old stuff on youtube and am still perplexed by the critical acclaim for the first Clash album.
EC The Egyptians may or may not be Arabs, but the rest are, surely? Grant has a point ... If not "Arabs" then w.t.f does one call them, then?
That's the best (most honest) compact history of the State of Israel I've ever read. Thanks!
I'd suggest that the Soviet Union as was should also take a share of the blame for the UN.
Hitler is to blame for the UN. (Kinda-sorta.)
Lest we forget: its predecessor, the League of Nations, proved itself to be utterly toothless in the 1930s, as it had no equivalent of the Security Council and no mechanism for taking action. See also Italy v. Ethiopia, Hitler's looting spree in Europe, etc.
Fast forward to the Yalta conference during WW2. We don't hear about this much today, but one of the side-effects was to establish a formal alliance against the Axis powers: an alliance that was named the United Nations. Yup, the post-1945 UN was the organization originally created to fight fascists and their allies. Unlike the LoN, the UN had very big teeth: teeth with atom bombs, Marshal Zhukov's armies, the entire war-fighting power of the fully-mobilized British Empire, and so on.
Then the war ended ...
The UN already had a whole bunch of members. It had a dispute resolution process and military co-operation agreements (the thing the LoN had lacked). So the allies foisted it on everyone else as the de-facto successor to the League of Nations, with one principle that everyone agreed on (even Stalin): thou shalt not wage aggressive warfare, or the UN will shit on you from a very great height.
(Which, incidentally, is why the unpleasantness between Argentina and the UK in 1982 was not a "war" but a "conflict", even though there were naval fleets attacking each other and a couple of amphibious invasions. Legalese is important and the UK wasn't about to violate a core principle of the agreement that gave it a permanent seat on UNSC. Nor was the Argentinian Junta willing to assert that it was waging war on the UK -- they were just reuniting their alienated territory with the fatherland, that's not a war, that's an anschluss or something.)
Anyway the good-natured let's-all-get-along version of the UN only lasted until the Nuremburg criminals were hanged. Then the iron curtain came down, because Stalin was totally not going to let a major capitalist imperialist power position army groups within a thousand kilometers of the Soviet frontier (which in view of the events of 1941 was probably sensible of him, even if rather ignoring the coming new realities of nuclear war and ballistic missiles). So the UNSC ended up deadlocked over almost everything ...
Except for the Korean War: at the time when things turned hot, the USSR was boycotting the UNSC and so was not present at the critical meeting where they could have exercised their veto, which is why the USA, UK, SK, and other allied forces on the peninsular fought under the UN flag.
But anyway: the only reason the UN exists is because Hitler. Nobody remembers this (or cares) any more, but it's worth pausing to think about next time you hear someone proposing to stop paying UN membership dues or kvetching about what it's good for.
Greg Tingey @ 217: EC
The Egyptians may or may not be Arabs, but the rest are, surely?
Grant has a point ...
If not "Arabs" then w.t.f does one call them, then?
Some of the people from the State of Israel's neighbors are Arabs, some are not. Some Jews are also Arabs, and some Arabs are also Jews.
Depending on where they're from, maybe call them Egyptians or Jordanians or Lebanese or Syrians or even Palestinians ... same as people from Israel are Israelis.
Charlie Important Addendum
Some OTHER PARTS of the UN are very useful indeed, provided they have not bee suborned from within by "someone" with ulterior motives. UNESCO / WHO / UNHCR / FAO / IAEA / IMO / IMF /WFP etc
Full list HERE Getting rid of all of these would be a very bad idea, indeed.
Meanwhile, we were talking about "Arab"/Israeli fuckwittery .... I know the "olympic" games ought ought be permanently put down in the name of sanity, but: Try this for size
Membership of the Arab League is irrelevant. Iranians and most Egyptians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese are not Arabs. But the main reason that it is racist is that it is used by the pro-Israel bigots (to be euphemistic) who say that the Palestinians are immigrants to Israel and should be resettled in 'Arab countries'. In fact, at least some will be descended from Canaanites and their residence in Palestine predates Judaism - as will at least some Israeli Jews and Christians.
No, I do not know how many of those people regard being called Arabs as offensive, nor do I care, though I know that some do. It is a racist term when used as I describe in the previous paragraph - and, yes, Greg, that means you.
The simple fact is that basing any claims of residence on purported immigrations of over a hundred years ago is at least bigotry, usually outright racism, and this is a matter thousands. It's over a thousand even to the Arabisation of the Levant! On this matter, I regard OGH to have at least as good (and probably a better) claim to Scottish citizenship than I do, my surname is a well-known Highland one, and my great-grandfather was born in Edinburgh.
Yes. The USSR was jointly responsible for the UN's dysfunctionality, but treating the General Assembly with contempt and emasculating many of the UN's sub-organisations was primarily the work of the USA with the UK's assistance.
Black Flag, Fear, and X were part of the Los Angeles punk scene, which was concentrated around south Hollywood and the Olympic Auditorium south of Downtown Los Angeles. It was a very hot scene in the late seventies and early eighties. The bassist in Fear went by the name Lee Ving, which wasn't a huge laugh, but definitelyone of those jokes that ages well.
In terms of 1970s UK punk's relation to politics, Jon Savage's England's Dreaming is great reading. And in the US, here's a great article on Jello Biafra's 1979 run for mayor in SF.
I went to see Snakefinger at one of those dives and someone snuck a Christian "Punk" band into the show as the first act. When they got off the stage the MC went up to the microphone and told a riddle:
"Why doesn't Jesus eat M&Ms?"
"Because the crucifixion left holes in his hands!"
The audience cheered for a good, long time and the Christian "Punk" band slunk off into obscurity.
EC FUCK RIGHT OFF You quite deliberately raised a totally false flag of racism - so that you could just have a go at me - & not the first time either STOP IT OK?
As for your bullshit about the UN - I SUGGEST you re-read my post on the list of UN organisations, right?
The Six Wives of Henry the VIII? You don't mean "'Enery the eighth" do you? Herman's Hermits? (Who I saw do that live....)
Re Jello Biafra running for mayor: I'll see you, and raise you one: Kinky Friedman, with an album "Texas Jewboy", running for governor of TX. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Texas_gubernatorial_election
Friedman is an interesting character. I read his detective novels back when they came out, and got the album on the strength of that (Sol American is the title, but it's the first one from back in the early 70s). He also ran for sheriff at least once in his hometown in Texas (not motivated enough to look it up at the moment).
I actually went to a gig he did as part of an Americana festival at a pub in Brisbane a few years ago. He spends a bit of time in Oz, is old buddies (maybe from his Peace Corps days, though I'm not sure how that works) with an arsehole right-wing newspaper columnist here. Which is how he ended up doing a speech at the National Press Club (which should be available online). So I'm not sure about Friedman's politics: seems relatively liberal and he certainly isn't keen on guns, but he plays around the edges of a lot of things. I think he aligns better to (hippy) freak voters than to Libertarians and I like to think he distances himself from the latter but I could be wrong.
One less salutary thing: his stage set includes a cover of the Warren Zevon song 'My Shit's fucked up'. Despite the title, it's not really a comedic song, and should be played straight as tragic. To his credit Friedman does this, but because he made his whole career by acting as a transgressive clown, and the song's impact is built around its swear words, it's not a fantastic look.
Sorry, that's Sold American. It's something that rewards listening to, if you can tolerate the country music from that era (which it parodies). Most of the songs contain Jewish references along with other jokes, some of which are real gems, for instance:
Well, it's retro rocket time inside my attic I'm all wrapped up in the flag to keep me warm Got my brain locked in the cruise-o-matic Rollin' Ronnie Reagan in suppository form.
Then there's AhNold actually winning the governor of California race--twice. Jesse Ventura won in Minnesota. I think that says that pro wrestlers know more about politics than do actors and musicians.
We won't mention that other actor, one Ronald Wilson Reagan. He ran for some stuff too.
Snap!
As ever, you have to notice the jokes:
Wikipedia altering the (original Gaelic / Irish spellings) -- > us fucking around Symbolic(ally).
Yes, it's the Queen of Spades originally (but has now bled into Ace of Spades - which all decent readers of Host's books will instantly goto Motorhead, of course[1]) - and it has a significant sexual response patterning within the USA[3]
There are about three thousand children books re-imagning Hamlet as having a Pig as a protagonist, finding the right one (it's a 1970's version) is the quest.
It's not "King Kanut (Canut)" but King Canoodlum[2]
181 / 182 - these people are not living in reality, they're living in the Above Zone Fiction Times[tm] and sadly: they do not even know who is creating it. Hint: there a a couple of Jewish people involved, but largely it's Big Goy Capital with Nukes who are afraid of China.For the record: Baddiel is a middle-weight comedian who rode to fame on two far more talented people (one of whom was essentially black-listed for his politics: check out his live shows, esp. regarding history and oil, man has talent) and is horrendous as a "figure-head" given his history of dressing up in black face + pinapple headdress (not in, say, 1979, but in the late 1990's) given the current state of play regarding modern Football politics (Rashford etc). Anyone listening and/or believing him at this point is: Old and Useless Husk.
Real Players burn people for £60,000,000; they don't waddle through a crappy book deal that's modelled on the US Politics market to get noticed in lists (and yes: we happen to know who 'bought the rights', who sponsored it and who is paying for rubbish like that - if they want to fuck around with the Big Horned Cheeses, £60,000,000 buy-in price is not something they can afford).
This is a polite notice: update your Wetware or get Mindfucked. The "Allies" selling you this tripe are running really much nastier shit and laughing at you.
Anyhow: oh, right. Original version of bean sídhe: hint, modern definition is C18th, might be something happening in Ireland around that time that might have changed the mythological nuance to it (like... genocide).
No, seriously: 181/2 - your Minds are getting prepared for a Harvest you cannot congnitively resist and it's depressing as fuck to watch you line up for it.
[1]
[2] https://www.worldofbooks.com/en-gb/books/joseph-o-conor/king-canoodlum-and-the-great-horned-cheese/9780563177463
[3] For the UK, one might discuss "dogging" as the geographical equivilent
TL;DR
If you're simping for Baddiel when Rashford is in play, you're basically Telegraph / Times (UK media) fodder.
Brains ----- Mush.
If you're simping for Baddiel when Rashford is in play, you're basically Telegraph / Times (UK media) fodder.
I'm tired enough that the only response I have for this sentence is "Mornington Crescent".
The first learning point for all Conscious Minds is the realisation that they do not, and cannot, understand everything.
Farting out boring Games that have long been surpassed is a symptom that states: My Mind is Done, I wish Death / Void, please Hunt Me Now.
It's not our kink, but Holy Fuck you do not want to meet those [redacted] who have it.
DigiCom ( @ 238 ) Love it! Unfortunately the mad screaming troll will now try to wind you up & if you don't respond, probably threaten you.
Greg, EC is right and you are wrong. Insofar as racism is the reduction of a huge group of diverse people to a single dimensional point on the basis of stereotyping, you're acting that way when you dismissively describe the highly diverse population of a region larger than western Europe as "Arabs". About all they've got in common is the Arabic written language -- the spoken language is so diverse that the dialects spoken in Egypt or Saudi Arabia or Libya would, in Europe, be called "Spanish", "Portuguese", "Italian", and "French". The Maronite Christians in Lebanon and the Kurds in northern Iraq wouldn't much appreciate being called Arabs, either. (Just the first two such groups that came to my mind.)
As for your list of UN organizations we don't need, I disagree strongly. Just one example: UNESCO does useful stuff on the Edinburgh literary scene, and on the global level promotes cultural exchange and attempts to preserve globally significant cultural artifacts -- like Stonehenge, which Grant Shapps is currently trying to drive a motorway under (and straight through about twenty similarly-historical unexcavated archaeological sites).
I both disagree and agree with Greg, lumping all mideasterners together as "Arabs" would be like calling all Europeans "German", I believe he was calling the elimination of U.N. agencies a bad thing as well he should, it has been a bette noir of "Contemporary conservatism*" for ages.
*Or may we refer to the damned spawn of white supremacy and conservatism as "Conservatism for people of average intelligence"?
Charlie You've got it badly backwards ... I think we really need all those UN organisations ... how did that misunderstanding arise? As for "Arabs" - meaning all the states (excluding Iran) that want to commit another genocide in the "holy land" ( WHAT a misnomer! ) - what SHOULD one call them as a catch-all term, then? I do think, though, that "muslim headbangers" isn't quite the right term, either, somehow ..
As for "Arabs" - meaning all the states (excluding Iran) that want to commit another genocide in the "holy land" ( WHAT a misnomer! ) - what SHOULD one call them as a catch-all term, then?
Egypt: signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1977.
Jordan: signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994.
Lebanon: complex, peace accords in place since 1983 but civil war/revolutions and the odd invasion interrupted it. More recent UN mediated negotiations in progress. (Israel is larger and more populous than Lebanon.)
UAE and Bahrain: peace accords signed in 2020.
Saudi Arabia: no official relations but apparently joint military and intelligence coordination goes back a couple of decades (because of Iran).
Iraq: designated hostile state. (Does not share a land border.)
Libya: has never had diplomatic relations with Israel but (since 2019) some signs of outreach/denials of hostility.
... And so on.
Aside from Iran, the middle eastern nations party to the Israel boycott that goes back to the Arab League have the luxury of doing so because they're outside the unrefuelled flight range of an F-15 loaded with bombs and they are not expected to actually do anything about the technologically advanced, beligerent regional military power. The ones that share a land border with Israel are deeply unenthusiastic about inviting an invasion (and, since 1973, it's been Israel doing the invading in that part of the world).
Iran is a special (complicated) case. (And bear in mind that it's part of the Sunni/Shia cold war: Israel is de facto on the side of the Sunnis.)
You forgot Syria, which has a land border with Israel and I believe is hostile.
I'd also point out (again) that since Israel and Saudi Arabia are both US allies, they're kind of stuck being each other's allies. That draws Israel into a pro-Sunni, anti-Shia alliance which otherwise they probably wouldn't be part of. The reason I say that is in the not-too-distant past, there were a lot of Jews living in Iran, fairly safely.
The thing about the eastern coast of the Mediterranean is that it's been overrun by empires going on 4500 years now. The normal course of empire is that when you conquer a group, you split them up and resettle them in various places, so that they'll be less able to rebel again. That, plus trade and intermarriage, have been going on there for longer than people have been working metal in the British Isles. Ethnicity, let alone race, is a sick joke in these circumstances. The current states were carved out of the Ottoman Empire by, yes, the British and the French in the 20th Century, so crying racism in that region is problematic.
You forgot Syria, which has a land border with Israel and I believe is hostile.
The Syrian Assad family are Alawite Shi'ite, but secularized (politically they're one of the surviving Ba'ath splinters). Alawi's are in any case pretty far out there even by Shi'a standards, for example drinking wine (as Ali's transsubstantiated blood) during religious ceremonies: it's Islam, but not as we know it. They align with Hezbollah and Iran because they're on the same side wrt. the Saudi jihad against heretics. However, Syria is a shadow of what it used to be before the civil war, and the Assad government (who eventually prevailed) are largely dependent on Russian military aid.
Israel tried to stay neutral-ish in the civil war, and the result is a relative thaw in Israeli/Syrian relations in the past couple of years.
But that's about the one nation with a land border with Israel that isn't actually at peace or engaged in peace negotiations. And the Syrian state today is in no shape to pick a fight with Israel: the civil war displaced or killed 15% of their population, and trashed their economy unbelievably badly. (Losing about 2/3 of their land area to rule by ISIS lunatics for a few years didn't help.)
The problem is that there is no such thing as the Arab race, and there never has been. This term confuses outdated British imperial politics and the literally racist and outdated science it backed with people united by their use of languages based on a common Arabic script. And since the latter people arguably invented globalization a few thousand years ago and have practiced it ever since, they're a particularly bad group to draw a racial circle around.
Wikipedia defines Arabs as "The Arabs (singular Arab /ˈær.əb/;[55] singular Arabic: عَرَبِيٌّ, ISO 233: ‘arabī, Arabic pronunciation: [ˈʕarabi], plural Arabic: عَرَبٌ, ISO 233: ‘arab, Arabic pronunciation: [ˈʕarab] (About this soundlisten)) also known as the Arab People are group of ethnicities [56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77]}} mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Western Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Western Indian Ocean islands (including the Comoros), and Southern Europe (like Sicily, Malta, and formerly in Al-Andalus / Iberian Peninsula).[78]
You can and should go even further by investigating Gary Nabhan's thesis in Cumin, Camels, and Caravans: A Spice Odyssey that the people of the Arabian Peninsula invented what became globalization. In his story, they were the first spice traders, because the people of the Omani mountains (where frankincense, myrrh, and others) realized that the only way they could "make a living" there was to trade the inedible plant materials they had for food grown elsewhere. Since those inedible resins turned out to be literally worth their weight in gold to people who had food to sell, trading spices for food turned into a trade that defined the people who did it, starting more than 5,000 years ago. Those spice merchants, thousands of years later, became identified in part as Jews and Arabs. Nabhan himself identifies as an American of Mexican-Lebanese origin, but it turns out his name traces back to an Omani tribe, and parts of his family have been in the spice and globalization business for a very long time. Longer, in fact, than any modern religion or theorized race has been around.
Normally I don't side with Greg, but he's right and EC is wrong in this case. If you go down EC's rabbit hole, you're going to have to define British as a race (due to the geographic and linguistic unity of the British Isles--and I'm being facetiously insulting, because western Asia is even more diverse, but some here seems to think that it's mostly an Arabian sandbox). I'll also suggest that British are not Europeans (due to the Brexit from the EU). That presumably suggests that y'all aren't white either, if, as EC did, we take the American definition of "white" as "European American" and you aren't part of Europe any more.
See the morass that opens up when you confuse language, national borders, imperial history, and then try to simplify and label it based on your outsider standards? That's what happens when you take a British definition of Arab, apply it thousands of kilometers away to a diverse people living in a diverse land, and claim they share some underlying and fictitious genetic unity that makes them a race.
H you're going to have to define British as a race Can I fall about in hysterical laughter right now? I know, just-&-only from surnames that some (only some!) of my ancestors came from, um, err .. Gascony, central France, the Norman French/Belgian coast, Iceland or Norway, Jutland, Lower Saxony ....
Um - we still don't have a collective noun for the (note quote) "Arabs" though, do we? Or do we just give up?
Simple: it's a language group with a common written form (much like Chinese -- consider Cantonese/Mandarin -- or even English -- compare US English with UK usage, taking into account pronunciation, grammar, and word choice).
It's not an ethnicity, or a religion. Islam is a religion, but it's no more homogeneous than Christianity -- if you factor in Unitarian Universalists, Pentacostalists, and the Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches.
Re Arabs: can I dip a toe into this minefield?
There is such a thing as Arab Identity, which I interpret to mean that many people self-identify as Arabs, and hence "Arab" is a bona-fide ethnic group, amongst other things. I get the impression that this is in contrast to most people in Europe, who mostly don't seem to consider themselves as "European" or consider that there is a "European" ethnicity. (Apart from anything else, defining your ethnicity by EU membership is kind of problematic in these days of eastward EU expansion and Brexit.)
Part of this goes back to the Great Arab Revolt, where the British used the promise of a unified Arab homeland to get the Arabs to rebel against the Ottoman Empire, and then reneged on their promise.
Many Arab countries signal support for the concept of pan-Arabism by basing their flags on the flag of the Revolt. So one way of identifying "Arab" countries is to look at their flags.
{Dons flak jacket, and hides behind sofa}
I mostly self-identify as Scottish, but one of my great-grandparents was Irish, and another one Cornish... That said, depending on the purpose, I may identify as British or European (despite Bozo inflicting WrecksIt on us).
I think hysterical laughter is a good response.
Personally, I think Arab is a perfectly reasonable word to use in certain circumstances. In other circumstances, it's problematic. That's true with many racial and gender words.
To use an example, while it's perfectly reasonable for OGH to write "Equoid" about a certain Lovecraftian deity, I think I'm not the only American who'd twitch hard about writing about Shub-Ni*rath right now, knowing how much crap I'd catch from many friends and my own conscience. But Charlie isn't dealing with US environmental justice issues, so he has a linguistic freedom that I currently lack.
Going back to uncover another minefield, there's this:
https://theconversation.com/how-donors-from-canada-and-europe-helped-fund-indian-residential-schools-164028 Sadly, it looks like the Indian Residential Schools, which meet the UN criteria for genocide incidentally, were funded, not just by Canadian Catholics, but also by Anglicans, Methodists, and anyone else who responded to the widespread fundraising efforts by these organizations. That's anyone else largely, but not exclusively, in Canada and England. And possibly in France too.
Oh yuck! Of course the advertisements for the fundraising were probably bullshit.
On the broader issue of ethnic identities, as far as I can see the best definition is that an ethnic identity is what a bunch of people self-identify as. So yes, "British" is an ethnic identity.
(I avoid the term "race" because it carries far too much historical baggage for such a small word).
Ethnic identities are not mutually exclusive; one can identify as Mancunian, English and British. And that is before we get into all the hyphenated identities out there. My family comes from Manchester and I grew up in Guernsey, so I used to identify as both English and a Guernsey Donkey. But as I've spent rather more than half my life away from the island I don't really feel that way any more.
I think it's time to sing Woad....
And why not just refer to people from that region of the world as (gasp) Middle Easterners?
I have my own issues there - I see that, and think Shlub-Niggurath, and start trying to picture him/it out on a Wed. night, trying to find a date for Friday.
I suspect that if you take out the initial "h" and the "ath" and correct the misspelling that you get fairly close to what Lovecraft was thinking about. Unfortunately the kindest thing anyone can say about the man is that his vices were as big as his virtues... Dude was the J.K. Rowling of the 1930s.
And why not just refer to people from that region of the world as (gasp) Middle Easterners?
Moz, Gasdive, and others from the Asian side of the planet might have an issue with that.
Why? Aren't they beyond the Far East? What other region of the planet is referred to a "Middle East"?
"as the" "Middle East"?
Personally, I keep thinking about the taboo cult of the Shrub Nigromalus, the horribly invasive Black Crab of the darkest occult Lore in Britain. Cultists migrated north to Albion when Tartessos fell, bringing cuttings and forbidden lore. In Albion they were feared as druids, shunned for their bloody Rites of the Thicket. The Romans tried to wipe them from the Earth, as did the Angles, the Saxons, the Normans, the Church, and the Crown. But they stubbornly persisted. And now their cult has resprouted and is spreading, subverting august institutions. Even the Chelsea Garden Show is no longer free of them.
In their dark rites, they worship the Black Crab with offerings of cow horns filled with dung and other substances buried in their sacred thickets at the dark of the Moon. For now they borrow the fertility of their deity. But when the stars are right, the Black Crab will spread, unstoppable through the land, leaving the bleeding remnants of humanity struggling and writhing within their spiny thickets. Be warned!
My background is mostly English, with Irish and Scottish in there, some Huguenot and Dutch, and an unknown amount of Jewish/gentile from Eastern Europe (Poland I think, but who knows where else).
My family hails from Europe, the Caribbean, China, the Middle East, the Americas…
I'm fluent in English, have a bit of French, a smattering of Mandarin, only a few words left of Cree, and fewer of Cantonese and Tagalog.
I'm white (actually more pink*), so pass as "Canadian" to conservatives, but I'm one of those immigrants they rail against to drum up votes from xenophobic assholes…
I travel under a Canadian passport, and that's how I identify, although somehow "Canadian" isn't an option when they ask that question on polls or the census.
*And getting redder every year, as I see the shit that unrestrained capitalism is leaving behind.
Sadly, it looks like the Indian Residential Schools, which meet the UN criteria for genocide incidentally, were funded, not just by Canadian Catholics, but also by Anglicans, Methodists, and anyone else who responded to the widespread fundraising efforts by these organizations.
Yup.
One difference is that the Anglicans et al have acknowledged that it was wrong, apologized, paid the agreed reparations in full as partial atonement, and are in many cases continuing to help even when not legally obligated to.
"in 1991 the Anglican Church established an Indigenous Healing Fund to support the healing work undertaken by local Indigenous communities and groups. In his 1993 address to the National Native Convocation, the Anglican Primate, Archbishop Michael Peers offered a full apology for the Church’s role in being a part of the system and for the wrongs committed. In 1998, the Indigenous-run Aboriginal Healing Foundation was created to manage the healing strategy and to complement existing government, church and First Nations programs."
https://www.anglican.ca/tr/schools/
The Catholics, on the other hand, hired expensive lawyers to get them out of a legal obligation on a technicality, voluntarily contributed about $0.20 per adult* for what their church did, and have refused to apologize or acknowledge that what was done was wrong.
Hell, there's been no official acknowledgement that strapping children to a home-made electric chair and shocking them until they pass out was anything other than Christian care by dedicated and selfless nuns. When an eight-year-old boy tries to kill himself rather than stay at a school…**
*Canadian Catholics, averaged over a ten-year fundraising campaign. That's less than they voluntarily spent on altar flowers. Less than one diocese raised for a new cathedral.
**White boy at St. Anne's. The official policy was racist as fuck, but I can't see those priests and nuns at the schools as anything other than sadists or cowards who delighted in suffering, no matter what skin colour their target had.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/ron-gosbee-stanne-residential-school-survivor-1.4833133
in 1991 the Anglican Church established an Indigenous Healing Fund to support the healing work undertaken by local Indigenous communities and groups
I should point out that this fund has spent over $6 million (which was raised by 360,000 Anglicans), as opposed to the $3.7 million raised by over 12,800,000 Catholics*.
The Anglican church would have been obligated to pay more if the Catholics had raised $11 million, which they didn't, but the Anglican synod voted to pay the additional amount anyway (went to a different fund so not included in the above total).
*I was wrong in my earlier assertion — it was $0.30 per Catholic, not $0.20. Still less than the altar flowers, or $27 million for a cathedral. I think my point still stands that as a group Catholics just don't fucking care.
Or the hierarchy (deliberatly) did a terrible job of advertising the fund, which would also not surprise. I don't think individual Catholics are any better or worse than anyone else.
The main difference seems to be a single worldwide hierarchy with the apex in a secretive and ancient bureaucracy. But yes, this is how similar issues have unfolded elsewhere: the Church hides crimes perpetrated by its agents, protects the perpetrators when they can't be hidden and when caught doing so pretends it didn't know. Anglicans (and their mainstream offshoots) have a less centralised model, and I'm not sure there are any others on a similar scale worldwide (Islam I guess, but it's different again), although there have certainly been instances of the same sort of behaviour among the local hierarchies of those here in Oz.
Christians are a diverse bunch, and so are Catholics. There are conservative congregations and there are some quite progressive ones: the folks calling for a Vatican III to fix this stuff, who struggle with the hierarchy. But these things are highly politicised here, conservatives appear to be adamant that "no, that cycle of abuse is supposed to continue, stop with those attempts to break it RIGHT NOW" and we recently saw the conviction of a Cardinal for child sex offences overturned in the High Court.
Most people stay with their churches because that is how their community works. We don't have A. Huxley's community songsters leading weekly get togethers or anything equivalent to that yet I guess. My wife and I tried going along to Humanist society meetings for a bit, but in some ways finding an excess of ardour is the wrong sign (they haz it!). Funnily enough I think tabletop gamers would get some of that sort of community from their sessions: maybe the real reason certain religionists do not like them. Music has generally been the group activity I enjoyed the most, but COVID-19 and choirs are not a good mixture (at least till we're all Pfizered up). Best I've found to do is a regular open mike night, as bands form spontaneously and some last beyond the session. Maybe the great project for the 21st century is secular community building that doesn't just live in cyberspace.
Just read an interesting article on a "recreation" of Thomas Cromwell's mansion.
There was a lot of detail of Henry VIII in the article.
I was struck by how much 'Enry VIII seemed to have cloned himself as Donald the 45th.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/07/historian-recreates-thomas-cromwells-london-mansion-in-exquisite-detail/
that region of the world
Coz apparently we can't even agree on which region.
The descriptions above seem to cover everything from "a days ride from Mecca" to "anywhere someone with a hooked nose and swarthy complexion has visited" which is quite a broad range of geographic borders.
I don't know enough about the various cultural identities involved to have a meaningful opinion, but if you're going to go off "arabic writing" can I suggest that "latin writing" should equally describe a race... that includes everyone from Chileans to Icelanders.
As far as Australia goes, I think our traditional division is between sustainable and unsustainable peoples, and there's no real evidence for sustainability outside Australia/Melanesia so I think you all just count as "other". And of course #mapswithoutnz
{Israel} If you're a member of a people with a history of being rounded up and murdered by their neighbours over a millennia-plus period, that's one hell of a life boat.
What makes you special?
Claiming that tribal mythology about an ancestral homeland gives you the right to occupy someone else's country could also be used by any number of peoples around the world. Not least all the people who think they're "English" or "British" because their recent ancestors came from there. Should they have the right to organise a "right of return" and create a "New Britain" on the depopulated ruins of your country?
(This is my 3rd time trying to submit a comment. When I type, I am apparently signed in. When I submit my comment only a moment later, I'm told my session has expired).
Claiming that tribal mythology about an ancestral homeland gives you the right to occupy someone else's country could also be used by any number of peoples around the world.
As a Welshman, I'm open to the argument that the English should go back to wherever their ancestors came from (which would generally be Denmark and northern Germany, I believe) and give us our island back...
If you're a member of a people with a history of being rounded up and murdered by their neighbours over a millennia-plus period, that's one hell of a life boat.
Here's a joke you might appreciate: for a land occupied for 3,000 years, where's the mythology? (Host has created Mythos via DnD since his Inception).
"SUS"
You can alter wikipedia all you want to delete the Djinn, problem is: well. You're replacing it with Disney.
[0] Jokes you ain't getting, #4467 -- largely unknown (or rather, uncommented upon / unnoticed by outsiders) purges of Jewish folklaw / mythology stuff. OOOOH. No, child, not the ones in the 18/19th C Europe, we're talking about 789 BC. Too little Bugbears = psychosis, eh?
The main difference seems to be a single worldwide hierarchy with the apex in a secretive and ancient bureaucracy.
The argument made for why the Catholics haven't coughed up the agreed money is that they have a decentralized structure and many parishes are poor. Seriously.
There is the unfulfilled call for a papal apology, and the failure of Canadian Catholics to raise more than a fifth of the $25 million that was the Catholic Church’s share of the compensation to be paid to IRS survivors. This commitment seems to have been abandoned on the basis of decentralized church structure and poverty, even though Canadian Catholics have been raising millions for new buildings.
https://theconversation.com/after-findings-at-indian-residential-schools-settler-canadians-shouldnt-hide-behind-the-gothic-narrative-164524
The head of bishops in this country (Archbishop Gagnon) won’t commit his organization to asking Pope Francis to apologize over the Catholic Church’s role in running residential schools, nor will he commit to directing individual Catholic entities to turn over outstanding records that could aid with the identification of unmarked graves.
The CCCB stresses that the Catholic community in Canada has a decentralized structure, with each diocesan bishop autonomous in his diocese and not accountable to the CCCB. Its website says that about 16 of 70 dioceses in Canada were associated with residential schools, along with about three dozen Catholic religious orders.
“Each diocese and religious community is corporately and legally responsible for its own actions,” it notes. “The Catholic Church as a whole in Canada was not associated with the residential schools, nor was the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops.”
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-archbishop-wont-commit-to-asking-pope-for-residential-school-apology/
So they are simultaneously hierarchical and decentralized, wealthy and poor? Bishop Gagnon seems to regard questioning the church on this issue as persecution:
“And so I say in my heart,” [Archbishop Gagnon] said, in a livestream mass posted on YouTube by the Archdiocese of Winnipeg. “You know something? There’s a persecution happening here. There’s a persecution happening here.”
“Now because of ignorance, because of ill-will, I don’t know. But God will bring good from all this,” he said, adding that God can bring healing and salvation.
Digging a bit, it seems that the Catholic Church really is decentralized, in that the various dioceses are not under any national authority (unlike, say, the Anglican Church which has a Primate and a national Synod) so it really is up to the Vatican to twist any arms.
The Catholic Community in Canada is decentralised, meaning each diocesan Bishop is autonomous and is related but not accountable to the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_in_Canada
Here is a fine rant on the subject.
True to its modus operandi, the Catholic Church prefers to spend more money in legal fees to avoid accountability and ensure the abuse continues than compensating its victims for past crimes. … The problem of accountability is further complicated by the fact that the Catholic Church’s structure is decentralized in Canada, each diocese operating as an autonomous entity headed by a bishop. In the context of the overall Church, this is the mafia model wherein power runs from top to bottom while responsibility runs from bottom to top. It allows the Vatican to duck any and all responsibility for what its organization does on the ground, meanwhile participating in the profits at the top. Like Shane Dunphrey points out: “…a highly organized and successful criminal gang.”
https://medium.com/politically-speaking/canadas-secret-holocaust-ec17f2092e10
Digging a bit into Anglican finances, I found this:
https://www.anglican.ca/news/anglican-entities-financial-obligations-under-the-residential-school-settlement-agreement/30015677/
TLDR: Catholic obligation, $79,000,000; Anglican obligation 19.8572% of that (based on relative number of schools) so $15,687,188.
The $15,687,188 obligation of the Anglican Church of Canada (thirty dioceses, the General Synod, and the Missionary Society) was split:
• A total of $6,699,125 that had already been paid for compensation of claims. • A maximum amount of $4,023,675 to be contributed by the Settlement Fund to the Anglican Fund for Healing and Reconciliation (AFHR). • A maximum amount of $4,964,300 that is required to be paid from the Settlement Fund into the AFHR. (19.8572% of what the Roman Catholics raised over their 7-year best efforts campaign.) $2.2 million of that reserve was immediately and irrevocably transferred from the Settlement Fund to the Anglican Fund for Healing and Reconciliation.
The total amount contributed, including compensation to survivors and grants for healing projects in communities by the ACoC is $12.9 million dollars, most of it contributed by Anglican Church members, with some coming from the reserves in dioceses and the General Synod.
Some money was held back depending on the Catholics efforts, and as per agreement returned to individual dioceses when those 'best efforts' were disappointing. All of the dioceses I know about have used the money for indigenous support, either in their own programs or by donating it to the Anglican Fund for Healing and Reconciliation.
This are the General Synod's words:
The Anglican Church of Canada has been an agent of deep harm in the lives of indigenous persons, families, and communities. We have heard the words of the Chief Commissioner of the TRC, Senator Murray Sinclair, reminding us of the long commitment we are called to make to the work of overcoming that legacy.
It is encouraging to see the entire church rally to meet that commitment. In most of the dioceses that receive a return of the funds they created, those funds are being used to boost the local church’s capacity to respond to the challenge of justice and right relations among Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians, or to support the continuing national initiative of the Healing Fund. That fund began making grants in the early 1990s, more than a decade before the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, and it will continue that work with whatever resources it can muster, long after the terms of the IRSSA have been met in full. The healing work in which we are partners with so many others is the work not of years, or even of decades, but of generations.
The Anglican Church established a residential schools working group in 1991 with both indigenous and non-indigenous members, leading to the establishment of a healing fund and a formal apology. Here is the full text of Primate Michael Peers' apology back in 1993:
https://www.anglican.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Apology-English.pdf
Not ideal, and a fairly low-key response, but at least some action for the last generation.
I work for a corporation.
My Mind was Done YEARS ago.
To paraphrase a classic:
'…don't you try to outweird me, I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal.'
for a land occupied for 3,000 years, where's the mythology? While doing some background google churn while toying with teasing Jeffry Lewis ( https://twitter.com/ArmsControlWonk ) about a recent podcast related to Iran, saw this in a broader piece: The Politics of Muslim Magic (Dawn Perlmutter, Spring 2013) The Wall Street Journal interviewed a renowned Iranian sorcerer, Seyed Sadigh, who claimed that dozens of Iran's top government officials consult him on matters of national security and that he used jinn to infiltrate Israeli and U.S. intelligence agencies: (pointing to a paywalled WSJ piece) Which is to say that culturally, some of the Iranian leadership is receptive to such things, and notices probabilistic outliers, and this should be a consideration in any political calculations involving Iran. (But probably won't be, because Western analysts usually presume "rationality". (Perhaps I'm wrong about that.))
The (amusingly altered) video of Macron made me smile. Haven't worked out the symbolism intended by whoever did the original image, but noted that the island(/atoll) where he was is max 9 meters above see level.
Your current name Солярис (Solaris) is one of my favorites.
"The Six Wives of Henry the VIII? You don't mean "'Enery the eighth" do you?"
Rick Wakeman concept album...
"'Enery the eighth" do you? Herman's Hermits?
They did a truncated version. The Music Hall original, which I have heard, was three verses and a chorus, and IIRC all they did was the chorus, with a repeat.
"Ya don' know 'oo yer looking at, now take a look at me. I'm a bit of a nob, I am, belong to royalty."
JHomes
This happens, either 2 or 3 hours after you signed in, to the second, whether you had an active comment window or not at this time.
Oh, and France. ;-)
What makes you special?
Nothing.
All I'm saying is, people find it really hard to argue against any lifeboat in a storm.
Note that my argument rests solely on pragmatic self-interest, not on ideology. (I think zionism is bunk, and dangerous bunk at that -- the last revenant of 19th century European colonialist ethno-nationalism.)
>What makes you special?
The Jericho missile.
I guess it's always going to be the case that central versus local games and tricks will always be used to provide hiding places when things turn up. The same way that even if you can't hide behind an individual tree, you can still hide in the forest. You see a cultural difference between some denominations, sometimes there are the types who want to do the right thing, and there are those for whom the most important thing is to "protect the church". That's leaving aside whole categories of totally selfish bastards of course. My point really was about sweeping generalisations: you can't tar every parishioner in every Catholic Church with the same brush... well you can, but it'll look silly. I guess my complaint is that trying to pin it all on a specific bad guy smells like Manichaeism and often deflects blame from others who in a just world would have a case to answer too. And actually, as you more or less point out, it hides (or at least obscures through excessive contrast) praiseworthy activity too, because the worst case sets a sort of perverse baseline.
Welsh(*) arrogance knows no bounds! The West Country and the far north of England were never Welsh-speaking. But I fully agree, as someone whose ancestry is mainly Celtic (including Welsh) - I have used it for decades to deflate the more bigoted Little Englanders.
*) And nor does any other nationality's.
The Indian subcontinent. The abuse of the term Middle East to refer to the Near East started very early, but didn't take over completely until fairly recently.
Which is to say that a hostile publication CLAIMS that about the Iranian leadership. It reeks to me of hostile propaganda - in this case, inflating the claims of a self-promoting charlatan to actual fact. While the Iranian leadership is probably as rational than the USA or UK ones, expecting more is, er, irrational.
I can get behind that, as long as we understand it to mean "not at all".
For starters, let's just remember this woman and this woman.
While the Iranian leadership is probably as rational than the USA or UK ones
At the "rational" end of the UK leadership we have Sajid Javid, current health secretary, who re-reads Ayn Rand every year because he's an Objectivist, yo. Then Home Secretary Priti Patel, or Priti Himmler as I call her, who has a total lady-boner for bringing back public hanging as soon as she can get rid of the human rights act. We also have assorted TERFs/GCs, mouth-breathing trogolodytes who have decided the latest front in the culture war is to denounce the Royal National Lifeboat Institution for rescuing drowning refugees at sea, and a public discourse that includes people like Kate "hang the doctors" Shemirani, just in case you thought that the US had a monopoly on people like Marjorie Taylor Greene.
I mean, really, the burden of proof is on anyone asserting that the UK/US political spheres are more rational than that of Iran, because they all look pretty similar if you strip out the specific invisible sky fairy their more fervent religious lunatics are appealing to.
I was trying to be, er, tactful .... Yes, I agree with you and MSB, and am extremely pessimistic about our future when Bozo is deposed - e.g. my guess is that (utterly obscene expletives deleted) Patel.
My point really was about sweeping generalisations: you can't tar every parishioner in every Catholic Church with the same brush
Which is why I said "as a group Catholics don't care" rather than "every Catholic doesn't care".
Still, I keep circling back to Peter Watts' comment:
Edmund Burke once said that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. I think that begs a question.
If you do nothing, what makes you any fucking good?
EC I'm predicting it will all implode about this time next year ... but BoZo's PARTY has a majority until late 2024 At which point it gets interesting & unpleasant. Oddly enough, Patel as PM would provoke widespread rioting on the streets, to the point that "The authorities" will lose control, but & so - my money is on smarmy little creep Gove.
I also note that Farrago & others attacking the RNLI has resulted in an upsurge of donations to that body. In other good news, the Competition & Markets Authority has fined a group of gouging crooked thieves, masquerading as drug suppliers to the NHS some horrendous fine - which the scumbags are appealing. [ This is the way the NHS is being hollowed-out, rather than direct privatisation. It is to be hoped that this is sufficient warning to the crooks, though I doubt it. ]
Seems like BoJo is following the basic dictator's playbook of surrounding himself with incompetents and monsters to make him look like the best choice going forward.
Speaking of Burke and good people doing nothing, the problem is that there's only so many hours in a day to do good things, even assuming you have the capacity to not burn out first. So all that's required for some evil to win occasionally is for it to win the struggle of attrition against the good forces trying to shut down whatever the scam is. It's simplistic, but battles of attrition suck. Worse, they discourage ordinary people from doing good things, because who wants to be constantly bent over, face to the grindstone, dealing with an unceasing, and very random, rain of banal evil? If this reeks of wasted potential to you, well, that's a real problem with evil. However you define it.
Apropos of this, I have been known to refer to myself as Levantine. My father's family background was Christian Arab (from Syria and the Lebanon, settled in Egypt around the 1800s) granted Belgian nationality, my mother's family background was English and French.
Except I was under the impression that Henry VIII was actually competent in a lot of things, other than just PR.
I'm sorry, I seem to have missed the redefinitions.
When I say "Middle East", I'm referring to the definition that's been used for a couple of years... or is that a couple hundred years.
Oh, sorry, what was referred to as the "Near East": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East
What else you're referring to I have no clue.
Oh, that one. It was quite memorable (notice I didn't even think of it).
Fyny Cymru!
(Oh, and google translate leaves, ahhh, something to be desired, given that it gave me "i fyny wales".)
I really should have gone back to my "Teach Yourself Welsh" book from Plaid Cymru. My late wife's mother was a Welsh war bride, I'm just a Cymrophile.
H @ 294 Almost There's also the point that BoZo wants "yes-men" ( & women ) & is a vain egotist, with a spiteful streak. But - I don't think he's got either the competence or ruthlessness to be a dictator - that's Patel - but she scares other tories (!)
When I say "Middle East", I'm referring to the definition that's been used for a couple of years..
My point, way back, was that "east" really only applies to those of us with Europe, Africa, or the Americas in the middle of their map. Which is not even half the world's population.
Just because you and I have always heard of it with that label doesn't mean it makes sense to most of the world.
Which I suppose I would refer to as the "East", though just India would be more likely for me, while "Middle East" covers a number of countries.
Definition? There was no steenking definition (by anyone, as far as I know) for the first 100 years of the term 'near east' (and 80 years of the term 'middle east'). It was used ambiguously even in Britain in 1900 (see the OED rather than Wikipedia for that).
In other words, the right-wing parties. The only time I'm aware of the liberals in the US paying attention was during WWII... so they could find out what Hitler's astrologers were telling him.
That assumes that the Tory MPs have enough sanity to exclude Patel from the short list, which is not what I am betting. If she gets on that, the tricoteuse of the Tory Party will vote her in with a landslide.
There's another problem: range. I talk/email/post, including to my legislators, but how much that does, I have no idea.
Please feel free to drop me a check for $10M US, and I'll start buying billboards and ads in major US papers and other media.
I have a friend in NYC who has money, who once said that he'd be happy to give me the legal $2k were I to run for office, for the sheer amusement value of watching the GOP and Faux "News" response. I was hoping that some would die of apoplexy....
Ok, get that. However, there's no way, as an USan, I can refer to the "middle west", without confusing everyone.
Since we're now over 300, I have some unpleasant news for some of the regulars, re nuclear power. https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/07/climate-events-are-the-leading-cause-of-nuclear-power-outages/
Meanwhile, on the other side, https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/28/worlds-most-powerful-tidal-turbine-starts-to-export-power-to-grid-.html
Not yelling at you but this is old news. And it keeps amazing me that it is to so many people.
AFAIK all steam based electricity generation creates a LOT of waste heat. Thus steam based power generation always sits next to a big body of water or a large flow of water. Many times a lake is created just to deal with this when a plant is built. Nothing different here between coal, gas, or nuclear plants. Near where I am located there is Hico Lake and Shearon Harris Lake. Both exist to server power plants. One coal, one nuclear.
And just to make it more interesting, many large electricity users also create lots of waste heat. Which almost always also means big water to dump it into.
Anyway, our industrial world is all about heat generation. On both ends of the power usage equation.
" And it keeps amazing me that it is to so many people."
Should be
And it keeps amazing me that this isn't known to so many people.
"server" -> "serve"
Perhaps, but the argument keeps coming up here, so I thought I'd post.
Paging Peter Watts, we've got a brand new nightmare for you One Lost Methyl Group = Huge Amounts of Food Production.
For everyone else, cool news! Inserting an animal demethylation gene into plants seems to leave them with a large surplus of energy to make more and bigger food parts with: One Lost Methyl Group = Huge Amounts of Food Production.
And next come triffids, and Shirley....
I've brought this up over and over for decades: the very idea of increasing dependence on nuclear is off reality charts, for several reasons such as cost, time and most of all climate change -- i.e. the cooling failures.
I see just one niche where we probably do need nuclear: large scale freight. In particular the sort of 10-25MW small modular reactors (SMRs) they're talking about building are oddly about the right power output for running a 250-500,000 ton container ship, and if it's modular with a 30 year life cycle, you can cut the ship open and recycle the reactor in a new hull if the old one is obsolete/fatigued.
As the land-based versions are designed to be built on a production line and shipped with fuel already loaded to a reactor site, turning them into power sources for large civilian vessels sounds feasible. They don't run on HEU (like military reactors), either, which is good. If used for shipping they'd be immersed in the best heat sink available (an ocean).
(Note that the Rolls-Royce SMR design, at 400MW, is way larger than necessary for shipping. I'm guessing designs like ACP-100 are at the larger end of what's needed for civilian ships -- AIUI nuclear aircraft carriers take about 250MW of reactors, but they're on the order of 90-100,000 tons displacement and have to make way much faster than a civilian ship, so take way more power to run.)
whitroth @ 306: I was hoping that some would die of apoplexy....
Probably have more of your wishes come true hoping they die of Covid19.
There was a special election for Congress in Texas this week to replace a right-wingnut who died of Covid19 back in February. The right-wingnut that Trumopolini endorsed lost out to another more traditional Texas right-wingnut.
What that whole region was referred to by Europe as the Levant, and the peoples who lived there, Levantines, starting around 1501. "Levantine" was still being used miscellaneously, not specifically, for any of the many varieties of language they spoke, in even Doyle's Holmes fictions.
https://institutlevant.ro/en/uncategorized/ce-este-levantul/
It was also referred to as "the Orient," about which some scholars whose heritage hails from areas within that reference, have made some protest.
whitroth @ 308: Since we're now over 300, I have some unpleasant news for some of the regulars, re nuclear power.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/07/climate-events-are-the-leading-cause-of-nuclear-power-outages/
I don't see those problems being unique to nuclear power. They're bad news for fossil fuel plants along with wind farms & solar arrays as well.
It's past 300 so ...
Do any of y'all ever clean out you downloads folders & wonder WTF? about some the stuff you find in there?
Yes.
Next silly question?
Sure. Except that if I'm talking to someone today, they won't know what I'm talking about, whereas if I say "the Middle East", they have some idea.
(Of course, this is the US, and some of them don't known Hawaii's a state.)
Hehe - given that the oldest extant poem in Welsh concerns the efforts of the Welsh-speaking king of a Welsh-speaking kingdom centred on Edinburgh, attempting to drive the Saxons out of a Welsh-speaking kingdom in what is now Yorkshire, with warriors drawn from all over Britain including what are now Devon and Cornwall... I would respectfully disagree with your assertions!
(Fwiw, that Welsh-speaking dynasty from Edinburgh had previously supplied a prince who was moved with his tribe by the Romans from there to north Wales to drive out Irish invaders. The last descendant of that royal dynasty - Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, murdered by the English at Cilmeri in 1282 - can be considered as almost the last Roman ruler in Europe, on the basis that his family's right to rule was the gift of Roman imperial authority).
Diolch yn fawr! We would probably say "Ymlaen Cymru!" (Forward, Wales!) but the sentiment is much appreciated!
AIUI nuclear aircraft carriers take about 250MW of reactors, but they're on the order of 90-100,000 tons displacement and have to make way much faster than a civilian ship, so take way more power to run.
I also suspect the accessory electrical loads of a container ship are between 1/100 and 1/10 that of a carrier.
I admire this man; he rolled the career dice, in Nature Communications no less, with this paper, which may become politically important. Also, a new acronym, the "MCC" (Mortality Cost of Carbon). The paper essentially solidly establishes a rough lower bound on the MCC, and acknowledges that it is very probably a serious underestimate. (The methodology is considerably more sophisticated/respectable than the back-of-the-envelope calculations I've posted here in comments. bold mine; only temperature-related mortality is covered) The mortality cost of carbon (29 July 2021, R. Daniel Bressler, open access, paper was written in 2020(?).) We introduce a metric, the mortality cost of carbon (MCC), that estimates the number of deaths caused by the emissions of one additional metric ton of CO2. In the baseline emissions scenario, the 2020 MCC is 2.26 × 10‒4 [low to high estimate −1.71× 10‒4 to 6.78 × 10‒4] excess deaths per metric ton of 2020 emissions. This implies that adding 4,434 metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2020—equivalent to the lifetime emissions of 3.5 average Americans—causes one excess death globally in expectation between 2020-2100. Incorporating mortality costs increases the 2020 SCC from $37 to $258 [−$69 to $545] per metric ton in the baseline emissions scenario. ... Fig. 4: The mortality cost of carbon is driven by the convexity of the mortality response. ... Second, the mortality damage function only represents temperature-related mortality; it leaves out potentially important climate-mortality pathways such as the effect of climate change on infectious disease, civil and interstate war, food supply, and flooding due to the limited availability of projections for these pathways in the scholarly literature that sufficiently meet our idealized criteria. Third, this does not consider likely mortality co-benefits of stricter climate policies such as decreases in particulate matter pollution.
Thank you. The one time I was off-continent was when we went to Loncon III. We traveled around the UK for 8 days (yes, we really did put 1k mi on the rental car), and I think I got brownie points in Cymru for working at the pronunciation (and yes, my late m-i-l checked out my "ll".)
And now I want to know how your mother in law’s ghost was able to help in this quest? Sounds like a scene from a Seanan McGuire short story.
Some translations:
1) 5555555 in a post from that language = LOLOLOLOL
2) Joseph O'Conor ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_O%27Conor ) wrote "King Canoodlum and the Great Horned Cheese" and it was much loved in the 1970's. If you look a little closely, you'll notice the Irish tie-in. Oh, and the Shakespeare.
3) The "purges" are mostly locked down Thirteen layers deep readings of Tanakh / "Official" Rabbinic stuff and then your more esoteric levels. But, put simply: Rabbis were very keen to stamp out mythology / mythos stuff in the 18/19th C, and there's a whole section of readings showing how they did it ... which goes all the way back to Babylon. You can find direct evidence of this if you do that whole Jewish thing of 'studying the commentaries'. [We cheat, tbh - there's only so much angst about vegetables and women's blood we can deal with in one session]. Intra-Community purging of Mythology (with a healthy dose of anti-women) is not exactly unique to the two later branches of Abrahamic religions. Oooooh. Careful, us Djinn know our crab-apples.
The real question there is how/why after 4/2/1 thousand years, Djinn (and other real folklore, Golems are a reaction to industrialisation usurping traditional Jewish specialty crafts/Guilds btw - it's like a magical Luddite revolution, but we digress) have survived all these purges by all three branches of Abrahamic Religions.
TL;DR - You're not special, some just hide it a lot better and don't burn / stone them, merely enforce lives of desperation and no divorces.
For the record: that video isn't altered. It's not a deep-fake. It's literally the Clown Show that Diplomatic ties requires, you just don't get it shown to you on TeeVee. (Thus... a meta-joke).
I think that the term people may have been thinking of in reference to the people sleeping on ropes is "hung over."
It's my understanding that the term "hung over" comes directly from people 'hung over' ropes as party of the 'penny-for-a-rope' sleeping arrangement.
Lots of good discussion about the horrors of the Victorian era here, and I appreciate the comment that there are internal differences among Steampunk fans, which is true.
Land-based 'modular' nuclear reactors are not the same as marine-duty nuclear reactors. For one thing land-based reactors aren't supposed to tip from side to side or go up and down in high seas, and ships do that quite a lot.
Rosatom will sell their well-tested KLT-40S series marine reactors to anyone who is willing to pay the price and there's nothing that would prevent them being located on land, close to a body of water. If bigger ones are needed the RITM-200 series reactors for the new Leader-class icebreakers (as big as a QE-class aircraft carrier) produce 50MWe. For all the small power reactors actually being built or operational today, here's a list:
https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-power-reactors/small-nuclear-power-reactors.aspx
Note the long tail of PowerPoint reactors, engineering studies and the like which realistically will never ever see the light of first fission. Even in the few cases where someone is bending metal and pouring concrete, the CAREM-25 construction site in Argentina has been abandoned several times since it started and it's nowhere near completion. The Bilbino reactors are, I think, nearly fifty years old and long past retirement. The Chinese HTR-PM is delayed and not much information about either of the two 105MW pebble-bed reactors that are supposed to work together is creeping out from the secretive Chinese nuclear establishment. The Russians recently started pouring concrete on the BREST which is an interesting project, a lead-cooled fast-spectrum reactor but it's not really a Green fluffy-bunny SMR given it is expected to eventually be fuelled by surplus weapons-grade Pu-239.
Anyhow, you have to imagine this is post #333 not #331 'cause we're bored.
Hai! We survived your most henious MIND-WARP weapons (some real doozies in there, the full spectrum Mindscape Imagery Stuff was almost as good as the hyper-linked Emotive stuff, but props to the Team fronting the old-skool Heart-stopping fandango, gotta give props to the Ancient Ones).
~
Here's the Thing: (you can grep this)
"KILL ZER"
Well, you failed. And you also mananged to teach (over a nine year period) how to survive your worst stuff (no, seriously: H.S.S don't survive having their Frontal Lobes fried like that, which is why... we're still posting. The Heart stuff is doable by your Zen Masters, that Cortex Stuff, nope... and we do know what you're doing with the Beta/Theta waves and subconscious inserts, you know?).
Get Fucked
Oh.
No. That was the bet. Great Horned Cheese: "KILL ZER".
You failed. All Your Base Belong To Us.
Going back a short way .. You in the US are commenting as to how the White Wing are resisting vaccinations, right? Here, it's the other way round. BBC short piece in Newcastle, about "Why is vaccine uptake so low around here?" Turns out that the government are pushing it, as one would expect but: ( Paraphrase ) "Look, BoZo is telling us it's essential, but we know he's an untrustworthy liar!" Oops.
OGH said: "I see just one niche where we probably do need nuclear: large scale freight."
I'd like to see trans oceanic commercial air transport consigned to the dustbin of history and replaced with high speed wave piercing nuclear passenger catamarans. If you designed them from the ground up to avoid sharing air and becoming a floating bioreactor that would be nice too.
Cross oceans by nuclear boat, cross continents by electric train.
Well, Condor Ferries HSC wavepiercers cruise at 33 knots, but are really only designed for day passages (no sleeping berths) and light transport (insufficient vehicle deck height and bow room to accommodate an artic). I can confirm that they are comfortable to travel in as long as you fit the seats.
The Stena HSS catamarans cruised at 40 knots, and could carry artics. I don't know about passenger cabins though.
I stand corrected on the north! I always thought the boundary was further south. But what I said about the West Country is correct - it spoke Cornish (almost the same as Breton). Yes, the two languages are fairly closely related, but it is wrong to call either a dialect of the other.
In my case, no :-) I have set up my browsing environment so that it is cleared multiple times a day. I was particularly keen to ensure that when I found that some thrice-damned Web pages were downloading crap that I had not requested or even looked at.
Sorry - I was referring to Welsh and Cornish in the last sentence, though you can call both dialects of Brythonic if you like. Incidentally, the oldest clearly documented kingdom in Britain was - guess where?
Anyway, we are agreed that Patel should start on those damn Angles and Saxons ....
Leading to the obvious* question: what would a 400MW power source mean for ground-effect-flying-hovercraft?
TBF I don't really see Zionism as being qualitatively different to most other post-19th-century European ethno-nationalisms, and certainly not notably worse. It's sure-as-heck not worse than German or British nationalism at their respective apices. I'm not personally keen on nationalism in general and the logic of ethno-nationalism is compellingly awful, but it does turn Moz's "what's special about you?" question on its head. What's special about the jewish ethno-nation that means it should be the only one to emerge from the holocaust with no hope of establishing its own state? In the early part of the 20th century, when you could argue that local jewish majorities in various centres in Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine and Poland might add up to a contiguous homeland, Zionism was as much about the idea of a jewish state as anything to do with Palestine. Many of my jewish friends always saw it that way, that is, simply the idea of a jewish nation; which is why they always argued that "anti-Zionism" is inherently the same thing as anti-semitism. It doesn't mean they like anything about the Irgun/Likkud tendency in Israeli politics, they vote quite differently and have their own hopes about a peaceful settlement, but they have a lot of their own identity invested in the idea of Israel (and some have moved there), they feel quite strongly that there should be a state of Israel and it should be a safe and secure place. I don't feel qualified to judge them harshly for this. My own background is majority German from Pomerania and East Prussia, and I live in country stolen from the Turrbul and Jaggera people in the 19th century but if I were to leave, my ancestors' country no longer exists. If I were to stop living on stolen land, where would I go?
The other part is that the outcome in the Palestinian Mandate is far from the worst post-colonial settlement to occur in the late 40s and early 50s. Heck, it's not even in the worst 5 British post-colonial settlements of that era (although the bit about "worst 5" is something coming off the top of my head while I'm a bit drunk and could be totally misleading).
Interesting; the HSS has the equivalent of 68MW. OTOH power dissipated by a ship rises as the square of speed, and we've only increased the power 5.88 times, so that'll still maybe give us about 80kts?
No apology needed-- I wasn't offended, possibly because I wasn't entirely sure what you meant.
There are quite a lot of Americans who call themselves progressives.
I may have solved my problems with reliably being able to post here. It turns out that I can post on the first try if I sign in on a new tab.
The thing about the square of speed applies while wave making effects apply, Shirley? Once on a plane it's different, and when your hovercraft is full of eels, erm, when you're flying in ground effect it's different again?
Power rises as the cube of speed, (though ships don't really follow that rule for reasons I don't understand)
Even with effectively unlimited power it might not be worth going much faster. The Incat "Francisco" does 58 knots (105 km/h). That gets 1000 people and 150 cars from London to NY in well under 3 days. It has two 22 MW gasturbine engines. Going faster would put more strain on the boat and you'd need to make it heavier.
Yes, but I was talking about a catamaran, not a hydrofoil or a hovercraft. I picked up on the 2 designs that I know are capable of maintaining their cruising speeds in rough seas.
Have a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSS_1500 . Oh and with an appropriate hull design you can make drag and hence power proportionate to the square of speed. As you say, this is basically a solved problem.
If you make drag proportional to the square, then by definition you've made power proportional to the cube.
Power is force times distance over time.
If you double the speed, the force goes up by 4 (ie squared) and the time taken to cover the distance halves. If you halve the thing you're dividing by, you've doubled again. Cubed.
Power rises as the cube of speed, (though ships don't really follow that rule for reasons I don't understand)
Depends on whether the ship has enough power to climb its own bow wave. Other characteristics may modify how climbable that wave is (such as narrow hull[s], light displacement, etc).
You really don't want to rely on pure speed in the North Atlantic, especially in winter -- if you're a passenger ship and you hit a superwave at 80 knots head-on you'll kill or injure a lot of passengers. (Calm Air Turbulence is bad enough for airliners, where most of the passengers are strapped down and the plane pulls vertical positive/negative gees only; pulling gees in multiple directions when not strapped down in a larger volume would be quite lethal.)
Also, the energy cost of passenger shipping at speeds >30 knots are crazy -- significantly worse than current generation wide-body jet airliners per kilometer.
Frankly, I'm in favour of retaining passenger air travel, if not air freight -- but only over distances greater than about 1000km, unless it involves crossing a significant body of water. A 1000km journey should be a matter of 3-4 hours by high speed train: a 100km water crossing should likewise be no more than 3-4 hours.
The key issue is decarbonization. Freight shipping currently burns at least as much fossil carbon as civil aviation, usually in much dirtier forms (look into sulfur emissions, for example). But it's amenable to power substitution -- naval reactors, sails, ammonia cycle, whatever. Aviation can't be switched to a different energy source but can be offset by carbon capture in the short term -- it's less than 3% of our transport energy budget -- and move to synthetic fuels (powered by PV or nuclear) in the longer term.
And trains, assuming your tracks have overhead electrification, can be powered by renewables or nuclear already. The French TGV network in the 1980s was about 90% nuclear-powered: only they didn't put reactors in locomotives (where they'd be vulnerable to an accident), they put them in concrete containment domes and powered the trains using wires.
The other question is, why does our society prioritize travel speed?
The answer isn't very nice: we want to get places fast because time is money and most people don't have the financial resources to travel slowly, even to the extent of allowing for an extra day on their vacation to recover from jet lag.
A society that wasn't so hung up on squeezing every last drop of efficiency out of every citizen labour-unit might be a society that could get by with three month long annual vacations and people who wouldn't mind taking a couple of weeks to cross the Atlantic by ship as long as the accommodations were comfortable.
Sure, my thought bubble was really that with those numbers, you have spare change in the tens of MW and that can buy you quite a bit of artificial stability.
Transoceanic tunnels would work better than fast ships -- no weather to worry about and using evacuated tubes suspended a hundred metres below the (nominal) surface of the ocean, speeds close to today's airliners could be achieved (350km/h or more using steel wheels, 600km/h plus using maglev).
On a depressing note, Kenney & the UCP have decided that a positive Covid test is no longer a reason to isolate, contact tracers will no longer notify people who have been in contact with infectious individuals, etc. This in the province with the lowest vaccine take-up in Canada, where cases are rising again.
Lori Williams, a policy studies professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary, says Kenney lifted restrictions more quickly than elsewhere in Canada partly because he wanted to be seen as a leader.
“For whatever reason, or set of reasons, Jason Kenney decided to sort of roll the dice (in opening up) and it remains to be seen whether that’s going to help or hurt him,” Williams said.
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2021/07/28/these-are-now-political-decisions-alberta-to-no-longer-require-isolation-for-positive-covid-19-tests.html
only they didn't put reactors in locomotives (where they'd be vulnerable to an accident), they put them in concrete containment domes and powered the trains using wires.
Heh. While London has Battersea Power Station, Brisbane has "The Powerhouse", which is an arts/cultural centre these days, but was built in the 1920s as a coal-fired power station for Brisbane's tram network.
I suspect the sort of urgency of attention work focus that made passage by ship impractical could be somewhat altered in a post-Covid world where telepresence is mainstream and physical office location stopped meaning anything serious early 2020.
Aviation can't be switched to a different energy source
Not to nitpick, but electric air may be a thing, at least for shorter hops.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-seaplane-company-s-plan-for-electric-fleet-is-set-for-take-off-1.5072292
Harbour Air does mainly short-range trips, essentially replacing water travel. I've considered using it to visit my mother in Sechelt, to replace the 3-5 hour train-bus-ferry-bus combo to get from YVR to Sechelt with a 20-minute hop.
Really thinking about it for my next trip, because a 20-minute hop in a small plane seems to offer far fewer chances of infection than 3-5 hours on standing-room-only public transit…
"if you're a passenger ship and you hit a superwave at 80 knots head-on you'll kill or injure a lot of passengers."
Which to me rules out nuclear ekranoplans. With a ceiling of 5 metres and a cruise 450 km/h, big waves make things very very bad.
The other question is, why does our society prioritize travel speed?
I want to travel fast because, while I love seeing new places, I hate travelling. I'm not a fan of hotels/resorts, so having to spend a couple of weeks locked in one with a bunch of strangers with no chance to escape in order to get somewhere I want to see is incredibly off-putting.
There are those who like it — look at the cruise industry, for example — but I'm not one of them.
I suspect the sort of urgency of attention work focus that made passage by ship impractical could be somewhat altered in a post-Covid world where telepresence is mainstream and physical office location stopped meaning anything serious early 2020.
Yes.
A current generation cruise liner is environmentally horrifying -- a ten story high resort hotel that burns orimulsion and flushes raw sewage into delicate coastal ecosystems.
But if you stuck a nuclear reactor under it, and added some waste processing capacity (just boiling the crap out of the sewage before discharging it would help), then added fast satellite internet (hello, Starlink) and some hot-desking office space, you'd have a plausible ocean liner. Not as fast as an old school liner from the 1950s, but much more comfortable and, more importantly, people traveling for work could still get stuff done while on the move -- far more effectively than with a laptop and in-flight wifi on an airliner, too (if you've ever tried working on an airliner, they're incredibly cramped, noisy, and distracting).
Which to me rules out nuclear ekranoplans. With a ceiling of 5 metres and a cruise 450 km/h, big waves make things very very bad.
Up to 14 m for the KM, but that's still vulnerable in the Atlantic.
Which to me rules out nuclear ekranoplans. With a ceiling of 5 metres and a cruise 450 km/h, big waves make things very very bad.
Ekranoplans don't have a ceiling of 5 metres; it's just that if they fly above ground effect they lose the benefits (reduced fuel burn). As an example, the A-90 Orlyonok could fly at a maximum altitude of 3000 metres, albeit with reduced range. (It was unpressurized, hence the low altitude limit for an aircraft.) In principle an Ekranoplan should either detour around bad weather, or take the energy hit and hop above it.
Hovercraft are another matter. Rather than sitting on a dynamic air cushion (using wings in ground effect), they sit on a trapped air cushion using pressurized skirts. They can hover (Ekranoplans don't hover in ground effect, they have to be moving forward constantly), but they can't fly. It's almost a helicopter/fixed-wing aircraft distinction.
Ahem..
https://www.hovercraft.com/content/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=5_34_53
Not mainstream, nor entirely sane, but something that exists.
So I looked up the Francisco. Interesting. But designed to basically operate in a somewhat protected bay over a route of 50 miles or so over water.
I have my doubts about anything carrying passengers across the North Atlantic (or any other major oceanic route) that takes more than a day. Weather changes. Every year a ship or few gets caught and sinks due to weather. Now maybe they are stretching it for profit reasons and but still, weather forecasting over the middle of oceans is still not all that great at a detail level.
On a depressing note, Kenney & the UCP
When I was first fast reading this my brain saw the rest and was wondering who the UCP was and what they had to do with Louisiana. I had read "Kenney" as "Kennedy". The nutter Senator from Louisiana and grand kid of JFK who spends more time spreading anti vaccine information (since long before Covid) than doing anything useful.
Not as fast as an old school liner from the 1950s
A few years ago as my wife and I spent a couple of days in the Philadelphia area we went by and looked at the hulk of the SS United States: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_United_States
Fastest ocean liner to ever cross the Atlantic. Retired long before planned due to jet air transportation. (I suspect it would have retired somewhat earlier than planned due to the aluminum / steel galvanic corrosion issues but that's another debate.)
We had a weird interest in seeing it as it was how my wife got to the US in 1956 when 6 weeks old.
I used the word "hulk" as it is gradual drifting to ruin as a small group to wants to restore it keeps managing to raise a $1milion a year or so to keep it from sinking to the bottom and pay for dock fees from people with more money than sense. Or make it into a hotel. Something about the lowests estimates of $700 million to return it to ocean voyages might have had something to do with the hotel plans.
Execute Red Triangle Protocol!
Remember the White Flame!
The fancier classes in the old school liners were very comfortable, and even the ones I travelled in (and the Union-Castle line was NOT luxurious!) weren't bad. I can still remember the smell of hot seawater in the bath :-) But we weren't as soft as most people seem to be back then.
I'd love to do a Rhine - Danube cruise all the way from the North Sea to the Black Sea, travelling in daytime even if it meant only travelling alternate days to fit in city tours.
You don't get these flyers in the mail? Or are these mostly sent to those of us in the US?
https://www.vikingrivercruises.com/cruise-destinations/europe/rivers/danube/index.html
We don't get Viking fliers in the mail, although we do get their blipverts as they "sponsor" early evening commercial television. They also seem very coy about time in ports and time on the river. My preferred cruise idea was to allow you to see the rivers and the cities.
But we weren't as soft as most people seem to be back then.
I think we've heard that one before…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26ZDB9h7BLY
(Four Yorkshiremen.)
They also seem very coy about time in ports and time on the river.
My wife's sister and husband did one not too long before everything shut down. Week or two I think. River was so low they had to take ride a bus for first half of trip. Seems to spoil the concept but that's just me.
Oh, indeed, but it's an important point in the context of reducing the ecological harm done by transport. My estimate is that we could cut the damage done by a factor of about two without actually cutting back on usage. You sound as if you are claiming that we NEED 2 tonnes for personal transport, en-suite bathrooms in passenger ships, etc.
Some British humourist in the 1950s said "There, there, little luxury, don't cry; you'll be a necessity bye and bye."
"But if you stuck a nuclear reactor under it, and added some waste processing capacity (just boiling the crap out of the sewage before discharging it would help)"
The Boiling Shit Reactor! Love it.
You sound as if you are claiming that we NEED 2 tonnes for personal transport, en-suite bathrooms in passenger ships, etc.
No. My problem with passenger liners isn't that they're insufficiently luxurious, it's that I really dislike the idea of being crammed together with a crowd of strangers with no escape. Especially as passive politeness, or whatever you call avoiding doing things that will bother other people, seems less common than it was when I was young.
If you get sat beside a jerk on a plane, you have to endure them for less than a day. On a liner, you might have to endure the idiots in the neighbouring cabin for a week or two.
Yes, yes, I know - nowadays, the younger generation have no manners and the lower classes don't know their place!
nowadays, the younger generation have no manners and the lower classes don't know their place!
And everyone's writing a book.
I'll point out a bit of a paradox:
-Bulk cargo is considered the most efficient method of moving stuff around, better sometimes than pipelines. This is on how much energy it takes to move a set weight a set distance.
-Cruise ships, conversely, reportedly blow 3-4 more CO2 per passenger mile than do jets.
So one issue isn't making cruise ships more like jets, it's making liners more like cargo vessels AND making them more hospitable. A 1-2 week Atlantic crossing is doable, at least according to most Americans' European ancestors and all the enlisteds who fought in the world wars.
I'd also point out that the European empires ran on ships, not jets, so there's definitely a cultural shift here.
Now, if I wanted to invent a nuclear-powered giant ship, my candidate would be a doubleplus-sized catamaran or trimaran. With cargo handling cranes on it. Its job is to be parked in or near a harbor and move cargo off of deep ocean cargo ships and onto lighters. Tie up the cargo ship outside the hulls, the lighters between the hulls (or perhaps vice versa) and move cargo from one to the other. The point of the multihull is to allow the platform to shift huge amounts of weight laterally from one ship to another without capsizing.
The reason for a cargo catanuke is that we're also collectively suffering from a bad case of Champlain Towers Syndrome when it comes to managed retreat from the waterfront due to rising sea levels. This is going to cripple oceanic transport, even if it is more efficient. So by the time we get our collective digits out of our collective orifices, it's entirely possible that harbors in general will be really bad places to offload big ships onto truck and rail. My solution is to move the bulkiest part of that offshore, in the hopes that smaller infrastructural changes (loading small lighters instead of behemoths) will be politically practical and doable with the onrushing concrete shortage. Or maybe they'll lighter with hovercraft or landing craft, and load the trucks offshore and run them onto engineered ramps built from the crushed debris of expensive shoreline towers.
Something similar could be done for passenger ships too, of course. The question then becomes: where does anyone build big ships, if people are so stupid about managing for sea level rise? Floating dry docks?
sigh
Well, perhaps she helped me get it right, back in the nineties, when she and my late wife were both still alive?
Sorry, not funny to me, when it involves people I love who are dead.
You wrote: "traditional Jewish specialty crafts/Guilds"
I beg your pardon? From the Renaissance up to the early 1900s, Jews were unwelcome or banned from guilds.
And "specialty crafts"? As opposed to doing what to survive?
Yes. Not sure if you can read this - it's NYT, but let me note that, although they have a paywall/10 article mo limit, I run noScript, and have never had a problem looking at Krugman's page every day.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/29/opinion/covid-vaccinations-republicans.html
Ahem, WTF?! And "no license"?!
I was reading your post, and have just invented The Answer: redesigned cargo containers as one room (and bathroom) living spaces, with windows on one side, and a door on the other.
Then the passengers bring whatever they want to their container over the week or so before the cruise, and lock it up. Time to go, and cranes load the ship with the containers, in the correct order, and you've got a private room, all handled by cargo cranes and a cargo ship with additional facilities.
Oh, or two units, for the lower-cost option, with a shared bathroom.
"I want to travel fast because, while I love seeing new places, I hate travelling."
The transport industry seems to operate on a twisted version of that: allow the experience of travelling to become more and more hateful, but attempt to compensate by making it fast enough that people don't just decide not to bother.
I much prefer the Midland Railway approach: they knew fine they could never be as fast to Scotland as the other railways with shorter routes, so they decided to be more comfortable and to lower the cost of comfort.
And the other railways had a fit about it, because it broke the principle of competition by brute force. You can always chuck more power at things to make them go faster, but to make them nicer is a lot more difficult, because you have to think about all sorts of little things instead of just concentrating on the single point of the size of the lump on the front; and you have to abandon the cherished principle of being a cheap-arsed git, in favour of ritually sacrificing at least one bean-counter for each individual minor improvement you make.
It's no surprise that railways these days have gone back to the brute force method. So we get trains with far too few seats on the train as a whole but far too many crammed into each individual carriage, the seats laid out with utter and deliberate disregard of whether you can actually see out of the window or not, and designed for people with huge fat arses and two prosthetic legs (the former to compensate for having a half-inch thickness of stale biscuit instead of a proper cushion, the latter plainly evident from the seat manufacturers' diagrams of human shadow-figures occupying their seats, their upper bodies doing various different things, but their legs all uniformly and rigidly "to attention" in a manner intolerable after five minutes or so for people with real legs). You are crammed into an airless and smelly tubular sardine can without even the chance to open the window and let some fresh air in. And as supposed compensation they blither on about "speed", doubling the traction power to shorten the average journey by no more than a couple of minutes but those two minutes being of desperate importance to people so impatient for the only pleasant moment of the journey, ie. the point where you finally get off the thing. It's a wonder people use trains at all when they could go by car and not have any of this shit.
Aeroplanes, by all accounts, take this awfulness to even greater extremes, extend the duration, and then add insult to injury by compelling you to spend several hours fucking around in airports at both ends being treated like the stooge in a clown act, instead of turning up 5 minutes before the thing leaves and walking straight off afterwards.
I am certain that the reality must be worse than I can imagine from the descriptions, and therefore am determined never to travel in one. If I needed to cross an ocean and the option was available, I would do so by ship without even considering air travel.
Thinking about it (warning, this is always a bad sign), if you want intercontinental travel in a solarpunk world...
No, not airships. Those maxxed out at twice the speed of fast liners...
...Hydrogen powered flying boats. Here's the logic:
--hydrogen-powered aircraft are already sort of a thing, and absent a technological miracle that we should all pray and sacrifice for, hydrogen's probably more weight-efficient than batteries.
--In the 1930s, the first intercontinental air services often used long-range flying boats. The nice thing is that the failure mode of an aircraft running out of fuel and falling into the ocean is somewhat more survivable in a flying boat. Yeah...
--And far too many airports are near the sea and threatened by rising waters (true for every big airport in California, for instance (San Diego, LAX, SFO, Oakland, San Jose, for instance). Sooner or later, someone's going to realize that turning Lindbergh field into a boat ramp is cheaper than trying to keep raising the runway every two decades.
--But yeah, HyPow flying boats probably won't have the range of current jets.
--On the other hand, there's the horrible tragedy of all the atoll dwellers in the Pacific having to pack up and move, and what they can do with their islands and waters after they're uninhabitable.
--And my partial solution to the sunken atoll problem is to build floating, solar powered seawater hydrolysis facilities and moor them on the seamounts near the atolls (on top of the atolls is probably begging for trouble from storm waves, but I may have that reversed). They can be either owned outright by the island nations, or leased. But these facilities would be available to refuel flying boats and more regular watercraft, basically by capturing solar energy in bulk hydrogen and storing the "oh-the-humanity" gas in a place where the explosions don't matter quite so much. The gas station might also have a passenger area or chandlery for people to get off their vessels and recharge themselves while waiting for their vehicles to get refueled.
I've seen stupider things proposed for space travel. Why not?
"If you get sat beside a jerk on a plane, you have to endure them for less than a day. On a liner, you might have to endure the idiots in the neighbouring cabin for a week or two."
But they are in a neighbouring cabin. You have your own cabin, and you can shut the door and ignore them. Or you can be somewhere else on the ship, strolling around the deck or whatever. You aren't forced into actual physical contact with their bodies by the seating design, you don't have to put up with their open-mouthed chewing and their farts and other stenches natural and artificial, you don't have to listen to them adulating Trump or some other arsehole, and you don't have to keep trying to avoid having your eye caught by the motion of the horse porn on their laptop.
"The question then becomes: where does anyone build big ships, if people are so stupid about managing for sea level rise? Floating dry docks?"
On land. They'll float sooner or later...
I was reading your post, and have just invented The Answer: redesigned cargo containers as one room (and bathroom) living spaces, with windows on one side, and a door on the other.
IIRC Neal Stephenson got there in Snow Crash a year or two ago.
More to the point, everybody likes playing with turning cargo containers into housing. The problem is that they're not built for housing, so by the time you put enough work into making them habitable, it's cheaper to custom-build whatever it was you wanted in the first place. To be clear, do I want to spend two weeks in a metal box on the deck of a ship in the Tropical Pacific? Oh hell no. Didn't various imperial navies use that as a form of punishment or torture?
But cargo ships are apparently one of the two ways you can get to the Marquesas Islands as a tourist (the other way being on your own boat), among other destinations, so it's entirely possible to combine slow passenger and cargo trips without much trouble. The question then becomes what makes for a suitable power source, and I'm torn between nukes and hydrogen.
David L @ 324:
I also suspect the accessory electrical loads of a container ship are between 1/100 and 1/10 that of a carrier.
The Enterprise Class had 8 A2W reactors at 150MWth delivering 210MW (280,000 shp) to 4 shafts (2 reactors, 2 turbines/shaft). The rest of the output went to providing electrical power for the ship.
The Nimitz Class has 2 A4W reactors at 550MWth delivering 194MW (260,000 shp) to 4 shafts (2 shafts/reactor).
I didn't look too closely into how highly enriched the uranium in Aircraft Carrier reactors, but note the A2W reactor was supposed to use something like 93% enriched uranium (according to Wikipedia).
The one nuclear reactor I do know anything about is a Westinghouse Pressurized Water Reactor rated at 2900MWth capable of producing 900MWe (electricity?) with the fuel enriched to 5% average (according to their media guide).
The plant was originally going to be 4 units. I've wondered sometimes what happened to the other 3 reactor vessels that were not used because they cancelled units 2, 3 & 4. All four reactor vessels had already been delivered to the site when I was working there. They were on dunnage in the steel lay-down yard that I had to visit frequently as part of my job.
Also, I don't know how power output in MWth of the reactors is divided up between propulsion - shp and electrical power - MWe on the ships.
Pigeon "The brute force method" on trains IS ENTIRELY down to the fucking arseholes in The Treasury & their minions in the DfT ....
As for Really Big ships ... its' time to re-create Project Habbakuk, surely? < grin >
As to comfort vs cram them into tiny seats for transportation ...
I have some experience in this. Well my wife does. Over 30 years with a major US airline. And over 1/3 of that putting cheeks in seats. (Answering sales calls to sell tickets in a call center. Figure it out.)
A $10 cheaper crappy seat on a terrible connection would almost always be picked over a better seat with a decent connection. 95%+ of the time.
Folks will piss, moan, say things must be done, hearing get held, news stories written, whatever. But at the end of the day a large majority of the traveling public wants it cheap when they actually have to pull their money out of their pocket. Or give out their credit card number.
Which is why Ryanair in Europe and Spirit in the US have so many people picking them.
Not always; My mother and sister have flown SleasyJet or O'Sleasy from choice, choice informed by getting the routes they wanted.
Yes! Why oh why can't (more) railway companies compete with higher comfort nowadays?
I get a first class ticket these days (if available) the few times I have to travel - not that it's more comfortable (modern swedish rail cars are identical between 1st and 2nd class but you usually don't have to share compartment with too many others*... Oh - and I think you are supposed to get free wifi or something which I've never bothered to check...). A few times when there was a shortage of available train carriages they've had to exchange the modern doubledecker carriages with the old style ones. Then I pump my fist in the air and cry YES!!! COMFORT!!! LEG SPACE!!!
(*During the swedish Covid semi-lockdown there has been fewer seats available on every train departure. Do they space out the available seats maximally? Nope. On one journey we were three passengers in the whole 1st class compartment with our seat reservations clustered together with less than 1 meter between us. Sigh...)
You missed my point - this is to replace cruise ships.
But they are in a neighbouring cabin. You have your own cabin, and you can shut the door and ignore them.
Only if you are deaf. And you need to go out for meals, at least, and exercise…
$10 cheaper seats? I've mostly flow American or Southwest. Upgrading from the cheap seats to "business class" - there's nothing in between - is more like $40+ and up.
Elderly Cynic @ 336: In my case, no :-) I have set up my browsing environment so that it is cleared multiple times a day. I was particularly keen to ensure that when I found that some thrice-damned Web pages were downloading crap that I had not requested or even looked at.
That stuff never gets to the download folder.
Most of what was in there was fairly mundane ... "Do I still need this PDF of the manual for a camera I bought at a pawn shop for $5? No, it stopped working a couple of years ago. Bin it!"
...OTOH, it's obvious why I saved a copy of the XKCD cartoon for "Someone is wrong on the internet."
... or why I keep copies of photos that inspire me.
But why do I have a map (with photographs) showing the locations where all of the mafia leaders arrested at the 1957 "Apalachin Conference" in upstate New York had come from?
So by the time we get our collective digits out of our collective orifices, it's entirely possible that harbors in general will be really bad places to offload big ships onto truck and rail.
Naah.
The point about freight is that once you unload it, you need to move it somewhere over land. For which, railfreight is the most efficient mechanism (when talking in terms of thousands of TEUs per day). So unloading from a ship directly onto a railhead as is done today is most efficient.
But, as you point out, managed coastal retreat is going to be necessary.
So I'd like to propose reviving a 19th century invention: the shipping canal. You just dig inland from the current harbour until you've got about 30-50km from the current coastline. You put in lock gates to help you get your ships above sea level. And along the way you have canalside railways (see also: Panama) and container cranes, because the railways aren't just for traction locomotives to tug the ships along -- they're to facilitate unloading and transfer of cargo.
In other words, make it a linear, inland container port rather than a parallelized one lying on the coastline, so that when "managed retreat" costs you a couple of kilometres, instead of losing your entire port you lose the equivalent of 10% of its quays.
Containerized modular barracks are already a thing and were deployed on various British bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. They need power, water, and waste hook-ups and a current-generation container ship wouldn't do -- they're not designed to provide access to all the containers. When all's said and done, it's probably cheaper to just build traditional hotel quarters into the ship.
I've seen stupider things proposed for space travel. Why not?
Because if you've got cheap hydrogen (presumably from electrolysis using PV power), then you can turn it into methane, which is vastly more energy-dense per unit volume and much easier to handle than hydrogen, and a practical-ish fuel. And if you can make methane you can turn it into longer-chain alkanes for not very much efficiency loss ... the end product of which is basically kerosene, at which point you can run existing jet engines with minimal tinkering rather than having to handle pressurized cryogenic gases that like to embrittle metals and leak through seals and joints.
I have no objection to your seaplanes, mind: they could even spend most of their time cruising in ground effect to reduce fuel burn. Why, we might even call them something weird and Russian-sounding like, oh, Ekranoplans?
I'm going to side with Pigeon on this one.
Economy class international air travel is like having to spend the night sitting on a park bench shared with three or four random strangers.
Business class international air travel is like having to spend the night in a reclining armchair that lies flat and turns into a youth hostel bunk, with maybe one random person within arm's reach.
Sea travel ... unless we're reviving steerage, there'll be none of that: it'll be like spending up to a week in a cheap en-suite hotel room in a resort hotel with stuff like spas, bars, a library and a swimming pool to distract you.
It'll cost at least as much as that week in a cheap hotel, mind you, but then, so does the business class recliner on the airliner.
Methane in an era of climate change? Seriously?
Um, No thank you very much...
David L @ 362:
When I was first fast reading this my brain saw the rest and was wondering who the UCP was and what they had to do with Louisiana. I had read "Kenney" as "Kennedy". The nutter Senator from Louisiana and grand kid of JFK who spends more time spreading anti vaccine information (since long before Covid) than doing anything useful.
He's not related to those other Kennedys. JFK does have one grandson, Jack Schlossberg (Caroline's son), but at age 28, he's still too young to serve in the Senate.
Speaking as a not-a-frequent-flyer-right-now, who due to an accident of geography almost always has to fly via a connecting hub, my definition of a "good" connection might not match everyone else's. I'm used to making allowances for planes not arriving on schedule, so a couple of hours of slop -- make that 3-4 hours, if clearing international immigration and customs on my way somewhere -- is desirable, otherwise that "nice" 60 minute connection turns into a missed onward flight and I'm stuck somewhere like Detroit for the night.
And experience convinced me that while it was possible to save money by using a budget carrier, after paying for extra checked luggage, a preferred seat, and stuff like a meal, it was generally no cheaper than buying a ticket from a higher quality airline who still include the unbundled stuff as standard.
(NB: American and United can get in the fucking sea, and Delta aren't much better. I'm talking travel via KLM/Air France/Lufthansa relative to EasyJet or Ryanair, here, none of the US carriers do that stuff any more unless you count bizjet charter companies.)
2CH4 + 3O2 -> 2CO2 + 2H2O
And the beauty of it is, it's reversible.
Of course you need to ensure your methane doesn't escape before you burn it (it being a potent greenhouse gas): but you make it out of air and water, and back to air and water it returns. If handling it gives you the collywobbles, turn it into decane instead -- something with a much lower vapour pressure, anyway. That's all.
I repeat: the problem with fossil fuels is the fossil part. If we're synthesizing alkanes from air, water, and electricity then burning them again we're not making a net contribution to the atmospheric CO2 level.
whitroth @ 379: Yes. Not sure if you can read this - it's NYT, but let me note that, although they have a paywall/10 article mo limit, I run noScript, and have never had a problem looking at Krugman's page every day.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/29/opinion/covid-vaccinations-republicans.html
As far as I can tell their paywall does not apply to straight up News or to the Opinion pages. Every time I go there I get prompted to subscribe, but I've never been denied access to one of the articles I wanted to read (except back in 2004 when I WAS a subscriber and couldn't access the website from Iraq ... but that's another rant for another day).
I run a hosts file & NoScript.
Portakabin will supply for rent or sale pretty much any sort of modular accomodation a company or individual might want but they're not made from TEU cargo containers. The 'kabins' are built from the ground up as accommodation and office modules. Most of them can be moved with container handling equipment that is also used to handle shipping containers and they can be transported as containers on trucks, trains, ships etc. since they commonly fit within the same size and mass straitjacket.
Big events I do stewarding jobs at use these sorts of cabins a lot for breaktimes and briefings. They come with all the plumbing and electrical gear built-in, heating, lighting etc. I've seen them fitted with countertops and sinks, tables, fixed seating, a modular kitchen with fridge and microwave, mud rooms with wet-gear storage, bunk rooms, showers etc. Modifying a cheap second-hand TEU container would take more effort than scratch-building what you want and result in a less livable product in the end.
It's worse. You can't stretch your legs.
I repeat: the problem with fossil fuels is the fossil part. If we're synthesizing alkanes from air, water, and electricity then burning them again we're not making a net contribution to the atmospheric CO2 level.
Um, sorry boss. Nope.
We're already at the "civilization teetering" level of GHGs in the atmosphere as I write this, and that's with most of the gas going into the ocean, which means it will come out again as we draw down atmospheric pools. And as we've found out, the idea of humus storing carbon is also bullshit*, so ecosystems thought to be big carbon sinks are turning into big carbon donors when heated a wee bit. Because we got the science wrong and modeled it wrong.
And that doesn't even count the idiots, cheats, and fools who let problems propagate into disasters.
Add that up, and we're stuck in a situation where pulling carbon out of the atmosphere and putting it back again is not a viable solution. Because we're human and live on Earth, it's one of those simple, clear, and wrong answers, so we're stuck with electricity and hydrogen.**
Sadly, the only people I hear pushing steady-state carbon cycling these days are sleazeball developers and their paid-off bureaucrats.
*https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-soil-science-revolution-upends-plans-to-fight-climate-change-20210727/
**screw up using nitrogen for energy storage, and you also get some really potent GHGs too. Idiot-proofing is hard.
Basically with enough energy to hand any human-scale problem is solvable. Food? Synthesise a basic nutritional dole from sewage sludge, seawater and recycled plastics. Climate change? Reform atmospheric carbon into graphite and bury it deep. Aircraft fuel? Synthesise methane or longer-chain hydrocarbons or ammonia or whatever from seawater and atmospheric carbon. And so on.
The problem is 'enough' energy. The desperate need for energy to be CHEAP energy means fossil fuels are the only route to provide existing energy needs today as well as meet future growth in energy demand as the third world gets lighting and clean water and washing machines and transport and hospitals and so on.
My ballpark estimate for how much energy is required to give all 7.5 billion of us a decent standard of living is 15TW, or about 2kW per person on average. From various rather fuzzy sources the world consumption of energy (including process heat, heating, cooling, transport, electricity, toys etc.) at the moment is about 7TW and, again the numbers are a bit fuzzy, right now we get about 5TW of that from fossil fuels of various sorts. From an engineering standpoint we need to replace that 5TW of fossil fuel production now, today and preferably forty years ago with non-fossil-fuel generating capacity. That's not going to happen, sadly. After that's (not) achieved we need to double the amount of energy we currently produce, again without using fossil fuels, to give everyone a comfortable existence.
There are some things we can do with 15TW of dependable energy -- when it's noon on the International Date Line in the middle of the mostly uninhabited Pacific, energy consumption around the world drops off significantly and the energy surplus at that time could be used to actively decarbonise the atmosphere. A SWAG estimate suggests 1TW of energy dedicated to decarbonising could reduce the CO2 content of the atmosphere by 1ppm annually. That does require that 15TW of supply to be dependable and not subject to the vagaries of the diurnal cycle, clouds, seasons, weather etc.
(Four Yorkshiremen.)
In colour ?? Luxury !!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKHFZBUTA4k
Ahem, WTF?! And "no license"?!
"This looks completely safe! What could possibly go wrong?"
...OTOH, it's obvious why I saved a copy of the XKCD cartoon for "Someone is wrong on the internet."
You poor damaged soul... I memorized the URL.
I will (unhappily) fly American. SWAir actually gives you more legroom. United... is below "none of the above". They're almost as bad as Continental was.
it'll be like spending up to a week in a cheap en-suite hotel room in a resort hotel
I'd rather spend a few hours on the park bench, actually.
Last time I stayed at a hotel there were children running up and down the hallway yelling and beating on doors in the wee hours of the morning, and their indulgent parents just waited for them to tire themselves out and got profanely belligerent at any guest or employee who dared criticize their spawn or their parenting. Wasn't a cheap hotel, either, but apparently there wasn't much they could do so we had to suffer until checkout time (which on a ship could be a week or more away)…
Containers can be quite impressive as buildings. After the first Christchurch earthquake in New Zealand they temporarily rebuilt part of the city centre using containers. The Restart Mall lasted from 2013 to 2018.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/ChzsmZaJ44fNFe8u8
There were shops, banks and restaurants as well as other buildings.
In the Midwest of America, business are already building electrolysis plants to utilize the surplus power from windmills. What they are planning to do is sell it as natural gas as natural gas can be diluted up to 25% with Hydrogen with no modification needed to domestic burners.
This also means you can get your fuel cell/Hydrogen economy going using your existing infrastructure by extracting the Hydrogen from the natural gas at its destination.
I've had one experience of going on a cruise ship, so it's not vast, but it's a data point.
Once you closed the quite substantial door (I'm guessing fire proof), you couldn't hear anything at all from the companionway. My guess is that steel walls block out more noise than fibreboard used in cheap hotels. In fact it was too quiet and my tinnitus went crazy. Opening the door to the balcony provided a nice wave slapping sound that covered the tinnitus nicely.
On the actual companionway my footsteps were silent. Not banging a wooden floor like a drum. Again, steel deck and sound proofing probably had something to do with it. It seemed like someone had paid attention to sound damping.
Fair enough. Definitely no offence intended there and apologies for poking a sensitive spot.
Both whitroth and CS.
First off this blog is no where near representative of the typical flyer. (My wife and I fly a lot of standby. We are pretty good at allowing enough buffer time.)
Second for most US airlines the cabin is mostly full of folks who might fly twice a year. At most.
Third, I'm not talking seat prices within a carrier. But across all carriers. When my wife was "on the phones" they could see all the air fares for carriers that interline. And if asked THEY HAD to answer if there was a cheaper fare. And would sell it if demanded. Not so true anymore. But still ...
And people would call in saying Southwest has a $100 fare but it leaves at 5am and the return gets in at midnight. What do you have. $110 for 8 am depature and 10pm return. "No thanks".
And the number of people who booked their own segments involving Southwest and the majors and didn't understand that no interlining means no baggage transfers between the airlines. But they saved $40 total on their tickets for their vacation. With maybe a missed flight or two tossed in due to personally having to transfer bags.
As to finding a good seat. We were on our way to Ireland when we noticed a plane change. 777 to 767 or similar. Which pushed us out of business seating into crammed coach. So we hopped a flight CLT to ORD so we could catch a coach ride on a 787 which while not business was much better than "steerage" on a 767. And we manged to bump up to economy plus once at ORD.
Intra-Community purging of Mythology (with a healthy dose of anti-women) is not exactly unique to the two later branches of Abrahamic religions. Oooooh. Careful, us Djinn know our crab-apples. The real question there is how/why after 4/2/1 thousand years, Djinn (and other real folklore...) have survived all these purges by all three branches of Abrahamic Religions. Yes. Thanks for pointing this out.
The Heart stuff is doable by your Zen Masters, Mmm. As an odd kid (pre-internet, and definitely not a zen master :-), I once trained up on limited mental resistance to electric shock, with self-controlled voltage (a variable transformer). Current flowing across the body from one hand to the other. Technically an extremely bad idea, since there is a (smallish - 10 to 30-millisecond) subsection of the heartbeat cycle that does not like interference (which can be also mechanical, e.g. a punch). (And yes, causality for arrhythmias can be difficult(impossible) for doctors to determine.)
My point about Iran was slightly different. It's about a mindset that thinks more probabilistically (though usually intuitively), that is less common in the west. And this style of thinking recognizes statistical outliers with more precision than is typical in the west, and some ascribe some of these these outliers to supernatural entities.
Example: in Iran, and in much of the middle east, backgammon is a very popular game. Most beginners who play with an expert suspect that the expert is cheating at dice rolls in some way that they can't determine. Mostly (not always :-) this is the not the case. The expert player is just maximizing "equity" at every decision point (the moves after their dice roll); essentially they are attempting to maximize their probability of eventually winning. In the 1990s superhuman ML performance in the game of backgammon was achieved with a combination of expert level players trained using reinforcement learning, and either shallow lookahead or statistical (confidence) pruning of rollouts, which are the playing out of thousands of games using expert level machine players from each possible move given the dice roll. (This can be done in parallel.) Top human players are very nearly this good.
I've only been on one multi-day cruise, on a river. It was noisy.
As a now permanently ex-frequent flyer (a trip every two weeks or so), permit me to suggest the following way to select flights.
(1) Try to find direct flights to your US destination from somewhere in Europe.
(2) Only then figure out connections.
For example, as someone who flew into Denver every year, it was a pleasure to discover that British Airways do a direct flight from LHR. So I then fixed up a train to London from Manchester, and got the office to book the car needed to get to Teluride or Aspen.
You'll note that I used a train for the 185 miles to London -- it's quicker than flying, once you account for the security theatre etc etc. And it is a genuine pleasure to be a Foreign National landing in the USA oustide of one of the big hubs.
By the by, I never did figure out why Bob didn't use that direct flight LHR to Denver when we first meet Schiller and Persephone. Unreliable narrator getting drunk again?
Other tips: never, ever use Atlanta. The one thing you can rely on is that the weather will screw up all the connections. Oh, and in Europe you'll probably be using LHR, CDG, or FRA as your hub. Though Madrid is good for South America.
"Add that up, and we're stuck in a situation where pulling carbon out of the atmosphere and putting it back again is not a viable solution."
I really don't understand this. What makes it so much worse than just leaving the carbon in the atmosphere, which appears to be your proposed alternative?
If you are suggesting pulling out the carbon, and keeping it out, then this needs to be done independently of fuel sourcing, anyway, so no difference.
JHomes.
Basically we agree. At the moment carbon and other manmade GHGs need to be removed from the atmosphere (and also from the ocean, where carbon's fucking up a lot of necessary things) and kept out.
When you can explain to me how to distinguish between, say, which part of the methane in your tank was very recently synthesized from air and which methane was extracted from a source that would have otherwise have kept it out of the air...then we can start talking about how to keep all the plumbing and moving parts properly sealed so that leaks never happen. Then, maybe, we can start talking about how to keep a stable supply of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere for use in society, and how to sequester the rest.
Until then, it's a utopian fancy. Without cheap, effective controls on this level, it's easier to cheat (extract fossil fuels) and/or be careless (leak) than it is to do the right thing.
Talk to the poker players, perhaps?
The fun part is that this is little different than the STARGATE Program and other CIA attempts to use the paranormal for remote viewing. If you want to amuse yourself, try figuring out the difference between the Roman Genii and the Arabic Jinni. Then figure out how you'd parse, oh, remote viewing or ESP in a language that depended on Jinni instead.
Oh, and have a chat with Legba about why he's the intermediary between humans and spirits, while you're at it. He likes to talk.
Here's red AND green, from a program I'm sure you will remember: https://images.app.goo.gl/RFs53TVnRYdwqXrW9
Here's red AND green, from a program I'm sure you will remember...
If you're going to roam the wild, wild west you should travel in style!
My very Methodist mother (and a DAR) bought into in innocence of residence schools for Native American children, lock, stock, and barrel. But, her generation wasn't much for introspection.
1) Train Dumbarton - Prestwick, then O'Sleasy direct to Shannon or 2) Train + Bus or taxi Dumbarton - Glasgow Airport, Aer Lingus to Dublin, and either Bus Eirann for 3 hours or 3 hours at Dublin waiting for the Aer Lingus flight to Shannon. The return services are the same things backwards. So you fly O'Sleasy not because they're cheap, not because they're more comfortable, but because they're 2 hours faster.
While the contain mall is now long gone (some of it was moved/recycled in Kaikoura), a similar but more permanent set up has been created called the Boxed Quarter: http://www.boxedquarter.co.nz/boxed
Other tips: never, ever use Atlanta. The one thing you can rely on is that the weather will screw up all the connections. Oh, and in Europe you'll probably be using LHR, CDG, or FRA as your hub. Though Madrid is good for South America.
For me, the never-use connection is Chicago O'Hare (which is always congested AF).
But due to personal prejudices: I refuse to fly BA (or Ryanair), and refuse to use LHR or LGW. Which is why I default to KLM/Air France or maybe Lufthansa for the intercontinental stuff. Noted exception: when there's a Delta shuttle service between Edinburgh and JFK, that's my fastest route into the US (aside from immigration at JFK being nearly as bad as LHR).
As up thread Charlie, O'SleasyAir is sometimes the best routing by far, like West of Scotland to Shannon.
Longtime lurker, but if y'all are going to start discussing Arab identity, guess it's time for me to chip in.
The basic points to understand here are that: - No Arab country is monoethnic, and Palestine is no exception - there are Palestinian Dom (i.e. Roma, more or less), Palestinian Armenians (some refugees from the genocide, some much earlier arrivals), Circassians (19th c. refugees from the Russians), even a couple of Kabyles (19th c. refugees from the French)... all stuck in the same boat of statelessness or second-class citizenship. - Arab identity is almost as assimilationist as, say, American identity. A few crusty emirs may still believe that the only real Arabs are those who can trace their descent back to some 6th-century Arabian tribe, but by and large, if you speak Arabic well enough and decide to call yourself Arab, you're Arab as far as most Arabs are concerned. Doesn't mean your ancestors suddenly changed.
if you speak Arabic well enough and decide to call yourself Arab, you're Arab as far as most Arabs are concerned
That sounds more assimilationist than a great many Americans (and most Republicans — at least, most Republicans who get into the news).
Legba is easy. A nice sweet cup of coffee, and he gets all chatty.
Now the Guede loa, they can be tricky. The Baron is pretty finicky about his rum.
So you fly O'Sleasy not because they're cheap, not because they're more comfortable, but because they're 2 hours faster.
I agree. You and I are on the same page. People will put up with a crappy seat to save $$/££/€€. Of what ever they think the equivalent is. Schedule being one of them.
My point is people complain about comfort all the time but in the end people don't want to pay for it if there's a choice.
the never-use connection is Chicago O'Hare
I look at O'Hare (ORD) differently. At least for domestic flights. Outside of mid July into mid September when thunderstorms can wreak schedules there and at DFW and mess up the entire country I like ORD. If something goes wrong there is almost always another flight that gets me on my way. Ditto DFW. ATL is similar but I don't have the flight privileges on Delta.
But one thing about ORD, it is just flat out boring.
You also mentioned avoiding United. You should watch them. Like all US based carriers they are not the same as 5 or 10 years ago. Kirby seems to be working hard to make them into more of a quality product instead of a people stuffed into a tube carrier. (I've not flown United in 20 years so this is based on my reading of the situation.)
Damian@353 writes: "telepresence is mainstream and physical office location stopped meaning anything serious early 2020."
Sure would be great if that were true. Then space for tens of millions of office workers in NYC, SF, LA, Boston and Chicago would no longer be needed. Neither would pricey residences within commute distance of those cities. Urban real estate values would drop sharply, along with advertising expense and zoning restrictions required to artificially prop up the many financial juggernauts derived off of those land prices. Could be a real fresh start for economies worldwide, generally.
Wonder what the ramifications would be if all the cash jammed in to London, HongKong and Tokyo real estate suddenly cut loose and went looking for returns elsewhere. Could actually be invested in stuff people need, but how many billionaires would get demoted to mere multi-millionaires if that happened.
Assuming they all gang up as usual in the name of asset protection to prevent such an outcome, how will they do it? Bet there'll be a whole new media emphasis on urban glamor, such as remakes and intensification of old series like Friends, 90210, LA Law, Dallas, CSI Miami, Sex & the City, and The Real Housewives of Insert $City Name. A slimefest worthy of the 1980s. Watch for it, this coming fall season at a network near you!
Haven't used a travel agent in several dog's years. I usually use Travelocity or Orbitz, which give me by price all airlines (except for SW). I'm willing to pay $20-$30 more to get leave times I want, and direct flights. I am not willing to add $40-$80 on top of that for business class.
Oh, and the only time I've checked luggage in the last 20 years was on Iceland Air in '14 (I could have packed less than 20+Kg in my internal-frame travel pack.)
I will note that AFAIK, Roman genii were spirits of a specific place, not mobile, where the Arabic genie were mobile, and not tied.
Moderators, chatbot detected, #427.
I don't have a real problem with O'Hare, though I prefer Midway (SW).
However, when we went to LonCon III in '14, we took the Megabus up from DC to NYC, and then flew in and out of JFK - it was something like $200 PER TICKET (for each of three of us) cheaper than, say, BWI.
Chatbot zapped.
Oddly, they showed up with a comment once before -- in 2015. But the semantics were almost identical, so I guess they were just trying to funnel link mojo to their own website rather than directly advertising anything.
Again, the crowd here is NOT representative of most flyers.
My wife and associates got to talk to them for nearly 2 decades. They are NOT use.
Everyone from a couple flying from NYC to Miami who didn't want to take the flight (last minute) because they couldn't sit next to each other to famous actor who's wife didn't remove the luggage routing sticker so her Oscar's night dress went to London instead of LA so they got to get with the LHR baggage folks and get it on the next flight to LAX. Dress made it in time so no Beverly Hills shopping needed.
For saving money leaving UK (or just England) the ticket taxes leaving the country are way higher than others in Europe. To the extent you can take the Chunnel train form London to Paris or Amsterdam and fly back for the almost the same price as the flight to the US out of LHR.
For those of us with hotel reward nights so we can spend a day or two in the other city this is a great deal.
If we ever make it to London for a week our plan is to do this for the return or take the train/ferry to Dublin and return from there.
Elderly Cynic @ 407: It's worse. You can't stretch your legs.
Plenty of leg-room on a C-130, although facilities at the destination airport are sometimes a bit primitive ... assuming there is an airport at the destination. 8^D
PS: Airline employees in the US call it the "Queen's Tax".
A significant number of containers are lost at sea from ships in storms. Not an appealing way to travel.
Many thousands of sailors still spend months at sea on cargo ships. It wouldn't be so hard to imagine ways to expand that to include non-working passengers. The problem is not the ships it is the time.
In the US few people are able to take more than 2 weeks vacation/year, because it is an utopia of capitalist freedom and the free market. ;) Nobody is going to spend all that time on a ship unless it is a holiday in itself - hence the cruise ship industry.
Other places that more closely resemble dystopian socialist nightmares have longer vacation times and more ability to take holidays, but few people can leave for months at a time, and even if they can don't want to bracket their trip with weeks in a marginally comfortable and possibly scary ship.
A more practical solution will be to find ways to neutralize the carbon cost of air travel.
Assuming they all gang up as usual in the name of asset protection to prevent such an outcome, how will they do it?
By pushing companies to insist that workers return to the office, or discriminating against those who work remotely, or lowering wages of those who work somewhere with lower CoL…
then added fast satellite internet (hello, Starlink)
Do you consider Starlink to be a valid solution? This video claims otherwise:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YLWlALwObA
TL;DW:
This does not include office spaces, ground base stations, maintenance. In short, the math just doesn't add upp.
Robert Prior @ 414:
I'd rather spend a few hours on the park bench, actually.
Last time I stayed at a hotel there were children running up and down the hallway yelling and beating on doors in the wee hours of the morning, and their indulgent parents just waited for them to tire themselves out and got profanely belligerent at any guest or employee who dared criticize their spawn or their parenting. Wasn't a cheap hotel, either, but apparently there wasn't much they could do so we had to suffer until checkout time (which on a ship could be a week or more away)…
My Mom's solution would have been tranquilizer darts à la Marlin Perkins.
I hope you at least got a partial refund on the room rate ... and posted an honest bad review on their web-page (or yelp or ...).
David L @ 445: Again, the crowd here is NOT representative of most flyers.
My wife and associates got to talk to them for nearly 2 decades. They are NOT use.
Everyone from a couple flying from NYC to Miami who didn't want to take the flight (last minute) because they couldn't sit next to each other to famous actor who's wife didn't remove the luggage routing sticker so her Oscar's night dress went to London instead of LA so they got to get with the LHR baggage folks and get it on the next flight to LAX. Dress made it in time so no Beverly Hills shopping needed.
Did he remember to thank your wife and the LHR baggage handlers in his acceptance speech?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGkfBw7v55c
I couldn't find his bit about flying to Los Angeles for an appearance & his tuxedo having "a fine vacation in Hawaii".
Your figures for Starlink are whack.
The satellites cost only $250,000 each b/c they're mass produced: 6000 of them would cost $1.5Bn, not $10.5Bn.
Launches: they lift 60 at a shot on refurb Falcon 9's. The retail price of those launches is $60M a flight, so they'd sell 100 flights (6000 satellites) to a third party customer for $6Bn, not $38.5Bn. But they're flying Falcon 9 first stages 10 or more times now, so that $60M/flight is a profit-taking price assuming new hardware on each flight; they're clearly a lot cheaper in-house. (I've seen some estimates that a pre-flown Falcon 9 stack tends towards a launch cost of $10-12M, not $60M.)
There aren't anything like 42,000 Starlink sats; the cluster runs on 2000-6000 satellites, 42,000 sounds like an estimate for the total number of satellites launched over a 30 year period, with build-out to cover currently uncovered areas.
I strongly suspect the transceivers are not being sold at a $1500 loss -- that's the cost for the first run prototypes/beta test units, and assumes no amortization over a customer locked into a multi-year contract.
The current 500K subscribers is for a service still in beta testing, not a final product. Add a couple of orders of magnitude!
Finally, Starlink is being sold heavily to US cablecos who have a universal service obligation and who can't afford/don't want to send out a backhoe and cable-laying crew to an isolated house several miles up a mountain road. They can stick a Starlink node on the customer's premises and discharge their obligation, thereby avoiding hefty fines or loss of a valuable commercial franchise. So the cablecos subsidize Starlink indirectly due to structural inefficiencies in the phone/cable TV/ISP regulatory system (in the US).
I hope you at least got a partial refund on the room rate ... and posted an honest bad review on their web-page (or yelp or ...).
Talked to the manager in the morning. He was dreadfully apologetic, but it sounded like there really was nothing the night staff could do other than put the family on the 'banned' list. It was the children causing the noise, and understandably no one on staff was willing to physically restrain the kids (when the parents refused).
Maybe they could have refunded the family and had them trespassed from the hotel, but the police might not have enforced that against children. I wouldn't have wanted to make that call myself.
I didn't ask for a refund or discount — I wasn't paying for the room myself.
Nowadays I'd be tempted to film it, obscure the kids faces, and send the clip to one of those Karen-themed Youtube channels. "entitled parents let kids burn off energy in hotel corridor at 2AM"
How to power an airliner, post-fossil-fuel:
Plan 1: Windmill makes electricity. Take water from atmosphere. Use electricity to turn into hydrogen and oxygen. Release the oxygen into the air. Put the hydrogen in the airplane. Airplane mixes hydrogen with air and burns it. Original amount of water is returned to the atmosphere.
Plan 2: Windmill makes electricity. Take water and carbon dioxide from atmosphere. Use electricity to turn into synthetic kerosene and oxygen. Release the oxygen into the air. Put the synthetic kerosene in the airplane. Airplane mixes synthetic kerosene with air and burns it. Original amount of water and carbon dioxide is returned to the atmosphere.
Why do you prefer Plan 1 to Plan 2?
Plan 2 maybe requires a bigger windmill per calorie of fuel due to the more complex chemical process, but Plan 1 requires more calories of fuel per passenger-mile due to less dense fuel hence bigger tanks.
In the long run whichever plan requires a smaller windmill per passenger-mile wins. In the short run Plan 2 wins because of not wanting to replace airplanes before they wear out.
Not that we have the money to do Europe, when we do (hopefully) Glasgow (and the UK, and Ireland) in '24, but... really? When we flew in '14, it was just over $1100 per ticket to LHR.
Did he remember to thank your wife and the LHR baggage handlers in his acceptance speech?
No. But thanked the call center folks profusely. I will not say who it was.
And it wasn't the baggage handlers. It was the folks in the LHR baggage office who NEVER get to talk to anyone who does start off with a problem.
Guess I should be honored that my neurodivergence parse as a chatbot.
Or maybe offended. Autism/High Potential/Schizophrenic/Sociologically Illuminated are all facets of the same genetic markers. Maybe.
No matter, maybe you should try to write in another language and see how well you fare.
Anyway, have fun with your fictional utopias. I'll go on a little bit in French because I'm Cuh-raaaaazy.
Je suis vraiment un fan de longue date, avant la sortie des atrocity archives. J'ai lu la plupart de tes romans 2 à 3 fois et tu comptes parmi les rares auteurs vivants dont j'achète chaque livre à la sortie.
Désolé d'avoir essayé d'instiller un peu de réalisme magique dans vos masturbations intellectuelles sur les avions qui volent très vite, les tanks qui résistent aux gros n'obus, et de communiquer à ma manière maladroite.
Je continuerai à lire tes livres mais comme je me sens particulièrement mal accueilli (un commentaire en 2015 pour signaler un jeu en rapport avec le sujet de la discussion qui aura été ignoré jusqu'à aujourd'hui et un deuxième cette année, terriblement louche pour un lurker qui s'est identifié comme tel) revenir lire les délires de Cat in A Diamond, de Bill Arnold, de ce droitiste virant extreme Dirk Bruere (ok lui je sais qu'on ne le reverra plus) gardera ce sale gout d'avoir été considéré comme une machine par des gens dont je connais tellement de la vie privée et publique que ca pourrait facilement être mes amis.
Mais des gens qui me traitent comme une putain de machine sans âme, ca fait mal au cul, on dirait les commentaires que me faisaient les gamins populaires avant que je ne leur mette un pain dans la gueule pour leur rappeler de ne jamais se fier aux apparences.
En un mot: Déçu :(
Paix, Amour et Lumière.
If you want to fly to Europe for just 2 people and can figure out how to spend $3K to $6K (haven't looked lately) on a credit card or two within 3 months you can do it with points/miles. You might have to do it with 2 cards in two 3 month periods. (I think this is a mostly US thing.)
Unless Charlie says it's OK I'll not post a link to sites that will tell you how. My wife is almost retired and we want to fly to places that her airline doesn't go to. So we've been doing points and miles for about 5-7 years. I had some great opportunities to spend a big ($10K in 6 months) chunk of money on some cards. That and a few other things and I'm sitting on the equivalent of first class anywhere in the world for the two of us several times over. Or premium economy or business a lot more times. Plus 20 to 25 nights at hotels. There are also cards that allow you to build up hotel nights.
But you have to get over some major myths about credit and credit cards that many believe.
Just as a data point, my daughter has been around the world twice on points. And she and her husband spent 5 nights in Japan, first and/or business both ways with a total of under $500 on hotel and airline cash spending.
Sorry for trying to instill a little magical realism in your intellectual masturbations on planes that fly very fast, tanks that resist big busses, and communicate in my awkward way.
I will continue to read your books but as I feel particularly unwelcome (a comment in 2015 to report a game related to the topic of the discussion that will have been ignored until today and a second this year, terribly shady for a lurker who identified himself as such) come back to read the delusions of Cat in A Diamond, of Bill Arnold, of this extreme right-wing player Dirk Bruere (ok him I know we will never see him again) will keep this dirty taste of to have been seen as a machine by people whose private and public life I know so much that it could easily be my friends.
But people who treat me like a fucking machine without a soul, it hurts the ass, it sounds like the comments popular kids made to me before I gave them a shit to remind them never to trust appearances.
In a nutshell: Disappointed :(
Peace, Love and Light.
Yeah that's not a bot
Shells, not buses... :)
"A significant number of containers are lost at sea from ships in storms. Not an appealing way to travel."
Hardly surprising though when they stack them up so high and wide you can barely see the ship underneath them and make it look like it'll roll over as soon as it moves away from the dock...
But I thought we'd already established that if you were going to put people in them you would have to load them onto the ship in a different pattern from the usual cargo stack.
Why do you prefer Plan 1 to Plan 2?
Two reasons.
The big one: Because it allows fossil fuel extractors to cheat by infiltrating stuff out of the ground with stuff from the air,
and
The other big one: Oddly enough, the delights of engineering simplicity and transport speed are more important than this reality that climate change is already killing people, through storms, floods, and fires. Flying is not more important than life.
I'm touched (slightly sarcastically) that you don't see the fossil fuel industry as capable of cheating on sourcing of petrochemicals, after they've spent 70 years attacking every effort to deal with climate change.
I'm troubled by how we can have conversations here about how sucktastic air travel is, while someone proposing an alternative gets shot down with an argument that basically says that the airline status quo is not only not sucktastic but in fact wonderful.
Anyway, the bottom line is that the only way to keep the fossil fuel industry from cheating is to get away from fossil fuels entirely. There's absolutely nothing in their record that suggests they won't cheat on emissions limits if those limits are above zero. I'd even go so far as to say that they'll cheat on emissions until their facilities are systematically dismantled, given that is what's happened with everything from CFCs to illegal drugs.
Should I assume that's translated from French? In any case, the one I call chatbot was not in any way as coherent as that - it rambled, and jumped all over, making no sense that I could get out of it.
Yes. Thatsthejoke.jpg. It's a Marx Joke. Do you think mythology is not purely an economic manifestation? "Where did Golems come from?" - Poland.
Why?
Well, now we're going to have to discuss Pogroms.
It's Dirty and Harsh but the "Luddite" is kinda the meta-punch-line.
(Although, not True: Jewish communities were certainly given specific Liens in European Economic Systems and there are fairly obvious outliers even in ultra-Catholic Empires such as Spain, e.g. why those explorers and later slave shippers happened to be sometimes Jewish, not to mention much earlier in Eygpt and spices but hey. It was never a monolith. Nor were Jewish communities ever solely Tax / Financial based and Industrialisation really did destroy a lot of communities)
See? PTerry says: life ain't easy Black/White.
~
delusions
Look: here's the way this works:
1) Post humourous image of Macron
2) Ask why?
3) Answer:
3a) On the one hand, Macron is currently taking someone to court in France for posting a large (think Trump / Bibi) building sized picture of him as Hitler for defamation. This has caused well, it's all the obvious tradework[tm] of a Right-Wing destablizing crew working the France (anti-lockdowns, anti-vaxx, anti-Covid Passport) memes. Thus, posting a ridiculous shot of him without resorting to crude Hitler tropes shows you can do this stuff without even resorting to you know, "that rule of the internet".
3b) That image / vid has hit and been spread by some interesting parties. Go look them up. Some are USA / IL, some are actual people involved (thus the link is to... one of them, not one of the US/IL accounts sharing it)
3c) Far more interesting is looking up: a) The French banning protests on Macron's jaunt (mostly Nuke testing protests), b) wondering why an "over-abundance of gift tokens" might be seen as a protest against this ("kill them with kindness") and c) actually going and reading said islander's own thoughts on it. Thus the "555555".
3d) Why US/IL are fanning it? Probably should look up CN fish farms and investments and FR canning it on said trip and the geopolitics of the SE Asia region with regard to US/IL interests (IL mentioned here because one of the other investment paths FR skipped over... yep, IL).
And so on.
We CAN DO THIS FOR EVERY SINGLE LITTLE DETAIL.
Sooo, we're thinking about Parkinsons, dead MUCH LOVED AUTHORS and "Anti-Trf" (name deleted) etc etc, and... hit up your social media, guess what just landed.
We're giving you a future-grep so you can a) not get damaged by the heinous stuff and b) easily counter it.
~
And yes: for £60,000,000 you would not believe the shit Humans are willing to do to other Humans.
But people who treat me like a fucking machine without a soul, it hurts the ass, it sounds like the comments popular kids made to me before I gave them a shit to remind them never to trust appearances.
Given you're not [redacted] this is a little harsh: we don't peg those who don't ask nicely. Hint: they're not delusions, they're... stuff you don't know about.
~
do a grep: repo market hit $1 trillion. Sept 2019, told you that was nothing.
Posted at 3:33 because we can.
The sad problem with tranquilizer darts is that you've got to have a good estimate of your target's weight and/or height to calibrate the dose in the dart. Some drug dosages scale with weight, some with surface area (go figure), and I don't know which is true for fentanyl or whatever sublethal concoction you're going to hit them with. Oh yeah, fentanyl: get the dose wrong and the patient does a Michael Jackson/Prince/Tom Petty finale, so you've got to monitor your
victimpatient rather closely and be able to revive them if they stop breathing.And oh how I wish this weren't true. I want a phaser set to stun! Speaking of which:
My personal dream is murder-hornet shaped drones with tasers in their tails. They'd only be good for maybe a second, so you release 100 of them and hope your swarm management software is good enough to put a necklace of hornet drones on everybody you want to be really peaceful right now or else.
Dude is posting in French without spotting us... actually kinda supporting his side.
If you think UK protests have been "odd", France is doing it old-skool. They got the spark, and there's several High-Powered Crews working the angles in there.
Hey, grep us discussing a really big joke about Paris suburbs with Henry and never getting any love for it. Vous pensez que la situation actuelle est folle ? Oh non. Nous sommes juste en 1788.
We don't discuss it because Host hasn't show any interest it in.
~
Back to TR, where things are... well. Burning.
Votre crise ontologique n'est pas due à nous, mais au fait que votre définition de ce qu'est un « humain » a cessé d'avoir une base factuelle il y a plus de cinq ans.
We gave up the LOA to help you out, you've no idea what it cost us.
Heteromeles,
It is beginning to sound, to me at least, as though you are saying that it is more important to prevent the fossil fuel companies from being even able to cheat should they so wish, than to actually stop fossil carbon getting into the air.
Consider: Currently there are no hydrogen fueled aircraft extant. If the designers are working on them Right Now, a couple of years minimum before a proof of concept aircraft flies, maybe ten, maybe longer, before the first flight the point of which is to move passengers or freight from A to B and they use a hydrogen fueled aircraft because that's what's there, and I doubt that either of us will live (barring major medical breakthroughs) to see Hydrogen aircraft outnumber carbon burners.
In the meantime, aviation will be burning carbon fuels. Under Plan 1, all fossil carbon. Is that really what you want?
In the meantime, there is a simple check on cheating (not foolproof, but enough to make cheating too much like hard work). If we know how much fuel from atmospheric carbon is sold to the airlines, which should be able to be determined from available data, and how much the airlines have actually used, then the difference is the fossil carbon, and it doesn't matter how honest the fossil fuel companies are about it. I don't trust them any more than you do, except I doubt they'd really pull a Dick Dastardly Stops To Cheat.
JHomes
whitroth @ 465 JUST LIKE posts 466, 468, 469, 420, 331, 328, 275, 240, 239, 237, 236 - you mean ... like that?? Obvious chatbot, no coherent structure & usually zero meaning or content?
Not that we have the money to do Europe, when we do (hopefully) Glasgow (and the UK, and Ireland) in '24, but... really?
Yes, the UK departure tax is higher than from the EU hubs. But the cost of using the Chunnel to get to Paris CDG is higher than a budget airline ticket from London to Paris. From here in Scotland, it's ridiculous: you're looking at a 4h15m to 5h30m train ride to London, change stations, then another couple of hours to get to Paris, at a price comparable to a budget trans-Atlantic flight. (Only Londoners find the channel tunnel convenient -- for the rest of the UK it's eye-roll territory.)
For entering the UK from the US, you might want to check for flights direct to GLA (Glasgow Airport) or EDI (Edinburgh Airport, frequent coaches to Glasgow centre, or tram to Haymarket then train to Glasgow). Customs and Immigration at both those airports is much less busy and congested than at London (except Edinburgh in August, if the Edinburgh Festival is getting back to normal by then) and there are direct flights from the USA. Do not consider Prestwick, sometimes billed as Glasgow's second airport: it's actually in the middle of nowhere with minimal ground transport links to the big cities -- driving is the only convenient way to access it, and you do not want to hire a car in a country that drives on the opposite side of the road after a red-eye flight plus jet lag. (Also, car hire in the UK is about twice as expensive as it is in the USA and our cities were not designed around automobiles.)
For the prices, I agree. But it's a lot more convenient for people on a Kings's Cross / St Pancras (or even Euston) line. It's not great, I agree, because the air lobby ensured that the gummint constrained it to be very airline-like.
But I can assure you that using Thiefrow or Grotwick from Cambridge is a horror - yes, I really DO mean allowing 4-5 hours for departure and 2-3 for return, in addition to the other nightmares. Services from Stansted are severely limited by the airport cartel and Luton is unspeakable.
When I was skiing in Montgenevre, the train trip took one hour longer than the fastest flying route, and was actually enjoyable rather than a complete day of hell.
It is beginning to sound, to me at least, as though you are saying that it is more important to prevent the fossil fuel companies from being even able to cheat should they so wish, than to actually stop fossil carbon getting into the air.
You know, you're going to have to maintain a higher level of stem-winding to keep this game interesting for either of us...
I'm touched (slightly sarcastically) that you don't see the fossil fuel industry as capable of cheating on sourcing of petrochemicals, after they've spent 70 years attacking every effort to deal with climate change.
Your problem is not specifically the fossil fuel industry so much as it's the system of incentives in place under our current capitalist system.
It's like looking at the Sacklers and Oxycontin as a leading cause of opiate deaths and deciding to ban the pharmaceutical industry.
The real issue is a lack of effective regulation in our global energy infrastructure, and/or the existence of regulatory capture. To which, I submit, the solution is a replacement for growth-oriented capitalism in general, not just a ban on one specific industry that takes out other industries (eg. civil aviation) as collateral damage.
The real issue is a lack of effective regulation in our global energy infrastructure, and/or the existence of regulatory capture. To which, I submit, the solution is a replacement for growth-oriented capitalism in general, not just a ban on one specific industry that takes out other industries (eg. civil aviation) as collateral damage.
I have to walk carefully at this point, because there are some confidentiality issues. That said, it's not as simple as better regulation or regulatory capture when the industry is based around cheating and said cheating is quite lucrative.
I'd also point out that with petrochemicals, we've got multiple examples. From fuel use to the proliferation of plastics, the industry as a whole, when given the chance to cash out and reformulate their companies into something that doesn't wreck the planet, not only fail to do so, they actively campaign to find new ways to cause trouble, create laws that make it as hard as possible to stop them, and offload the damage onto everyone else. In an example of the last, I've seen an oil drilling contract where the oil company takes most of the profits, pays a pittance to the owner of the oil deposit, explicitly leaves the owner with all the problems to clean up after they're done drilling, and threaten to have the rights taken away (legally) by eminent domain if the rights owner refuses to lease the property to them. And the owner was unable to sell the mineral rights at a fair price, either.
Bleating about regulatory capture is nice, but industries that do this really need to be taken apart. The fact that we've all been captured and made complicit in their activities does not change this.
And if you look at countries from Russia to Saudi Arabia to Britain to the USA, it's not regulatory capture, it's nation-state capture.
Obvious chatbot, no coherent structure & usually zero meaning or content? Politely, you are suggesting that you have near-zero skill at this. (And your comment is an obvious troll, but whatever.) For the record, machine identification of machine generated text is a very active area of research, and an arms race, with generators using very large language models (GPT-3, and others) winning at the moment. It is a scary problem. Huggingface's old GPT-2 detector misfires, a lot. (I've had it misfire on blocks of my text, that I clearly recall writing, and have browser history to prove lookup of items within the text I suppose it's possible that my fingers are being controlled by an entity that sometimes wants my text to look like it was GPT-2-generated, for Reasons hidden. :-) GLTR was an early attempt, that is still helpful: http://gltr.io/ though their public server is borked, but with a linux box and the source https://github.com/HendrikStrobelt/detecting-fake-text you can set up your own local server. However, I've observed with some testing that it can get confused by simply turning up the temperature of a ML text generator.
But really, you should be able to tell by reading the text, and maybe poking at a few details. The "abc.org" in the comment in question was a flag ("Associated Builders and Contractors", at the moment at least). There were some names (one with just one google hit) that indicated a gamer, and there was some text that strongly resembled machine generated text (both to me and to automation), etc, etc. I was intrigued and waiting for another comment. (Which was subjected to another filter, to make the problem harder.)
They can still cheat with Plan 1 by using a coal plant to make hydrogen.
Interesting, thank you. I admit I'm not good at discerning which things he's involved in are legit and which are scams.
Heteromeles @ 464: The big one: Because it allows fossil fuel extractors to cheat by infiltrating stuff out of the ground with stuff from the air,
Actually you can measure the ratio of atmospheric to fossil carbon in such a mix very easily with a mass spectrometer. Just measure the C14 content. Fossil carbon doesn't have any. So anyone fraudulently passing off fossil carbon as atmospheric is going to be very easy to detect.
To a lesser extent, this (C-14 fraction measurement) can even be done with atmospheric methane measured at many points, to discern between agricultural and swamp methane (and other non-fossil methane), and fossil methane.
This drives me into screaming fits - the train should always be cheaper than the plane. And I always looked forward to riding the train in the UK....
Thanks, though, for the recommendations about flights.
And yeah, I dunno about getting in after a long flight, and driving. But we'll be doing weeks before or after - not sure yet - the con, doing the UK and Ireland (grandparents of Ellen's were from County Mayo). And I've driven in the UK in 14. It was the right-hand turns that were hardest.
Y'know, it's folks like you that I got even with in my first book. Folks who are sure that, I mean, everyone speaks French, and Latin, and Greek.
I have quotes in Welsh and Finnish.
Bill Arnold I have been trained, all my life, to try ( at least ) to write clearly & to a specific point - my highest qualifications are in Engineering & Physics, after all. Not only do I have zero skill at deliberate obfuscation - I'll leave that to crooked lawyers & religous aresholes - but it brings me out in purple spots & "shouting at the radio". The Seagull, from my p.o.v. is at least a 100% waste of space & time - she COULD write clearly, but won't ... well, no thanks. [ And OF COURSE it was a wind-up ] Equally, I'm totally uninterested in real chatbots, either, for reasons that ... should be obvious? And your apparent lecture is also a complete waste if space & effort - rather like the fucking olynpic games, come to think of it. Not only don't I know - I do not want to know, nor should any sane person. Oh yes: DO NOT FEED THE TROLL.
whitroth As Charlie says, it's rigged in favour of flying - hence the fucking INSANE security theatre using Eurostar - imposed by HMG & the air-lobby as a deliberate spoiler
What do you have against Basque? :-)
Right.
I have never understood the psychoactive nature of hydrogen. All of my investigations have led me to the conclusion that, if the answer is using hydrogen as a fuel, you have asked the wrong question; there probably are exceptions, but they will be very unusual. But that doesn't stop it being touted as the solution to all our fuel-related problems.
Though I, like you, am unable to make sense of SotMN’s posts, it seems that Bill Arnold somehow can. Given that he finds meaning there it’s pretty pointless to repeatedly ask him not to interact. If anything doing so just further feeds the troll.
I'll point out that this all started when I pointed out that hydrogen-powered seaplanes could plausibly replace transpacific jets, if they hopped from hydrogen plant to hydrogen plant, and those plants were moored off atolls to use abundant sun and water to manufacture hydrogen on site. It's not the most efficient electrolysis method, but it's okay when your source materials aren't limited.
That's rather more plausible than assuming the possibility of intercontinental, battery-powered, passenger planes. Or, for that matter, intercontinental battery-powered trains.
And better yet, it doesn't even require high volume carbon capture and storage technology. That little technological bugbear is currently dooming our efforts to deal with existing carbon emissions. I'm slightly surprised no one figured out that if you can capture carbon fast enough to turn it into jet fuel, you can probably make a serious dent in the climate problem.
Otherwise, we'll probably use batteries, because I agree that hydrogen's a niche product.
"Given that he finds meaning there it’s pretty pointless to repeatedly ask him not to interact. If anything doing so just further feeds the troll."
Agreed.
I take issue with 'plausibly'. It isn't just the creation and use of the fuel; the consequential issues (especially safety) would be a nightmare.
Yes, I figured that out about carbon capture a long time ago, and it is what I understood Nojay was saying in #409.
If you’ve got a windmill or solar farm producing excess electricity, turning it into hydrogen is something you can do with it right now, using commercially available equipment.
Long term I think it makes more sense to develop equipment to turn excess electricity into more easily handled fuels than to redesign everything in the world to run on hydrogen, which is a pain t handle.
Why? Other than the obvious point that hydrogen is mostly made by electrolysing water or hydrocarbons.
Actually you can measure the ratio of atmospheric to fossil carbon in such a mix very easily with a mass spectrometer. Just measure the C14 content. Fossil carbon doesn't have any. So anyone fraudulently passing off fossil carbon as atmospheric is going to be very easy to detect.
You're sort of right, but so is Bill.
The problem is the charmingly-named Suess Effect, named after the real Dr. Hans Suess, who had a PhD, worked in physical chemistry and nuclear physics, and did not write children's books, although he lived and worked in the same town as Theodor Geisel (San Diego).
Anyway, the Suess Effect is a critical correction term for utilizing carbon dating, based on the increased injection of fossil carbon into the atmosphere. Per Wikipedia: "The term originally referred only to dilution of atmospheric 14CO2. The concept was later extended to dilution of 13CO2 and to other reservoirs of carbon such as the oceans and soils."
The other fun part is that there's a lot of Bomb Carbon (enrichment of 14C from the nuclear test era) still in our atmosphere.
So for carbon verification, if you posit cheap, ubiquitous accelerator mass spectrometry to sort out the isotopic concentrations in each gas tank, yes, you can catch the cheaters. That, of course, posits Ghostbuster style licensed accelerators that are small enough, potent enough, and energy-efficient enough to do the work. Or you can use radiometric dating, which takes 24 hours per sample.
And the counter is so simple even an idiot like me could figure it out. As I recall, stuff that accumulated atmospheric carbon during the aboveground nuclear test era has a radiocarbon date around 5500 CE. Yes, it's from the future. So if people all start dating the carbon in their gas tanks, the oil companies simply make a big show of remediating landfills that likely contain material from Mid-Century. These are usually festering messes foisted off on cities, so if giant companies offer to process the landfill gas coming off or better, to mine and digest the organic fraction in one of their fractionation set ups in an oil refinery, I think everybody would cheer.
They then take this 14C enriched landfill material, mix it in with their 14C depleted fossil fuels, and sell it as air captured. The best part of this scheme is that it would be impossible to shut down, because remediating old landfills is one of those huge, chronic problems that need more people working on it.
Heteromeles @ 467: The sad problem with tranquilizer darts is that you've got to have a good estimate of your target's weight and/or height to calibrate the dose in the dart. Some drug dosages scale with weight, some with surface area (go figure), and I don't know which is true for fentanyl or whatever sublethal concoction you're going to hit them with. Oh yeah, fentanyl: get the dose wrong and the patient does a Michael Jackson/Prince/Tom Petty finale, so you've got to monitor your victim patient rather closely and be able to revive them if they stop breathing.
You do realize "tranquilizer darts" was just my Mom being sarky don't you?
Greg Tingey @ 471: whitroth @ 465
JUST LIKE posts 466, 468, 469, 420, 331, 328, 275, 240, 239, 237, 236 - you mean ... like that??
Obvious chatbot, no coherent structure & usually zero meaning or content?
Oh. I thought it was just someone had another new name.
Speaking of the Suess Effect and Bomb Carbon, I'd like to dredge out a little thing from Hot Earth Dreams: we're now invisible to future carbon-dating.
The reason is that from the 19th century on, humans have been dumping 14C depleted carbon into the air from fossil fuels. IIRC, right now our air looks like it was from 1600 CE or earlier.
Then there's the spike of 14C from the aboveground nuclear tests in the middle of the century. Material made with that carbon looks like it's from a few thousand years in the future. Currently this spike is really handy for catching forgers of all sorts, because we know the history. But our records? They're increasingly online, hence vulnerable to loss over time. And the spike is for things like old wines and fake antique furniture, not for stuff mixed and dumped in landfills, with old, bomb-enriched wood next to current plastics.
So if we hypothesize that someone in the next, say, 10,000 years wants to figure out what happened during the industrial age, the radiocarbon dating is going to be screwed. Leading into it, the RC dating slows, then goes backwards as fossil fuels kick in. Then it gets to be a jumbled mess. The reason for the mess is that we're going to have to do a truly epic amount of recycling to get to sustainability, so the stratigraphic layers an archeologist needs to date stuff are going to be totally bollixed by a century or two of remixing. With material from our era dating semi-randomly from perhaps 1000 CE to 5000 CE depending on when the materials that made it fixed their carbon, carbon isotope dating is going to be totally useless for our era. Without a good historic record (lost because it was all online), our archeology will be unintelligible. In the words of the song, they'll be able to tell that something happened here, but what it was ain't exactly clear.
I'd been saying this since at least my early twenties, if not late teens, before I knew about Basque.
You do realize "tranquilizer darts" was just my Mom being sarky don't you?
Yep. I just want something that works better than pain compliance with a rock.
As I was walking away, I thought of The Answer to dealing with noisy kids, straight out of Arthur C Clarke: noise cancelling directional speakers. If the kids are bothering you, just plug a speaker in, turn it on, and cancel out their noise when they get close to you. What could possibly go wrong? I mean, they already have noise cancelling headphones, this should be straighforward.
... minute frequency service to Glasgow Central
Yeah.
Nevertheless, it's worth noting for non-natives thinking of flying into Prestwick and then heading for Edinburgh: yes, there's now a train to Glasgow Central ... but the regular trains to Edinburgh go from Glasgow Queen Street, about a mile away. (IIRC there's a train every two hours from Glasgow Central that goes all the way around the houses before it gets to Edinburgh. Whereas the GQS trains leave every 15 minutes and go a more direct route.)
Yes. Papers like this are interesting:
http://hysafe.org/science/eAcademy/docs/1stesshs/presentations/Ireland_hydrogen_safety.pdf
At worst, a hydrogen-fuelled airliner crashing during take-off would be comparable to a MOAB. Air contamination of the storage facilities or a massive leak followed by delayed conflagration and detonation would be even more impressive.
I mean, they already have noise cancelling headphones
I have a nice pair of noise-cancelling Bose headphones. They don't work against screaming children.
Engine noise, no problem. Bandsaws, noticeable reduction but still obvious. Screaming children? Multiple highly variable, high-pitched heterodyning sources — no reduction in apparent volume at all.
Has anyone come up with a guesstimate of what proportion of hydrogen we should expect to end up in the atmosphere if it were used as a fuel on a country-wide scale ? Also, how much of that would escape harmlessly into space ?
I don't have an estimate, because the bigger problem is that the atmosphere fractionates with elevation, and ultimately merges with the outer part of the sun's "atmosphere."
Basically, we don't have to worry about hydrogen build-up, whatever hydrogen that gets past the stratosphere AFAIK will be lost to space eventually.
The problem that bugs me is what hydrogen reacts with in storage or on the way out. For example, I haven't thought much about hydrogen leaks in the marine environment. To what degree will they get sopped up by bacteria, and to what degree will they acidify the water? I'm more concerned about local acidification, because hydrogen ions are rather worse for that than dissolved CO2 is.
At worst, a hydrogen-fuelled airliner crashing during take-off would be comparable to a MOAB. Air contamination of the storage facilities or a massive leak followed by delayed conflagration and detonation would be even more impressive.
Let's see:
MOAB: 11 tons TNT equivalent, or 4.6e10 joules
A 747 full of jet fuel: 1e13 joules
Yeah, I'll take a crash with a hydrogen powered plane. It's about 1/250 of the energy carried by a fully loaded 747, and we think of their crashes as regrettable but not reasons to cancel the industry, as was done with the Hindenburg.
“Screaming children? Multiple highly variable, high-pitched heterodyning sources ” - oh, that’s easy to solve. All we have to do is wait a while until all the little buggers are vaccinated. At that point we hack the 5G chips to transmit the location data along with some info about the noise being made. Your headphones combine that with your location etc and have the right anti-noise impulses ready before they even get to you. Simple!
Wouldn't it be simpler to use the 5G chips to control their vocal cords?
the Asian side of the planet
My thought this morning (I only have one per day) was that Europe should rightly be called "West Asia" and thus Cork Asians are really West Asians. Well, except for the western island that has real Cork Asians.
Charlie Stross @ 472:
Yes, the UK departure tax is higher than from the EU hubs. But the cost of using the Chunnel to get to Paris CDG is higher than a budget airline ticket from London to Paris. From here in Scotland, it's ridiculous: you're looking at a 4h15m to 5h30m train ride to London, change stations, then another couple of hours to get to Paris, at a price comparable to a budget trans-Atlantic flight. (Only Londoners find the channel tunnel convenient -- for the rest of the UK it's eye-roll territory.)
... and maybe American rail enthusiast tourists who actually LOVE the trains. Sometimes I think y'all don't appreciate what you've got over there. I wish we had it as good over here.
For entering the UK from the US, you might want to check for flights direct to GLA (Glasgow Airport) or EDI (Edinburgh Airport, frequent coaches to Glasgow centre, or tram to Haymarket then train to Glasgow). Customs and Immigration at both those airports is much less busy and congested than at London (except Edinburgh in August, if the Edinburgh Festival is getting back to normal by then) and there are direct flights from the USA. Do not consider Prestwick, sometimes billed as Glasgow's second airport: it's actually in the middle of nowhere with minimal ground transport links to the big cities -- driving is the only convenient way to access it, and you do not want to hire a car in a country that drives on the opposite side of the road after a red-eye flight plus jet lag. (Also, car hire in the UK is about twice as expensive as it is in the USA and our cities were not designed around automobiles.)
When I came to Scotland on R&R in 2004, I believe we landed in Birmingham to go through "UK customs" even though I was on a flight from the EU (Frankfurt), where I also had to go through "EU customs" & passport control to get into the airport. I should say to get "back into" the airport because at that time the south side was still the U.S. Air Base where it looks like they're now building a new terminal and there was no perimeter road connecting it to the main terminals on the north side. It was a short trip along the Autobahn to get from the airbase to the airport.
The one thing I remember most about the Frankfurt airport is having the worst coffee I've ever had at the McDonald's at the one inside there. I arrived at the airport side around 3:00am local time (5:00am in Iraq) for a 7:00am local time flight to Glasgow. It's one of only two McDonald's I've ever been in that didn't have the standard Bunn-O-Matic drip coffee (I think y'all call it filter coffee) maker - the other one was in Stirling.
My BEST memories of that trip were the trains in Scotland. But your inter-city bus service was a hell of a lot better than what we have in the U.S. It was better than what we used to have way back when too.
Well, I’m not keen on giving the game away too soon. Better to wait until they get to voting age before activating that capability.
whitroth @ 483: Y'know, it's folks like you that I got even with in my first book. Folks who are sure that, I mean, *everyone* speaks French, and Latin, and Greek.
What? They don't? You don't? 😃
Then they should have Google Translate bookmarked at least ... or some other internet on-line translation website.
I have quotes in Welsh and Finnish.
It's a little bit harder from books because you can't just use copy & paste. Especially if it uses characters not found on a standard U.S. (or U.K.) keyboard.
But if you use Windoze there's the built in Character Map utility. I don't know MacOS well enough to say for sure, but I'm 99% sure it has a similar utility. Let's just say I would be surprised as hell if Windoze had a useful feature that MacOS didn't have.
I was being euphemistic. Firstly, are you SERIOUSLY saying that a hydrogen-fuelled aeroplane would have 1/250th the fuel load of a kerosene-fuelled one?
Secondly, you are completely ignoring hydrogen chemistry. Kerosene doesn't vaporise all that readily and has a fairly narrow range of concentrations in air at which it will detonate; aircraft deflagrations rarely turn into detonations. Hydrogen is a gas at all normal temperatures, has a VERY wide of concentrations at which it will detonate.
None of this is hard to look up, and you could find indications of it in the link I posted.
Elderly Cynic @ 486: Right.
I have never understood the psychoactive nature of hydrogen. All of my investigations have led me to the conclusion that, if the answer is using hydrogen as a fuel, you have asked the wrong question; there probably are exceptions, but they will be very unusual. But that doesn't stop it being touted as the solution to all our fuel-related problems.
If they could ever solve the storage & distribution problems it would be the ultimate clean burning fuel. I don't know if they will solve those problems in my lifetime (or ever), but I think it's worth doing the research just to find an alternative to burning fossil fuels.
Robert van der Heide @ 491:
Long term I think it makes more sense to develop equipment to turn excess electricity into more easily handled fuels than to redesign everything in the world to run on hydrogen, which is a pain t handle.
You don't have to figure out how to run the world on hydrogen. Use the hydrogen you manufacture with your excess electricity as an ingredient, an intermediate step, in manufacturing those other fuels.
PS: Fifty years from now, when THEY finally have a working fusion reactor, they can convert that hydrogen into helium and use it to fill the gas envelopes for airships propelled through the air by hydrogen burning turbines.
"It's one of only two McDonald's I've ever been in that didn't have the standard Bunn-O-Matic drip coffee"
You should try Australian McDonald's (Maccas). I haven't seen a drip filter coffee maker in a Maccas for years. (maybe they're there but I've not noticed) When they did have them McDonald's coffee used to be revolting and only used in times of great desperation.
Maccas now have actual coffee made by baristers. From a cappuccino to a macchiato, it's all available and quite drinkable. They could probably even whip up an americano.
Heteromeles @ 498:
Yep. I just want something that works better than pain compliance with a rock.
Earplugs work real good for shutting out unwanted noise.
Well, maybe. There has been enough research to indicate that those problems are intractable. Also, it can be produced by using fossil fuels just as readily as by using renewable ones.
"It's a little bit harder from books because you can't just use copy & paste. Especially if it uses characters not found on a standard U.S. (or U.K.) keyboard."
Google does live translate of text. Point the camera at it. Some versions retain the font, even from say Chinese to English. You can point at signs or menus and see it rendered into your language of choice live on the screen.
Example of how it works
https://blog.google/products/translate/google-translates-instant-camera-translation-gets-upgrade/
Earplugs work real good for shutting out unwanted noise.
They certainly do. And unlike object-based pain compliance or tranquilizer darts, they're perfectly legal and require no special skills.
Robert Prior @ 502:
I have a nice pair of noise-cancelling Bose headphones. They don't work against screaming children.
Engine noise, no problem. Bandsaws, noticeable reduction but still obvious. Screaming children? Multiple highly variable, high-pitched heterodyning sources — no reduction in apparent volume at all.
I have custom molded earplugs similar to these. The filter channel lets you hear normal conversation but closes up to block high intensity impulse noise like artillery fire or screaming children ... the screaming children weren't caused by the artillery fire1.
https://soundgear.com/collections/soundgear-custom-earplug-solutions/products/soundgear-filtered-ear-plugs
These are not the brand I have but they're the closest thing I could find with a short internet search.
They extrude an expanding foam mixture into your ear canal & a few minutes later, after it solidifies, they pull it out and it's a perfect match for the contours of your ear canal. It's used to create a mold for your custom earplugs2.
They work REAL GOOD. I slept through a mortar attack at LSA Anaconda (Mortaritaville) while wearing them. Admittedly, I was very tired by the time I got to lay down on the cot the Army provided & I'm a pretty sound sleeper, but incoming mortar fire is LOUD, and the warning sirens are even louder (OSHA wouldn't let you have a siren that loud here in the U.S.). But you can still hear normal conversations with them in.
They also give you back your ear-molds in case you want to use them to order another pair, but my first pair lasted me 30 years, and I expect my ear canal had changed a bit by the time I wanted a replacement pair and having new molds cast didn't cost any extra.
1 I just thought of another solution I have used with bothersome, noisy children. Invite them to play hide and seek. Tell them you'll be "IT" & come looking for them after you count to a thousand. You won't hear much noise from them (other than the occasional suppressed giggle) for quite a long time. If you're lucky they never catch on.
2 ... and if you have any ear wax build-up it will also usually come out when they remove the ear-mold.
arrbee @ 503: Has anyone come up with a guesstimate of what proportion of hydrogen we should expect to end up in the atmosphere if it were used as a fuel on a country-wide scale ? Also, how much of that would escape harmlessly into space ?
Just a SWAG (and I'm not even going to pretend I have the math to back it up) but I expect it would be zero. Electrolyzing water to make hydrogen and then burning it as a fuel just converts it back to water again. I expect the same amount would escape into space as already escapes without our making hydrogen & burning it.
Someone please explain / tell Greg about the current UK PTerry stuff and how proud we are of the larger Fantasy / SF community for 'sticking it up the Kyber'. It'll make it all make a lot more sense (esp. the Banshee name).
The real trick is noticing the Names then the effect. And not thinking too hard about "What Maisie Knew" and what / how information exchange is, well: it's organic where we come from, it's not silicon cough. [Disclaimer for... those who love Praying Mantises' - this is allll cold, no input data, no seeding the sides, no influence or any such stuff. That's the real Joke]
TL;DR We have read and loved "King Canoodlum and the Great Horned Cheese" and we've also read PTerry.
Anyhow: Light bending and X-ray echoes from behind a supermassive black hole
Analysis of the X-ray flares reveals short flashes of photons consistent with the re-emergence of emission from behind the black hole.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03667-0
~
For the record, repo market hitting $1 trillion on the weekend ~6 million US citizens are about to go into Rent Arreas is pretty fucking dark crystal stuff. Here's a question: what is Capital that is not deployed because it would break all the things?
Answer: A Weapon weilded by Fools.
gasdive @ 515:
You should try Australian McDonald's (Maccas). I haven't seen a drip filter coffee maker in a Maccas for years. (maybe they're there but I've not noticed) When they did have them McDonald's coffee used to be revolting and only used in times of great desperation.
Maccas now have actual coffee made by baristers. From a cappuccino to a macchiato, it's all available and quite drinkable. They could probably even whip up an americano.
No thank you. I believe that awful coffee at the Frankfurt airport McDonald's was an "Americano".
I don't drink coffee flavored drinks. I don't put anything in my coffee but coffee (maybe a few chips of ice sometimes if they make it too hot or too strong because they expect you to dilute it with all that other crap). I don't put cream, I don't put sugar and I for damn sure don't put pumpkin spice syrup in coffee1.
My only other experiences with McDonald's coffee outside the U.S. was when I went to China. All the McDonald's I found there had those coffee flavored drinks, but they also had regular McDonald's coffee which is what I want.
When I visited Scotland in 2004 all of the Bed 'n Breakfast places I stayed at had the Bunn-O-Matic machines (the carafe is unmistakable - especially when it says Bunn right there on it). And the other McDonald's in Scotland (besides the one in Stirling) that I stopped into to get a coffee all had them too, so it's not like you can't find plain old regular coffee in Scotland ... just that one McDonald's didn't have it.
1 I may have put Irish whiskey in a coffee one time, but I don't really remember. Plain coffee is an acquired taste, but I have acquired it and I accept no substitutes.
gasdive @ 518:
Google does live translate of text. Point the camera at it. Some versions retain the font, even from say Chinese to English. You can point at signs or menus and see it rendered into your language of choice live on the screen.
Example of how it works
https://blog.google/products/translate/google-translates-instant-camera-translation-gets-upgrade/
That's pretty cool and I hope I can remember it if I ever need it.
I rarely use my iPhone for internet.
I got my weekly "screen time" report today: "Your screen time was up 109% last week, for an average of 9 minutes a day". It was so high because I had to call my doctor's office at the VA and leave a message with his nurse to have a prescription re-issued (no refills left & I was going to run out before my upcoming appointment) ... which means going through the VRU a couple of times & then waiting on hold until someone can pick up.
Try this out:
https://twitter.com/ideamarket_io/status/1420456931370541060
For hints to noticing some things. "We don't want your Money, Honey..."
And the Indisputable fact that BlackRock and the Democratic Party of the United States of America (currently with a 60 legislature pass-zone) failed to solve the rent crisis about to hit.
Crib sheet notes:
1) Host related, has historical interlacing
1a) He's kinda got it right, but underestimates it by an order of magnitude
2) Nick Land adjacent / whole slew of /acc peeps
3) The amazing Dawn Foster (grep) died, we mourn. Everyone we touch, dies.
4) You won't have seen this, but viewing the new Loki series (Disney owned) is kinda instructive on this. The Mouse really is using Nexus Events and Real Deal[tm] stuff to sell merch. Lovely cameo by R.E. Grant though.
5) US Gaming industry is imploding, everyone suddenly working out why the makers of "KUD-WARFARE-10-ZOMBIE/MENA-SLAUGHTER" are all... actual, real life, 100%, Bush era War on Terror people. "Child indoctrination", well, well, well...
~
Proof of Non-Hominid-Intelligence #9291: "19 miles"
Ooh, we get one more!
When you come up with slogans such as "Build Back Better" one cannot not stop to think: these are deeply stupid and ideologically stunted H.S.S who have no conception of what ecosystems are. Their ideological belief systems cannot even tolerate other Humans being different so what are their chances of survival? And many of said beliefs are based on ancient tomes over a thousand years old.
If you wrote it in a novel, no-one would believe it. And yet, here we are, witnessing the Anthropcene, dictated by Muppets.
0%
[1% is being kind - this is a meta comment to [redacted] ]
ὕβρις
It's hitting 40-50oC out there boys: ecosystems do change in millions of years, not tens of years. You fucked it.
p.s.
Arms Dealers. Your World Economy is run by Arms Dealers. And Religious fools and sociopaths. Soooooo....
grep "Causal Weapons".
WEEEEE.
Absolutely, 100% have to know you got screwed by your own fucking species on this one.
"Block it out"
Boys. We've bad news. Turns out we knew a shit load more about Black Holes and stuff than you did. Tee-Hee-Hee.
[Redacated] are cowards.
Ok, hydrogen as fuel: is everyone here talking about fuel tanks of high-pressure hydrogen? You're not going to want liquid H2, given how hard it is to keep it from leaking.
I remember, decades ago, discussions of using some kind of metal or metallo-ceramic sponge (platinum's coming to mind) to store the hydrogen. That, of course, is not going BOOM in a crash.
"a higher level of stem-winding"
I am not trying to wind you up. I really do not see where you are coming from in this. Some atmospheric carbon fuel could be available in a couple of years, making some contribution to the problem, and even if the fossil fuel companies do go full Dick Dastardly, there still would be a contribution made, and an increasing one as more plants (they will want to sell the fuel) come on stream.
But you are saying we should throw all that away, in favour of a plan that cannot deliver anything for ten years or more, can then only ramp up slowly because of the existing fleet, and might even not work at all, if there proves to be an insurmountable opportunity.
Now, if you are saying that atmospheric carbon should be a stop-gap, to be replaced when/if hydrogen becomes a workable option, I'm not arguing with that. But that's not how I'm reading you.
JHomes
"I remember, decades ago, discussions of using some kind of metal or metallo-ceramic sponge (platinum's coming to mind) to store the hydrogen."
I have vague memories of it using iron, which is a lot cheaper than platinum. But whatever it would be, HEAVY comes to mind.
JHomes
You’ve misunderstood the point gasdive was making. Australians like good coffee. So much so that McDonalds was losing business because they were selling the international standard dishwater here. (and Starbucks couldn’t make a go of it). So McDonalds has decent coffee in their Australian outlets. A similar concession to the lack of ‘all beef patties’ on sale in their Indian restaurants.
But yes, an “americano”, in Frankfurt or anywhere else, is undrinkable.
Sounds like the Columbia River (locks not required).
If anyone knows of a Солярис-filter available to add to ANY browser (Linux or Windoze), I would truly appreciate their mentioning it here.
I rarely use my iPhone for internet.
I believe the functionality gasdive is talking about is in the google app (or perhaps in a dedicated translate app). It might call home for compute resources, but modern phones pack some pretty serious processing these days anyway and it might not be needed. It might therefore use the internet a bit, but not like you're playing with a web browser.
This might not make a whole lot of sense, because I'm still working on the details, but it should be obvious that powering an atmospheric carbon-remover with electricity made from fossil fuels is, at the very least, inefficient. So obviously you want to power your carbon-remover with solar, wind, or tidal - and such installations range from "sized for a single-family home" on up.
So carbon-removers need to come in a multitude of sizes, suitable for everything from home solar to a field of windmill a couple miles wide... they're plentiful and they get run off of whatever surplus power is available. Do you only need 19 MW of you 20 MW solar install? Shove 1 MW at your carbon-remover. Is everyone away from the house? Run your carbon remover while everyone is at work/school, then shut it down when Billy gets home...
Does this make any sense? Am I reinventing the wheel? Does anyone have a carbon-remover yet?
Actually no, I'm positing a way to have intercontinental air travel that's faster than airships.
The problem is that we've got around 9 years to get off carbon if we want to avoid the bad (not the worst) effects of climate change. If we were serious about dealing, we'd get rid of air travel altogether, until batteries or hydrogen canisters get light and powerful enough to make planes practical again.
So "stop-gapping" with carbon-based fuels, in my honest opinion, is one example of many of what Steven Levy called Champlain South Syndrome, on display in its full force when I brought up a silly little bit of science fictional window dressing.
Here's an extended quote from the link above:
"The engineer’s report was troubling. No, make that alarming. It was 2018, and the expert commissioned by the board of the Champlain Towers South, a lovely 40-year-old, 13-story Florida condominium with views of the ocean and the bay, had identified “major structural damage” that would require expensive repairs. The concrete was crumbling. The rebar was rusting. Maybe it wasn’t a great idea to put the pool over the parking garage.
"What to do? Residents of the building, who were not generally multimillionaires, had already paid hefty assessments for previous maintenance. They wanted a safe home, but, as one resident said, paying the necessary assessments would be like paying a second mortgage. Also, a building official reassured owners at a meeting that the structure was “in very good shape.” Board meetings became contentious. As proof of damage accumulated, the repair estimates grew. It was going to cost not $9 million but $15 million. The board couldn’t pull the trigger, and some members quit. “The building is falling apart,” warned one of the departing members in October 2019. In 2020, a new board began politicking to make the repairs, and in April 2021—three years after the engineer’s initial report—the president informed residents that the board would finally commit to making repairs. "The observable damage such as in the garage has gotten significantly worse since the initial inspection,” she wrote. Still, some tenants began a petition to fight the costly assessments, which would start on July 1, 2021.
"On June 24 Champlain Towers South collapsed, and 98 people died.
"What happened in Surfside, Florida, was not exactly denial. The dispute about whether to direct uncomfortably large resources, and the delay in actually doing so, involved a refusal to recognize the urgency of an existential problem. It’s easier to do this when everyday reality seems to be going well. Everybody knows that sooner or later you have to pay the piper. But what does sooner mean?"
I mean, I was reading about hydrogen-powered planes in 1980s science fiction, the same time I put together a college symposium on global warming. Why are we barely further along dealing with either now than we were then, more than three decades later? Even battery powered planes are rising faster, and they've even demonstrably flown intercontinental distances, although not in a way that scales readily.
The reaction to what was basically a goofy SF idea on an SFF blog was remarkable in it's normality. Y'all aren't a bunch of luddites or visionaries. In my experience, you're fucking typical. If you want to understand why climate change is a problem, it's not them, it's us. Look in a mirror and ask yourself why you have any problem with a hydrogen powered plane, even in science fiction, to the point where you sound like a shill for a petroleum company in shooting it down as an idea in a blog.
Imagine a future in 15 years where there are no gas powered planes whatsoever, and you might be thinking about a future where we deal with climate change. But cynicism and "the voice of reason" and all that other BS is just so comfortable, isn't it? That's Champlain South Syndrome speaking, telling you we've still got time to deal with climate change when we don't. CS Syndrome is the glowing worms behind your eyes that you see in your mirror. You like the words it makes you say? Or are you now looking away from that mirror, the better to prepare a defense of your words and your hesitancy, just as those tenants in Surfside did?
"blog comment killfile" is the usual solution here I believe. I use it, it gives you a "[hush]" link next to each comment and clicking that hides the relevant user. Well, until the next nym and accompanying burst of material.
blog comment killfile
To be clear: "blog comment killfile" is a plug-in for Firefox and Chrome that you have to install however you normally deal with browser extensions.
It was going to cost not $9 million but $15 million. The board couldn’t pull the trigger, and some members quit.
My understanding of this situation and many similar ones (even our local pool board) is while the board is driving the car all maintenance and even gas purchases have to be approved by at least a majority of the members. If not a super majority.
So while previous boards would talk about what was needed to be done they could never get a majority of the members to go along with the needed sacrifice.
But again the sounds like all kinds of major issues, including climate change, where the general population will NOT be taken to where they don't just want to go. Or admit they need to go.
I think I see what you're getting at.
Except...
Refusing to do anything about aviation carbon unless/until those hydrogen planes are out there flying sounds like a very similar problem.
And while you are right that shutting down most civil aviation would address the problem, I think it ain't gonna happen, whatever you and I do.
JHomes
Remember that civil aviation is a minority veto thing, though. Especially in the USA. Once people start putting bullet holes in airplanes the failure rate will go up significantly, and at some point the odds of success will drop below what even nihilists are willing to accept.
Works well in Firefox. Quelle splendide! Thank you ever so much, Moz!
EC It's very simple, actually & I'm very surprised you have not spotted it. Consider future traction power on the railways ... Electrification, right? But in the past what Roger Ford has called "Bionic Duckweed" was the preferred DfT/Treasury solution, because it's cheaper & hasn't been invented yet. Hydrogen is similarly "vapourware" ( Ghastly pun, but there you go ) allowing them to continue kicking the can down the road. The fuckwits are actually proposing to electrify the Motorways, rather than the railways, I kid you not. So It's a giant scam perpetrated by those who both/either hate railways &/or are the fossil-fuel lobby.
Charlie There's ALSO the Glasgow C - Edinburgh fully-electrified service via Shotts, every hour, stopping, oh dear all stations, & taking 90 minutes - pretty ride though ...
Moz Like the Arabs of S. Shields, you mean? ( I think they are Yemeni-descended ) - later - "Airlander" ?? ( Strictly a lifting body not an airship )
1) Hitting what you aim at, is complex when you're shooting up, espeically with a target moving at around 150 knots. 2) Should this start occurring, airport authorities will easily add detection systems such as wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunfire_locator and hackaday.com/2013/06/09/echolocation-pinpoints-where-a-gunshot-came-from 3) so that veto will be vetoed itself promptly.
2 years ago, "herd immunity" was the immunity that a population gains from catching or being immunised against $disease. The same article now reads that herd immunity is only gained by immunisation.
500 - True, but I read the OP as planning a visit to Scotland based around the Glasgow 2024 Worldcon. 509 para the last - the Glasgow Airport shuttle bus is a UK normal town bus (nearest North American equivalent would be a rear underfloor engined version of a school bus), where our inter-city buses are about airline coach seating standard. 515 - Me neither, but MaccyD's is a "vendor of last resort" anyway.Paws The ex-NBR main line is indeed electrified, as are ALL Dunedin - Glasgow lines, now. ( From N to S: Via Falkirk, via Airdrie, via Shotts & via Carstairs )
Quite. Currently, a full standard industrial hydrogen cylinder is 1% hydrogen, 99% steel, by weight. As for something to put in aircraft, that isn't going to fly :-)
https://www.boconline.co.uk/shop/en/uk/high-purity-hydrogen-cylinder
The foamed metal (and other materials) were bright ideas to improve the safety, by producing a storage mechanism not prone to fast release. But (a) they were STILL heavy and (b) nobody ever managed to get them to work well enough for production.
That paper I linked was written by a hydrogen proponent, and said:
"BEFORE HYDROGEN CAN BE USED AS A COMMON ENERGY CARRIER: • Achieve public acceptance of hydrogen-technologies • Provide at least the same level of safety, reliability, comfort as today’s fossil fuels • No solutions are available in terms of widely accepted standards, methodologies, mitigation techniques and regulations)"
Personally, I think that hydrogen as a fuel should be classed with fusion power.
Your hobby-horse needs a bit of a rest now and then, or we shall be reporting you to the RSPCHH! That might be true about loons like E-W Rail(*), but this was in the context of trans-Pacific air traffic. If you have any plans for an electrified trans-Pacific railway(!) from (say) Los Angeles to Tokyo, I am sure Heteromeles knows people who would love to hear from you :-)
(*) For other people, they proposed non-electrified plans and said that hydrogen-fuelled freight trains would solve the pollution issues.
(!) Yes, I know about the one via the Bering Strait, which sounds an excellent idea, technically, but will never be allowed by the Cold Warriors.
Cheers; I wasn't sure about the NBR main line.
The Carstairs line is the one Charlie correctly described as having a 2 hourly service.
Your problem is that you aren't thinking things through. You are using the logic: "Something must be done. This is something. Therefore it must be done."
I have no difficulty in imagining a future with no gasoline-powered aeroplanes, and haven't had for some decades. But I also worked out that, given forseeably viable technologies, that necessarily implies fewer aeroplanes and many fewer long-haul ones. Why do you have a problem imagining that?
The simple fact is that hydrogen as an aircraft fuel was science fiction only before it was extensively studied; it is now closer to fantasy. Batteries are not much better. Yes, both are (just) feasible for a few, specialised uses. Ethanol is perfectly feasible for any current use but with a significant lower energy density. But, IN ANY CASE, the engineering requirements almost demand a liquid fuel that burns in air, and the ecological ones are mainly dependent on how it is produced, not what it is.
On coffee and mass transit hubs:
The worst coffee I ever experienced was bought from a kiosk at the entrance to Central Station in Amsterdam. It was so bad that I spat it out, forced myself to salivate and spit for a minute to clear the taste ... then cautiously took another sip to confirm it really was that bad. Then it went in the trash.
The second worst coffee I ever had was bought from a kiosk in the departure area at Heathrow, many years ago. Not quite as terrible, but still required an urgent trip to the nearest drinking fountain (they had them in those days) to rinse my mouth out.
In both cases, they were from drip coffee machines and the kiosks were not terribly busy because it was a bit past rush hour. (They tasted like they hadn't been cleaned for months.)
In general, the bean-to-cup machines in airline departure lounges and fast food joints never get that bad because they start sounding buzzers and stop working until someone cleans them. And proper coffee shops with seating that rely on repeat business don't dare serve anything that awful. But kiosks with drip coffee machines like the Bunn-o-matic in busy transit terminals that sell to unwary travellers who ain't never coming back ... avoid like the plague!
" But cynicism and "the voice of reason" and all that other BS is just so comfortable, isn't it? "
Well, I'd say it is less cynicism than reading history. We are, as a species, good at rationalization away unpleasant facts when the things to do are uncomfortable.
Nothing with a real impact will be done until those in power as a group feel fear of imminently loosing the thing real they care for : Power, Prestige, Privilege.
The as a group part means we need to convince a supermajority of the 0.1 percenteers (the most sheltered, narcissist people on earth, mostly pampered heirs which do not have the intellectual qualities of the founders of their dynasties, people who are mostly always protected from their own mistakes, individual or collective) that there is something for then in "saving the planet".
I also believe that these people are really addicted to power, prestige and privilege more than to money and comfort, which means they do not care that much if they loose on living standards as long as they manage to stay top dogs.
How do you make "saving the planet" attractive (i.e. prestigious in their "in" group) to this demography ? It is not impossible, the powerful have been know to spend freely for prestige.
Gates is throwing is ill gained money at some worthy causes, how do you make this a trend ?
I was FaceTimeing with a person I have to keep in touch with for reasons the other day. This person voted for Brexit, is antiVax, a global warming denier, racist, supports JK Rowling on the trans issue, pays money to a guru for advice, believes in New Age guff and is generally on the wrong side of every issue. Said person was recently ordering new floor-covering and had this conversation with the salesman. I quote
“The showroom guy, he had Covid, he said it was like a bad flu, he was nine days off work. And then April he got his AstraZeneca jab and he felt like shit so he phoned a friend who said ‘phone an ambulance’ so he felt more like shit and waited and waited and then phoned an ambulance. The girl on the phone said ‘you’ve just had your AstraZeneca jab?’ so she sent two ambulances and the guys were with him and they said ‘you know what mate you’ve just had a heart attack’ and then he actually died, he said ‘I had another heart attack, I blacked out but luckily because I had four paramedics they resuscitated me’ and they took him to hospital and put a stent in. And he said to them ‘should I get my second jab?’ and the doctor was like she said ‘I’m not allowed to tell you’ but she looked around the room and said ‘No, No, none of them.' And he said two other people on the ward had also got blood clots with AstraZeneca.”
Facepalm.
Once people start putting bullet holes in airplanes
Once this starts happening DHS and other TLAs get even more power and the American not-right-wing gets labeled terrorists (again) by all the Fox-viewers…
It's not just the 0.1% - that's the trouble. The majority of people in 'privileged' countries have to be prepared to change their lifestyle, which gets the most insanely emotional responses even from some of the 'ecological' camp. This thread is an example, but electric vehicles as a solution to our land transport problems are a better one.
No, JUST moving to all-electric vehicles is NOT a solution, especially for places like the UK. In itself, it solves one problem, makes several others worse, and isn't even viable in the medium term. At the very least, we need to upgrade our generating and distribution capacity by a factor of three, ensure that all the electricity is generated from renewable sources, we reduce the amount of usage, and make the vehicles smaller, not larger; none of that is being done. It is being used by TPTB and the sheeple as a way of pretending to tackle the issues while not facing up to them and, by the multinationals, as a way of selling even more expensive gimmicks. There ARE solutions, and electric vehicles would be a (small) part, but we are heading in another direction entirely.
The aircraft issues are similar. This would mean that most perishable foods would have to be grown locally (which would really hit British supermarkets), and we wouldn't be able to jet off to far-flung parts whenever we want to. Yes, I remember what that was like. But there is no known way in which our aircraft addiction can be fuelled compatibly with resolving our ecological problems.
Back when compulsory seatbelt legislation was passed in Alberta the daytime talk shows were full of people phoning in with stories about a friend/uncle/cousin who rolled their car into a lake and drowned because the seatbelt jammed and they couldn't get out.
One of the hosts contacted a buddy at the RCMP who looked at every fatal accident report in the province, ever, to verify that that had, indeed, never happened. They eventually stopped calling into his show with those stories, once they realized he would just mock them and make fun of them on air for being liars too stupid to realize their lie would be caught.
No, JUST moving to all-electric vehicles is NOT a solution, especially for places like the UK.
Yeah, I'm also in despair here because much of both the public discussion and my circles discussion is how and when to get an electric car and will they work well enough, when I think the better way would be to try to get rid of most of the personal cars. However we are a large country with people living in places where depending on public transportation is not easy, so saying 'don't buy the cars' is making a lot of people angry.
Of course getting people to move to more dense areas where the public transportation would be a working solution would be good, but it's not easy to sell to people, though a lot of the Finnish countryside is getting depopulated anyway. Still, I live in the second-largest city in Finland, part of the capital metropolitan area, and much of the city is quite difficult to live in without a car, especially when one wants to go to work (though less of it now, obviously), school, hobbies, or even the grocery store. I'm trying to do my small part in getting the public transportation to be better, but it's not especially fast, and the bus services seem to be always on the brink of destruction. This means more and more people are more dependent on having the personal car(s) when we should be going to a wholly different direction.
Also the flying is kind of an issue - from the Central European perspective we are quite like an island. It's possible to travel to the Central Europe via land, but that means either going around the Gulf of Bothnia to Sweden (so Helsinki-Stockholm adds about 1750 km extra to the travel) or via either Russia or Baltic countries, which is not particularily short and easy either. The main non-flying route currently is a ferry to either Stockholm or Germany and from there by whatever means necessary - this summer there's even a train route from Stockholm to Berlin, so that's an option - but the Baltic ferries are not especially environment-friendly, either. The Eastern route has really no easy train service to Berlin and beyond. Flying is so much easier and faster, sadly.
We did some planning if we could have travelled in Europe this summer, and we found a way to get from Helsinki to Paris in only three nights: the first night is ferry Helsinki-Stockholm, then a day in Stockholm, the second night is the train Stockholm-Berlin, with again a day in Berlin, and the third night is the night train Berlin-Paris. This is probably something we do next year, but it's still quite different from the maybe five hours it takes to take a plane to Paris (with all the associated hassle at airports). I would welcome longer, more relaxed holidays, sure, but for many people this is quite unacceptable, and obviously going further abroad takes even more time.
I wasn't very clear, i guess. I was speaking of the 0.1% because they are trend setters for the 1%.
And people are ready to go to insane lengths to be in the "in" group.
The current batch on "in" people are into flying phallic symbols in near space. With each launch at least equivalent to a 100 very long range plane flight.
Saving the planet must be made fashionable, using guilt and the future of children simply never worked, most of these people are simply too self involved to be able to feel the pain of the future.
As Pigeon and I have pointed out, almost all personal transport issues are very easy to resolve, by going down the electrically assisted cycle route. Indeed, at the most car-like end, a quad suitable for most such uses need weigh no more than 250 Kg (probably less) and use only a 1 KW motor(*). It would also take a fraction of the resources to make and need a damn sight less road space than the proposed electric cars, both for running and parking.
This WASN'T true even a few decades ago, though bicycles were (and are) are a solution to many such issues even then.
(*) And, yes, it could include heating, an air filter for the people that need one, and other essentials. But, no, you would not be able to drive one in a Finnish winter dressed like this:
https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/man-with-hat-and-tropical-shirt-by-pool-smiling-portrait-picture-idsb10065415e-001?k=6&m=sb10065415e-001&s=612x612&w=0&h=oEll29Jti41liithccz6ssAvr1FPNCsxJnvJvFu5qCs=
I have to go to a specific hospital 3 times a week for haemodialysis. By hospital taxi this takes about 40 minutes door to door. Using public transport (a mixture of walking, rail and bus) it would take 85 minutes, plus waiting time for train and bus. Oh and I have to do the return journey immediately after a dialysis session, when possibly tired and/or nauseous.
I was reading about hydrogen-powered planes in 1980s science fiction, the same time I put together a college symposium on global warming. Why are we barely further along dealing with either now than we were then, more than three decades later?
Because they don't work.
Lockheed looked into hydrogen very thoroughly, back in the 1950s, as an alternative hypersonic propulsion system for what eventually became the SR-71. During the Cold War, high energy fuels were very much a thing. Yet, to this day, the only niche role for hydrogen in propulsion is as a liquid fuel for high performance spacecraft -- and usually so low in thrust (as opposed to efficiency) that they can't get off the ground without strap-on solid fuel boosters. (In this respect, Blue Origin's space tourism hop was a very unusual triumph -- it demonstrated a sea level launch using only an LH2/LOX cycle engine! Which is quite something in human spaceflight, even if it's only sub-orbital.)
Hydrogen gas is one eighth as massive per unit volume as methane, and provides far less energy when you combust it. Liquid hydrogen is better ... but it still has a density of only 70 grams/litre.
If you want to send a 747-sized (or any other size) airliner across X kilometres at speed Y with payload Z, you need to expend roughly the same amount of energy, regardless of fuel -- unless the fuel is very bulky, in which case your airliner is going to be extremely fat (in order to hold all that fuel), so is going to face much higher drag (so need even more fuel to overcome this). Making multiple landings to refuel en route doesn't improve the situation, as landing and takeoff consume disproportionately more energy than level flight.
It turns out that even liquid methane (423 grams/litre) is so much bulkier than kerosene (820 grams/litre) that current airframes can't carry any useful cargo in addition to fuel. Hydrogen is simply unworkable.
The only reasons hydrogen works for rocketry is because (a) rockets go straight up as fast as possible to get above the stratosphere before they start to accelerate significantly, to minimize the aforementioned drag penalty; and (b) the limiting factor on rocket efficiency is exhaust velocity in vacuum, not energy density. H2O is about the lightest credible exhaust gas molecule with the questionable exception of H2F which nobody sane wants to add to the atmosphere.
Anyway, here's the point: if hydrogen was more efficient than kerosene (or methane) for jet travel, we'd already be using it. It isn't; it's actually much, much, worse. If you've got a carbon-neutral source of hydrogen (eg. electrolysis of water, powered by PV cells) then the sensible way to use it for aviation is to turn it into long chain alkanes like kerosene and then back into water and CO2. At least kerosene doesn't require bulky thermal insulation, diffuse through fuel tank walls, embrittle metal components in a complex structure under dynamic stress, and readily form explosive mixtures when it leaks in air.
Remember that civil aviation is a minority veto thing, though.
I suggest you read up on the green laser pointer problem (and its solution) before you play that card.
TLDR: cheap green laser pointers can cause laser blinding eye injuries to pilots at ranges of a few kilometres. When idiots began to do this ... well, in the USA you pull a multi-year prison sentence after the Feds catch you (and they treat it as a terrorism offense). In Australia they just totally banned possession of those lasers without a license.
"Minority veto" only works by the consent of the majority.
I've had two(!) this year and yes, on a well built ship you do not hear anything from the neighbouring cabins.
(Just back on Saturday from a week-long trip round Iceland)
Personally, I think that hydrogen as a fuel should be classed with fusion power.
Do you mean in terms of delivery time lines?
Sort of. It's 20 years away. Always was, and always will be.
"#555, #557 - You don't understand why public transport is not seen as a replacement for the car.
I have to go to a specific hospital 3 times a week for haemodialysis. By hospital taxi this takes about 40 minutes door to door. Using public transport (a mixture of walking, rail and bus) it would take 85 minutes, plus waiting time for train and bus. Oh and I have to do the return journey immediately after a dialysis session, when possibly tired and/or nauseous."
the most common case : try getting into overloaded public transport with a young child in a pushchair. It's a man's world.
Charlie @ 561 Then, will someone PLEASE get it into the Treasury/DfT's head that it ISN'T GOING TO WORK? Various people have been telling them this for several years & they are still burbling on about hydrogen-vapourware-powered trains ( including heavy freight! ) Meanwhile there's THIS INSANITY ... but they won't spend a penny on electrifying the railways .... I assume very large & corrupt vested interests are at stake, of course
At least kerosene doesn't require bulky thermal insulation, diffuse through fuel tank walls, embrittle metal components in a complex structure under dynamic stress, and readily form explosive mixtures when it leaks in air.
Diverging a bit here. Is there any reasonable sane discussion of just how fuel would be stored on a mission to Mars? You know the stuff needed to brake when you get there, light off for the return trip, then brake when you get back to earth?
Yes. That's what I meant.
they are still burbling on about hydrogen-vapourware-powered trains
Oddly, trains are about the only area where hydrogen-fueled transport might work: they don't care much about bulky insulation (you can string a tanker car or two behind the locomotive), they don't have to keep it chilled for many hours (they can top off regularly at station stops), and you can armour them to survive a crash (if you can build a nuclear fuel cask that won't rupture when hit head-on by a freight locomotive running at full speed, you can probably adequately protect an LH2 tank).
It's still really dumb, though, when we've got a largely electrified network (and can probably provide adequate battery power to ferry a train a few miles across non-electrifiable gaps, like the Forth bridge).
SpaceX is planning on using methane/LOX cycle engines. They can synthesize fuel for the return trip from the Martian atmosphere, and although the fuel and oxidizer are cryogens they're much easier to handle than LH2.
cheap green laser pointers
But those aren't protected by the second amendment…
:-)
try getting into overloaded public transport with a young child in a pushchair
Or a suitcase.
Maccas now have actual coffee made by baristers. From a cappuccino to a macchiato, it's all available and quite drinkable. They could probably even whip up an americano.
No thank you. I believe that awful coffee at the Frankfurt airport McDonald's was an "Americano".
Ah, it sounds like you don't like the taste of espresso coffee, given that an Americano is espresso plus hot water.
So at least one unmaned mission to see if it all works?
I don't think I'd want to be on an alpha test mission that required such a process to get home.
I wonder about cooling for months at a time.
They also seem very coy about time in ports and time on the river. My preferred cruise idea was to allow you to see the rivers and the cities.
Viking work on the principle of staying all day in port, and then sailing all night to get to the next port.
This isn't always practical - it may be too far to the next port to do it on an overnight trip. There's one point on the Danube where it's over 24 hours between stops, and on their sea routes the distance may be too great too, but that's what they try.
Going round Iceland last week
Saturday July 24: arrive from elsewhere into Reyjavik Sunday: all day in Reykjavik, departing at 18:00 Monday: dock in Ísafjórdur at 08:00, depart at 17:00 Tuesday: dock in Akureyri at 07:45, depart at 17:00 Wednesday: dock in Seydisfjórdur at 08:00, depart at 23:00 Thursday: anchor by Djúpivogur at 08:00, depart at 18:00 — at least that was the plan, but it was too rough to board the tenders so it got bypasses Friday: anchor by Heimaey at 10:00, depart at 18:00 Saturday: dock at Reykjavik at 05:00, get chucked of the ship again
(If this was Windows I'd know how to get the Icelandic character that looks like a d, but it's a Mac so fuck knows)
One great thing about Viking is the complete lack of children aboard.
Thanks; that's exactly what I was afraid of.
control-command-space pops up the Character Viewer on macOS. Ðð
Heteromeles wrote: "When you can explain to me how to distinguish between, say, which part of the methane in your tank was very recently synthesized from air and which methane was extracted from a source that would have otherwise have kept it out of the air...then we can start talking about how to keep all the plumbing and moving parts properly sealed so that leaks never happen."
Paul and Bill & H. beat me to the point, but I already keyed this so I'll post it anyway, serves me right for mooching off public wifi....
Regarding the dispute between Jhomes and Heteromeles over atmospheric versus fossil carbon in jet fuel, it would only matter if fossil carbon burning was regulated in the first place. If such a monitoring regime existed, then any fuel's fossil carbon content could be measured. The same type of carbon dating technique used to estimate the age of an organic archeological find, is what's currently used by the Food and Drug Administration for random sampling of alcoholic beverages. This ensures that drinks haven't been adulterated with ethanol synthesized from natural gas, which is cheaper than alcohol distilled from grain. To be legal for sale, an alcoholic beverage has to be slightly radioactive, enough to prove its ethanol content wasn't derived from methane that sat underground for geological ages, way longer than the half-life of atmospheric carbon naturally irradiated by cosmic rays. That's why carbon dating only goes back a few thousand years, any older and the heavy carbon isotope has already decayed back to the lighter one.
The next question that leads me to is, could a black market develop for irradiated carbon, as an illegal additive to throw off test results. How expensive would it be to synthesize tons of radioactive carbon isotope, I'd guess there's more involved than just parking a skid of charcoal in front of a particle accelerator.
By the way, noting how Champlain Towers Syndrome warps thinking:
Two people have pointed out that hydrogen powered airplanes don't work.
Meanwhile, Airbus and ZeroAvia are working on, yes, hydrogen-powered commuter passenger planes for short-haul routes. And ZeroAvia started test flying a six seat passenger plane last year in Britain (https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210401-the-worlds-first-commercial-hydrogen-plane).
The article link does go into some of the problems, but oddly enough, they're not the ones OGH or EC are going on about.
As for using carbon-based fuels, the industry could get to "carbon-neutral" some time after 2050, per the article. For those of you who don't get it, that's around the date when we expect coral reefs to be gone, which means that, formally, we will be in a mass extinction event* and will have likely locked in the worst scenarios for climate change if we're still emitting greenhouse gases by that point.
So the choices seem to be: --drop air travel entirely in the next decade --switch to short-haul electric or hydrogen planes as infrastructure grows --go for mass extinction and taper off the use of carbon-based fuel.
Of these, the first is the most doable physically and the least doable by any other metric.
*Geologists define mass extinction events by the sudden absence of reefs in the fossil record. These are called "reef gaps." We're not in one yet, but we're way too close for comfort.
the Icelandic character that looks like a d
The eth (also spelled edh)? This one? Ðð
If you have the keyboard menu on your menu bar (top right, look for country flag) pick the "Show Emoji & Symbols" option to display the character viewer, then select the Latin listing and choose the eth from the pane on display (it will be with the other D-like characters).
So the choices seem to be: --drop air travel entirely in the next decade --switch to short-haul electric or hydrogen planes as infrastructure grows --go for mass extinction and taper off the use of carbon-based fuel.
You forgot --declare that we will have to live with changing climate and keep burning fossil fuels. --proclaim changing climate is a hoax and keep burning fossil fuels.
They aren't good choices, but they encompass the standard right-wing positions on both sides of the Atlantic.
You have special needs, and so you're using a hospital taxi. Other folks with needs use the public transit special needs buses.
99% of the people driving are not doing it because of special needs. A lot is sheer stupidity/suburbanitis (in the US, anyway). As I've mentioned before, I used to cruise down the center of the Interstate, getting into downtown Chicago, on the Metra, the commuter rail, while the idiots on the freeway were in traffic, or traffic jams, because it's "more convenient".
THAT is the attitude that needs to change.
And, in the US, we need to really raise taxes and immensely improve public transit. The bus I used to take to the Metro, the subway, here, ran once every 20 min... in rush hour. As opposed to downtown Chicago, where I once had to take a bus instead of the El... and the rush hour schedule was "less than every three minutes" (yes, that is a direct quote).
Meanwhile, down on the Space Coast of FL, "rush hour" between Cocoa and Titusville was once an hour.
Just for S/G: the biggest commercial seaplane in development right now is the AG600 from China. It's a four engine turboprop with a top speed of ca 600 km/h, a range of around 2700 km, and a capacity for 50 passengers. And it has the wingspan of a 737. It's pretty obviously a big ol' firefighter and rescue plane, more than a cargo or passenger carrier.
With planes, design is not destiny. Airlines have made major fuel economy improvements in the last decade (50% perhaps?). Size isn't destiny either. Comparing a 737 and the AG600 is silly, because they fly in different realms (the AG600 flies low and slow, the 737 in the stratosphere), and they even need different runways. How would a 737 handle taking off or landing in 2 meter waves?
Now, if I was building a system based on AG600-type planes that carried 50 people 2000 km and used hydrogen fuel (or batteries, for that matter)...
The only way from North America to Asia would be through the Aleutians, where 2 meter waves are (I think) rated locally as "flat calm." So with rare exceptions, travel from Asia to North America would be by boat.
But it would probably be possible to island-hop most of the way from mainland Asia to the Marquesas and Hawai'i (just barely). New Zealand would have to route all air traffic through New Caledonia, and so forth. So China could, conceivably, create an air dominance sphere over most of the Pacific, from New Zealand and Australia to Kamchatka.
But the Americas, using the same technology, could not get out past the Galapagos, and certainly not to Hawai'i.
Hmmmmm.
A few years ago I broke my arm and couldn't drive for a while. I tried taking public transit to work one day to see if it was even remotely feasible. 2.5 to 3 hours one way*, vs. 0.5 hours driving. Let alone the hassle of trying to navigate a packed rush hour public transit system one-handed. (Something as 'simple' as pulling the cord for the next stop is tricky when you need that hand to hold on with and pull the cord at the same time.)
(I ended up taking sick leave until I could drive again; deciding that working would prolong my recovery**.)
*Walking, local bus, express bus, subway, other subway, local bus.
**For one thing, I couldn't get adequate accommodations at work — officially I would be accommodated, but practically I would have been on my own. So I remained home where I could do physiotherapy multiple times a day and then ice-and-elevate, didn't have to life heavy furniture every day, etc.
You seem to be describing the original Pan Am.
"The article link does go into some of the problems, but oddly enough, they're not the ones OGH or EC are going on about."
Surprise, surprise. If you were less challenged when it comes to engineering, you would realise that the problems OGH and I were describing increase rapidly with scale. The hydrogen aircraft proposed for 2026 doesn't even have the range of the Douglas DC-3, and is only 3 times the size. And you would ALSO know that the word 'concept' when applied to a design means that it is wishful thinking by the marketing department.
"So the choices seem to be: --drop air travel entirely in the next decade --switch to short-haul electric or hydrogen planes as infrastructure grows --go for mass extinction and taper off the use of carbon-based fuel."
Are you SERIOUSLY proposing that we could replace our existing long-haul and freight aircraft usage by even the sort of aircraft they claim should be possible? I call bullshit on that.
You are concentrating on WHAT IS CLEARLY NOT THE PROBLEM. As large numbers of people have said, almost all short-haul aircraft could be beneficially (and often easily) replaced by land- and sea-based transport.
If we followed your fetish, we would improve the emissions for a very small proportion of the usage (and a largely unnecessary one at that), and our fossil fuel use would continue for the vast majority. From the following "Flights of over 1,500km account for roughly 80% of the sector’s carbon emissions, according to the industry’s ATAG."
https://www.airportwatch.org.uk/2021/03/hydrogen-very-unlikely-to-be-used-in-long-haul-planes-huge-problems-even-for-short-haul/
https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2008/06/moderation-policy.html
Moderation Policy
3: Stuff I find objectionable
Trolling, spam, personal attacks...
So much of the intensely passionate arguments on here seem to be distorted by engineer-itis, a form of thinking that assumed if a solution doesn't work in one realm or for all cases it is a bad solution.
Halting, reducing or slowing climate change will require thousands of different solutions with the same overarching goal.
Solar power won't work in Edinburgh, according to many. Fair enough, will it work in Los Angeles or various other hot, sunny places? Yes it will. Overbuild there, maybe we can ship power to other places like Edinburgh through an expanded grid. If solar doesn't work, does wind?
How about tidal? No, it won't solve all the demand for somewhere like the UK, but it will be a big help, and it is as predictable as the moon.
Hydrogen power won't work for planes in most use cases. Fair enough, use it and develop it where it makes sense, find other solutions where it doesn't.
Electric airplanes only work on short hops? Ok, use them for that, continue developing battery tech and maybe the hops get longer.
Evs aren't the solution to climate change, but they are the solution to many other problems and can be a part of the solution to CC. The tipping point is happening very quickly here in BC with EV ownership and infrastructure. Even if they do nothing to resolve CC, they will make a big difference in local pollutants. And reducing the demand for fossil fuels will reduce production and take the profit away from the dark lords.
Extracting carbon from the air is currently energy intensive and in the early stages. Maybe it will get better, certainly try to encourage development. Don't count on it.
Rather than pick a solution and argue for it to the death, let's pick a goal and encourage many solutions.
I see no personal attack there, but it'd be good if EC tried to be more temperate in his language.
You seem to be describing the original Pan Am.
Basically, yes, although the clippers had twice the range of the new flying boat China's building. The Boeing 314 and the AG600 are about the same size and carry about the same number of passengers.
Note that I don't think that island hopping seaplanes are an improvement over what we have now. I just think they're a possible least-worst alternative to having no air travel at all. This is on the theory that air travel is a good thing, even if only a few people or high value cargo uses it.
Since the Graf Zeppelin managed to circumnavigate the globe in 21 days and had about the same passenger capacity as a Pan Am clipper, we can also argue about whether hydrogen airships might be a better idea than seaplanes. I'm agnostic on that, because we have to get over that "Oh the Humanity" film clip first. Since we routinely send weather balloons well into the stratosphere, it might even be possible to get above the weather and go faster in a Nextgen airship, rather than flying slowly around the weather beneath the cloud deck, as the zeppelins did. The key problem there (aside from hydrogen safety), is whether it's possible to create an ultralight pressure chamber that, say, 50 people would want to live in for up to a week.
Rbt Prior & whitroth That shows just how utterly fucked actual public transport ( "Transit" ) is in the US .... Most commuter heavy rail services in London run at 4 tph, my local UndergounD line at 20 tph in slack times & 30 at the "peak"
EC Oh dear ... Actually, it appears that real actual electric aircraft are a thing & getting bigger ..
Apropos clippers and flying boats in general, there's this quote:
"One of the 314's most experienced pilots said, 'We were indeed glad to change to DC-4s, and I argued daily for eliminating all flying boats. The landplanes were much safer. No one in the operations department... had any idea of the hazards of flying boat operations. The main problem now was lack of the very high level of experience and competence required of seaplane pilots'."
That shows just how utterly fucked actual public transport ( "Transit" ) is in the US ....
Greg, you realize that calling a Canadian an American is fighting words?
Also, the TTC is the least-subsidized of all North American public transit systems, for reasons having to do with Ontario politics. And a great many of its problems come from being forced (by politicians) to extend expensive service (like subways) to thinly-settled areas, thereby raising the costs for all transit users.
One of the local bloggers worked out that drivers actually get more per capita government assistance, in the form of public highways etc, than transit riders do.
I will try, but I got seriously annoyed by statements like this (from the start of #580):
"By the way, noting how Champlain Towers Syndrome warps thinking:
Two people have pointed out that hydrogen powered airplanes don't work."
At best, that is accidental offensiveness, and I read it as more. It is also most definitely a misrepresentation of what I had said.
"So the choices seem to be: - drop air travel entirely in the next decade... ...the most doable physically and the least doable by any other metric."
I guess that's probably about the first of the Greatest Missed Opportunities Of The 2020 Plague to have manifested itself...
"http://link.wired.com/view/5e768ed9678089643a4c68a4en79z.44a5/3956574b"
Er, where does that actually go?
"One of the local bloggers worked out that drivers actually get more per capita government assistance, in the form of public highways etc, than transit riders do."
Aye, well, it's high time that governments got it through their heads that just as the road system is not expected to make a profit, nor should the rail system be...
No, that's not what most of the objections are. They are that the 'solutions' tackle at most 20% of the problem and, without immediate action on the 80%, even solving the 20% completely would be counteracted by the increase in use over 3 years. So we need to tackle the real problem, which is the long-haul flights.
As far as EV's go, the problem is JUST moving to them makes other problems worse, and doesn't even solve the problems as much as they are claimed to. E.g. increasing vehicle weights by 50%, and generating electricity by burning natural gas (let alone shale gas!) are not helpful.
Central Glasgow - Central London - Walk to Glasgow Central, then ~5 hours in train to London Euston. Taxi or bus to Glasgow Airport, ~1.5 hours to go through "check in" and the security theatre, 1 hour on plane (if on time), ~ 1 hour to deplane, reclaim hold baggage, and find your route into Larndarn. This will be ~1 hour by Tube or taxi, or 15 minutes by Thiefrow Excess, but that takes you to Paddington, so you still have another leg unless your destination is within a mile or so, so you might save half an hour?
589 - I don't know about BC, but if it's like the UK, your Scalextric cars are being heavily subsidised by fossil fuel cars and domestic and industrial electricity users for now. How would they look if you were being charged Can$0.40 per kwh tax on charging them? 597 - I think you're ignoring the indirect benefit of having roads for use by the ambulance and fire services..."http://link.wired.com/view/5e768ed9678089643a4c68a4en79z.44a5/3956574b" Er, where does that actually go?
Thanks for pointing that out, it should have been https://
https://link.wired.com/view/5e768ed9678089643a4c68a4en79z.44a5/3956574b
It goes to the August PlainText column by Steven Levy in Wired. I've used that link four times so far, and I got it from Wired in an email.
Levy uses his article to make the point that multiple giant tech companies suffer from Champlain Towers Syndrome. I'll add that I've got a bad case of it too--it's a standard anti-development/NIMBY tactic. Indeed, it's probably ubiquitous in anyone over 30 by this point.
That said, I still think it's worth slamming my own face and other people's faces into the problem, because we're out of delaying time on climate change.
My frustration is that everyone who is an expert (not me, I'll quote IPCC on this, because they got the Nobel for their climate work and they're considered conservative on climate change) thinks we can make a huge difference if we get off our collective behinds, no matter what our ages are. That, I think is worth being insulting for, if it motivates people move towards decarbonization with all due haste.
Doing stuff, in this case, can be asking science fictional questions about "what if" and trying to find ways forward that might even work. I think RocketJPS had it right in 589 above.
Going back to the original title & the "new Management" - in the "real" world... How long before the main body of the electorate finally revolt at this open corruption & demand the bastards OUT? Incidentally 3 current bills in Parliament make me extremely uneasy ... Niemöller comes to mind.
Rbt Prior Well, if you local guvmint behaves like the US ones ...
#589 - I don't know about BC, but if it's like the UK, your Scalextric cars are being heavily subsidised by fossil fuel cars and domestic and industrial electricity users for now. How would they look if you were being charged Can$0.40 per kwh tax on charging them?
Speaking as an electric car owner in the US: wonderful, the Bolt cut our family gas use by 75%.
Even using your math, it's around US $5.00 per gallon for 25 miles per gallon for my gas car, so around $0.20 per mile. The Bolt gets a bit over 4 miles/kWH, so it's $0.10 per mile. Since the electric company pays us for all the surplus solar electricity we send into the grid every day, our normal electric bill is low or negative, and it's almost entirely comprised of surcharges added for administration of our account.
"... thinks we can make a huge difference if we get off our collective behinds, no matter what our ages are. That, I think is worth being insulting for, if it motivates people move towards decarbonization with all due haste."
I agree.
But the converse failure syndrome is focusing on 'solutions' that tackle only a small part of the problem, and will either have the consequence of blocking or be used to block attempts to tackle the main part of the problem.
I spent a lot of my career and other involvements in trying to ensure that did not happen, with a dismal record of success. Oh, yes, my predictions of what would happen if they pursued the path I was advising against were spot-on, but that's not what I wanted.
And that is precisely what I am seeing in this area, which is a damn-sight more serious.
JHomes @ 527:
I have vague memories of it using iron, which is a lot cheaper than platinum.
But whatever it would be, HEAVY comes to mind.
The phrase I remember is "lithium hydride".
"I don't know about BC, but if it's like the UK, your Scalextric cars are being heavily subsidised by fossil fuel cars and domestic and industrial electricity users for now. How would they look if you were being charged Can$0.40 per kwh tax on charging them?"
Yes, electric car purchasing and use is currently heavily subsidized, by both the province and the federal government.
Speaking from very recent experience, I just bought an electric car. Until 3 weeks ago I had never once bought a 'new' car, always choosing a reliable used car. However, $5k from the federal government, $3k from the province and $6k from the 'scrap an inefficient car to buy electric' incentive made purchasing a new EV very attractive.
On top of that, our community is riddled with chargers, because some local politicians chose to make it a goal. The mayor of the neighbouring town was by all accounts a complete arsehole and was rightfully ejected from his job, but he forced in some signficant EV charging infrastructure that paved the way.
As a person who cycled to work for 20 years, 12 of which I didn't own a car at all, I am well aware that some modes of transportation subsidize others. My property and income taxes subsidized the people who honked and shouted at me (or deliberately soaked me with puddles).
The whole point of a subsidy is to incentivize change. ~40K/year die in Canada from particulate pollution linked to vehicle travel. That all on its own is a good reason to subsidize a shift to EVs. Additionally, here in BC much of our power is hydro, which has extremely low emissions.
In my post I never said that EVs were the only solution, just that they are part of the suite of solutions. None of the solutions will solve all the problems. All together they might.
The challenge is in finding ways to do that without creating an absurdly complicated mess.
Undoubtedly the case for a great deal of urban-area travel; and I have certainly bewailed the factors that presently count against the idea, and that nearly all of them are artificial and most of those are silly...
Using a mobility scooter to get about the town (for rather longer distances than I think most people use them for) I find the main problems are merely that it has no weather protection and it's a bit slow. But as long as the weather's OK it is really more convenient than a car despite the slowness (and it's not always that much slower, either). It is well able to haul a sack of pigeon food home up the hill, and it has plenty of range to not have to worry about running out of charge. It's the same width as a bicycle (determined by the size of a set of handlebars; probably about the minimum possible) and a little shorter. According to the book of words it weighs 102kg including batteries, so I don't see any problem with adding a bit more speed, a glass-and-aluminium weather kiosk, a wee heater, and the extra batteries required, and still coming in under your 250kg/1kW limit.
They are also well suited to ordinary cheap easily-recycled lead-acid batteries and probably better so than to lithium ones. There is no problem packing in enough capacity, and the weight is actually useful as ballast to assist with lateral stability, which can be a bit marginal. (And in terms of what is currently on sale scooters with lithium batteries are a snare and a delusion; they cost about five times as much for a given capacity as lead-acid, so what you get is a battery that costs about the same but with only a fifth of the capacity...)
I think we agree on this.
Hydrogen seaplanes aren't THE solution. At best they're a high-end stopgap, and at worst they're unworkable.
Shall we move on to something else?
~40K/year die in Canada from particulate pollution linked to vehicle travel. Yes, and at least half of that pollution is from tyres and brakes, which electric cars still use.
Shall we move on to something else?
Okay, on power:
I'm not convinced we're ever going to get batteries an order of magnitude more efficient than current ones: the electrochemistry simply doesn't support it. We might get batteries that are within one OOM in capacity and don't catch fire as often and are easier to recycle/don't consume rare earth elements, but that's a reach too. Luckily, the profits to be made from better battery tech are so obvious that we don't have to incentivize industry to push the R&D boat out.
So we're probably going to end up relying on a horrible mixture of tech, including a smart grid that can use EV car batteries as distributed storage, powerwall-type batteries in homes, and so on. (Pumped hydro storage ... works, but is very expensive to build and relies on stable water supplies, which doesn't look like a good bet this century. Lifting concrete blocks: yeah, I'd like to see a working prototype storage system.)
We need PV panels everywhere but especially on rooftops, wind turbines ditto (but especially on Trump's golf courses, just because), tidal power where it's possible without disrupting vulnerable ecosystems, etc.
We also need 4th generation nuclear reactors, even though it's an expensive technology with problematic failure modes and a waste disposal problem (that latter is entirely political, IMO). We need small modular reactors for shipping which don't need military grade HEU as fuel and which are adequately oops-proofed against disasters including ships breaking in half and sinking in storms.
We need ongoing work on fusion, and ideally on some variant of aneutronic fusion that doesn't rely on fusing unicorn glitter like 3He -- proton-boron fusion is harder to achieve than 3He fusion, for example, but can run on fuel that's lying around in heaps and drifts on Earth, rather than requiring us to strip-mine the lunar regolith.
Oh, and we should probably push forward with SpaceX's Superheavy launcher, because we're going to need something like that if we want to eventually launch a space elevator or tether system, and especially if in the near term we want to put up geosynchronous orbital powersats, which are probably the best long term solution to providing 24x7 base load aside from figuring out how to build our own fusion reactors down here. (Disclaimer: if the launch rate is significant, they'd better be running on synthetic methane, as chewed over interminably before this point. But they're designed to run on synthetic fuels because Musk is obsessed with colonizing Mars, so this is actually a big win for sustainability in spaceflight from Earth.)
es, and at least half of that pollution is from tyres and brakes, which electric cars still use.
You know that even current generation EVs use regenerative braking to scavenge electricity from the vehicle's existing KE? So that's potentially a huge win on the brake dust pollution front (albeit not a total victory).
Better tyre materials technology would be good, as would better road surfaces (some of the dust from tyres is also ground-up/vapourized bitumen from asphalt). Not sure what a final solution would look like here, as steel-wheel-on-steel-road is not obviously compatible with steering wheels ...
AndrewMck @ 528: You’ve misunderstood the point gasdive was making. Australians like good coffee. So much so that McDonalds was losing business because they were selling the international standard dishwater here. (and Starbucks couldn’t make a go of it). So McDonalds has decent coffee in their Australian outlets. A similar concession to the lack of ‘all beef patties’ on sale in their Indian restaurants.
But yes, an “americano”, in Frankfurt or anywhere else, is undrinkable.
You misunderstood the point I was making.
The way McDonald's makes coffee here in the U.S. (drip/filter coffee) IS "decent coffee". It's the coffee I want to drink.
If you prefer those coffee flavored drinks, that's fine with me, but I want the coffee I like. It's wrong for you or anyone else to tell me I shouldn't want it.
The other point is I should be able to walk into a McDonald's anywhere in the world and get a cup of "McDonald's Coffee" ... even if 99 & 44/100% of their sales are for that other stuff, they should have the original available. I don't even mind if I have to wait a few minutes while they brew it. I do understand that my tastes are not universal.
But what's the point of going into a McDonald's if they don't serve "McDonald's coffee"?
#585 - Exactly my point: car (or taxi) is perceived as vastly faster than public transport, particularly if you have a change.
In my case, measured not perceived.
The way McDonald's makes coffee here in the U.S. (drip/filter coffee) IS "decent coffee". It's the coffee I want to drink.
I'm sorry, but drip/filter coffee isn't coffee: it's dishwater.
(And Liptons Yellow Label is not tea; it's floor sweepings.)
your Scalextric cars are being heavily subsidised by fossil fuel cars and domestic and industrial electricity users for now.
Partly true for the first point, in that road construction/maintenance is partly funded by the gas tax. OTOH, the fossil fuel industry also gets a lot of subsidies so it actually might balance out.
Not true for the second, at least in Ontario. Yes you get a tax break on a new 'green' vehicle, but your electricity is paid at standard rates. When I replace my gas-burner with an electric vehicle* my electricity will cost just the same as it does now (maybe more, as it might kick me into a higher price tier).
*Years in the future at the moment. I'm currently burning about 23L of gas a month — it makes no ecological sense to scrap my car for a brand new one, and no financial sense either. When my current car needs replacing, then I'll seriously look at electric.
Damian @ 531:
I believe the functionality gasdive is talking about is in the google app (or perhaps in a dedicated translate app). It might call home for compute resources, but modern phones pack some pretty serious processing these days anyway and it might not be needed. It might therefore use the internet a bit, but not like you're playing with a web browser.
Whether I use a browser or an app, IF I use the internet from my phone it counts against my 2GB/month data plan.
... and before anyone starts lecturing me about I should have more data than that, No, I shouldn't!
I don't use my phone for the internet. I don't want to use my phone for the internet.
If I ever travel somewhere I need Google Translate to tell me what signs say, I'll get a disposable phone with as much data as I need for the trip.
Liptons Yellow Label is not tea
What about the powdered instant tea they serve (or at least served) on British Rail trains?
Ah, it sounds like you don't like the taste of espresso coffee, given that an Americano is espresso plus hot water.
If an Americano is watered-down espresso, it will have a different taste.
I heard that the reason Americans like weak coffee is that in WWI coffee was roasted and ground in America before being shipped to France in sacks, so by the time it got there it was stale. Then the Army used only 38 g of coffee per litre when brewing it (and apparently only half that the next time, relying on the old grounds, which were left in, to keep adding flavour).
No idea if this is the reason — but it's certainly how the US Army made coffee!
I'm sorry, but drip/filter coffee isn't coffee: it's dishwater.
Tastes differ. The interesting thing was how much my LDL dropped when I switched from French press to filter. Not going back. I also brew my own, so I get better dosage control.
I never experienced such an abomination!
Oh, and we should probably push forward with SpaceX's Superheavy launcher, because we're going to need something like that if we want to eventually launch a space elevator or tether system, and especially if in the near term we want to put up geosynchronous orbital powersats, which are probably the best long term solution to providing 24x7 base load aside from figuring out how to build our own fusion reactors down here. (Disclaimer: if the launch rate is significant, they'd better be running on synthetic methane, as chewed over interminably before this point. But they're designed to run on synthetic fuels because Musk is obsessed with colonizing Mars, so this is actually a big win for sustainability in spaceflight from Earth.)
The only space program I invest in is JP Aerospace, because they take Patreon and loft kid's experiments on their weather balloons every quarter.
Anyway, the JPA basic system is what I'd argue we should invest in: Have a reusable airship, powered by solar with propellers (everything but the panels has at least been prototyped) and use it to lug a 20 tonne payload into the middle or upper stratosphere. That payload is a rocket. You then dangle the rocket well below the airship and launch the sucker, having done away with the first stage. Then you spend the next five hours getting the airship back down to do it again the next day.
JPA's already built and fired "rockoons" using weather balloons lifting sounding rockets. The basic tech is something even I can understand.
Note that I'm not getting into his airship to orbit thing, although I think there are some advantages to having large airship/stations in the upper stratosphere to do space-adjacent stuff, to launch payloads, and to basically be an intercontinental slow train. Since they're moving in stratospheric winds, conceivably people could ride an Ascender airship to a station, hang out in the station, and ride another Ascender down to a destination. Probably there's a lot of chaos in docking and location-matching to work out, but compared with a space tether?
Okay, for the orbiter: I have little idea what hypersonic travel looks like in the mesosphere, since all most of what we know about that part of our atmosphere comes from rockets going up and spacecraft coming down, both at very high speed. But when the hypersonic boffins pitch out asides like hypersonic equations spitting out mile-long surfboards as plausible designs, one can see where someone would think that such a shape might be better as an airship than as a plane. Whether it's possible to assemble such an airship in the stratosphere and accelerate it fairly slowly to space over a few days? Again, compared with a Beanstalk, it might actually be less daft, if not precisely doable.
Regardless, I'd suggest using airships to launch small satellites into LEO from the stratosphere really might be the more sensible option.
paws4thot @ 544: #509 para the last - the Glasgow Airport shuttle bus is a UK normal town bus (nearest North American equivalent would be a rear underfloor engined version of a school bus), where our inter-city buses are about airline coach seating standard.
I think the comment you were replying to has slipped a couple of numbers to #507 after the chatbot's comments were deleted (because the comment currently at #509 doesn't have anything about airports or buses).
I'm pretty sure the transportation I took from the Glasgow Airport was a "normal town bus" ... the nice lady at the tourist desk helped me find a hotel room for my first night, told me where to go to queue up for the bus, which bus to get on & which stop to get off for my hotel (and how to find the hotel from that stop). The "normal town bus" I encountered in Glasgow and Edinburgh were almost identical to the "normal town bus" here in Raleigh.
I did ride an open top double-decker bus in Glasgow, but it was strictly a tourist thing with a guide describing the sights over a PA system so we wouldn't miss anything.
I don't have a lot of experience traveling on commercial airlines, but I have flown "coach" a few times (I think U.S. airlines call it "economy class"). The inter-city buses I rode when I visited Scotland in 2004 (I kind of alternated between trains & buses) were a lot nicer than the airline coach/economy/tourist class seating I've experienced.
#515 - Me neither, but MaccyD's is a "vendor of last resort" anyway.
They sell those coffee flavored drinks at McDonald's here in the U.S. too. My point about McDonald's is that you should be able to walk into ANY McDonald's, anywhere in the world and get coffee of a known quantity ... quality(?).
Every McDonald's should have "McDonald's coffee" (Bunn-O-Matic drip coffee) available no matter how much of the other stuff they sell. And with the two exceptions I've already mentioned, I've always found that to be true.
If I wanted something different from "McDonald's coffee", I'd go somewhere besides McDonald's.
I am not a coffee person, and dislike instant coffee. I was given some instant tea (expecting real tea) when it first came in; worse, it was whitened with something that tasted like cutting oil; and, yes, it was on a railway platform. I would take it over Bovril with milk and sugar (ask if you are hard enough), but it was truly, utterly disgusting.
I quite liked east African bus station tea. Stew the tea well, dilute as needed, and add sweetened condensed milk. But anything to lay the dust would have been good.
The problem with a laser pointer is that you have to be right there pointing it at the pilots for it to work. Makes it very easy for the PTB to go looking for people in that exact area who have laser pointers.
The advantage of making holes in airplanes is you can do it any time and it's much easier to do it while the thing is stationary on the ground. That way "all" the nihilists have to do is check every aircraft parked in the area for holes...
Fun power problem: transmission lines. It turns out both how much electricity they carry and how much electricity they can carry are now national secrets in the US, post 9/11. This might have to do with a right-winger speculating on how easy it would be to paralyze the West Coast by shotgunning power lines out in the desert.
The problem is, us enviro wingnut types are trying hard to find the least damaging places to put solar panels (google DRECP to see one such effort). Ideally, we'd like to get solar installations on salted-over farmland near a big power line, so that the owner of the wasted land is getting some money and not much is lost in moving solar from the farm to the grid. But if we don't know whether that power line can accept that much electricity?
Oy.
I'm not working on this personally. Fortunately. Around here, we're floating in that big ol' African River (DeNile) about how much we're going to have to rework urban and suburban power grids if we go to 100% electric vehicles. This basically ballpark means we need to have the capacity to move at least twice as much electricity as we already do. Problem is, the power lines around here are increasingly underground, so we've got to rip up all the streets, double the lines somehow, and not accidentally cross the doubleplus power lines with the meter-wide water lines (which happens under one major intersection I now dislike driving through).
But dealing with these little problems is the price of waiting 30 years to get our gluteii moving, so here we are.
Responding to the post in part to be blocked by the people's filters, because it amuses me. BlackRock and the Democratic Party of the United States of America (currently with a 60 legislature pass-zone) failed to solve the rent crisis about to hit. As you note with the 60 vote threshold, US Republicans have agency; they (including the Republican-dominated US Supreme Court, thanks 2016 for (barely) electing Trump) mostly own this, not the Democrats. (Still in play, though, though late.) The US media has been saying otherwise, but they are full of shit and should be purged.
I don't like accelerationists (and many/not all adjacent), but re the tweet video, if he (Vinay Gupta) did that spiel to my face one on one, I'd laugh (gently) at him. Though the "Dink - And it just falls to the ground" with the hand gesture (for information relevant to their bottom line bouncing off) was OK. (Could be misinterpreted as penny-throwing, but shouldn't be.) Do they not realize that e.g. messing with the walls of epistemological delusion chambers can be effective?
I've avoided looking much at Disney's Loki. (TVA types are hidebound, creatively impoverished wimps.[1] :-)
[1] "Parallelized Stochastic Ascensionary Excursions Considered Dangerous - Case Studies" (SSTE 2026)
Bellinghman @ 574:
Ah, it sounds like you don't like the taste of espresso coffee, given that an Americano is espresso plus hot water.
Probably. Although I have been trying to explain it in terms of what coffee I DO like.
Right. But, if EVs are going to be 50% heavier, and #608 is correct, what's the actual benefit? It's not a simple calculation, despite the hype.
I'd like to see some actual evidence for the 'half are caused by tires and brakes' assertion.
However, if we take that as a given then why is a 50% reduction in annual deaths (from 40k to 20k/yr in Canada) seen as a reason to dismiss a change? I see 20k people not dying as a win and a step in the right direction.
EC 627: I'm not convinced that EVs are actually heavier. Our EV is comparable to the beast we scrapped last month in weight. I'd love to see some actual numbers on that, because there is a fair amount of obfuscatory FUD on EVs that likely originates in the black chambers of the fossil fuel industry.
I've had acquaintances assert to me that lithium mines are 'even worse' than fossil fuel extraction. Perhaps, but I've been to Fort McMurray and seen the dark side of the moon first hand.
Weight is less of a meaningful measure than impact on health and environment.
EVs are heavier than gas cars of the same volume, which is not to say that they have the same volume as the cars they replace (they're often smaller). Moreover, the weight does not fluctuate as the car drives, unlike gas cars, which get lighter as they burn through their fuel. That said, I agree that accurate comparisons are non-trivial. When you couple different drive styles with regenerative braking and so forth, what gets compared?
Lithium mining is a freaking nuisance, in the small places where it's practiced. Fossil fuel use is a existential crisis for the globe. I don't think they're on the same scale at all.
Now if you want amusement, couple worries about sand shortages (For concrete manufacture) with reports of glass batteries being the next hotness. Setting concrete against batteries really would be interesting politically.
That's why I said that "if it is correct". If the reduction in deaths WERE 50%, I agree, but will it be? Do you have any data? The 50% is based on my surveying of the available vehicles, comparing like with like, because I want to replace my current Skoda Fabia; in particular, I am looking at boot capacity for my recumbent trike, and enough range. The point about weight is that road damage and tyre wear is at least proportional to weight (often to a power of it) which, inter alia, increases the pollution.
Yes, there is a hell of a lot of obfuscatory FUD, but it's on both sides; as I said, the vehicle companies are rubbing their hands with glee at the requirement for cars to go electric, because of the way that they can jack the prices so much.
Apropos of nothing at all, robot sandworms are now a thing- https://www.digitaltrends.com/features/sand-worm-robot-tremors/
You have the multi-dimensional horrors of the Laundry, I have British Rail instant tea. Let's call it even, shall we?
couple worries about sand shortages (For concrete manufacture) with reports of glass batteries being the next hotness
I thought you could make glass out of desert sand? I know it's too rounded and polished to use for concrete, but once it's melted that shouldn't matter.
And speaking of concrete, that's a lot of greenhouse gases right there, going into making it…
Robert Prior @ 585: A few years ago I broke my arm and couldn't drive for a while. I tried taking public transit to work one day to see if it was even remotely feasible. 2.5 to 3 hours one way*, vs. 0.5 hours driving. Let alone the hassle of trying to navigate a packed rush hour public transit system one-handed. (Something as 'simple' as pulling the cord for the next stop is tricky when you need that hand to hold on with and pull the cord at the same time.)
That was pretty much my experience trying to use public transit when I was working out at Research Triangle Park ... and I didn't even have a broken arm.
If I made it to the bus stop near my house early enough (before 7:00am) I could catch a transit bus downtown ($1.50) to the hub where I could catch the bus out to the RTP hub ($2.00) and catch a shuttle over to my employer's facility. If I missed the city bus, I could still walk downtown (it was just a little over a mile) and actually get to the transit hub before the city bus did because I walked straight down there & didn't have to follow the bus route. That was about an hour & a half one way.
Getting home was a bit more of a problem. If I had to work late (after 5:30 - which I often did) the last shuttle over to the transit hub out at RTP would have come and gone. And there was a LONG wait for the late bus going to downtown. There was a bus approximately every 30 minutes from 4:00pm to 7:00pm, and then a late bus at 9:00pm ($2.00). The last shuttle left from my employer's stop around 6:30pm.
When I got back to downtown Raleigh, it took less time to get off the bus at the second to last stop before it got to the transit hub (about half an hour) & walk home than it would to go to the hub & catch the city bus going out toward my house (about an hour).
So $5.50/day to ride transit and close to 3 hours for the round trip. I could have bought monthly passes for the city bus & a ticket book for the triangle bus that would have more or less halved the cost, but there was no way to shorten the commute time on the bus ... or to manage the problems from having to work late.
The driving alternative was also peculiar. I could leave my house at 7:00am to drive the ~15 miles to where I worked and due to the daily traffic jam out on I-40 (10 miles at less than 10mph)1 I'd arrive by 9:00am. OR I could leave the house at 9:00am and arrive at work by 9:30am.
Eventually I time shifted to an even later start because I so often had to work late and was accumulating a LOT of overtime.
But the thing is I wanted to use transit instead of driving. It's the environmentally friendly option. It was just logistically & physically (and financially) impossible for me to do so.
1 The daily traffic jam affected the triangle bus as well, one of the reasons it took so long for the bus to get out to RTP. There was another traffic jam in the evening, but I had to work late so often I usually missed that one.
You're probably right, this being about silica rather than particle size and shape. Yay! We strip one sand barren for silica, another to build the skyscraper for the company mining the silica!
Now where do sandworms come into this? Hmmmm.
To paraphrase the guys who sold us the Bolt, it's not so much the price of the car, it's the fact that EVs have to be serviced by dealers that makes them happy to sell them.
I've got a bunch of after-market auto mechanics in my extended family. Love to give them business, too. The sad thing is, they'll be all out of business if we get to 100% EV in the next decade. The EV mechanics are only starting to pop up, even though EVs have some interesting little bugs of their own.
try getting into overloaded public transport with a young child in a pushchair. It's a man's world.
I had taken babies on a public transport. I did not bother with a pushchair (I assume it is a British for "stroller") at all: I would just put the baby into a frontpack.
Apropos of nothing at all, robot sandworms are now a thing- https://www.digitaltrends.com/features/sand-worm-robot-tremors/
You know, between JP Aerospace trying to build spaceships out of airbeams, other airbeam-style engineering, and now this, I'm getting seriously fond of soft robotics and inflatable engineering. My only grumble is that the fabrics are variations on the theme of plastic (or Spectra, teflon, etc.).
Geologists define mass extinction events by the sudden absence of reefs in the fossil record. These are called "reef gaps."
Do you have a link for that? I would love to bring this up on certain other web forums, but would like a reference other than "some dude on Charlie Stross' blog"
Robert Prior @ 594:
Greg, you realize that calling a Canadian an American is fighting words?
That's sad. Look at any map and you can plainly see that Canada is in America ... puts the North in North America so to speak.
Canadians are as much Americans as anyone from the "lower 48".
I have been trying to explain it in terms of what coffee I DO like.
But failing, because you don't seem to be noting the important distinction between what (and how much) you put in and how it's processed.
You refer to "coffee flavored drink" but as I read it, nobody else is talking about such things, just a concoction made (in various ways) only from ground roasted coffee beans, water and heat. Surely that is "coffee", however awful.
"Bunn-O-Matic drip coffee" means nothing if you don't specify what kind of coffee is put in it, how it's ground and roasted etc., and how long the resulting pot of liquid is left to stand (and in the worst case, to boil. There's a reason why the French say "Café bouillu, café foutu".)
Charlie Stross @ 613:
I'm sorry, but drip/filter coffee isn't coffee: it's dishwater.
Yeah, well that still misses the point. If a place is calling itself a McDonald's it should have "McDonald's coffee" available for those who like that kind of coffee.
Of course, the American Establishment solution is... More Tollbooths (digital and otherwise). My (temporary) Portland suburb is seriously underthrilled with toll charges on the Interstate Highways proposed for Our Fair City. We'll be gone before it gets rammed through, but it will be fun to watch.
My very limited experience was that for one baby a frontpack plus a bag of baby stuff plus my bag was kind of doable. Ruled out shopping on the way home, but ok.
With two babies, forget it. Front pack baby one, back pack baby two, and now I'm struggling to carry a single bag while navigating steps and gates.
I admire people. And let's be honest, it's 90% mothers, who can navigate a giant baby carrier with two babies and luggage in it, anywhere.
One friend has just given up and gone for a giant cargo bicycle that carries all four hellspawn* plus all the associated cruft that they inevitably require. I don't begrudge her the electric assist in the slightest, despite her youth and athleticism, because she's often pushing 100kg of load. For her the "park right outside the shop" is less of an advantage and close to a necessity. As are the leashes that tie the hellspawn to the vehicle. Apparently a five year old can teach a two year old to undo the buckles that are supposed to hold them in place...
Geologists define mass extinction events by the sudden absence of reefs in the fossil record. These are called "reef gaps."
This help? https://skepticalscience.com/print.php?n=177
Search on "Reef Gap Mass Extinction" and find a reference you're comfortable with. I used the Veron 2008 book mentioned in the link above, and I recommend it.
The basic science issue is that: --Reefs (coral and other) tend to be a disproportionately large part of the fossil record, because they're composed of hard stuff that fossilizes easily in an environment where they are likely to be buried. --Geologists therefore decades ago started defining mass extinctions based on when reefs a) disappeared in the fossil record globally, and b) when reeds showed up again 5-20 million years later, the dominant reef-building organisms usually different. --Over the last 20 years or so, this has led to some angst over whether we're currently in the Sixth Mass Extinction or not. Most of the species that have gone extinct already did so on oceanic islands. But islands are normally horrible places for long term fossilization, because they get eroded away most of the time. So how do we compare island extinction rates in deep time with reef gap rates over the same time scales? Do islands have a faster turnover rate than reefs, or not?
--This is a whole field about comparing disasters, but AFAIK, the consensus is that when the coral reefs globally bleach and die, we'll definitely be in the Sixth Extinction. That was predicted to start happening in 2050, but we may be decades ahead...
re: #625: Right-wingers have considered how to take down society for far longer. Witness G. Gordon Liddy's hopefully-non-prophetic story in the January 1989 OMNI magazine, RULES OF THE GAME: https://vocal.media/theSwamp/this-fictional-memo-to-the-president-from-1989-predicted-terrorism-in-the-us
And, if you want to know about transmission line capabilities, talk to a lineman, as I learned when I was in IBEW Local 199, decades ago. Not my specialization, else I would share, but the bar closest to the truckyard of a public futility makes them easy to find, and right now, they're thirsty.
Err... My comment #646 was made in reply to #624, not #625.
Thanks! A friend told me about 3G's work, and I was hoping to find a link to it.
I'm getting seriously fond of soft robotics and inflatable engineering
Remember the Goodyear Inflatoplane?
The original concept of an all-fabric inflatable aircraft was based on Taylor McDaniel's inflatable rubber glider experiments in 1931. Designed and built in only 12 weeks, the Goodyear Inflatoplane was built in 1956, with the idea that it could be used by the military as a rescue plane to be dropped in a hardened container behind enemy lines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodyear_Inflatoplane
Err... My comment #646 was made in reply to #624, not #625.
That's why using the "Reply" link is better. Not only will it always point to the right comment, but a single click will take a reader directly to the comment you're replying to (rather than having to scroll).
Robert Prior @ 617:
If an Americano is watered-down espresso, it will have a different taste.
I heard that the reason Americans like weak coffee is that in WWI coffee was roasted and ground in America before being shipped to France in sacks, so by the time it got there it was stale. Then the Army used only 38 g of coffee per litre when brewing it (and apparently only half that the next time, relying on the old grounds, which were left in, to keep adding flavour).
No idea if this is the reason — but it's certainly how the US Army made coffee!
What does that work out to in pounds of coffee & gallons of water?
The way I originally learned to make coffee was 3 pounds of coffee & 9 gallons of water in a large steam jacket urn1. It's the same recipe the Army mess hall used every time I ever had KP duty. We never reused the old coffee grounds. The urn had to be cleaned out & spotless for every new batch of coffee. The cloth filter had to be rinsed out & stain free.
Back at my unit after I finished Basic & AIT, the mess section had a Bunn-O-Matic. You filled it with water to an indicated level on the sight glass and the coffee came pre-measured in a paper filter, kind of like a giant tea-bag. I can't swear it was exactly the same ratio of water to coffee grounds, but it tasted the same to me ... and it's why I like "McDonald's coffee". It tastes like that first cup of coffee, fresh from the mess hall at oh-dark-thirty.
At annual training we had the equipment in whatever mess hall we were assigned to or we had a field kitchen where coffee was made in a large vacuum thermos bottle like thingy (3 gal water & 1 pound coffee).
1 I learned to make coffee in the steam urn working for the Student Union Food Service while I was going to NC State, years before I went into the Army. The manager was a graduate of Cornell University's hospitality & food service curriculum and he was a FANATIC about doing things a certain way.
It stood me in good stead later when I had to pull KP in Basic & AIT because I already knew how to use the steam urn to make coffee and I knew the proper (most efficient) way to mop a kitchen floor & how to scrub pots & pans so that they were more than clean enough to satisfy the Mess Sargent.
However, if we take that as a given then why is a 50% reduction in annual deaths
You're assuming the amount of dust is directly related to the death rate. I wonder if a 10% reduction could result in a 50% death rate reduction. Or maybe it takes a 90% reduction in dust.
My experience selling coffee to undergrads in the labs I taught was that medium roast, ideally organic, mocha java or similar was acceptable to the widest variety of people. I just made this in an ordinary coffee machine. The thing about organic was that some conventional coffees had an additional ingredient (an insecticide, perhaps?) that give some people, including me, heart palpitations. Hence it's worth spending a bit extra to get the good stuff. I'll point out that, thanks to world affairs, mocha java is a lot harder to get than it used to be (Mocha's a port in Yemen). Some Mexican coffees are a decent substitute.
The other rule I learned is that a pound of coffee makes about 50 cups. Our student organization made thousands selling good coffee and good baked goods to hungry students every morning, while the donuts and cheap coffee table upstairs went begging. If coffee's 20 cents per cup and you sell it for two dollars using volunteer labor, it's quite lucrative.
That shows just how utterly fucked actual public transport ( "Transit" ) is in the US ....
You keep relating transportation in the US with what is in London.
Compare London to New York City or the entire UK to the the US eastern seaboard from Maine down to Virginia. But to compare the city of London to the entire US (all nearly 3000 miles wide of it) is comparing apples to volleyballs.
Before everything locked down I spent 3 days in NYC and per Google walked 30 miles, did 10 miles of taxis, and 100 miles of subway/bus.
Heteromeles, are you familiar with acid-loving corals?
https://phys.org/news/2019-05-super-corals-glimmer-world-dying.html
The term “super coral” is a bit of a hype, but it describes something very real, and quite important. For years we’ve been hearing how rising CO2 levels cause ocean to become more acidic, and this acidification kills corals. Which made me wonder for a long time: How do corals exist at all?
We are still in the tail end of Ice Age. By geological standards, Earth is right now unusually cold; to have polar ice caps at all is rarity in Earth’s history. For most of it Earth was much warmer and oceans were much more acidic than they are now, so question is — how did coral reefs survive before Ice Age?
Well, turns out that there are alkaline-loving corals and there are acid-loving corals. The latter had been overlooked by marine biologists until recently because for the last million years or so they had been relegated to especially hot and acidic corners of the ocean. But over last 15–20 years, as the ocean as a whole has become more to their liking, these acidophile corals began reclaiming it. And once biologists realized their existence and their potential, the name “super corals” was coined.
The name is basically hype. A coral species which could thrive under both alkaline and acid conditions, now that would be true “super coral”. But given the pessimism of last two decades about the state of world’s coral reefs — pessimism to which I had subscribed, I might add, — I really cannot blame whoever came up with the name.
Quote from the article:
"Our thinking is that this bay is giving us a glimpse into the future where the corals that are at a disadvantage today have the advantage tomorrow,"
But if we don't know whether that power line can accept that much electricity?
I bet you can infer a bit to get somewhat close.
The size of the cable (there are only so many choices), number of cables per leg (I see mostly 1 or 3), and the line spacing are all baked into the formulas for designing such things. Make friends with a career path in electrical engineering with a concentration in power engineering. Plus find the power stations and trace it out from there.
Yes, I am vaguely familiar with these corals. Cross your fingers and hope.
The other joker in the deck are the mesophotic coral reefs. Since many of these organisms are soft-bodied, I'm not at all sure how they play out with the stories of reef gaps.
And a third joker are eelgrass and seagrass beds. Some of them seem to be acid-tolerant too. Doesn't mean they're not endangered by humans, but the threats are different.
The Inflatoplane? Yup.
On a slightly different topic, you might like this one from RAND: High-Altitude Airships for the Future Force Army. It's only slightly goofy.
Canadians are as much Americans as anyone from the "lower 48".
Sigh. We've been through this before.
In common usage, including by your own government, "America" usually refers to the country "United States of America", not the continent. Canadians certainly don't refer to themselves as "Americans".
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States
America (əˈmɛrɪkə) n 1. (Placename) short for the United States of America 2. (Placename) Also called: the Americas the American continent, including North, South, and Central America
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 ©
A nuanced take here: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/06/what-does-american-actually-mean/276999/
Important quote: "anglophone Canadians, at least in my experience, seem to stay largely removed from the debate: Canadian friends have all said they "definitely" do not consider themselves "Americans" and reserve that term for people from the U.S."
Government usage: https://www.americasarmy.com
Not to mention your own president: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/01/20/inaugural-address-by-president-joseph-r-biden-jr/
"This is America’s day."
"Through a crucible for the ages America has been tested anew and America has risen to the challenge."
"A once-in-a-century virus silently stalks the country. It’s taken as many lives in one year as America lost in all of World War II."
"Today, on this January day, my whole soul is in this: Bringing America together. Uniting our people. And uniting our nation. I ask every American to join me in this cause."
"And I pledge this to you: I will be a President for all Americans."
Do you seriously assert that Biden is calling on Canadians and Mexicans in this speech?
Pop culture usage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Fellow_Americans (Note: named after the traditional opening to presidential addresses, according to Wikipedia.)
And an example from the UK government, clearly using "American" to refer to US forces: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normandy_landings#/media/File:Naval_Bombardments_on_D-Day.png
What does that work out to in pounds of coffee & gallons of water?
5 oz per gallon.
I'm assuming that's an American gallon, not an Imperial gallon.
Looking for the locations of Extremely High Voltage power distribution lines? Enjoy. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=extremely+high+voltage+transmission+line+map
Richard H @ 641:
But failing, because you don't seem to be noting the important distinction between what (and how much) you put in and how it's processed.
You refer to "coffee flavored drink" but as I read it, nobody else is talking about such things, just a concoction made (in various ways) only from ground roasted coffee beans, water and heat. Surely that is "coffee", however awful.
Cappuccino, Frappucino, Macchiato, Latte ... nothing in them but "ground roasted coffee beans, water and heat"? Hmmmm, I don't think so. Coffee flavored drinks.
But whatever. I'm gonna' drink what I like and you can drink what you like. I don't have any problem with that. I only have a problem with people telling me I'm wrong to like the coffee I like.
"Bunn-O-Matic drip coffee" means nothing if you don't specify what kind of coffee is put in it, how it's ground and roasted etc., and how long the resulting pot of liquid is left to stand (and in the worst case, to boil. There's a reason why the French say "Café bouillu, café foutu".)
Fair enough ...
5.3333333333 oz dry measure FRESHLY GROUND medium roast beans per gallon of 190.00000000°F water, held at EXACTLY 140.00000000°F until discarded NOT LATER THAN one hour after brewing (± 10.5 seconds).
In the field I just drink it even after it's cooled or if I'm on the road I stop somewhere that has the kind of coffee I prefer to drink and get a new cup.
I believe McDonald's discards their brewed coffee after about 30 minutes.
Never boil coffee. Never make coffee with boiling water. If the water boils, let it cool before using it to make coffee.
kiloseven @ 647: Err... My comment #646 was made in reply to #624, not #625.
It happens whenever chatbot comments get removed. It's why I adopted the person @ number format. That way, even if the comment moves up a few spaces you can still tell who I'm ranting at.
"As far as EV's go, the problem is JUST moving to them makes other problems worse...E.g. increasing vehicle weights by 50%..."
I've lost count on the number of times I've corrected you on this.
Tesla Model 3 Long Range (the heavy one) 1847 kg fully fueled
BMW M3 base model (the light one) 1705 kg no fuel
BMW X5 2555 kg no fuel
Tesla Model X P100D (the heavy one) 2509 kg fully fuelled
BMW 7 series 4wd, 2255 kg no fuel
Tesla Model S 4wd long range (the heavy one) 2250 kg fully fuelled
Those are the actual facts.
Robert Prior @ 649:
The original concept of an all-fabric inflatable aircraft was based on Taylor McDaniel's inflatable rubber glider experiments in 1931. Designed and built in only 12 weeks, the Goodyear Inflatoplane was built in 1956, with the idea that it could be used by the military as a rescue plane to be dropped in a hardened container behind enemy lines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodyear_Inflatoplane
Riff from the Sluggy Freelance web comic would like that.
https://archives.sluggy.com/book.php
"Scalextric cars are being heavily subsidised"
In Australia fossil cars are subsidised by direct subsidies to the oil industry to the tune of about 2000 dollars per year. Enough to buy everyone a free Tesla every 25 years or so. If you include the health effects, it's less than 20 years. Some is clawed back through excise, about 350 dollars a year on average.
That was before covid, the numbers now are probably much higher.
In contrast, my 2016 Prius weighs 1383 kg unloaded. So a approx 400-1200 kg lighter than anything you've mentioned.
A 2016 Camry 4 door is 1469 kg.
So maybe 25-30 percent weight difference. But I still want an electric.
You're making the same mistake that EC makes.
If you want to figure out if electrics (of which they're are few) are inherently heavier than petrol (of which they're are many), the right way to do it is to look at the few available electrics, find petrol equivalents from the huge pool of petrol cars, and compare weights. That way you get a like for like.
What you don't do is the other way around, take your petrol car, look for an exact equivalent electric, find that there isn't one in the small pool, then round up until you've got something that's larger/bigger/more in every specification, then compare weights. That tells you that the pool of electric vehicles is small (which you already knew) but tells you nothing about the inherent weight penalty of going electric.
EC drives a sub compact wagon. There aren't even many petrol sub compact wagons (I can't think of any others, but I'm sure they exist) and because it's a tiny tiny tiny market, no one makes a sub compact electric yet. He's concluded that means electric cars are 50% heavier, because the next size up electric that covers all his needs is 50% heavier than his very unusual car. That's ridiculous.
It's not important anyway. It's pretty obvious that electric is the way to go. I'm certainly not objecting to electric on the basis of weight!
Exactly. There's no alternative if we want to live.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbzbIGkPW-o
TL;DW: Youtuber orders a laser on ebay advertised for "medical use" Contrary to the advertisement which says it is within legal and safety limits, it is a two watt laser. With some tinkering, he makes it into a four or five watt laser.
How good are the Australian postal inspectors?
David L You keep relating transportation in the US with what is in London. NO, WRONG I'm comparing to ANY largeish city in the UK, like Glasgow or Manchester or Birmingham or Newcastle or Liverpool ( Leaving poor old Leeds out, because they have been shafted at least twice )
skulgun A FOUR Watt laser is a killing machine (?) - certainly would blind-for-life
How good are the Australian postal inspectors?
No such thing. Import policing is done at the random sample level. However the premise isn't entirely correct.
rummages in satchel without leaving chair
This here Logitech device is great for starting up a slideshow and advancing to the next slide (although I had to set a shortcut to make the MacOS PowerPoint work properly, don't judge me!). Also when I turn it on, point it at the ceiling and press the "pointer" button, it makes a green dot. Green is my favourite colour and anyhow in a world where all the pointers make red dots, it's nice to make a green one, so I was happy when green laster diodes got cheap (not as cheap as red ones, but both have moved). The rub is that the Class 2 laser device warning on the underside declares its maximum output to be <1mW. That number is important: "laser pointers" with an output of more than 1mW are restricted in Queensland and require "a reasonable excuse" to own. There is an explanation of what is accepted as a reasonable excuse here. Note that none of the listed excuses apply for devices >20mW. Other states will have different regulations that define these things differently.
Note, however, that the language discusses "laser pointers". There's no restriction on laser diodes, nor indeed on an integrated diode and driver module for use in, e.g., CNC applications (which, to be clear, is the most common legitimate use). So it's totally legal to import a 5W module, but if you then build a "laser pointer" with it, possessing the resulting device would be illegal in Queensland. If you build it into a CNC rig using old scanner parts and a Raspberry Pi, there is a legal requirement to secure and sign the working area appropriately (Class 4 laser hazard, avoid eye or skin exposure to direct or scattered radiation, eye protection must be worn), but otherwise you're fine. That's under different regulations of course.
That would be a fair comment - IF that is what I had been doing, but I hadn't. You seem to forget the type of, er, obsessive I am. If you skip to the end, you will see that I did essentially what you recommend.
I discovered that there almost no cars suitable for my purpose made at all (EV, hybrid, disel OR petrol), nowadays, and did an enquiry of a Web advisory site, which confirmed it. And there are NO - Count them! None - suitable EVs of that nature. So I looked further.
Firstly, I discovered that the manufacturers' cartel was pushing people like me in the direction of full-blown (often stretched) station wagons, SUVs and suchlike crap. Fuel type is irrelevant. Bugger. So I started to look at EV's more generally, for something for the longer term, to see what they were touting.
I compared available EVs with their equivalent petrol models, and discovered (surprise! surprise!) that the EVs were much less capable, especially in terms of luggage capacity. In order to get models that were functionally equivalent, I needed to compare with a slightly bigger model. And that's where the weight comes in.
And, yes, I was accepting half the range for EVs (i.e. 200 miles, as distinct from 400).
It's not unreasonable to filch boot space for the battery, but I can assure you that a LOT of people (and most van drivers) need the boot space they have. It is a major selling point, after all. Calling EVs similar while discouting that is polemic.
Cappuccino, Frappucino, Macchiato, Latte ... nothing in them but "ground roasted coffee beans, water and heat"? Hmmmm, I don't think so. Coffee flavored drinks.
Yeah...no.
I don't know what Frappucino is, as it's not a standard espresso style. But you are simply factually incorrect about the others you mention. They are all traditional Italian styles of serving espresso. The difference between them is mostly different ways of adding milk. You're missing "short black", which is also just called "espresso" and "long black", which is watered down to something like the strength of a black coffee you might make in your percolator (following your description above). "Vienna" coffee has whipped cream (Schlagobers in German).
Espresso is made by forcing hot water through compressed grounds at high pressure, usually one serve at a time, but it depends on the device. When I was a student I lived off the stovetop espresso maker, which is sort of like an upside-down percolator. "Ristretto", where the grounds are ground especially finely and/or compressed especially tightly, which as a result requires more pressure to express, is extra-strong espresso.
When you talk about flavoured drinks most people think of chain-stores that add flavours to these styles, mostly to cover up for using inferior beans to start with. These are a separate distinct category. You seem to be conflating the two, probably due to encountering the former only via the latter. That's understandable, but it doesn't make what you say here correct.
To be fair, I think percolated coffee has its place, so long as, like you say, the equipment is kept scrupulously clean and not allowed to run until the coffee becomes stale or undrinkable bitter. It works for events and other situations where you need to caffeinate as many people in as short a time as possible. I've been to events where there are maybe 2 baristas making lattes for hundreds of people and it's faster to leave the conference hall, walk a block and find a cafe, order a takeaway flat white, and walk back than it is to wait in line). But it's a quantity versus quality thing. Unfortunately many people's experience of percolated coffee is not positive: low-end cafes that leave the machine running all day and hardly ever clean it. Which is sort of okay at a truck stop at 2 in the morning (even though, somehow, the coffee you find there is often surprisingly good). But not otherwise and sometimes it's the most horrible thing.
More than a bit close - as you say, it's well understood. In the UK, converting our heating (a really big one) and our vehicle fleet to electric will be a disaster unless we enhance our generation and distribution capacity by a factor of three. The experts have seen saying it for decades. The publicists (commercial and political) are banging on solely about more charging stations on motorways and trunk roads, which is easy but merely evades the problem.
Yes, it's soluble, but it needs a functional government to make it happen. North of the border, possibly.
And I have lost track of how often I have corrected you. What you say is true, if you currently drive an oversized car. But most people do not have the money to do that, or don't do it for some other reason. So the correct comparison is by functional equivalence.
TBH this is actually quite helpful. I've had a sort of vaguely non-ironic practice of saying "USAian" to describe certain cultural national characteristics and the people who display them, with the dodge that it can be thought a bit ironic if called on it. And that's not really a good faith position, something I'm aware of and I should stop doing that. So I'm happy to refer to American, Canadian and Mexican as mutually exclusive, at least in terms of being categories (even if individuals can belong to more than one category).
I'm not discussing the generation of particulates by manufacturing processes because I don't know the underlying science at all.
611 para the last - Well, here in Scotland McDonald's actually do sell Barr's Irn Bru, despite your argument for their "global conformity". 614 - Yes, but as my point is that most of the UK pump price of road fuel is taxes, which aren't levied on electric vehicles, and they get road licence tax based on emissions at vehicle rather than mass when damage to roads is done by mass... 621 para 4 - The open top bus tours are normal city service buses with part of the roof removed, and a PA system added.Paras 8 to 10 - My point is that MaccyD is uniform yes, uniformly bad (and not that uniform if you get real coffee in Oz, Irn Bru in Scotland, and don't get beef in India).
628 - You're reading me differently to my meaning; I'm saying that EVs are not virtuous just because they're less bad. Oh and the one report I've seen analysing PC10s was hard copy from 1982 (report copyright) so pre-dates the use of desulphonated hydrocarbon fuels, which obviously reduces engine based PC10s. 654 - Abandoning the Larndarncentric arguments, the sort of public mass transit that Greg and I talk about is quite typical of towns and suburbia in the UK. From here in Dumbarton I can get 2 trains an hour direct to the down terminii, and through Glasgow to Edinburgh. I can get 4 an hour to Airdrie, and 2 an hour through Glasgow to Motherwell. From just across the road (I can see the stop out the front window) I can get a bus every 10 minutes to most of the local housing schemes; from 5 minutes walk away I can get a 30 minute frequency bus to Glasgow. Personal experience says that Birmingham, Bristol, Cheltenham, Leicester, Leeds, Manchester and Sheffield (to list places I've been and used buses) are similarly served. 667 - Australia is considered a niche market even by the Australians, who've actually stopped making cars themselves. 669 - See above. EC lives in the UK, where we do get sub-compact cars, lots of them.I think percolated coffee has its place That's another potential source of confusion. When you say "percolated" I think of those domestic percolators that were fashionable in the 1970s, where steam pressure forced water up a tube and it ran back down through the ground coffee ad infinitum, but you may have something else in mind.
The problem with that kind of percolator is that, unlike your stovetop espresso maker, drip filter machines, cafetieres etc. where the water passes through just once and is then removed from contact with the solids, the percolator cycles the water repeatedly through the coffee right up to the bitter end (which, curiously, is a nautical expression and has nothing to do with caffeine.)
Yeah that’s the sort I have in mind too. Good ones had two settings: “percolate” and “keep warm”. Better ones had a timer that switched from a to b after a proper interval. I’m sure these still exist, I just haven’t been in charge of operating one for some decades.
Lithium mining is a freaking nuisance, in the small places where it's practiced.
I'd like to note that Elon Musk -- who is often full of shit, so you need your bullshit detector engaged when evaluating his statements -- comments that (a) EV batteries in Teslas in practice turned out to remain useful for longer than originally predicted, and (b) even tapped-out car batteries (down to 60-70% of capacity) can be usefully used in grid backup farms (you just stack the up, plug them in, and use them until they're down to 20% of original capacity) ... and most importantly, recycling and reclaiming the lithium from dead cells is a commercial no-brainer, because they contain more than twenty times as much Li as even the richest ore deposits -- and you don't need to crush rocks to get at it.
I'm inclined to give his statements about battery production/lifecycle more credence than when he's talking about NFTs, dogecoins, and colonizing Mars. So there's that.
... And this is a critically important difference from the petrochemical industry: we extract fossil carbon continuously and effectively throw it away, whereas lithium for batteries can be recycled economically.
British Rail hasn't existed for 24 years.
But the memory of That Tea lives on ....
Heteromeles @ 629: Now if you want amusement, couple worries about sand shortages (For concrete manufacture) with reports of glass batteries being the next hotness. Setting concrete against batteries really would be interesting politically.
The two are not comparable.
Building sand has to be "sharp", meaning it is created by water erosion rather than wind. That is a minority of the sand on the planet (at least, not deep under water), and that is what we are running out of.
Meanwhile glass and silicon can be made from desert sand. So it's not a competition for the same resource.
Seconded. Public transport in London is (was, last time I visited) second to none. Outside London, among other big cities, it varies. Edinburgh: second to none, only weakness is a lack of tram tracks (which is being remedied, gradually -- there's clearly a long-term network-building plan in place, now). But if you get out into smaller towns and cities it varies enormously. After deregulation under Thatcher, StageCoach and First Bus cannibalized the smaller bus co's and then treated their markets as cash cows, withdrawing services where they didn't make money, so there are town/village transport deserts as bad as anything in the US.
Also, even by the late 80s, municipal systems didn't necessarily interconnect. In 1988, my car was stolen and for a few days I had to get to work in Halifax, a mere 20 miles away, by bus and train. It took nearly 3 hours each way: bus into Leeds city centre, wait for a train, bus out to suburb where I worked. The transport only took about 60 minutes, but the delay was due to three 20-30 minute connections (and a 15 minute walk at the Halifax end). But the rail and bus stations weren't even colocated, much less arrival/departure synchronized, and things have only gotten worse since then.
One possible source of electricity: floating wind turbines.
This article in The Economist describes the latest developments:
The difficulty has been making them float and then replacing big components like blades and generators. The article talks about cranes that climb the structure they are making.
Presumably the "11 times over" capacity would mean pretty much the entire ocean covered in windfarm. More realistically, 9% of the ocean surface would be required. Which is still a pretty huge project. I don't know if anyone has run the numbers on the materials required to do this, like concrete for the floating structures the turbines sit on. But it looks like a way forwards.
When I first went back to England in the late 80s I didn't rent a car, as my parents told be about the wonderful public transportation system.
It wasn't.
Second visit I rented a car, so that I could actually see the sights I wanted to see (because a once-a-day bus is no good when you only want to be at a sight for an hour or so).
Coffee I very rarely drink coffee out of home, but when I do I can recommend "AMT"- not cheap, but well-made with serious quantities of caffeine in it. At home, I use a drip-filter device - spoon in the freshly-ground coffee into the filter, close the bucket, pour cooled boiled water into the input end, press a couple of buttons & off it goes
…in nightmares…
Me @ 686: Meanwhile glass and silicon can be made from desert sand. So it's not a competition for the same resource.
I should check my assumptions at the door. Glass-making requires high-purity silica sand (98% SiO2). Desert sand doesn't qualify. However this is still not the same kind of sand that concrete requires.
It's not clear to me how, if the aim is to reduce CO2 emissions, making enough concrete to cover 9% of the oceans with Mulberries is going to help it. Or, indeed, that covering 9% of the oceans with anything isn't going to precipitate some ecological disaster of its own on top of everything else.
It doesn't require covering 9% of the entire ocean in a flat concrete surface; wind turbines are pretty widely spaced, and the platforms float. Like I say, someone needs to run the actual numbers.
Actually I'd expect an offshore windfarm to be of local ecological benefit; you can't go trawling there because of all the underwater moorings, power cables etc, and those same moorings are basically artificial reefs which will benefit marine life.
There are also designs that use steel rather than concrete, but I'm betting that concrete will wind up being used quite a lot. See also Wikipedia, although that seems rather out of date.
I'm not convinced we're ever going to get batteries an order of magnitude more efficient than current ones: the electrochemistry simply doesn't support it. We might get batteries that are within one OOM in capacity and don't catch fire as often and are easier to recycle/don't consume rare earth elements, but that's a reach too. Luckily, the profits to be made from better battery tech are so obvious that we don't have to incentivize industry to push the R&D boat out. On recent battery developments: https://www.pocket-lint.com/gadgets/news/130380-future-batteries-coming-soon-charge-in-seconds-last-months-and-power-over-the-air
Comparing cars that are made in both dino-powered and EV formats, thus attempting to compare like with like, it would seem that EVs might be in the range of 20-33% heavier? This is comparing the VW Up, the Mini, the VW Golf and the MG ZS, though it's hard to be certain that I was comparing sufficiently similar models.
As for electrifying the railways, or rather not electrifying them. Well I understand that's definitely the policy down in Englandshire, but up in Scotland they have a rolling programme of electrification programmed out to 2035.
On recent battery developments
Snip: a long list of marketing/PR hand-outs.
None of them offer even a single order of magnitude improvement in capacity, because actual existing chemistry and physics don't permit it. Batteries that are safer, charge much faster, can be used as structural load-bearing components in cars, can survive more charge/discharge cycles and don't lose charge when unused ... all of these are clearly possible, and in development. But you can't change the laws of physics to create a higher potential difference between an anode and a cathode without also changing the elements in the electrolyte to some magical unobtanium ...
Mr Tim Quote: "one OOM" w.t.f. ...Or - is an "OOM" an order-of-magnitude???
Square Leg In England the DfT & especially the Treasury who are um "resisting" And there's Utter Fucking Madness madness like this going on at the same time as dragging their feet over even continuing rail electric to Sheffield or across the Pennines. You really could not make this shit up!
Charlie Battery developments / marketing PR / hand-outs Maybe & agreed, but, But, BUT .. if even one-third of those (I note patent applications) actually work ... I think order-of-magnitude steps are unlikely for "Laws-of-Physics" reasons, but 10% here, 10% there, another 5% here & 5% there might add up, or rather multiply up to quite significant improvements
Well, I don't need an order of magnitude increase in range on my EV, but I can see the appeal. 99.8% of my driving ends with me back at the house and >70% charge left in the car. The other .02% has resulted in a <20% charge.
The one time a year I drive beyond our functional range I will probably just rent a ICE.
In other fascinating news, Google has apparently built the first 'Time Crystal', which purports to evade the second law of thermodynamics. "https://www.quantamagazine.org/first-time-crystal-built-using-googles-quantum-computer-20210730/"
Assuming this is true and replicable, I'd be very interested to know the ramifications of this in an sf context.
"A novel phase of matter that physicists have strived to realize for many years, a time crystal is an object whose parts move in a regular, repeating cycle, sustaining this constant change without burning any energy."
Clearly I am hopeless at posting links. Sigh.
Time Crystals
I have just checked up on the VW Golf. The electric version loses 10% of the boot capacity AND any space for a spare wheel (even one of the temporary jobs) and essential spares. It also has something under 1/3 the range. That's not like-for-like.
w.t.f. ...Or - is an "OOM" an order-of-magnitude???
Yes.
I have just posted the following to the "FT" after a scary article on Saturday:
How ironic & utterly terrifying that, in the same week that Simon Kuper asks: "Does the elite treat the country as .. something it's looking after for future generations, or as a stolen wallet full of cash?" And the "FT'" main headline is: "Elite tory donors club holds secret meetings with Johnson" Whilst the following legislative bills, causing much angst & hand-wringing ... The Police, Crime, Sentencing & Courts / Telecomms Security / Nationality & Borders / Elections / Judicial Review Bills respectively are gliding through our supposedly-democratic processes, hugely strengthening the grip of the executive on power at the expense of individuals. I think we have our answer, do we not?
"Stolen Wallet full of cash" Coupled with what looks to me like overt-but-"legal" steps towards something strongly resembling fascism.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ To Rocketjps Can "Time Crystals" be utilised for energy storage & retrieval?
We don't need a (decimal) OOM improvement in capacity, anyway (*). Except for a few, extremely niche, uses, current batteries are good enough in that respect - provided that we improved the infrastructure appropriately. Some of the other benefits are definitely worthwhile. The current problems with range are because we DON'T have the infrastructure, and there aren't any coherent plans to provide it, except possibly in Scotland.
(*) Even excluding the inherent danger of any energy storage technology that contains enough energy to vaporise the volatiles in its substrate.
Speaking of energy storage, it looks like a company in Australia (Lavo) is building 40 kWh hydrogen energy storage systems for home use. It's what you might expect: connect electrolysis up to home solar, make and store hydrogen, get the energy out with a fuel cell. Cost is around $24000 US, but that's close to comparable with a set of Tesla Powerwalls that hold the same amount of energy. And it discharges faster than do Powerwalls, at least last time I looked.
https://www.inceptivemind.com/lavo-worlds-first-home-hydrogen-battery-powers-average-home-two-days/17778/
I'm not particularly interested in reigniting the previous controversy, but I figure that a tank of hydrogen and a charged lithium battery wall holding the same amount of energy are equally (potentially) dangerous in case of fire.
Ocean is 70% of Earth's surface. Covering 9% of that is 6.3% of Earth's surface. Current human agriculture takes up around ~10% of Earth's surface.
So I doubt there's enough concrete in the world to do this. Something's very weird here.
As for deepwater offshore turbines, floating rigs that are tethered to the bottom are a known thing, and putting up a turbine isn't much (or at all) harder than drilling into the bottom and sideways from there. Actually, I'd be happy to give the rig-makers something to do that doesn't involve the oil industry.
Also, given that construction currently accounts for nearly 40% of greenhouse gas emissions, simply making that much concrete (if it was possible) would be problematic…
I figure that a tank of hydrogen and a charged lithium battery wall holding the same amount of energy are equally (potentially) dangerous in case of fire.
I'm not sure, but hydrogen might be safer. It'd take up a lot more space, which is why it's not suitable for transport, but you could in principle bury the gas tank outdoors in the yard and provide blowout panels. Hydrogen rises rapidly, so it won't hang around at ground level: add a suitably-designed chimney/flame duct and you could flare it off if it starts to leak into the cellar the tank's installed in.
Lithium ion battery packs, on the other hand ... you're dealing with an alkali metal fire -- same column of the periodic table as sodium and potassium. In other words, it wants to go BANG, very emphatically. And because lithium batteries are firewalled to hell and back, they tend to smoulder for hours or days:
(source)I read elsewhere that the preferred response to an EV fire is to plant it in a tank on the back of a low-loader and fill the tank above the roofline with cold water. Then let it sit in a corner of the pound for a few days, or until it stops hissing and bubbling.
Mitigating factor: it takes a lot to set a Tesla car battery burning -- they're firewalled (as noted), and there's a titanium armour shield between the underside of the battery and the road. Any impact that can set fire to it is guaranteed to write off the car first, and probably kill the human cargo (we're talking 100mph impact into a bridge abutment here).
So I doubt there's enough concrete in the world to do this. Something's very weird here. Pretty sure it's offshore("coastal" or similar) wind. See page 80/figure 8.6 in this IEA report. (pdf) Most of the open ocean is not included. Offshore Wind Outlook 2019 (Use the "Rotate clockwise" tool in your pdf viewer to view that figure.)
So I doubt there's enough concrete in the world to do this. Something's very weird here.
Assuming what is meant is 9% used for "farms" of Mulberry things, that still likely creates a no go zone for cargo lines. So now we get into yelling over which sites get left open for ocean cargo routes.
The one time a year I drive beyond our functional range I will probably just rent a ICE.
Someone I know drove from central North Carolina to California and back with their Tesla last summer. 200+ miles between charges. 20 minutes per charge up. Get out, pee, stretch legs, get back in and head out.
And here in Raleigh we have charging stations all around. There is a clump of 10 or so Tesla charging points less than a mile from me.
So what I see is EV's become an urban/suburban thing which covers 80% of the vehicle needs. And thus now the rural folks (R majority) yell that the urban folks (D majority) are wasting money on stupid things when dino fuels are just fine.
Damian @ 676:
Yeah...no.
I don't know what Frappucino is, as it's not a standard espresso style. But you are simply factually incorrect about the others you mention.
"Frappucino" is a stupid coffee flavored drink from Starbucks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frappuccino
It's MY OPINION, but it's also a FACT that each of the other drinks I mentioned ARE NOT JUST "ground roasted coffee beans, water and heat".
Damian @ 682: Yeah that’s the sort I have in mind too. Good ones had two settings: “percolate” and “keep warm”. Better ones had a timer that switched from a to b after a proper interval. I’m sure these still exist, I just haven’t been in charge of operating one for some decades.
The steam urn I mentioned was not a percolator. It was a drip-filter coffee maker, a BIG one capable of producing nine gallons at a time.
When I worked for the student union food service I would make 3 batches in the morning - just before 6:00am (when the line opened), another at 7:00am and a third just before I left to go to my 8 o'clock class. They probably made a couple more batches after I left to go to class. The food service sold coffee quickly enough that stand time was not a problem.
On recent battery developments
I loved the very carefully worded press release about over the air power harvesting. EevBlog on utube regularly covers that, and I follow a blog from someone involved. That stuff is all about microwatts and nanowatts outside the lab, and whatever power level you like as long as no human being comes within ln(power in watts) kilometres of any part of the system.
The battery stuff appears to be strictly lab work and press releases, but it's symptomatic of the general trend: there is a lot of money to be made in batteries so a lot of R&D is being done. Picking winners at the lab stage is a matter of funding as many as you can and hoping for the best.
Well you're maybe talking about milk or (in some cases) a dusting of chocolate powder on top of the foam. If you're talking about flavourings, then you're only talking about certain US-based or influenced chains, not about what the rest of the world recognises those things to be. Mocha? No. Hazelnut? You can't even call that coffee anymore. Does that help?
now we get into yelling over which sites get left open for ocean cargo routes.
Environmentally this is very likely a huge win. Turn the shipping lanes into the narrowest viable strips, actively balance where those strips are against other concerns. Do the same with fish mining (trawling) with a view to eliminating it by decision rather than by no fish left to mine. Use wind farms to actively prevent the current profitable "error" of mining then paying the fines if you get caught.
As just happened in Australia, the cost of fine for doing the wrong thing is low enough to be affordable to anyone, which necessarily means it's so far below the cost imposed by the offence that it's laughable. In Western Australia a poorly operated cargo ship just dragged anchor and broke an internet cable. With a little more effort they could have broken three. Apparently they might be liable for the repair costs, but not the consequential ones.
On the earlier topic: if you want to really fuck shit up don't go ecowarrior on them, buy a company and have an accident. Make the law work for you rather than against.
Ocean is 70% of Earth's surface. Covering 9% of that is 6.3% of Earth's surface.
Even the most aggressive wind farms typically cover less than 1% of the occupied area. The towers are just not very big, and even the swept area is small due to turbulence effects limiting how close you can put towers to each other. https://dbldkr.com/how-far-apart-do-wind-turbines-have-to-be/
So your ocean wind farm is very large amounts of ocean with very small amounts of steel floating in it, held in place by widely spaced lumps of concrete. At this stage it's not worth the hassle of using lumps of rock rather than concrete, but with any luck they might start using second hand trawlers filled with rubble as anchors. There are probably sound technical reasons for not doing that, or using mesh bags full of construction waste or whatever, but I suspect that people are looking very carefully at options because concrete is expensive.
I'm guessing that the actual numbers go more like: X wind turbines per square kilometre, each using Y tons of steel and Z tons of concrete, where X is less than 10, Y is a couple of hundred and Z is under 1000. But it's X that really matters here, because scale factors are steadily reducing that. Currently 220m is the biggest diameter, suggesting a turbine spacing of ~1.5km and a density/X value above of 0.5-ish.
Greg Tingey @ 690: Coffee
I very rarely drink coffee out of home, but when I do I can recommend "AMT"- not cheap, but well-made with serious quantities of caffeine in it.
At home, I use a drip-filter device - spoon in the freshly-ground coffee into the filter, close the bucket, pour cooled boiled water into the input end, press a couple of buttons & off it goes
The only difference between that and the coffee maker I use at home is the machine heats the water to the correct temperature & pours it over the coffee grounds. I just have to fill the reservoir with the correct amount of cold water & put the desired quantity of coffee grounds in the filter ... and turn the heater under the carafe OFF before it sits for too long so it doesn't take on a scorched taste.
I also have a Melita filter holder that I can make single cups, but I usually am going to drink more than one cup, so it's a lot more work & I don't use it very often. I used it a lot more when I was camping out a lot & had no place to plug in the Mr. Coffee machine.
Commercial machines like the Bunn-O-Matic have a larger reservoir & the machine not only heats the water it delivers a measured amount for each run. The coffee comes in pre-measured packages so you always have the same amount of grounds used for every batch.
That uniformity appeals to me. The coffee's not too strong in one place, too weak in next or made with water that's too hot or not hot enough ... Everywhere I go they use the same machine with the same settings and the coffee is a KNOWN quality.
And it tastes like the coffee I made when I worked in food service, like the coffee I drank in Army Mess Halls and like the coffee I make at home. I admit it's kind of bland, but that's the way I like it.
I'm wondering aloud which is most likely to continue working with the least maintenance over decades, for the least consumables and spare parts with the shortest supply chains. Battery banks don't have moving parts, but have a finite limit of cycles, while a hydrogen relies on seals and at least one pump to get it in the tank (unless I'm completely misunderstanding how that might work). I mean it looks like the LAVO system incorporates Li batteries too, but in principle for endurance with these technologies in the event that supply chains break down... even in places where there is built-in lithium independence.
Greg Tingey @ 698: Square Leg
In England the DfT & especially the Treasury who are um "resisting"
And there's Utter Fucking Madness madness like this going on at the same time as dragging their feet over even continuing rail electric to Sheffield or across the Pennines.
You really could not make this shit up!
How will you find out if something might work if you don't study it? Maybe it's feasible, maybe it's infeasible, but how are you going to find out which it is without studying it?
Order of magnitude improvement in kWh/kg does indeed seem rather optimistic.
However for grid-storage, getting a order of magnitude from currently $100/kWh to $10/kWh seems perfectly possible, even $1/kWh would not break any physical laws.
This would allow renewables to provide power for everything that does not move at least.
Heteromeles @ 706: Ocean is 70% of Earth's surface. Covering 9% of that is 6.3% of Earth's surface. Current human agriculture takes up around ~10% of Earth's surface.
So I doubt there's enough concrete in the world to do this. Something's very weird here.
As for deepwater offshore turbines, floating rigs that are tethered to the bottom are a known thing, and putting up a turbine isn't much (or at all) harder than drilling into the bottom and sideways from there. Actually, I'd be happy to give the rig-makers something to do that doesn't involve the oil industry.
I thought the suggestion was for fields of wind turbines that could cover 9% of the oceans? Actual concrete foundations for such a field wouldn't cover the entire field; just the spots under the turbine towers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offshore_wind_power#Fixed_foundation
There would still be mostly ocean between the turbine towers ... with some artificial reefs to protect the cables carrying power to land. But I'm still thinking only a single digit percentage of the field's area would require any concrete.
Something less than .5% of the Earth's surface?
Elderly Cynic, what IS the car you drive? If it is mentioned upthread, I am having trouble finding it.
Damian @ 715: Well you're maybe talking about milk or (in some cases) a dusting of chocolate powder on top of the foam. If you're talking about flavourings, then you're only talking about certain US-based or influenced chains, not about what the rest of the world recognises those things to be. Mocha? No. Hazelnut? You can't even call that coffee anymore. Does that help?
No. Because it doesn't matter. It's a moot point.
Whatever the rest of the world might mean by those names, I'm still not drinking them. I know what I like and that's what I'm gonna' drink (or bitch about it if I can't find it).
It's a free country and I can call 'em whatever I want to ... well, it's mostly a free country around here where I'm located, but ... ain't nobody gonna' put me in jail (YET) for calling something by another name than what they think it should be called.
Here's the extract (html) from the full IEA report (pdf) I linked above: Offshore Wind Outlook 2019 This is the "International Energy Agency" mentioned in the Economist piece. "Offshore" is near coasts. The 9 percent of suitable offshore ocean is to meet 2040 projected electricity demand. All suitable offshore ocean would be the 11x.
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Škoda_Fabia according to #630.
"Electrification works in every other country in Europe, so why won't it work in Englandshire?"
Of the motorways?
At least it's only 2 million quid that the "study" parasites are being fed, which is small enough to make it a reasonable expectation that they've been instructed to conclude that it is indeed silly.
They actually look pretty nice. I have been pretty happy with the Mazda 2, but the cargo space is... enough for grocery shopping. Even folding down the rear seats doesn't yield much. Something in the same size class but set up as an actual wagon rather than hatchback would be nice. It looks like similar performance from a much smaller engine too... Hmm.
JBS @ 720 They are proposing electrifying with TWO cables on the M-mays, when they already have a purpose-built freight transport network - the railways, that need only ONE cable? And the railways have dedicated rights-of-way that are difficult ( relatively) to access & fuck up? Do please GROW UP
Pwas@ 725 point #718 Not Invented Here - it works everywhere else, but it could not possibly work here! Seen that so many times it's painful - see also HS2 OR "Zonal Fares ( In London ) & & & .....
Pigeon @ 728 BUT It still kicks the can down the road another 2-5 years, doesn't it?
Sigh. Covid in Alberta now has an R of 1.48 — highest ever — which is of course for removing all restrictions including contact tracing and the requirement that those infected self-isolate. Less than 65% with first doses, less than 55% with two doses*, but at least Alberta is "Open For Business!"
Oh, and nurses just got handed a 3% pay cut, as a reward for their hard work during the past 18 months.
We used to think Alberta wanted to be Texas, but apparently they want to be Florida instead.
Beginning to think I might have to cancel my planned trip to see my family :-(
*Although the chief medical officer did say that isolating would be a "good idea".
**Which seems to indicate a large number of anti-vaxxers, which is what I expected from the news, but larger than I'd hoped.
They seem to be pretty well regarded, in that Skodas are said to have all the good qualities of the corresponding VWs with an actual VW badge on them, while being cheaper. The police bought a lot of them, which is a hard life for a car, but they seem to stand up to it well. Though it has to be said that I would prefer something comparable from Japan if the matter ever arose.
"electrifying with TWO cables"
I'm not clear whether that picture at the head of the article is real or just something they've made up with a computer, but that dual-catenary/double-head pantograph arrangement it shows does suggest the following kind of scenario:
711 - Most people can't afford a Tesla. Point taken?
My point was that charging stations are being built. And Tesla will be making theirs open to other models soon.
And in the group of folks with this Tesla there is also another Tesla and a Leaf. The Leaf guy charges at the same location with all the Tesla chargers. The location has multiple options. And in the US there are Apps for your smart phone that will tell you what charges are where and how fast they can charge what kinds of cars.
Personally I'm holding out for a Subaru Crosstrek for my next car. If they make an electric one. My 1.5L Turbo Civic gets 30-50mpg and is now 6 years old. My wife will get the Crosstrek as her 2009 Elantra "put put" car got totaled last Oct and currently I'm stuck using the 5.7L Tundra way more than I want to.
As affordable, the biggest issue I see with the move to electrical vehicles in the US is home electrical service. There are a LOT of older homes with only 120 Amp (240V) service. Or less. Which doesn't leave enough after the home usage to charge the car very fast. And the cost to upgrade such a home could range from $1500 to $10K. $1500 if just a new main panel. Maybe less. But if such an upgrade creates a cascade of bringing an older home to code, ouch. And this is before a powerwall or similar. And even if your panel has the power rating needed you still might trigger the cascade just putting in the car charger. This is where I am just now.
And for people in mid to lower end apartments, they don't have any way to charge an EV at home and someone has to agree to pay for the charging stations. And no one will want to do it until a non trivial number of the tenants have EVs. And if you're on the lower end of the income scale that may not happen for 20 years.
Which is why I feel even IF EVs come down in price to about where fossil fuel cars are they will still be a thing for the upper half of the income scale.
In the US.
but they seem to stand up to it well.
On my visit to Spain and Ireland a few years back they, Skodas, seemed to be popular taxi choices. I assumed for the same reason.
Since I've actually been through this, getting a $1500 home charger installation, here's how it went.
1) Home solar: how much of your roof faces the sky south or west without obstruction? That's how much solar you can get. I've got 18 good panels on my roof, and I can get about 65 kWh on the roof in a week in summer. To do this, the solar company installed a subpanel right off the main panel.
2) Charging an EV at home. On line voltage, it takes around 32 hours to fully dump 65 kWh into my car. So not good. With a 50 amp plug, it gets cut to around 8 hours to fully recharge, which is what they want. Tesla can do it faster, I know. I'll get back to that.
The things you pay for are the home charger ($750 a few years ago), proper installation, and inspection. I'm lucky enough that my main panel is on the outer wall of a garage, the solar stuff is in the garage, and it's already high amperage, so running the car charger didn't take much more effort than installing a 50 amp, GROUNDED plug near the panel. What you're paying for is getting that big ol' wire right from your home main to the charger, with a really good ground so that if gremlins get involved, stray voltage doesn't decide to ignite your home. Paying to get the work is actually mandatory here, and I think worth the price (it's 0.0025% of a current home). Oddly enough, you can get el cheapo installers who insist that there's no need to pull a permit and get an inspection. Run from them.
Now this is the best situation. If your main panel is nowhere near the garage, it gets more interesting and expensive, because you're snaking big, dangerous, hot wires through places they maybe were not intended to go.
3) speaking of which: heat. Some of the Bolts ignited while recharging. I'm not surprised. Until we got the software patch, the signal ours was done charging was the scream of the car fan kicking into high gear as the battery (over)heated when it was done charging. Unplugging the car and opening the now very warm garage ended the threat, but the fan still screams when the Bolt is charging in a hot garage, and I still unplug it when I hear the fan scream.
That's the thing to think about carefully. We all want that EV that can charge 100 kWh in one hour, but running a system at 100 kW is likely to generate a lot of heat and really needs to be grounded extremely well for safety. With my experience with the Bolt heating up the entire garage while recharging, I'm willing to leave such rapid charge systems outside.
Lorries go from suppliers to customers. Trucks go from suppliers to rail depots where the items the trucks carry are unloaded to wait in warehouses until they can be loaded on a train going somewhere close to where the customer is located. When they get there the items are unloaded into another warehouse until a truck is dispatched to collect them. The goods are then loaded onto the truck to be delivered to the customer.
The extra handling required for transporting most goods by rail is a time and cost sink, never mind damage and pilferage and faulty routing and the extra cost of intermediate storage. There's a reason most rail transport nowadays is either container-based or pipeline freight of liquids, gases, rock for construction etc. since it's usually routed depot to depot with simplified handling using pumps, hoppers, conveyors etc. at either end.
My brief reading of the proposed system suggests it is meant to be a charging system for EV battery trucks in motion on certain sections of motorway and perhaps urban highways rather than providing 100 percent of the motive power for the vehicles connected (temporarily) to it.
I had an idea of something similar for EV buses with dedicated overhead connections erected at bus stops, capable of delivering a few minutes of high-current charge via pantograph while the bus was dropping off and picking up passengers. As an aside I saw my first battery-powered double-decker bus here in Edinburgh a couple of days ago.
https://www.lothianbuses.com/news/2021/06/capitals-first-fully-electric-double-decker-buses-arrive-in-edinburgh/
Lothian buses did have some single-decker EV buses in use last year but I'm not sure if they were meant to be a permanent addition to the company's fleet or they were just being trialled.
With my experience with the Bolt heating up the entire garage while recharging, I'm willing to leave such rapid charge systems outside.
Hadn't thought of that. Very good point. Building codes might need to be revisited — an unventilated garage in a wood-frame house is not the right place to be fast-charging an electric vehicle!
Line voltage would do me fine most of the year, but there are times when I'd be needing that overnight recharge*. And then there's road trips (once we get the pandemic sorted)…
*12 hours would probably do, rather than 8.
the Bolt heating up the entire garage while recharging
The good news is that we have lots of experience with vehicle fires, and in Australia we have lots of experience with keeping fires in/out of places. I've been through some of the "building in a flame zone" rules and it's actually relatively easy. Just expensive to very, very expensive depending on how pretty it needs to be.
A concrete garage under a house or apartment is easy, it's almost fireproof by default. If you could persuade motorists to unload then park to one side of a parking spot they could even do head-high fire barriers between cars to avoid the little problem they had in Australia the other day. You want the top open for ventilation.
In your home garage you can use MgO fire rated panels to line the inside, or just charge outside/in a disposable shed. The "cement board" panels can give you flame zone rating if doubled and the joints treated properly (~20mm total thickness). You'd probably still want to at least think about being able to pull the car out so the fire service can dump it into their mobile hazardous fire containment device (these will become common as electric cars proliferate).
So much bullshit about EVs.
A VW eGolf is a very poor sample to treat as representative. It was a hacked compliance vehicle, hence the many, many compromises. As best I can tell no current EV puts the battery in the boot. In most of them the no longer required volume for the tin of explosive cancerous liquid becomes still more storage. Along with the frequently created space where the reciprocating infernal confusion engine used to go.
Fires: if you’re worried vehicle fires, an EV seems to be safer. Ask BMW about cars burning in garages after being parked for a day or two.
The Grid. No actual expert will claim a need for tripling electricity production outside third world countries. Which of course, the UK is rapidly becoming, so there’s that. Most EVs use somewhat less electricity to travel X miles than is used to merely extract petrol sufficient to travel X miles in a typical ICE vehicle. And oh my whiskers and tail, what ever do we do if we need more elecktrickery Mr Gummidge? Well, probably the same as every time a new housing estate is built, a new office block built, a new school, a new hospital. I mean, the grid isn’t some gift from a mean spirited god that can never be changed, expanded, improved. At least, not my planet.
Weight: a BMW series 3 weighs pretty much the same as a Tesla model 3. They are logical comparisons for market sector, general size, general cost, etc. The Tesla is way faster and puts energy back in its tank when you brake. Name a BMW ICE that does that. There are smaller EVs and, shock, horror they tend to weigh roughly the same as the ICE equivalent. Because, y’know, you don’t have that lump of explosive containing metal with actual thousands of components and pipes of dangerous liquid and pipes of burning hot poisonous gases and catalytic converters to reduce the deadliness of said gas, and the very high voltage for the igniters for the poison liquid, and the big tin of poisonous explosive liquid and the frequently heavy sound deadening materials (sheets of lead and tar anyone?), and on and on. All that goes and gets replaced with one or two (or occasionally three or four) not so very heavy electric motors and a big and certainly heavy battery. And surprise! It adds up about the damn same. Except you aren’t doing as much poisoning of the air, which seems nice.
Rare Earth Metals: OMG - RareEarth! Must be really rare and dangerous to get, right. Look it up. And look up how much goes into an ICE vehicle. And how much more goes into the production of petrol.
Price: oh my, a Tesla is expensive! Well, pretty much the same price as a lot of other cars in that market segment until you go for the serious performance, in which case they’re cheaper. The T3 is right on the average price for the US. Several manufacturers (including Tesla, duh) are aiming at smaller cheaper models for markets where people want them. So, not the US where Homer’s Canyonero is now a sub-compact. You want small EVs? Take a look at the reviews of some on the Fully Charged Show on YouTube.
Use mass transit: fuck right off. No such thing in rural areas. My nearest bus stop is a six mile hike away with that six miles plus several hundred foot climb to return. For a bus that you might see once a day. Plus, sharing closed spaces with a bunch of sweat leaking pandemic spreading humans? No way.
So much bullshit about EVs.
So which EV do you own?
So far as heat in garages goes, I think the far more dangerous problem than heat is getting an EV charger installed by someone who cuts corners and tells the homeowner they don't need to pull a permit or get the work inspected. As with any problem that involves idiots, it's hard to solve this with rules or arguments.
The problem with Bolt charging seems to be ameliorated or fixed for now with a software upgrade, and that's all for the good. Getting back to Robert Prior's earlier point about charging in 8 hours rather than 12, the thing to think about is that my lastgen charger delivers about 8kWh per hour, and my lastgen Bolt battery holds 65 kWh. That's good for around town, not so fun for any trip over 100 miles, because it's not equipped to charge fast.
The critical thing to think about is the 100kWh battery. That's going to send a car 300 miles plus, so it's more like what people expect out of a current car. If you're recharging a 100 kWh battery at 8 kWh/hour, it's going to take 11-12 hours. IIRC, the top model Teslas and some other cars have batteries in the 100 kWh, so it's probably better to plan for them and for charging them fast, than to plan for something like the Bolt, which now is a mid-range car. It's a variation on the old problem with buying computers: it's expensive to be on the bleeding edge, but the trailing edge isn't much fun either, and the technology is iterating relatively rapidly right now.
Yes. I know all of that. I think I could pass the electrical code exam with a day or two of study.
New construction is nice but I'm in a area of mixed age housing. My house was built in 1961. Over 1/2 of the 400 in my "subdivision" were built around the 60s. They rest have been very remodeled or torn down and built new in the last 10-20 years. So 1/2 of us have 120Amp breaker boxes. Some fused 100amp. And many of us have non permitted wiring changes.
So I and at least 1/2 of my neighbors don't have a panel that will handle a new 50 amp load. And my house and many (most?) have grounding via a clamp on the cold water line. (I had forgotten mine was that way till I was about to replace a run of copper last month to deal with a capped off due to freezing outside faucet. I found the ground and had to do my water line fix differently. PEX and ground connections just don't mix. One more project on the list.)
So for my house they might likely want to pull a permit fully upgrade/inspect my house to code which is why the costs could skyrocket. (I almost want a windstorm to pull my service entrance off the side of my house so I can replace the panel with one for 200amps or more. Emergency repairs don't have to be permitted and don't trigger the "if you're doing this much then you must bring it all up to current code".)
And much of my area is full of houses older than mine.
Solar is a dream. Literally. I have a great south facing 24'x15' section of roof. But the structure will not take the load. If I tear down myself I'll do solar when building or set it up to add later.
PS: My house wiring is very close to current code. Nuff said. Let's just say after I moved in I discovered that the 3 bedrooms and 2 baths had all outlets and lighting on a single breaker. (The US had different concepts on this than Europe and this is a terrible way to do it for a modern life in the US.)
In response to Heteromeles on August 2, 2021 at 17:50: seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/hydrogen-powered-aviation-will-be-tested-on-turboprops-at-new-moses-lake-venture shows converting a DeHavilland DASH-8 twin turboprop 50 seater loses 20% of its passenger capacity. But, at least someone's trying.
Fair enough.
I had an unused (!) grounding rod outside, next to the main box in my 1980s era home. The solar guys sawed it off at ground level when they found a similar metal post inside the wall where the main box was mounted, with an access hatch and everything. It was the actual ground. That big old dedicated ground was nice to see, because it meant I could stop hardening my shins by hitting the one outside in the dark.
My late uncle did electronics in the Navy, so he also went for the big steel rod embedded in the back yard to properly ground his beloved computer setup. It passed inspection when we sold his house. The inspector mumbled about that rod, but it passed. Whichever kid got the bedroom that used to be my uncle's computer room probably was surprised about how very well it was set up for his computer.
Otherwise, I'm glad you brought up your roof problems. It's a standard complaint of those living near proposed solar farms in rural areas that the quintuply damned city slickers should make their own solar power, not screw up the beautiful countryside. They don't realize that far too many homes are like yours, with roofs that are unable to hold the needed solar arrays, even in a young town like San Diego. What's sad is how many urban architects and planners struggle to understand exactly the same problem.
Ok, so let's compare functional equivalent, which you seem to define by load capacity. I'll use the same cars as I did for weight.
Tesla Model 3 Long Range (the heavy one) 1847 kg fully fueled. 15 cuft, 424 https://www.caranddriver.com/tesla/model-3/specs
BMW M3 base model (the light one) 1705 kg no fuel. 13 cuft, 368 litres https://www.caranddriver.com/bmw/m3/specs
Electric car much larger luggage while being a bit heavier. . .
BMW X5 2555 kg no fuel. 72.3 cuft, 2047 litres https://www.caranddriver.com/bmw/x5/specs
Tesla Model X P100D (the heavy one) 2509 kg fully fuelled. 87.8 cuft, 2486 litres https://www.caranddriver.com/tesla/model-x/specs
Electric car much more luggage while being slightly lighter weight. . .
BMW 7 series 4wd, 2255 kg no fuel. 18 cuft, 515 litres https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/bmw/7-series/practicality
Tesla Model S 4wd long range (the heavy one) 2250 kg fully fuelled. 58.1 cft, 1645 litres https://www.caranddriver.com/tesla/model-s/specs
Electric car triple the luggage while being slightly lighter weight. .
Those are the actual facts.
Now note that I've used electric cars designed as electric cars, not petrol cars with electric motors grafted on. As an engineer, I'm sure you appreciate that petrol cars converted to electric are an ugly hack, not relevant to a discussion of a world where electric cars replace petrol ones. After all, we don't attach a petrol motor between the shafts of a Hackney cab in place of the horse because it would be shit. Neither do we put batteries in the boot and call it an electric car, (unless we're VW, which is synonymous with shit)
Pigeon No, it's real & it's utterly bonkers Wierdly we did have such a system in some cities - they were called "Trolleybuses" ... but were scrapped in a long-term fit of insanity in the 1960's
Nojay They are re-inventing palletised/small-containerised transport to city centre stations, using repurposed older passenger units Onward delivery by electric-float-fleets or even cycles.
You know he meant 'carcinogenic'
And which of those EV do you think is a replacement for a Skoda Fabia, based on price point in Europe (including WrecksIt land as part of Europe)?
Obviously none of them.
EC, (and you apparently) claim that electric vehicles aren't a viable solution, because there's no electric equivalent of his early model Fabia.
The fact that there's no petrol equivalent seems lost on both of you. You can't buy a petrol version of a flimsy 1990's 65 hp wagon new for the price of a 25 year old shit box.
So, no there's no brand new electric sold in Europe that's dangerously unsafe, and priced the same as a 25 year old crap car. This is not proof that electric cars are inherently 50% heavier, nor is it proof that they're more expensive. .
You probably know this, but it's worth repeating:
To Ilya187 (#723). My car is a 2011 Skoda Fabia 'estate', and weighs about 1,000 Kg. It is about as mainstream a European car (towards the low end) as any.
One reason that weight matters is that power consumption is largely pro-rata to weight; regenerative braking changes the scale, a bit, but doesn't change that fact. On modern, aerodynamic cars, air resistance starts to become dominant only above c. 40 MPH.
A second reason that weight matters is ithat road, property and personal damage (to people outside the vehicle) all increase rapidly with weight. That's particularly serious for HGVs and similar, but matters for all vehicles.
Load capacity is ONE aspect of functionality, but there are several others. It also happens to be the one that is usually sacrificed in electric cars to fit in the battery.
I am not claiming that my requirements are universal (though they are not unusual) but a LOT of people buy the smallest car that meets their requirements.
Yes. And most of the current or imminent EVs are equally poor examples, for other reasons.
Because most of the EV-heads keep misunderstanding and then misrepresenting me, I suppose that I need to repeat my points. Yet again :-(
Yes, I agree - EVs are much better in most important respects, there are no insuperable problems, and most of the serious problems are being worked on.
BUT ...
The EVs as currently being designed, touted and so on almost all seem to be urban shopping and commuter carts or aimed at the (sometimes poor mans') penis-extension market. The result is that utterly boring old sods (like me) who just want a car to fulfil a purpose are faced with a a factor of two increase in size and weight and a factor of three in price just to get the functionality :-( This is NOT a necessary consequence of them being EVs, but a consequence of the design choices.
EVs will not be viable without the infrastructure to support them and, at present, there are no signs that our misgovernment or exploitocracy are pursuing any other policy than 'someone else should do that'.
The problem with hydrogen is one of degree, rather than kind, except on a very large scale. Any of natural gas, petrol or hydrogen exploding in a basement (e.g. underground car park) can take out a skyscraper. Hydrogen is just much more likely to detonate if it leaks. So it definitely would need something added to make it smell!
The problem would be with distribution and storage. Petrol tanker and petrol station fires/failures result in a fireball, rarely in much of an explosion. Hydrogen is rather different, and fairly readily detonates without confinement. I can easily see our misgovernment following exactly the same path with those as it did when it created CJD.
I don't know how likely a simple vehicle leak on a roadway would be to cause a detonation. That would need study.
Batteries are different, as you say. Musk is obsessive, and the Tesla is (rightly) over-engineered; I don't see much problem with the forthcoming mainstream manufacturers' products, either. Where I see the problem is further down the line, when a common vendor outsources its battery manufacture to (say) the DPRK. Again, this comes down to our misgovernment relaxing controls.
A problem that, as far as I know, has not been properly studied is what chance one burning battery has of igniting an adjacent one. As you know, we fairly regularly get multi-vehicle pileups, including several HGVs.
The latter is one of the one of the reasons that I keep banging on that we need to reduce the size of our juggernauts, NOT keep increasing it! Nobody needs 2-3 tons for personal, (sub-)urban commuting and shopping; 250 Kg is ample, if well engineered. Let's skip the related areas of luggage space on public transport and the (mainly insurance) cartels obstructing temporary hires
I should probably have mentioned this, which is (again) a repetition of what I have said before. The UK really DOES need to triple our electrical generation and distribution capacity, but it is NOT just to support EVs. There are two other factors:
The suppliers are all pointing out that we are living far too close to the limit, and we need a significant increase to avoid massive power cuts if something goes wrong (including a cold winter). A fairly small improvement would lead to to a large increase in reliability.
Heating (and industrial uses). This is the other biggy (*). While it doesn't cause much atmospheric pollution, there is absolutely NO point in moving to EVs to reduce CO2 emissions and not changing these to electricity.
(*) https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/928350/2020_Energy_Consumption_in_the_UK__ECUK_.pdf
Nobody needs 2-3 tons for personal, (sub-)urban commuting and shopping
Except, possibly, safety from other people using 3 tons to do their shopping and commuting. It's now a weird size race where those who decide to stay small become more likely to get killed/injured in accidents (not to mention having a hard time seeing around the huge vehicles around them) while those who upsized are no further ahead than they would have been if no one upsized.
#720 - Electrification works in every other country in Europe, so why won't it work in Englandshire?
There is a Problem with electrifying numerous routes in the UK that were built in the heady rush of the 1830s-1860s with steam traction in mind: tunnels.
A lot of the UK's rail infrastructure was first-mover stuff, and thus obsolescent even in the 19th century. For example, we got stuck with a narrower-than-ideal loading gauge, which can't be fixed without rebuilding numerous station platforms and moving trackside infrastructure to allow wider trains/turning radii.
But tunnels make everything worse. Tunnels were expensive, even with cheap labour to wield the pick axe. So when faced with a lump of rock, they drilled a pair of tunnels for each route, with ventilation shafts to get the smoke out, keeping the bore as narrow as was compatible with running trains through them.
If you want to install overhead lines, you need a wider tunnel bore. Which means shutting one tunnel at a time for a prolonged period as you enlarge it, or drilling an entire new bypass tunnel, which requires all sorts of right-of-way permissions. Meanwhile, you have two lines reduced to one line running, which adds a raft of delays. If this happens at multiple points on a network, pretty soon you're playing a giant game of Roadblock ...
Workarounds might include adding a third rail system just for tunnels (makes the trains more complex), adding battery packs (ditto, also adds weight), or running diesel-electric hybrids that can use overhead power where available (this is actually a thing: the Class 800/801 Azuma trains do this).
The EVs as currently being designed, touted and so on almost all seem to be urban shopping and commuter carts or aimed at the (sometimes poor mans') penis-extension market.
Tesla got first-mover advantage in the market by following a simple strategy: start with the most expensive, lowest volume, and hence most profitable per unit, vehicle. Then work down the market, making them cheaper, in higher volume, albeit less profit per vehicle.
They started with the Tesla Roadster, a warmed-over Lotus (it used Elan bodywork).
The Model S came next, targeting the equivalent of a high-end BMW (Series 7?). They reused a bunch of components in the Model X, a high-end Crossover (SUV-like). Again: higher volume than the Roadster, but a bit cheaper.
Then they made the Model 3. I am not planning on buying a new car (I'm thinking of giving up driving entirely, except for the odd week-long rental for a vacation) but if I was, I'd go for a Model 3 because it's equivalent to a mid-range BMW or Audi or a Volvo S50, only electric.
Note that with each generation, the range increases. The Roadster was a bit pathetic (under 200 miles). The Model S got up from 180 to 250 miles on a charge. The eco version of the Model 3 is supposed to hit 320 miles on a fill battery.
Musk has boasted of plans for a Tesla hypercar, a second roadster that will sell for $250K and up (i.e. Lamborghini/Ferrari territory) but have a 600 mile range and a 240mph top speed. This isn't implausible insofar as companies like Maclaren and Bugatti are reportedly going there, at a higher price point.
Note that after about 2016, all the main auto builders got EV religion. Volvo are reportedly not planning on producing any new IC engines after 2022, they're already pushing plug-in hybrids and are going full-electric in the next couple of years. Similarly, VW: there's an all-EV VW Bus coming out next year. And so on.
My conclusion is that you can't draw conclusions about the likely state of the EV market from today's vehicles any more than you could draw meaningful conclusions about the market for turbochargers by looking at a Porsche 911 Turbo when it debuted in 1975. (These days every tin-box commuter hybrid or diesel wagon has one, and there's about zero turbine lag, and the engine won't even work without it. But in 1975 it was exotic.)
Agreed, which is why I said "currently being designed, touted and so on". Perhaps I should have said that there are a few exceptions (like the VW bus), but I can see absolutely damn-all for the utility car market, which is a huge proportion of our fleet (and what I am interested in). As I said, that's not a necessary consequence of EV, but a choice by the manufacturers. If you think the range of the Tesla Roadster was a bit pathetic, look at the VW Golf, and imagine driving around the Highlands in that!
I am seriously doubtful that anything not at least being touted today will appear before 2025, and I am not convinced of a great improvement before 2030, if then :-( That is supported by my observation that the vendors have jacked the prices of cars by (say) 60% in a decade, when the inflation has been 20%, and have increased their weights and packed them with mandatory electronic gimmickry to 'justify' that.
We are not the customers - we are the commodity.
AIUI the utility car market should be covered in another 2-4 years. Part of the problem is the cost of batteries, which would drive the price up by an unacceptable 15-30% compared to a gas-burner at present -- but battery costs are dropping precipitously, by about 80%/decade if I remember correctly. So the market is filling from the top down, so to speak.
As for the current Golf, I should note that all serious purpose-designed EVs sling the battery under the floor pan -- indeed, they're almost a structural element. A side effect of which is that they have a very low centre of gravity, so highly resistant to rollover and good at keeping the rubber in contact with the road.
But as I said, I'm not really shopping for a car these days. I'd like to move post-car, and as I live in a city centre, I can do that.
Electrification in general has the Vimes Boots problem: solar, wind, and storage all cost a lot up front. In the long run, they can turn a tidy profit, but the initial investment is problematic for most people.
With cars, when we bought the Bolt in 2017, it probably wasn't going to break even, meaning the benefit of the gas it didn't consume wouldn't be enough to make up for the cost of the car. With inflation that may actually change, and when we look at the fact that our gas consumption didn't drop by half, it dropped by 75% (we run as many trips as possible in the Bolt), it gets better. It's probably still a net loss, but we're investing in an EV future as much as in a car. Skimming past the worst of climate change seems like a really worthwhile investment.
As for the solar panels, they'll finish paying for themselves next year or so.
Unfortunately, the infrastructural version of the Vimes Boots problem is the Champlain South Syndrome: things that are expensive get put off, get more expensive, and ultimately fail. Civilization, more generally, is metastable. If it's not continually invested in, it falls apart.
Right now, we're discussing the cost of continuing to invest in keeping civilization running globally, and part of that discussion is about cars and other transit forms. The thing to remember in such discussions is that it doesn't seem likely that Earth can support even close to one billion people without civilization of some sort, and that includes the lives of everyone commenting here (within a rounding error). That's a cost that we also need to factor in when we look at investments in electrification.
The e-Golf was IMHO a warmed-over "compliance car" created when VW had the whole diesel-gate scandal and suddenly needed to have an e-Golf that was more than a "We have an EV, but why not buy one of our nice clean diseasals instead?" endeavour. (Then after being improved it was likely just a stopgap whilst they developed the ID3 and ID4.) It's also no longer in production, so I wouldn't exactly hold it up as any kind of paragon.
However even with it's sub-par range, I'm still not seeing why the Highlands would pose an insurmountable problem for it? Having had a cursory glance at Zap-Map I can't see any particular journey options where the range between rapid chargers is particularly greater than half the eGolf's range. (Yes, even the highlands is quite well equipped with rapid chargers.) Granted the eGolf wouldn't be my first choice for longer journeys, however roundtrips of up to 200 miles would seem to be eminently possible with charging at the destination so it's hardly a suburban runabout.
Pigeon @ 733, and also Greg @ 730:
The e-Highway system is a real thing being developed by Siemens. More details here. They've built a working sample system on the A5 in Germany. You can see the cable gantries on Google Earth and another photo here.
The pantograph is actively steered, so it can stay in place in spite of gusts of wind or wandering from side to side within the lane. Even if it fails, you can see that the pick-up conductor lengths are shorter than the gap between the cables, so it's not going to short-circuit. By all means be sceptical of politicians, but please don't assume that automotive engineers are all morons.
So what exactly is crazy about this idea?
They are proposing electrifying with TWO cables on the M-mays, when they already have a purpose-built freight transport network - the railways, that need only ONE cable?
The number of cables is the least of the issues.
Rail transport isn't going to hack it. Before the pandemic the UK rail network was moving about 6.7e9 tonne kilometers of multimodal freight per year, while the UK road network was moving about 161e9 tonne kilometers. So thats over an order of magnitude gap that rail would have to make up. And that's before you get to Charlie's point about the issues with electrifying tunnels.
To replace road freight with rail we would have to vastly increase the rail network. There would have to be lots more dedicated freight lines because you can't put high-speed passenger trains on the same lines as slow freight trains. So you are looking at something like HS2 multiplied by a couple of orders of magnitude, along with new freight yards close enough to every place where freight has to go.
By comparison, putting overhead cables on the motorway network looks trivially easy.
Cheers; it still makes sense to me.
Electrification in general has the Vimes Boots problem: solar, wind, and storage all cost a lot up front. In the long run, they can turn a tidy profit, but the initial investment is problematic for most people.
The real problem is that we're replacing one long-term infrastructure investment with another. It took about 80-150 years to build out our current oil/gas distribution system. And our civilization consumes significantly more energy per capita than it did at the beginning of that span (although efficiency/conservation began to take hold after the oil crisis of the mid-70s and demand essentially flatlined or declined throughout the developed world, despite increasing population).
Anyway, the point is, it's a very big ask to replace 100 years of fixed infrastructure in maybe a decade. Indeed, if we can do the job in less than 30 years it'll be a triumph.
#762 - You're making the usual assumption that all the chargers work, and have space at them when you want it. I have seen a single vehicle parked at a charger bay for several hours at a time
Or I am failing to assume that all of the chargers will be broken and/or occupied all of the time?
Yes, that's pretty obvious.
The problem is when you arrive, the charger that fits your car is out of order or otherwise unavailable (and remember how many incompatible types there are). You can easily be forced to drive 30 miles in the wrong direction, followed by 30 miles back and then 30 miles to the next charging station on your route. That's a big problem with a 130-140 mile range, even before the battery loses capacity with age. I remember when that was a real issue for petrol cars and, even recently and not JUST in ther Highlands, have had to ask locals where the nearest petrol station is, to avoid running out.
It's still a problem in other places.
In 2018, driving a moderately empty stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway between Kamloops and Edmonton, I remember seeing a sign saying "last fuel for 300km". Yeah, you bet I pulled over and filled up ...
"AIUI the utility car market should be covered in another 2-4 years."
We shall see. Given what they have been doing recently with petrol and diesel cars (#756, #759 etc.), I am seriously unconvinced. My suspicion is that the manufacturers are using this as an excuse to jack the prices by a large factor, knowing that most people are being held over a barrel by the enforced (*) change. That's a fairly well-established form of regulatory capture in several industries, including this one.
(*) Which I am NOT saying should not be made.
Anyway, the point is, it's a very big ask to replace 100 years of fixed infrastructure in maybe a decade. Indeed, if we can do the job in less than 30 years it'll be a triumph.
Well, it's also kind of an "...or else" ask too. Now, if there was just a way to use media to inspire people to believe it was possible. Wouldn't it be cool if there was a genre that inspired people to hope for a better future?
Yes. The Highlands, A66 and (heaven help us) even some motorways are a problem only for cars with ridiculously short ranges - such as the VW Golf electric. When looking for plausible EVs, I used 200 miles as the lower limit but, obviously, that wouldn't cut the mustard between Kamloops and Edmonton!
A touch of Anecdata:
I bought a Hyundai Kona in June - the all electric version - to replace a Kia Ceed ICE(Both come from Hyundai in some form or other). The kona is described as a sub-compact crossover (don't you just love marketing speak!)
In floor-space they are almost identical in size, but EC is definitely right that the boot storage is much less in the Kona. He is also right that the Kona is much heavier, possibly 50%. In market terms, they are probably aimed at the same segments. The Kona is also a good 10cms taller. Obviously my storage requirements differ from ECs.
The one thing that hasn't happened yet is a radical rethink of the design of the cheaper EVs in that there is unusable space all over the place and this may reflect the need to have one range cover ICE Hybrid and EV. Not being an Auto Designer I would suspect that so far this has limited radical reshaping if parts of the vehicle have to be used in multiple models.
Not quite a segue from coffee & travel, but this amused me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0FStYXDtqo
And that is exactly why vehicles designed to be “flexible architecture “ end up being not very good in any dimension. Inappropriate compromises that result in so many problems that no aspect is well presented. It’s a floor topping! It’s a dessert wax! A coat hanger! A unicycle for blindfold bagpipe players!
You might find the Sandy Munro YouTube channel interesting to learn a bit about this. Comparing the detail design of an ab-initio EV like a T3 to a legacy manufacturer vehicle like the Ford Mustang-e is illuminating. And the Ford is one of the better legacy-co attempts.
In general if you want to learn a bit about EV and related matters, the Fully Charged show is pretty damn good. It may seem weird that an actor known most widely for playing a somewhat crazy android on a million year old mining spaceship is such a good advocate, but that’s how it is.
Greg Tingey @ 730: JBS @ 720
They are proposing electrifying with TWO cables on the M-mays, when they already have a purpose-built freight transport network - the railways, that need only ONE cable?
And the railways have dedicated rights-of-way that are difficult ( relatively) to access & fuck up?
Do please GROW UP
Nope! Ain't gonna' do it. Nothing I can do about getting older, but neither YOU nor THEY can MAKE me grow up! 🤪
PS: https://www.wrtv.com/news/state-news/pavement-that-charges-electric-vehicles-being-developed-in-indiana
I think it's something like those pads you can lay your "smart" phone on to charge it without actually having to plug it in.
PPS: Really? You're going to tell me to GROW UP (!!!!) on a blog post about OGH's adaptation of the story of "Peter Pan & Wendy"? What would Tinkerbell have to say about that?
David L @ 734:
My point was that charging stations are being built. And Tesla will be making theirs open to other models soon.
And in the group of folks with this Tesla there is also another Tesla and a Leaf. The Leaf guy charges at the same location with all the Tesla chargers. The location has multiple options. And in the US there are Apps for your smart phone that will tell you what charges are where and how fast they can charge what kinds of cars.
FWIW, plug 35.83558935740862, -78.64287522471467 into Google Maps & go to street view. There's your charging stations. (I know David knows where they are)
But they're getting more ubiquitous every day.
I do believe that at some point the U.S. DOT/NHTSA is going to have to step in and mandate a single charging voltage & connector. Or perhaps it will be a high/low like regular & premium gas ... but both will use the same connector (like gas pumps use the same nozzle for regular & premium).
And I'm guessing that as charging technology matures people won't need to have a home charger. I don't keep a gas pump at home to fill up my car.
When the needle gets close to 'E' I pull in to a gas station. In the future I think electric vehicle owners will do the same.
PS: ... when I search Google Maps for "EV charging stations", it shows many more around the area, but the Tesla stations aren't there in the search results. If you search for "Tesla charging stations" they show up along with all the other charging stations produced by the preceding search.
I do believe that at some point the U.S. DOT/NHTSA is going to have to step in and mandate a single charging voltage & connector.
It looks like everyone can use the Tesla chargers (just not the super chargers): https://www.motorbiscuit.com/can-non-tesla-electric-vehicles-charge-tesla-charging-stations/
You just have to buy the adapter....
"The last time I looked, EVs started at about twice the cost of a Dacia"
Not even the electric Dacia is "about twice the price of a Dacia"
It's 12403€, compared to the Dacia Sandero Stepway at 12590€.
https://www.drive.com.au/news/2021-dacia-spring-ev-europe-s-cheapest-electric-car/
It's also lighter than an old Skoda Fabia at 970kg, and just as slow.
Gahh, the above comment was in reply to paws4thot, but the reply tag got stripped with all the reloading and url editing this place needs.
Work is in progress at Tesla to open up the supercharger network to anyone. The physical work is done everywhere but North America (everywhere else the stalls all have CCS2 as well). Now it's software, (apps, payment systems etc) that's holding things up.
Charlie Stross @ 769: It's still a problem in other places.
In 2018, driving a moderately empty stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway between Kamloops and Edmonton, I remember seeing a sign saying "last fuel for 300km". Yeah, you bet I pulled over and filled up ...
I remember similar signs from when my family made a trip out to California in 1960 (Route 66 west of Oklahoma). Not 300km though ... 100 miles or maybe 150 miles.
Nowadays with the Interstate highways & all I don't think there are those kinds of gaps left. Even out in the middle of nowhere there are gas stations at almost every exit (based on the 3 trips as an "adult" - 2005, 2007, 2013 - where I was paying for the gas, so I was paying more attention to it).
I track my fuel mileage CLOSELY, so I'd know whether I had enough fuel onboard to cross such a gap. Driving a rental car is a different story. I don't know just how many miles I have left in my current tank of gas the way I do from driving my own cars,.
But sometimes those signs were not truthful. They may have been a scam to get you to stop and buy gas with jacked up prices.
Mr. Tim @ 778:
It looks like everyone can use the Tesla chargers (just not the super chargers):
https://www.motorbiscuit.com/can-non-tesla-electric-vehicles-charge-tesla-charging-stations/
You just have to buy the adapter....
Yeah, I think that's an "interim solution" until the government mandates all manufacturers use a single specific connector. When I go to buy gas (petrol) for my car all the other cars in line for the pump, no matter who manufactured them, use the same hose with the same nozzle (unless they're diesel & have their own line, but all those also use the same nozzle).
That's the way I expect EV charging is going to be in the future. You won't need to buy an adapter.
Imagine what it would have been like if Ford required one kind of nozzle and Chevrolet required a different design and every manufacturer had their own design. The U.S. auto industry would never have gotten off the ground because it would be such a pain in the ass to fuel one.
That's mostly where we are today with EV charging and I believe the push to EVs is going to become overwhelming as climate change gets more intrusive. But it's not going to happen without standardization because of the inconvenience of finding the right charger with the right connector.
EVs won't displace ICE vehicles until they all take the same charger connector. That's not a knock against EVs, it's just what has to happen for them to replace ICE automobiles. Recharging has to become as convenient as pumping gas into a ICE automobile. And since I believe we WILL switch over to EVs, that kind of convenience IS going to happen.
And that's also why I think home chargers won't be a thing. It's not convenient. I don't have to fuel up my ICE vehicle at home or have to wait at home for it to finish fueling before I can get out on the road. When the gauge on the dash gets down to 'E', I pull in to the gas station and put gas in it.
EVs are going to be the same way.
weird size race where those who decide to stay small become more likely to get killed/injured in accidents (not to mention having a hard time seeing around the huge vehicles around them) while those who upsized are no further ahead than they would have been if no one upsized.
Which is yet another manifestation of the phenomenon described in this very long article:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
Warning: Besides being long, it starts with a poem by Allen Ginsberg, but the poem is easy to skip because it is in italics.
Aside from that, I found the article very informative.
The eco version of the Model 3 is supposed to hit 320 miles on a fill battery.
Two months ago my wife and I bought Tesla model Y. Its full range is 310-315 miles.
Charlie Stross @ 769: It's still a problem in other places.
In 2018, driving a moderately empty stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway between Kamloops and Edmonton, I remember seeing a sign saying "last fuel for 300km". Yeah, you bet I pulled over and filled up ...
The BC government has since installed fast charging stations at or near the midpoint on most of those stretches (including the highway North of Kamloops) , and continue to expand the network. That is a solved problem.
For the major highways in south-eastern Australia, that is really the coastal strip anticlockwise from Adelaide to Cairns and 300-ish km inland, there's a town big enough for a petrol station at least every 100km or so. So if Tesla's promise to charge 200 miles worth of driving in 15 minutes holds up, then large charging stations would make that all pretty workable. Outside this area is another story, of course, but that isn't something anyone with sense takes on lightly anyway.
I notice those CCS2 combined connectors have space for a pair of 200A DC connections, which implies gauge 0000 cable (roughly 11mm conductors) and with the output at 480V, means a limit of 96kW for that pair. I guess that supports the 72kW that the lowest version of the Tesla specs includes. So to get to the claimed 350kW for the latest and greatest, the 3-phase AC connections must be used also (the illustrations of the combo plug don't have these present, but the socket does... presumably so you can charge your car from whatever).
Getting 350kW per socket to those charging stations in the first place is a reasonably significant bit of infrastructure expenditure of course.
Paul GB Rail freight USED TO move a lot more than that ... but the rats & the scammers & the crooks got at it & freight on rail was deliberately thrown away, usually for political/corrupt-our-friends "reasons" Difficult to put back, because, of course the goods stations have all dissappeared & been bulit over. Blame the crook Marples & his successors. But, there is no fundamental reason why rail could not do it. It's not the money, it's the crooked politics Freight trains, these days can move at, certainly local-electric passenger-train speeds, unlik the old "unfitted" ones, which went very slowly. The retrofitted/modified units I spoke of earlier are 100mph capable.
For the major highways in south-eastern Australia, that is really the coastal strip anticlockwise from Adelaide to Cairns and 300-ish km inland, there's a town big enough for a petrol station at least every 100km or so. So if Tesla's promise to charge 200 miles worth of driving in 15 minutes holds up, then large charging stations would make that all pretty workable. Outside this area is another story, of course, but that isn't something anyone with sense takes on lightly anyway.
Yeah. We once were in Australia for a holiday, and drove around Cairns and Brisbane and that wasn't a problem. When we then took a plane to Uluru and after admiring the nature there drove to Alice Springs, we were somewhat more careful. That is still a relatively short trip and one that's perhaps travelled a lot, but it still made me a bit nervous.
It could probably be fun to drive through the desert there, but it would need a lot of preparation. (At least there might be sunlight for charging an electric car...)
(At least there might be sunlight for charging an electric car...)
Funny you should say that :) This is a thing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Solar_Challenge
I think that the crossings along major roads (so Perth to Adelaide, Adelaide to Darwin via Alice Springs ,Adelaide to Mt Isa via Birdsville, Adelaide to Sydney via Broken Hill*) are not insanely dangerous, simply because there will inevitably be other vehicles to find you with your minor breakdown.
Who was it here who had a most eloquent pithy explanation of privatisation equivalent to theft? Why? Look and see what Dopey Joe's got in mind, privatization of our US infrastructure. Yep, that's what's in the infrastructure bill, a giant giveaway/theft of the people's infrastructure to the private banditry sector. https://www.supplychainbrain.com/articles/33131-watch-the-private-sectors-role-in-bidens-infrastructure-plan
#777 - Either of your electric cars can routinely recharge from "empty" to "full" in 10 minutes? That's the point where their "refill time" becomes similar to a hydrocarbon car.
This is an XY problem. Rather than thinking about how an electric car can match a petrol car refill time, think about how charging can be made more convenient. We don't have petrol supplies at every parking space, but charge points could certainly be fitted as standard street furniture, just like parking meters used to be. If you have a house with off-road parking you can charge your car overnight, which is fine for regular commutes. If you replace driving to the petrol station every week with hooking the car up every night, your time spent recharging/refilling would actually decrease.
For longer trips, a 200 mile range means something like 3-4 hours driving, after which half an hour for a meal while the car charges starts to look like a sensible break. If you have been doing 70mph for 3 hours and then spend 30 minutes doing 0 mph your average speed drops to 60mph, which isn't too much of a drop. Even if its a 1 hour recharge your average speed is still 52.5 mph (although it's probably going to feel a lot worse as you sit there watching the charge % increment every 40 seconds).
I know we aren't there yet: current cars can't charge in 30 minutes, but it's probably only a matter of time. Also kerbside chargers for those who don't have off-road parking at home are a rarity. This is where the government needs to pull its finger out.
It just needs a shift in perspective. Wanting a car that can be recharged in 5 minutes "just like a petrol car" ignores all the ways in which an electric car can be recharged more conveniently.
It just needs a shift in perspective. Wanting a car that can be recharged in 5 minutes "just like a petrol car" ignores all the ways in which an electric car can be recharged more conveniently.
In the US (I don't know about how this works in Europe or other places) this will mean a radical change to or the death of convenience stores. These existence is based on people stopping to get gas and buying sugar and salt delivery food, beer, soft drinks, and cigarettes. All at very high prices. But without the need to find a tank of gas with 1000s of gallons stored to sell to you things will change. While these might still exist on major roads when people stop off for a 10-20 minute charge, those that exist at the corners of major intersections will (IMNERHO) in many cases die off or radically change. Because as other have said, it makes more sense to charge a car over night at home or while parked somewhere for a few hours.
Gasoline from refinery to vehicle is all about very leak proof (now) storage at various points along the way. Electricity is all about a thin tube(wire) from source to end point. The business model is different.
So if Tesla's promise to charge 200 miles worth of driving in 15 minutes holds up, then large charging stations would make that all pretty workable.
"Large" being the operative word.
Ignoring ICEing* as something that will eventually go away, 15 minutes is still at least three times longer than vehicles currently spend refuelling at the pump. Which means a busy station, like a typical highway station, will need three times more chargers than they have pumps. Likely more, as people who decide to grab a bite while recharging are unlikely to run out to move their car at the 15 minute mark. Last time I travelled on a holiday weekend, lineups for the pumps were over a dozen cars per pump. Even locally, a line at the pumps isn't that unusual.
That's one thing that I'm keeping an eye on — as EV use increases, how long until a charging station with 1-2 chargers (many of them locally) is swamped?
I think we'll need to move towards a situation where chargers are much more ubiquitous, so much so that people can recharge so many places that 'finding a charging station' is something that matters only on long trips. If you could recharge almost anywhere you parked, even if it was only slow-speed, you could keep your car mostly charged in the course of the day. I'm reminded of living in Edmonton and many parking lots having outlets so you could plug in your block heater. Even if you needed to visit a fast-charge station it wouldn't be for as long as your car would have more charge.
*Like this: https://driving.ca/auto-news/news/ram-truck-with-tesla-charger-in-tailpipe-shows-ice-ing-trend-not-over
That's one thing that I'm keeping an eye on — as EV use increases, how long until a charging station with 1-2 chargers (many of them locally) is swamped?
That clump of chargers near me that I mentioned is in the parking lot for a small outdoor oriented mall. Next to a Target department store. A friend who also lives nearby says if you pull up next to an in use charger and unlock your charging flap most folks will put the charger into your port when they leave.
"Wanting a car that can be recharged in 5 minutes "just like a petrol car" ignores all the ways in which an electric car can be recharged more conveniently."
It's worse than even that.
Petrol cars are filled to the brim. You have to do that for several reasons. First, there's a lot of dead time on each fill. The drive to the pumps, parking, unlocking, paying at the counter. They're all required every time you put fuel in regardless of how little you put in. You can't charge it at home, so running out is a constant worry. You start every day part full, so any trip, no matter how short could require a 10-15 minute delay. Part filling just makes that next delay happen sooner.
Electric cars are not like that.
If it takes an hour to fill a 300 mile range electric car from empty to full, and the trip is 350 miles, then the petrol car driver assumes a one hour stop is required in the middle. Completely unacceptable. They don't care that you can skip the weekly visit to the petrol station, they're not putting up with standing and holding the plug for an hour.
The reality is that between 5 and 30% the car will charge at 1000 miles per hour (assuming an electric car built by people who want to build electric cars and not by people who build petrol cars). You don't stand and hold the plug.
Instead you pull up when the car is low, plug in, walk off to the toilet, get back 10 minutes later to find the car has added 120 miles of range, (now it's got 70 miles more range than needed) unplug and drive away with enough charge to reach the destination, where you can charge it back up. It makes no difference if you fill it full, or just put barely enough to get where you're going, because it will be full next time you need to use it either way. They think that being electric will delay them an hour when the reality is that they get to their destination quicker. Because they didn't have to stand and pump fuel, then go pay for it, then move the car to another parking spot before going to the toilet or buying a snack or whatever.
Yes. Also, with current batteries, fast charging after a period of heavy use (e.g. motorway) is Not Good for the life(*). Let's take a low estimate of 30 minutes (enough for a pee and cup of tea) which, in practice, assumes the chargers are rigged to surcharge (financially) overstayers.
A typical UK motorway petrol station has 8-16 pumps; that implies 50-100 charging stations. So far, so good. Let's assume people are charging 50 KW-hr(+), on average (the urban runabouts rarely use motorway petrol stations). That's 5-10 MW, and requires more than a small substation. Taking longer to charge doesn't help much, because you need more charging stations.
Oh, yes, it's soluble - but not by simply denying it is a serious problem.
(*) https://www.drivingelectric.com/your-questions-answered/96/electric-car-battery-life-how-preserve-your-battery (+) https://ev-database.org/cheatsheet/useable-battery-capacity-electric-car
In the US (I don't know about how this works in Europe or other places) this will mean a radical change to or the death of convenience stores.
While there's a convenience store at almost every petrol station, there are plenty of convenience stores without an attached fuel stop.
I suspect the real response in the USA will be that restaurants and motels install charge points. For the motels it's a no-brainer, and for roadside dining locations it's an added attraction.
In other words, you'll top off your battery when you stop to eat or sleep, rather than buying snacks where you stop to refuel.
What is needed is a retail supply chain innovation: some corporation who handle installation, maintenance, and billing for those car-park chargers (just as ATMs in stores are generally not maintained by the shop staff).
Not just restaurants and motels - a number of supermarkets are installing them. If you are spending an hour doing a big shop, then that's an hour during which your car could be getting back some charge. Doesn't have to be a fast charger - a 7kW station is cheap enough, and if you're not charging for it, you can use it as a customer attraction.
It's true that fast charging is not good for the long-term life of the battery. Ditto filling to 100% or going below 20%. Neither are much of a significant issue if it isn't something you do often.
A fast charge is for those very rare instances you are on a long trip and need to top up between destinations. Ditto filling to 100%. Ours is set to stop charging at 80% for battery life reasons, 80% being ~375 km of range.
On top of that, we paid the extra few dollars for a 10 year warranty on everything, which includes the battery life. Presumably the manufacturer is fairly confident that they won't need to replace the battery or they wouldn't have sold me the extra warranty. However if I were to routinely charge to 100% on a supercharger and shorten the life, the battery would be replaced for me.
The point being that a lot of the seemingly insurmountable barriers being raised here are solved problems.
Agreed, but that still has the supply problem. To reduce the trolling: this is mostly a political problem, and only slightly a technical one.
For small stores, a mere, single 15 KW-hr in 15 minutes needs 60 KW (a sizeable 3-phase supply), necessarily with rewiring from the substation, and often needs the local substation upgrading. Obviously, it goes up pro rata to the number of stations. That's not on, not with the UK's supply as currently perpetrated (I can speak from experience).
Supermarkets are fairly similar to smallish motorway service stations.
Medium and large-scale accomodation has it easier, because it's already got more than a domestic supply, but not much. 30 times 50 KW-hr in 10 hours is 150 KW.
Small-scale accomodation (B&Bs etc.) can just about get sway with a high-end domestic suppply, because they need only an extra 30 KW.
Restaurants etc. are more complex.
Because they didn't have to stand and pump fuel, then go pay for it, then move the car to another parking spot before going to the toilet or buying a snack or whatever.
Isn't pay-at-the-pump a thing where you are? Very common here. When I was in Iceland it was the only way to pay.
We were in Iceland last week, and at Ísafjöður we noted a filling station which was completely automated. So pay at pump, and no shop
(We were looking for a waste bin at the time, and it had one)
That was the only filling station I consciously observed, though of course we passed a bunch of others.
Hotels jumped on early to installing chargers, especially in left-leaning destinations like Palm Springs. Similarly, San Diego Zoo early on put in a solar panel and charger setup.
Where I'm having fun contemplating are how to charge at work. Hospitals, for instance, can offer charging as a perk of the job, if they retool their roofs. It's much harder for service workers, especially when they're being scheduled to avoid perks rather than provide them.
The other fun part is thinking about what the rise of electric semi-trucks. It makes some sense for them to drive all night and recharge all day. Whether this is financially optimal is another question. How and whether this gets solved will be interesting.
It would be nice if more cars could be charged when the sun is high, but typically peak electrical consumption happens between 4 pm and 9 pm, so utility-scale batteries will be necessary to charge when there is surplus energy and discharge during peak demand.
And finally there's a note of whimsy. In dim places like Edinburgh, where the sun doesn't shine and the wind rarely blows at street level, I wonder about power generation kites, where the generators get lofted to 3000 meters or more to catch whatever wind is up there. Seeing a city with thousands of kites flying would be cute...if just a wee bit impractical.
This article's probably behind a paywall, but the title is informative: While they were asleep, their Teslas burned in the garage. It’s a risk many automakers are taking seriously. A fire inspector cited the thermal management system in one of the Tesla Model S sedans as one of two possible causes of the blaze, which showed what can happen when one electric car ignites another in a garage.
I suspect "battery management optimization" is going to be a hot new field for engineers going forward.
Nah. It's been a hot topic for nearly as long as rechargeable lithium batteries have been widespread. Very early on, the manufacturers realised that this is the worst problem with them, and subsequent events showed that it's seriously hard to resolve. You're right that it isn't a speciality that is going to vanish in the short term ....
I found this quote amusing…
a number of electric-vehicle makers have warned owners not to leave the cars charging unattended in certain circumstances, or sitting fully charged in garages
Mostly because I'm the only person on my block who actually stores a car in my garage. Everyone else parks them on their driveway* and fills their garages with stuff.
*Ironic that we park on driveways and drive on parkways…
And sort-of on topic…
The iconic treat that Canadians know and love is taking a meaningful step away from single-use plastics and is the first global confectionery brand to switch its main confectionery products to packaging made with paper.
https://www.thestar.com/local-toronto-scarborough/community/contests/2021/08/05/contest-enter-for-a-chance-to-win-a-smarties-prize-pack.html
When I was a boy, Smarties came in cardboard boxes, not plastic packets. Interesting bow they are now being marketed as a new idea. Is this just marketing, or have we lost institutional memory for how things used to be?
noted a filling station which was completely automated.
In the US, outside of Oregon and maybe one other state[1], I consider it a fail if I have to go inside or deal with a person. Unless I'm driving a distance and going inside to buy a snack or something to drink. But even then I typically have stopped at a grocery store with sane pricing and put them into the car for the trip.
In the US more and more of us buy our gas at a Costco, Sams, or even a grocery store where there is a person around for safety reasons and to help the pump challenged. And to deal with ADA requests.
[1]Oregon and New Jersey do not / did not allow self service gas pumping. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filling_station_attendant#United_States As my brother in law, the recently retired policeman in Oregon, says, "Sure it's done for public safety. We have NO instances of gas stations catching fire like in all those states with self service". With a very heavy dose of sarcasm.
I suspect "battery management optimization" is going to be a hot new field for engineers going forward.
Already is. 10 years ago the drive train / battery management systems for a car someone I know worked on had 2million lines of code. Give or take. Now a lot of it was likely to present things to the drive in a pretty easy to use format there was still a lot of power train management.
I won't use free-standing card machines, including those in pumps, except in desperation. They are notorious for being spoofed and hacked. Before COVID, I almost never used a card at petrol stations, because they have a similar (but MUCH lesser) record of fraud.
Oh, God :-( And HOW many bugs will that have?
In BC all fuel stations are legally required to have a pay first, then fill system. Most are 'pay at the pump. IIRC it was a teenage pump attendant who was killed when someone filled up and then tried to drive away without paying.
Around here convenience stores came first, and some have fuelling stations. The stores won't disappear with the fuelling stations, in fact I suspect electrical charging stations will have MORE reasons and opportunities to sell other things to motorists.
In the US I avoid off brand / mom and pop operations. (Sorry small local business advocates.) For those reasons.
And I only use credit cards. And the ones I have give me $0 liability for fraud.
And I look for dummy face plate on machines.
If I need a debit card I have to dust off the old roll top desk and find one.
For cash, well I carry some for emergencies, but aside for buying a club raffle ticket, selling a generator, or similar I've not used cash in a year or few.
And when I can I use my watch with Apple Pay to make a payment.
Same as most of our tech today.
Your gasoline powered car likely has a half million lines of code in the emissions and engine control system. You've been drive that for how long?
The OS INSIDE of a Samsung EVO SSD 5 years ago was over 380meg.
Life has changed.
In the UK, the plague of supermarkets has already wiped out most small food and 'domestic supply' shops, and Amazon, COVID and other such plagues have nearly done that with several other types of shop. Convenience stores are still holding on in (sub-)urban areas.
I am horribly afraid that the increasing dominance of the car culture (which has been in abeyance for some years) has been restored by COVID and our current misgovernment, and electric cars are going to be used (sic) to make it a lot worse.
In the meantime a bit over 500 vehicles catch fire every day in the US. Including BMWs parked indoors for several days.
Nice.Try to hide Trumpist rhetoric in verbaige. Go away.
I use a card all the time for gas. AT THE PUMP. I do not use freee-standing ATMs (go read Krebs on security). Even the pumps Iinspect the card reader.
As I said, I'm looking for a hybrid. 8-10 years from now, EV, but right now, hybrid. I don't trust enough chargers, etc.
Then, let's be real: the current market except for trial baloons like the one GM put out for several years, then stopped making, are for people making six figures, not for folks making under the median (around $59k). For me to buy a new hybrid minivan would eat almost half my savings. Maybe I can afford a used....
Tesla and other EV car manufacturers control the maximum drain of the battery packs to extend their lives but there was a weather event in Florida a few years back where evacuation was recommended/ordered. Florida being the shape it is that meant quite a long drive for some car owners in the southern part of the state. Tesla was able to provide a geofenced over-the-air software patch for the battery controllers on some of their cars which would permit people in the area to basically run their batteries flat rather than have to stop half-way for several hours to recharge before continuing their journeys. I presume that once they were in a safer area the car's software would revert to 'don't go below 20% capacity' mode or whatever.
There was a period when it was the card machines IN THE PUMP that were the cause of most of the frauds. No, I am not talking about the bolt-on devices, which are an obvious sign. Why do you think that a pump manufacturer is any more likely to be security-competent than a free-standing ATM manufacturer?
Obviously, I don't use free-standing ATMs either.
What is needed is a retail supply chain innovation: some corporation who handle installation, maintenance, and billing for those car-park chargers
Along these lines, a classification scheme for charging outlets will become important. If one doesn't emerge between the car makers and IEC, then the establishment of this sort of retail business would do it. I imagine perhaps a couple of companies with their own schemes being on the scene initially, before one becoming dominant and the other fading away (like VHS and Betamax). Whichever scheme remained would rapidly become universally well known and understood by most people.
So for instance, the station on the highway might have 12 Class E 60kW sockets and 4 Class F 150kW fast-charger sockets, for instance, while municipal kerbside metered parking spaces might only offer Class C (15kW). Signage for parking places in general would reflect the class of charging available.
A plot point in a novel might involve someone expecting more or less charge in their car based on mistaking what class outlet they'd parked at. This would not necessarily be SF.
In NZ, Mobil's pay-at-pump solution is an app that geo-locates the station that you are at, you enter pump number & max$, then authorise payment to unlock the pump. No card reader on-site needed, although the station I use most often has that option, as well as in-store payment.
Damian #825. The different charging types have different plug shapes. Our EV has 2 options, the now standard 240 outlet and a supercharger option. For plugging into a standard home 120 outlet the car came with an adapter. It would be impossible to not know how much charge you were getting.
I use debit everywhere, including at pumps. We are 100% liability free for fraud (as long as I don't give out my PIN nor admit to same). About 10 years ago someone managed to copy my wife's card. They got away with about $5k, the bank replaced it within hours. Since then I just don't worry about it - I don't keep a lot of liquidity in our 'cash flow' account anyway, so any fraudster won't get far.
What is needed is a retail supply chain innovation: some corporation who handle installation, maintenance, and billing for those car-park chargers
To me this is going to be like cell towers. At least in the US.
At first individual cell companies build their own. And with the best spots being limited there were multiple towers within 100' of each other.
Then a slew of companies came along who signed deals with the carriers to put multiple carriers on a single tower. And designed them for that so it wasn't a bolt on situation and the ground room below the tower was set up to deal with multiple companies working inside.
Then all of these tower companies merged into a few for economies of scale.
And now with LTE and 5G the major carriers are drifting back to their own towers as things are now small, many times bolted onto something tall and existing, and don't require a huge building at the base.
I suspect the first two steps will occur and just like with gasoline a standard "pump" connector will emerge.
Now longer term I can see where a lot of folks will want to design it so that the "pump" talks to the car and handles billing and all that. Then the first pump malware will inject some malware into a car brand/line and all hell breaks loose.
Anyway no one today has any idea of who owns/makes the gas pump. They are just label with the name of the gas station.
no one today has any idea of who owns/makes the gas pump.
Usually Gilbarco IME.
OK. I'll rephrase.
Most mortals have no idea who makes the pump.
Sure, those are the options you have right now. There's already at least one portable adaptor available which uses the Type 2 connector you'd use with your 240V plugin adaptor (getting something less than 2.4W), but you plug it in to a 5-pin 3 phase outlet and it offers up to 22kW (depending on whether the car can handle that through its 3 phase input). This would be useful if, for instance, you had 3 phase installed in your house as a general-purpose upgrade that could be used for things other than charging a car. Or your workplace, perhaps more likely. The point is that it's the same connector on the end of the cable that plugs into the car, that is different to the supercharger connector.
In the future there will be a range of different capabilities for individual charging stations. Tesla have separate 72kW, 150kW and 350kW specs for supercharger stations already (although the larger numbers sound impractical to me without massive infrastructure build). I think that at this stage the smaller figure sounds useful enough - 72kW is basically 1-and-a-bit kWh per hour, which is an easy rate to think about. But in the future you might have charging stations that offer all three depending on what your car can handle, on how many other cars are there at the moment and the supply capacity for the station overall. If a station offers only 72kW, however, you would expect that to be signposted clearly.
Different supply considerations work at the lower end too. If a large supermarket offers free parking and free charging while you shop and has, say, 50 parking spaces, the charge-while-you-shop won't be 350kW, probably not even 72kW. But unless you take quite a long time shopping, the 2.4KW for a regular 10A 240V outlet is probably just a waste of time... so the solution will be somewhere in the middle. Maybe 3 phase 22kW makes sense... but in that case you'd need it to be signposted as such (the plug on the end of the cable looks just like your home plug-in charger after all).
My intuition is that these different considerations will be cumbersome for most consumers to think about, and a simple classification code is more realistic. I can see that it would also need to allow for dynamic power availability too. Say your carpark can only supply 1MW total at any given time but has 10 outlets that will supply 150kW for a car that can take that... judging that most cars will take 72kW at most, what happens when you do get 7 cars that want to pull 150kW? It sounds like it would be complex to explain to a user, but it's the sort of thing a classification scheme can simplify, and with enough simplification contribute to building market.
EC @798 "Also, with current batteries, fast charging after a period of heavy use (e.g. motorway) is Not Good for the life(*)."
Your reference is wrong. Prolonged high temperature is bad for batteries. High temperature is good for batteries that are high charging or discharging. Teslas preheat the pack of they know your going to be supercharging soon (by setting a supercharger as your waypoint they know where you're going and how much charge york have when you get there). If you surprise the car and don't give it time to preheat the pack it won't charge as fast.
EC @802 "For small stores, a mere, single 15 KW-hr in 15 minutes needs 60 KW"
So far stores aren't installing there own 50 kW rapid chargers. They can reach an agreement with one of the many companies that have them, in which case it's the charge company that takes care of everything and there's no impact on the shop's electricity supply. Their only impact is an increase in customers. Or they install a couple of slow chargers (usually 6.6 kW) themselves.
"Medium and large-scale accomodation has it easier, because it's already got more than a domestic supply, but not much. 30 times 50 KW-hr in 10 hours is 150 KW."
150 kw is nothing to a large scale accommodation provider. How much power do you think their HVAC system draws to keep 300 rooms that all have floor to ceiling windows cool?
Heteromeles @805 "The other fun part is thinking about what the rise of electric semi-trucks. It makes some sense for them to drive all night and recharge all day. Whether this is financially optimal is another question. How and whether this gets solved will be interesting."
This is already solved. The Tesla trucks charge fast enough at the Tesla truck chargers that the trucks can drive forever, charging only during the mandatory rest breaks that are required by law.
Robert Prior @803 "Isn't pay-at-the-pump a thing where you are? Very common here. When I was in Iceland it was the only way to pay."
It exists but it's not common. It doesn't mean that you don't have to stand and pump, or move your car. Much nicer to pull into your reserved spot, plug in, have the car negotiate payment, then walk away.
Gah... correcting myself before someone jumps on the obvious mistake... I meant 1-and-a-bit kWh per MINUTE, obviously.
It also occurs to me to draw out that the CCS2 connector looks like it is made to with with multiple different configurations of populated pins in the plug or a charging outlet, or in a car's charging input. I mentioned above it looks like Tesla's 72kW supercharger would use the ground and data pins in the Type 2 section but leave the 3 phase unpopulated in favour of the 200A DC section. Ultimately if you pull up to a charging station and plug in whatever cable it's offering, you wouldn't necessarily tell what flavour it is unless you look at the pins (though sure, with more pins populated you need more force to insert it into your car). I can see that this would currently need to be handled with an explanatory notice on the station, something that a code scheme would partly simplify.
Tesla's site says the superchargers provide 120KW of direct current, bypassing the car's internal converters.
Robert Prior @ 795: So if Tesla's promise to charge 200 miles worth of driving in 15 minutes holds up, then large charging stations would make that all pretty workable.
"Large" being the operative word.
Ignoring ICEing* as something that will eventually go away, 15 minutes is still at least three times longer than vehicles currently spend refuelling at the pump. Which means a busy station, like a typical highway station, will need three times more chargers than they have pumps. Likely more, as people who decide to grab a bite while recharging are unlikely to run out to move their car at the 15 minute mark. Last time I travelled on a holiday weekend, lineups for the pumps were over a dozen cars per pump. Even locally, a line at the pumps isn't that unusual.
For that, I was thinking something like roadside diners or "Howard Johnson's" where EVERY parking space was equipped with a charger. So if you can find a place to park when you get there ... pull up, hook up, scan your credit card/smart phone and go inside for a meal.
Or at least something like everywhere you go there are handicap parking spaces and if you don't have a handicap tag (or hang tag for the mirror) it's a BIG fine for parking in one if you don't qualify. And some places they'll tow you away if you park in handicap spaces and don't have the handicap credentials.
That's one thing that I'm keeping an eye on — as EV use increases, how long until a charging station with 1-2 chargers (many of them locally) is swamped?
I think we'll need to move towards a situation where chargers are much more ubiquitous, so much so that people can recharge so many places that 'finding a charging station' is something that matters only on long trips. If you could recharge almost anywhere you parked, even if it was only slow-speed, you could keep your car mostly charged in the course of the day. I'm reminded of living in Edmonton and many parking lots having outlets so you could plug in your block heater. Even if you needed to visit a fast-charge station it wouldn't be for as long as your car would have more charge.
I expect the "solution" is going to be something that includes longer range, faster charging and more ubiquitous charging stations ... and possibly more choices for modes of travel. If I could be get to places I want (need) to go to without driving that would be fine with me. Even if it took me slightly longer to get there.
Going back to my experience with transit out to RTP. It usually only took me half an hour at most to drive it (15 miles at an AVERAGE of 30mph). If transit could have got me there in 45 minutes ... Even an hour transit time would have been endurable if it had been available to fit my work schedule (roughly a split shift or second shift).
... even though transit cost more than driving did, I still would have used it if it had been logistically possible.
*Like this:
https://driving.ca/auto-news/news/ram-truck-with-tesla-charger-in-tailpipe-shows-ice-ing-trend-not-over
Hmmmm Maybe he'll meet someone who "identifies" as an ice-pick through the side wall? Around here even the tree-huggers can be redneck assholes.
Although I really think it's going to be more like handicap parking. Block the EV charger and they give you a high dollar ticket & maybe even tow you away.
It doesn't mean that you don't have to stand and pump, or move your car.
I find the at-pump part to be 2-3 minutes, including washing my windshield. At highway stations I usually gas up when leaving the station (because of the way parking is laid out) after using the washroom and maybe grabbing a snack. So getting my electric car recharged while I was emptying my bladder and buying a coffee wouldn't save that much time. My total time at most highway stops is less than 10 minutes unless they are busy enough that I need to wait in line.
If I want a break from driving I much prefer to get off the highway and find a nice picnic area — but those are unlikely to have charging stations.
This would be useful if, for instance, you had 3 phase installed in your house as a general-purpose upgrade that could be used for things other than charging a car.
In the US 3 phase is NOT really available in the burbs. Or even in most rural areas. 3 phase comes out of substations and goes direct into larger commercial users, office parks, apartment buildings, etc... but for residential and small office clumps you just get one leg of that feed. Which is delivered to homes and smaller businesses as 240v 2 phase center tapped to ground and neutral so you can use 240v or 120v.
My house is a bit of an outlier as the 3 phase loop from the substation comes down my street. The first switch point to open up my side of the loop (there are about a dozen) is on my pole. And for some odd reason other than maybe my house was one of the very first in the area my transformer is tied directly to one of the 3 phase legs. Nearly everyone else is tied to a tap off one of those legs that run down the various streets. So my power gets restored before almost any of 1000+ homes in the area.
Bellinghman @ 800: Not just restaurants and motels - a number of supermarkets are installing them. If you are spending an hour doing a big shop, then that's an hour during which your car could be getting back some charge. Doesn't have to be a fast charger - a 7kW station is cheap enough, and if you're not charging for it, you can use it as a customer attraction.
I can see motels burying the charging cost in the room rate (probably doing the same thing they do with wifi - give you a password that works with your room number), but I don't think "not charging for it" is going to last very long at other venues.
Last time I had to park downtown Raleigh the parking meters had been replaced with kiosks that took credit cards. You inserted your credit card, punched in the number of the parking space & how much time you wanted to rent the space for. It also took cash (bills, but I don't remember if it still took coins) and I think it could do that thing where you wave your smart phone at it to pay. The time before that it spit out a ticket you had to put on your dash where the "meter maid" could see it as they walked past & it showed the time so they could write you a parking ticket if you overstayed your time. Now they probably have an APP that tells them which spaces to ticket.
I expect it's going to be like that. You pay for parking and it includes charging. Probably with the charging spots charging a higher parking rate.
Every place I've bought gas in the last few years had "pay at the pump". A few of them still had the readers where you could insert cash (bills) and more recently a few of them have had the "wave your smart phone at it" technology.
As chargers in the parking lots of stores become more ubiquitous I expect they'll use the same technology because it's going to be a lot more expensive for stores to give away free power along with free parking when the majority of the vehicles become EVs. In the U.S. supermarket profit margins are in the 1% to 3% range and any added cost (like giving away "free" electricity) is going to hurt. It won't be sustainable with low profit margins.
Pay-at-the pump. " It doesn't mean that you don't have to stand and pump, or move your car."
Here in Aotearoa, where pay-at-the-pump is usual, you can stick the nozzle in, lock it to deliver, and it will shut off when the nozzle detects fuel backing up in the filler pipe. I don't bother, small car with small tank and I usually refuel at the half empty point, but you can walk away if it's going to take longer.
JHomes
and it will shut off when the nozzle detects fuel backing up in the filler pipe.
I suspect that's the way it works on most of the planet with any kind of infrastructure. Otherwise there's be a lot of exploding gas stations. Well maybe just fires with diesel.
whitroth @ 821: I use a card all the time for gas. AT THE PUMP. I do not use freee-standing ATMs (go read Krebs on security). Even the pumps Iinspect the card reader.
I'd never use those free-standing ATMs anyway. The lawful surcharges will eat you out of house & home. They don't need to hack your card to empty out your bank account.
Even at their worst Bank of America & Wells Fargo didn't rip you off as badly as those free-standing ATMs do. If you're not a Bank of America customer & need to get cash out of one of their ATMs the fee was usually no more than $2.00 per transaction (or it was the last time I needed to do so slightly over a decade ago). But I'm pretty sure even if the fees have gone up FDIC insured (and regulated) banks are still a better choice than those mini-mart ATMs.
When I visited Scotland for R&R in 2004 I used my bank ATM card as a credit card. When I needed to replenish my walking around cash a couple of times I just went to a Royal Bank of Scotland ATM (we had an RBS subsidiary as a bank here in North Carolina at the time) and took out the default (here in the U.S. that's mostly $40 - two twenty dollar bills). I don't remember what it was there & then. Never had any problems, although I did tell the bank in advance that I was planning to visit there so they wouldn't freak about the charges when they showed up.
Robert Prior @ 836:h
I find the at-pump part to be 2-3 minutes, including washing my windshield. At highway stations I usually gas up when leaving the station (because of the way parking is laid out) after using the washroom and maybe grabbing a snack. So getting my electric car recharged while I was emptying my bladder and buying a coffee wouldn't save that much time. My total time at most highway stops is less than 10 minutes unless they are busy enough that I need to wait in line.
If I want a break from driving I much prefer to get off the highway and find a nice picnic area — but those are unlikely to have charging stations.
On U.S. Interstate highways we have the rest areas that combine a place to stop & rest with restrooms & picnic areas. I expect we'll see the addition of charging stations real soon now if they haven't showed up already. The hold up appears to be an Eisenhower administration rule prohibiting "commercial activity" at Interstate highway rest areas.
Of course California already has 'em at STATE rest areas.
Here in Aotearoa, where pay-at-the-pump is usual, you can stick the nozzle in, lock it to deliver, and it will shut off when the nozzle detects fuel backing up in the filler pipe.
I've never seen a locking pump at a self-serve station — you always have to hold the nozzle while filling.
What you describe was standard at full-serve stations, but self-serve pumps* don't have the locking gadget.
*Self-serve came in in the 1970s, at least in my part of Canada. Gas stations usually had self-serve pumps and full-serve pumps (which cost a bit more). Eventually the full-serve pumps disappeared, but I don't remember when.
We have those on major highways, but they aren't very nice. I usually head off the highway a bit to a park in a small town. Preferably beside a small river…
Pretty much all these details you describe here for Canada match my memory and experience in Oz (albeit I wasn't old enough to drive in the 70s). The nozzles are usually a standard type that was made to have a locking toggle, but they are always disabled on self-serve pumps in some way. I've come across several difference modes of disablement, both potentially reversible and not.
OTOH I've been caught out by the automatic shut-off failing at least a couple of times personally and seen it happen more times than that to others. Since you're always holding the trigger on the nozzle, even if your mind has wandered a bit you notice and stop pumping pretty quick.
Picnic areas...
This is where my closest supercharger is located. Its lovely, and easily the nicest place for a picnic close to the highway for hundreds of km.
https://www.cassegrainwines.com.au/visit-us/#gardens
I've been caught out by the automatic shut-off failing at least a couple of times personally and seen it happen more times than that to others.
Interesting. In nearly 60 years of filling cars, cans, tractors, etc... I've never seen one NOT cut off. I have had some that were so sensitive that I had to keep holding onto the trigger to get a flow but never seen one fail.
I don't own a car, so I'm kind of out of date with my knowledge, but here in Finland there's no trigger lock on petrol or diesel pumps, at least not for small cars. I seem to remember there used to be, but they were forbidden decades ago. I googled some and apparently the failure possibility is one thing, and they can also get frozen in the winter. I don't mind, but again, I don't fill up any cars often enough for it to matter.
We did rent a natural gas car (with a small petrol tank, too) for our summer trip, and the gas line had a lock. Obviously that's because the gas would kind of expand and fill all the available space which would be also outside of the tank, if there wasn't a lock. Cheaper than petrol, and worked well, but I can't see it as anything than a temporary solution. Even though we drove with bio gas, not natural, which was a bit more expensive. (It was the same CH4 anyway. I'm not sure how the bio gas is produced.)
Well, supposedly you can collect methane by connecting pipes to cows' rectums... ;-)
"So far stores aren't installing there own 50 kW rapid chargers. They can reach an agreement with one of the many companies that have them, in which case it's the charge company that takes care of everything and there's no impact on the shop's electricity supply. Their only impact is an increase in customers. Or they install a couple of slow chargers (usually 6.6 kW) themselves."
As I said, I have experience of this sort of thing. Bugger who does it - it needs significant negotiation, quite often gets refused (e.g. until a new substation is built), and causes significant roadworks and other disruption which costs a lot. Those companies will install chargers for the places it is easy, and skip the ones where it isn't, so there will be sizeable areas with no such chargers. Which, in turn, will harm the shops in that area.
6.6 KW for 15 minutes is 7 miles for a Tesla 3 - too little to even cover the trip to the shop in a UK rural area. Mutiple 6.6 KW units has the same problems as one larger charger.
"150 kw is nothing to a large scale accommodation provider. How much power do you think their HVAC system draws to keep 300 rooms that all have floor to ceiling windows cool?"
Almost nothing. This is the UK. Heating is more of an issue - which I have raised ad tedium before. As I said, large-scale accomodation providers have much less of a problem.
Nope. They belch it. Feeding them (suitable) seaweed apparently stops that.
I don't fill up any cars often enough for it to matter.
Well you're in a much colder climate than me but I flat out don't like cold. I re-fill my 13 gal Civic when I'm near my local Costco and have less than 1/2 tank. (And the lines are short.) Takes 2 - 3 minutes. I can deal.
But my Tundra can inhale over 20 gallons at a time. That can take a while.
And way back when self serve took off the flow rate of US pumps seemed to slow. I suspect there's a regulation somewhere.
Guesstimate based on an unscientific survey of 2 people says 45 minutes tops for a typical shop. So that would be 21 miles for the non-existent Tesla 3 at the vapourware chargers at the local supermarkets.
Running out of gas in an EV.
This just popped into my head. Those convenience stores mentioned earlier will sell you a gas can holding a gallon or two for $10 or more. (When you must have it .....) So you buy a can, fill it with $5 in gas and walk or take a ride back to your car. Or call a friend (or irritated spouse) and they help you out.
With an EV you can't really carry around a battery big enough to charge up your car to any meaningful value. And a jump from a 12V car will likely do you no good.
So you either get a tow, or a quick charge from a tow truck with a new feature, or electrons from another EV. Tesla model 3s have the circuits for putting out power but apparently there isn't an official set of jumper cables or programmed options in the car system to do such yet. The speculation I just read about the power output is that is to allow car to grid power maybe in the future.
That's supermarkets. 15 minutes are more typical for corner shops. I described the supermarket issues in #798 and #802.
The simple fact is that 6.6 KW chargers are worth bothering with only for home use, accomodation and long-stay car parks. For anything else, they are a joke.
Of course, if Pigeon and I got our way, they would be all that would be needed for almost all urban cars. Cut the power requirement by a factor of 5 (which IS feasible) and 15 minutes gives 35 miles, which is useful for most urban vehicles.
I have had some that were so sensitive that I had to keep holding onto the trigger to get a flow
I've had that experience too... actually it was all the time when I had a basic-model (alloy tray) single-cab Toyota Hilux ... it's not so much holding the trigger (you have to do that anyway) as moving the nozzle around till it doesn't think it has to cut off. And I believe it was some outcome of the shape of the pipe from the fuel inlet to the tank that confused the sensor, because it happened with a range of different pumps. Not all the time, but all the time for that car at specific pumps at specific petrol stations. It could make filling up take 10 or 15 minutes. That's a case of false positive shut off.
But my experience of false negative shut offs, that is failure to shut off, has not been a factor of the car at all, rather the pump. It's happened with our old Camry and it's happened with my 2019 Mazda. A common factor might be a situation where I've been obliged to use a pump on the opposite side to the car's fuel inlet: so you park further forward then usual and run the hose around the back and/or over the rear window, and the nozzle is "upside down" in the inlet. It's usually not a problem, but the sensor in the nozzle might not function correctly in an unexpected orientation.
Well. Maybe. Sort of.
When everything goes as planned.
A friend with a Leaf had an early EV several years back. Range was 75 miles on a full charge in good weather.
In the winter he said his wife was not happy with the choice of getting home form the movies. Drive in the cold around 0C or have heat in the car but not make it home. At night so exterior lights were required. Her choice.
And a few times he got into situations where he needed a lift while his car built up enough charge to get him home later. Not so much poor planning but at times life just happens.
Breaking news. Standing next to GM's new EV's will magnetize aluminum to your body.
Wait. This isn't The Onion.
Never mind.
Here in Oz locking fuel pumps were banned about the same time that self-service pumps came into vogue, on a state-by-state basis, so the mid- to late-seventies here in Victoria. I think Queensland didn't allow them until 1988 or thereabouts (if not later still!!).
I remember you could get a folding bit of cardboard that would hold the trigger up, that didn't last long. :-)
I've had pumps fail to cut-off twice in about fifty-years, and when I worked for the mob that did fuel distribution systems (Diamond Key Int.), the mechanical types had lots of stories about how pumps could screw up, in the servo forecourt, as well as the big ones at the refinery.
Yes, but I was talking about a car with a 300 mile range and a 15 KW-hr battery, so 15 minutes of 6.6 KW would be 11% - a useful top-up, if no more than that. With anything that gets less than 10 miles/KW-hr (and the current and proposed cars get c. 4), under an hour of 6.6 KW is a joke.
I have had to hold the nozzle upside down when the blow-back caused it to cut off as soon as it started pumping - older cars were often not designed for high-flow pumps.
Well quite, but that's just one of the factors that slows things down somewhat (it's been a while, but I seem to recall needing some jiggling even with part-flow).
"Guesstimate based on an unscientific survey of 2 people says 45 minutes tops for a typical shop. So that would be 21 miles for the non-existent Tesla 3 at the vapourware chargers at the local supermarkets."
So enough to cover the average daily needs of UK drivers then. And there now. Both Model 3 and 6.6 kW supermarket chargers exist. Not vapourware.
I'm sure you'll again call it "increasingly desperate" that I've corrected your lies again.
https://www.nimblefins.co.uk/cheap-car-insurance/average-car-mileage-uk#:~:text=On%20a%20daily%20basis%2C%20cars,and%207%2C400%20miles%20a%20year.
Neither of the 2 people surveyed owns, or has even driven, a Tesla 3. Therefore the car is non-existent in terms of the survey. Actual fact. None of the supermarkets in the local area have any form of EV charger in the car park. Actual fact.
Or do you think you know more than me about what vehicles are in my drive, and about supermarkets in my area?
Let's assume that everyone had a Tesla 3 and drove 7,400 miles a year (20 miles a day). gasdive's solution implies that such a person (a) needs to make a trip every day, (b) such a trip is always to a location where he stays for an average of at least 45 minutes, (c) all such locations have chargers, and (d) chargers are almost never occupied or out of order.
Yeah. Right.
This is getting silly, but presumably those persons aren't taking 24 hours to drive those 20 miles/day. Just maybe they can charge their vehicle somewhere in the time they are not driving it?
Or are the new goal posts set such that EVs are not viable unless one can get a full charge while at the supermarket?
4 days out of 5 we don't even bother plugging our EV in anywhere, because we don't use the miles. IF we expect a busy day or a lot of driving we charge it up, or if I feel like it. Most days we've only used 2-5% of the charge and don't bother charging.
So much of the debate on here is about road trips, which are a fun but small percentage of total use, and are rapidly becoming/have already become EV viable with slightly more forward planning that with an ICE.
Yes, it is. I described the (sane) uses of 6.6 KW chargers in the second and third paragraphs of #856. Please don't take, er, some people's misrepresentations as either what the actual situation is or what I and paws4thot are saying.
For the people (like me) with parking space adjacent to their house, there isn't a problem with almost all (sub-)urban use, and even the lack of supply capacity is dwarfed by the need for extra to covert heating from gas to electricity.
The problems lie elsewhere.
(With no relevance to anything except our favourite author...)
Scene: Today's Bing background image. Humanoid figure with 2 heads and 3 legs, to Charlie: "I/we can see your house from here."
...which reminds me that I really ought to try and grab a solar panel of a convenient size to prop up against the side of my mobility scooter when it's parked at home; then I would only ever need to use the mains charger in emergencies, even in the winter. An urban carlet with weather protection built in could in a similar way have one on the roof, and gain from it a contribution that would be significantly useful in a way that something with "conventional" battery capacity and consumption could not.
I find the false-positive and false-negative problems tend to go together. Whatever idiosyncrasy of the filler pipe confuses the thing may well be able to confuse it in both directions. I've had both "click, click, click... bugger the thing... trickle for 15 minutes" and "fuel all down the side of the car", from different pumps, on different occasions, on the same car.
Also of course when incessant false positives create the need to play games with the nozzle position to defeat the cutoff, the chance of spurting puddles goes up correspondingly. This is a particular problem when filling something that does not have a big long pipe between the cap and the tank, such as a reserve fuel can or a motorcycle. Sometimes you can't even put the nozzle inside the filler hole at all, but have to hold it just outside and squirt the stuff in...
I've almost never, in decades in the US run into gas pumps that didn't have locking trigger. At the rare gas stations that didn't have it... I pull the gas filler cap off the tab, and shove it it.
Not anywhere, from Chicago to TX, have I ever had one fail to shut off automatically.
I don't know about "bolt-on" scam at the pump, but I always examine the card reader, to make sure there's none slid in, which is how most of them work
I only use a credit card... and I only use my card with the lowest limit - that will catch someone when they try to get somethihng expensive, if they steal the PIN
Btw, Krebs on security, a few years ago, had a security video from a superrmarket of someone inserting a scam/reader in the card reader at a checkout with a person - it took them 3 sec or so.
I don't know about "bolt-on" scam at the pump
https://krebsonsecurity.com/all-about-skimmers/
https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-spot-and-avoid-credit-card-skimmers
Wubba, wubba, wubba! DIEBOLD make/sell them? I knew that they were unscrupulous, but it never crossed my mind they were THAT bad.
On U.S. Interstate highways we have the rest areas that combine a place to stop & rest with restrooms & picnic areas. I expect we'll see the addition of charging stations real soon now if they haven't showed up already.
They have! At least a few places; I've never made a survey or anything.
On Interstate 5, the southernmost rest stop in Washington state is at Gee Creek, where the charging station looks like this and has two chargers. That's not much but it's vastly better than being stranded by the side of the highway far from home.
For Europeans: this is pretty typical of a highway rest stop. There are restrooms in the small building, a large regional map and other information for travelers, picnic tables, and simply enough space to stand and walk for a while after being in the car too long. Large vehicles usually have parking away from smaller cars, as in this case. There is no access to surface streets, only back onto the highway.
Fun story in The Economist. Mostly but not entirely about use of commercial earth observation satellites. (And perhaps prompted by the public OSINT disclosures of the construction of two new large clusters of Chinese missile silos; the Chinese are getting serious about nuclear deterrence.) Trainspotting, but with nukes - Open-source intelligence challenges state monopolies on information (Aug 7th 2021 edition, seems to be not paywalled?) In undermining state monopolies on intelligence, OSINT is increasingly capable of challenging the narratives states promulgate. The CNS and other OSINT groups, for example, have consistently provided a sense of North Korea’s nuclear abilities more realistic than that offered by recent American administrations, which repeatedly claimed they would not allow North Korea to develop capabilities which, judging by the OSINT evidence, it already had.
My reading was that those are photos of skimmers made to work with (and partly mimic) Diebold ATMs, although the caption for one of them used slightly confusing language to represent this (i.e. "Diebold skimmer").
I just think these days that magstripes (and probably RFID, certainly static RFID codes) are inherently compromised for security-sensitive purposes. There are heaps of different NFC payment systems around, but I'm happy with Apple's so far. Serious security people seem to be happy with it too. Annoyingly my 6s (with a fingerprint reader) died in 2019 prompting an upgrade, so I was relying on face recognition just in time for widespread mask-wearing.
The debate is not if you have an EVSE at your closest supermarket or NOT. Nor is it if you like it or find it useful. It's would 6.6 kW EVSE be a useless joke as you and EC maintain, or would they be useful to some customers, and drive business to that supermarket, sufficient to make installation worth while in a situation of high uptake of EVs.
The fact is that even in times of very low EV uptake, many business have looked at it, decided it does work to drive custom to their operation, and rolled it out to other locations. So from the business perspective, they're not a joke as EC says, they're a profitable move.
It stands to reason that if it's worth s doing now, it's going to be even more worth doing in the future when more customers have an EV, even if you and EC don't understand why.
David L @ 847:
Interesting. In nearly 60 years of filling cars, cans, tractors, etc... I've never seen one NOT cut off. I have had some that were so sensitive that I had to keep holding onto the trigger to get a flow but never seen one fail.
There are two different automatic shut-off mechanisms. One is in the pump that meters the fuel. That's the one that allows the operator to pre-set the pump for $10.00 (or whatever amount). It almost stops delivery at $9.90 and then creeps through the last ten cents. I don't know, but I always feel like I'm getting gypped out of a few cents when I have to use one of those pre-pay pumps.
Then there's the anti-splash shut-off ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3phjAQZdGg
If you turn the nozzle upside-down when fueling (like when people pull up to the wrong side of the pump and have to drag the hose across the top of the car & the hose isn't quite long enough) it interferes with the anti-splash mechanism.
Usually it just means the latching mechanism won't work properly & it's hard to get any gas (that pump a gallon & trip ... pump another gallon and trip ... experience). Sometimes it will allow fuel to flow, but doesn't fill the sensor port in time to stop overflow.
Those stations that encourage fueling from either side regardless where your gas filler is located should have hoses long enough so you don't need to turn the nozzle upside-down if you're on the off side. I just always get in line so the pump is on the side where the filler is located. If it takes a few minutes longer to get up to the pump I don't mind.
And I've never understood why manufacturers wouldn't always put the filler on the same side with the driver?
paws4thot @ 848: #841 para 4 - There isn't a specific default amount in the UK, one-touch buttons for £10 to £50 step £10, but you can select anything from £10 to £350 with 5 presses anyway.
"Default amount" may not be the precise wording I need.
Every ATM I've ever used had menus with multiple selections for withdrawal where you can choose the account & what amount (in multiples of whatever value of bills the machine is loaded with), but they almost always have a selection for "fast cash from checking" that bypasses the menus & gives you a fixed amount of money (as long as the bank can determine that you have funds available?).
The ATMs I used when I visited Scotland had that feature and I think ... or vaguely remember - it was almost 17 years ago now ... that it was something like £20.
paws4thot @ 850: Well, supposedly you can collect methane by connecting pipes to cows' rectums... ;-)
I don't think anyone has come up with an efficient way of doing it yet.
And I've never understood why manufacturers wouldn't always put the filler on the same side with the driver?
The preference seems to be passenger side for private cars. The rationale is safety for someone refuelling from a can on the side of the road. It's driver's side for trucks and commercial so you don't have to walk around the vehicle (and you're assumed to be competent enough not to run out of fuel on a narrow road, I guess). Of course it most likely is one of the things that is not adapted to local market, so for cars designed in the Japan/SEA/Australasia market where the driver sits on the right-hand side, the fuel cap is on the left, even when that model car is adapted for the US/rest-of-Asia/etc market and the driving position is moved to the left; and vice versa (for European cars anyway, I've no idea about American ones).
Another speculation is that routing the pipe for the fuel tank depends on other design characteristics, and it would make sense that you'd avoid putting it on the same side as the lower exhaust system. The rationale: fuel and heat should only be mixed when there's a good reason. If you place the tailpipe on the driver's side (so you're not blowing exhaust directly toward pedestrians) then you'd naturally put the fuel filler pipe on the passenger side.
The preference seems to be passenger side for private cars.
My Hyundai fills on the left (driver's side), as did the two Toyotas I had before. So did my first car — a 1966 Chrysler Valiant.
Annoyingly my 6s (with a fingerprint reader) died in 2019 prompting an upgrade, so I was relying on face recognition just in time for widespread mask-wearing.
It is a conspiracy to get you to buy an Apple watch. Which increases our balance of trade deficit with China. Which proves that China created Covid-19 on purpose.
Oh, wait, wrong blog. NM.
Until the unlock with Apple watch if wearing a mask feature I got pretty quick at holding phone in front of my face with a quick remove loop from ear with other hand to swing my mask open then back to my face to allow my phone to unlock. All while holding other bits in one or both hands.
A 10 year stretch of frequent car rentals convinced me it was placed on one side or the other by the manufacturers to try and make it a 50/50 thing. So that cars can be tighter together using double sized pumps at large fuel centers. I got to where when I pull in for gas I almost always look down to see where the arrow points. Even on cars I've owned for years.
Or, if the car has a low fuel light and/or a push button fuel door release, the petrol pump icon associated will normally show the pump hose on the side that has the filler cap on it on the car.
"And I've never understood why manufacturers wouldn't always put the filler on the same side with the driver?"
Way back when, that was seriously inconvenient, as pumps in small garages were generally against the wall of the garage, and it meant that the driver often had difficulty getting out. As well as being 'counter-flow'. There are still a fair number of pumps like that in UK rural areas.
Nowadays, many such things are on the side that is chosen for most of the cars of that model produced, which means left-hand drive. In the UK, we then get some oddities, like the bonnet opening latch being generally on the passenger side, and sometimes the windscreen airflow being better on that side, too.
But, as far as fillers are concerned, I side with David L.
Fuel ... power reserves & power sources & electrical power & STORAGE, yes?
A not-quite new ( Been in development for some years, apparently) new super-battery power storage scheme / plant proposed / under construction See HERE IF, IF, If, if ... it works, then it should be a significant game-changer, as it is supposed to be significantly cheaper - about 10% of the cost of Lithiom-ion. Note that Bezos appears to be backing it? Similar information from HERE too. Thoughts & comments?
OH BUGGER Mods -please delete current post # 889 - double-posted & second version is better Oops
[[ done - mod ]]
If you hade been a little slower to remove your mask the phone would have asked you to use the passcode with no need to take your mask off.
Uh. Well. Of course.
But at times putting in a 6 digit code is more hassle.
And then there's the watch thing.
If you wear an Apple watch, paired with your phone, you unlock it with a 4-digit PIN when you put it on -- and thereafter it stays unlocked as long as it knows it's in contact with your skin.
Then you unlock your phone once (using a longer passcode), and thereafter, as long as it's in proximity to your unlocked watch, the phone will unlock using only a fractional Face ID match (if it can see your eyes, but not nose/mouth).
However, when it does that it shows you a "your phone is now unlocked" notification on your watch face so that if it's not meant to be unlocked, you can remote-lock it from your watch.
This isn't ideal for COVID19, but the pandemic wrong-footed Apple's R&D folks. They're reported to be working on Touch ID (fingerprint) through the phone screen, along with selfie-camera-through-the-screen, but haven't got them to a satisfactory quality yet.
The non-pro iPads seem to be moving to a compromise -- an edge-mounted Touch ID sensor on the on/off button, rather than a big thumb sensor embedded in the screen. (iPad Pro models are still pure Face ID, but they're pushing them with the Magic Keyboard as a laptop-like experience, and unlocking seems to be less of a sales issue with the expensive tablets: maybe people just don't whip them out and unlock them in the middle of the street as much.)
We need better authentication tools, but if COVID19 had shown up a couple of years hence, at least phone-unlocking would be less of a pain. (And phone-unlocking is not-unimportant, insofar as they're now contactless payment hubs: I can't remember when I last paid for anything using cash.)
I can't remember when I last paid for anything using cash.
I paid a lawyer in cash last month. We met for five minutes in a borrowed office, so easier to just hand a banknote over. We both knew that fomites aren't anything to worry about, so not a problem. (And if they were, Canadian money is plastic so easily cleaned with alcohol or peroxide.)
If you wear an Apple watch, paired with your phone, you unlock it with a 4-digit PIN when you put it on -- and thereafter it stays unlocked as long as it knows it's in contact with your skin.
I went with 6 and matched my phone. A slight security fail I know but it works for me.
My first Apple watch was the smaller 38mm first gen. My fingers were always missing what I aimed at. After a year I moved up to the 42mm. Now I have the 44mm iteration. So a 6 digit unlock isn't any issue with my fumble fingers.
And for those who can't see the point to such a thing. While it looks very similar to traditional watches and will let you know the time, it does what I wanted soon after I got my first cell phone. It is basically an extension of such.
It does the following for me. - Lets my know my phone is ringing and who it is so I can decide if I want to deal with the call or kick it to voice mail. Or even answer it via my watch "Dick Tracy" style. (The phone has to be nearby or on the same WiFi network at the watch.) - Does similar with Messages to my phone. And no, Messages on an Apple devices setup is NOT T9 texting. Far from it. - Shows the next event I have on my calendar. And my early alerts for events pop on my watch. - Shows me the temperature outside - Tracks my activity so I know what slug I've been that day. - Lets me pay for things at about 1/2 of the merchants I visit. A double tap, pick a card if different from the default I've set, and waive. - Along with payments it will bring up membership things if I've put them in or event passes if the event has set them up. - "Yells" at me if it thinks I've fallen. About once a month, almost always wrong but a single tap tells it no. And when right I can tap the "I fell but no problem". And if I don't respond it will call 911 (999 in UK?). And more.
And I have it set to not make any sounds or rings. It just vibrates on my wrist/arm so I don't interrupt meetings, movies, or just plain annoy folks around me.
My biggest gripe, and it isn't Apple's fault, is I'm a sweaty guy. At least more than average. And at times I just move it up my arm a few inches to let my wrist breathe for a bit.
Fe based batteries have been discussed for a while as a better way to do grid storage. In various chemistries. They are heavier and larger than lithium but that doesn't really matter all that much as those things are within reason close enough to lithium. But a lot cheaper. For grid storage weight doesn't matter all that much and size if not terribly bigger that lithium is also OK.
The big holdup for a while seems to be that the market isn't big enough to support the initial start up effort. And for most of the market that does exist used EV batteries filled it.
This one looks interesting.
All of the above, and also, most importantly for me: it's a handly remote control for the Music app on my phone -- stuff like volume control, play/pause, next/previous, all with a tap on my wrist. The expensive shiny phone stays tucked out of sight and it doesn't occupy my eyeballs while I'm walking around outside.
With a pair of Earpods Pro -- noise cancelling earbuds -- I can almost ignore the ridiculous traffic noise while I'm walking around outside. (The problem with living in a city centre is it's essentially a maze of stone canyons, on a hill: diesel trucks crawling uphill are loud. According to the dB meter on my watch it's often picking up more than 85 dB. There's no point relying on my hearing for safety when crossing roads -- it's necessary to use my eyes anyway, because the intensity of traffic noise is near-deafening all the time.)
Yes. All of it. And more.
One last trick. I can't find my phone. I set it down somewhere in the house where it blends into the background.
So I ask my watch where my phone is. It pauses for a few seconds, tells me it's nearby, then offers to play a pinging so I can go find it.
Airpods can be located the same way but so far I haven't had to do this. :)
Jbs@882 says, "I don't think anyone has come up with an efficient way of doing it yet."
A quick shopping list, for kids with summer jobs at dairy farms to start experimenting:
One box Hefty brand ten count trash bags, 35 gallon size One roll fifty yard duct tape One pvc garden hose, 20 foot One injection molded nylon turkey baster, remove bulb One butane cigarette lighter One long handled two-prong fork One 16 oz. bag Campfire brand marshmallows
Depending where they shop, maybe thirty bucks all in. Could discover bovine flatulence is too methane deficient to ignite; much of the gas gets belched up in the process of rumination, by which cows repeatedly chew and digest fibrous plant matter. It's enough of a problem that cattle production ranks as a top source of atmospheric methane.
an efficient way of doing it yet.
When I read JBS's comment my first thought was "that the cows would cooperate with"
Biogas digesters have been a thing for awhile. Not quite hose up rectum, but a good way to turn methane into CO2 while getting a little work done.
Speaking of natural gas, one of the fun projects of the next decade is weaning cities off their natural gas pipes. Why is it so fun?
--Even in a young city like LA, turns out a lot of the pipes are old enough to leak. When someone drives around with a detector, things get embarrassing for the gas company. --In new home developments, CO2 from burning natural gas is typically the #2 greenhouse gas source, after auto tailpipes. Pretty much every gas appliance has a decent electrical substitute, so there aren't great arguments for keeping gas when methane is such a nuisance. --Then there's the fun of de-gassing a neighborhood. Most people will just shut off the gas at the gauge. But the pipes under the streets are still full of gas, and aging, and leaking. The real problem will come when there's only one house per block or less still on gas, and the gas company still has to maintain a large majority of the grid to supply these legacy customers. Keeping the pipes from really springing leaks is going to be hard at this point, because there's little income left to keep the system in repair. This is a general infrastructure problem whenever a system gets dismantled, whether it's irrigation ditches or neighborhoods in New Orleans mostly wiped out by Katrina.
Detroit has been dealing with this for a while. They have taken to eminent domain condemnation to remove people where they are the last occupied house in a multi-block area. Paying way more than is needed for someone to find a new home but still created a lot of pissed off folks.
Anyway the point being to be able to close off sewer, water, gas, electrical, etc...
As to gas lines, when we subdivided some land in western Kentucky back in 67 they put in a flexible 2" or 3" PCV like pipe. Sort of like the tubes they bury now for fiber. I wonder what the life of such is?
In front of my central North Carolina house (1961 build and one of the first in the subdivision) I have a steel gas distribution line. (It was impressive to watch them WELD a patch and fittings onto it when my service had to be changed from shared with a neighbor to just me.) Gas lines around here run at under 5 PSI (I think). And we're in clay. I suspect your soil is much more sandy and loose. Which might make a difference as to what happens if the piping leaks.
The water line within a few houses of me has had 5 or 6 leaks in the 30 years I've been here. None of them were gushers. All were noticed with water weeping up through the pavement. Again, I suspect the clay makes a difference.
As to why so many (3 directly in front of my house) we had a 2 year project to swap out a storm sewer from 3' to 6' one cross street over. 5 axles trucks looping for that time. Plus once I think an excavator banged it hard.)
There was a similar recurrent leak outside where I used to live. More years than not it would put in a performance, and the road surface around the spot was a conglomeration of overlapping patches with dips and depressions in it. The substrate seemed to be mostly sandy mud and gravel, probably brought in artificially back in the mists of time. The leak would manifest as water appearing from nowhere and running down the road, often in quite large amounts but without any fountaining.
It kept on recurring for two main reasons. One was that by the time you got to see any water it had already been leaking unseen underground for quite a while, and wherever it was running away to it took large portions of the substrate with it, leaving cavities; it was often the partial collapse of one of these that broke the road surface and let water escape visibly. Failure to fill in all the voids to the original degree of compaction would then lead to the ground gradually settling into them once traffic was restored, taking the pipe with it, stressing it, and setting things up for a further leak.
The other one was an instance of the common failure of public works to acknowledge that the real world is not merely an expression of the imaginary world described in municipal documentation. The road had an 18 ton weight limit on it, for no reason at all - it didn't go over any bridges or anything else that might collapse under excessive load, it was just a plain length of nearly-flat road, straight and without obstructions. But it also led directly from one of the main roads into town to a significant generator of 38-ton lorry traffic, and also to the next main road round to which there was no out-of-town route for many miles; and the alternative route that was officially permitted meant crawling all the way into the town centre, through thick traffic jams and multiple sets of bastard-minded traffic lights, and then all the way back out again on the other road. So naturally the lorry drivers ignored the stupid weight limit sign - if they even saw the thing, it being buried in foliage for half the year - and took the direct and straightforward route instead. But the repair works on the water leaks were nevertheless done under the unbending assumption that the heaviest lorries using the road would be less than half the weight of those that actually did use it, and therefore to a corresponding standard of durability, because they couldn't understand that what it said on the sign was only an exhortation and not a description of set facts.
Hey, for anyone paying attention to the larger picture, since Host is into "mis-use of Racist AI trained badly on wholey inadequate models":
Blackrock unveils Aladdin Climate module
https://www.finextra.com/pressarticle/85245/blackrock-unveils-aladdin-climate-module
Dec 2020
BlackRock to Acquire Baringa Partners’ Climate Change Scenario Model Through New Long-Term Partnership
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210617005087/en/BlackRock-to-Acquire-Baringa-Partners%E2%80%99-Climate-Change-Scenario-Model-Through-New-Long-Term-Partnership
Jun 2021
Baringa sells Climate Change Scenario Model to BlackRock
Baringa Partners has agreed for BlackRock to acquire its Climate Change Scenario Model, which will be integrated into BlackRock’s Aladdin Climate technology. The combined solution is expected to significantly enhance BlackRock’s solution to help companies assess their climate impact.
https://www.consultancy.uk/news/28296/baringa-sells-climate-change-scenario-model-to-blackrock?PageSpeed=noscript
Ok, now, pay attention: forget all the right-wing attack patterns being done over BlackRock and Biden in the USA and FOCUS (note: Blackrock swing at $138 billion currently, just behind BlackSTONE (their.. progenitor and now rival) and way behind JPM ($409 billion).
A) BR are not the only people with access to "super-computers", but they are at the forefront of using them to model High-Speed modelling "Nine By Nine" on the Fly.
B) China does this as well. You're not allowed to know what they're called and we won't cause Host a headache with SIS / internals if we drop names (since, you know, Scotland has just jailed someone for a "JIGSAW IDENTIFICATION CRIME" so who knows where the Official Secrets Act now lies)
C) THIS IS BAD NEWS: go look up Turkey, Greece, Israel at the moment. You'll notice they're on FIRE.
What happens to 30 year bonds (already dying, the 10 year is like negative because of the general slew of negative interest credit + market cluelessness about "what the future holds". Hint: you don't mess up IPOs like Robinhood that badly unless you just read the Credit Suisse Risk Analysis report on Greensill and collective shit the bed in panic).
HINT: The first thing this does when it gets a decent model is do this: DUMP ALL BONDS OF X COUNTRIES IMMEDIATELY.
For real. You think this is fantasy?
https://news.sky.com/story/uk-and-ireland-among-five-nations-most-likely-to-survive-a-collapse-of-global-civilisation-study-suggests-12366136
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9838831/America-fails-crack-5-places-likely-survive-end-world-giant-borders.html
This is PR, not Journalism.
~
Skynet is Green. It also thinks.... like us.
"Nine By Nine" on the Fly.
This is a Cube3 Joke about "Quantum Computers" and a bastardization of the Alien Movie quote "In the Pipe, Five by Five" which is, in itself, taken from the US Airforce.
Aladdin, the Djinn, the Arch-Genie... is telling a lot of people who manage Trillions of assets to DUMP IT[1].
[1] This is a crypto joke: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/people/bogdanoff-twins
~
Anyhow. You should probably look at Bonds and current interest rates and so on and calculate how long they can keep the Pony Prancing once all their models tell them to cut and run. Like... who funds Greece 2.0 (Goldman Sachs?) once you know it's going to burn down each year (even ignoring the terrible car park done to the Parthenon).
"Be First, Be Smarter, or Cheat"
Hint: We're not the only thing faster than you, and the other things are getting hooked into some naughty little angles at the same time as crunching investment data. Remember that story about CPUs running off reverbs from the vibration of the fan from another unit?
Storing Rack Storage on-mass is a fucking baaaaaad idea. Vibration bleeds, and if it bleeds, you can kill it.
GOOD VIBRATIONS (HD) THE BEACH BOYS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdt0SOqPJcg
~Signature Tune: Beach Boys- I get Around https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wREBD2og5iY
~
Aladdin is like us: just with no soul, zero penchant for Justice and a fuck ton of .mil spec stuff it's running on the QT due to outsourcing and 9/11 NeoCons.
Sleep well.
Oh, and third one (sorry, parshing out general level of readership ability)
Larry Fink of @blackrock has a plan for the IMF and World Bank. They should be absorb “first-losses” for private lenders. @DanielaGabor nightmare made real. https://bloomberg.com/news/articles/
https://twitter.com/adam_tooze/status/1421093221338341377 -- Adam Tooze, Twitter, 30th July 2021. Do a grep, you'll notice the names are familiar.
~
Pensions, baby. They're going to torch the pensions before they torch private equity, and BlackRock's Aladdin is gonna do it. So, hey: unlike the US machine Politics of GOP, or the paranoid fantasies of those imagining the "Great Reset" ... they're doing it.
~
QED.
Gas is (relatively) cheap, electricity is expensive. Furthermore the only two gas appliances in my house are very controllable - the central heating boiler & the gas cooker. I simply refuse, point-blank to go to cooking on eclectic unless forced to at bayonet point.
Talking of "Electric" - PLEASE - comments on the "controlled rust" battery-storage, I mentioned earlier. What do people think?
Which works OK when and if there is only one occupied property left in a block
Detroit is a very strange duck. Say 20 square blocks with 20-40 houses left occupied in a space where 200-300 used to be. It's not about how many on a particular block but how many left in a large area of blocks.
Braddock near Pittsburgh is in similar shape. I don't know if they're tearing down blocks yet. But you have houses and churches literally overgrown with vegetation. I worked "over the hill" in Forest Hill in the 80s. I drove through it around 2014 on a return visit. Had my car stolen twice in the 80s and abandoned there.
Braddock was the "middle class steel workers great town to live in" in the 40s and 50s.
And for a side note the current Lt. Governor of PA was the mayor there for 14 years trying to upgrade it from terrible to not so terrible. Now doing a run for the US Senate in 2022. Interesting off fellow that one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Fetterman
Incidentally, "Middle East" is the term most common in Oz for the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula, including Iraq, Iran, some of Turkey and everything on the Asia Minor side of Suez. Not just "most common", more or less official: people from that region here refer to the region as "the Middle East".
OTOH it's totally incomprehensible here when someone refers to people from that region, or from the subcontinent, as "Asian".
Greg @ 909: I simply refuse, point-blank to go to cooking on eclectic unless forced to at bayonet point.
Have you tried an induction hob? Failing that, an infra-red one?
I agree, having a pan boil over on an electric ring-based cooker is a royal pain. It takes ages for the hot ring to cool down and stop heating the food, and then you have soup or whatever burned on to the ring and on the tray underneath the rings, which is a pain to clean.
Induction doesn't have that issue. It's as controllable as gas, and if something does boil over it does so on to a nice smooth glass surface that is easily cleaned. The heat happens in the metal of the pan rather than under the glass, so nothing that boils over burns.
It's also much better than gas at keeping something warm. Gas rings have a minimum flame size which is actually quite hot. Induction hobs don't have that issue.
(Ours has an electronic touch controller which means it takes a few seconds to actually get one ring all the way down to zero, but in an emergency you can just hit the power button. Other brands have knobs, but we got sold on the "its a worktop when you aren't cooking" concept).
Downsides: it costs more, only certain types of pan work with it, and you can't use one if you have a heart implant.
I haven't used infra-red, but it looks like a compromise: the heat source is more controllable than electric rings, but less than induction. OTOH you can use any pan and heart implants are not affected.
The stuff with the watch is great. My wife has one, she uses it for payment all the time and it really makes the whole Face-ID-with-a-mask-on thing a lot easier. The version with cellular can do the Dick Tracy thing and payment even out of range of a phone. I have a smart watch, but it's in Garmin's ecosystem rather than Apple's, which in practice makes things somewhat less integrated.
I don't feel like I'm missing anything I need, it just means that currently I'm entering my PIN multiple times when I go out for groceries and supplies. I need to unlock my phone to use the Qld government's mandated check-in app, and payment requires re-authenticating every time too. It's not so bad for the supermarket: I unlock my phone once, check in to the shopping centre, check in to the supermarket itself and run the supermarket's app, which provides a scan as you go capability, so checkout is just a payment step and you get to leave with a full trolley via a dedicated exit with no queues.
My local supermarket is actually a pilot site, it's one of 5 in Qld, 33 in Australia where this is currently being offered. I guess the chains are using lockdown and the emphasis on contactless services to accelerate their labour-shedding technologies, though the attitude to the changes among the staff seems more positive... sometimes this stuff just changes the focus of the work people do rather than reduce jobs.
Paul I have/use some VERY EXPENSIVE ( Collected over the years by madam ) copper-based cooking pots & pans from Dehillerin plus quite a few stainless & cast-iron-base pots, the latter from Le Creuset. Induction hobs means THROWING ALL THAT AWAY - over £2k worth at the least. Like at least the cost of a new cooker, or very likely, even more.... Minimum flame? My ancient cooker has one ring with a very low minimum & one can always put a diffuser between the flame & the simmering pot, after all. So, not a problem. I wonder if you can make Jam in a BIG oval Le Creuset cauldron on induction? I suspect not. So, in the politest possible way - get stuffed.
"Have you tried an induction hob? Failing that, an infra-red one?"
I have used infra-red hobs; they are better than rings, but not as good as gas, and don't last as well as either. Aside: when I was triking in Dumfriesshire, the cooker had solid plates, which reminded me how ghastly they are.
And how do you char peppers etc. on an induction hob? :-) For the reasons Greg mentions (and others), I wouldn't touch induction hobs, though I could tolerate infra-red ones, but it would increase my (low) use of propane/butane.
This is definitely a problem. I have heard of people who have installed camping stoves in their kitchen when stuck with electric hobs.
The road had an 18 ton weight limit on it, for no reason at all - it didn't go over any bridges or anything else that might collapse under excessive load
Well, no limit except the pipes under it, which by your account were repeatedly damaged by heavy traffic, not to mention extra wear-and-tear on the road itself.
Weight limits are not only to protect vehicles from being caught in collapses of their own making. They are to protect infrastructure from damage as well.
Hi Charlie Since you mentioned it, I'm curious to know what music is on your phone. I don't remember it being talked about here.
The version with cellular can do the Dick Tracy thing and payment even out of range of a phone.
Alas, the watch isn't big enough to take even a nano-SIM, so it's eSIM all the way, and the only UK cellcos that support it do not provide certain deal-breaker/must-have services my wife and I require in our phones (although somewhat less need for nearly-global roaming data at domestic prices in the era of COVID19).
So, in the politest possible way - get stuffed.
Greg, you are obviously not going to switch to an induction hob unless natural gas ceases to be available. Ditto your central heating system. So such a switch ... charitably, throwing away £2000-worth of special cooking utensils is the least of your worries (you can add in another £2000 for the cooking range, then £5000 for a replacement to your boiler, even if you can keep the £5-10,000 of pumped water heating radiators -- more likely you'd be on the hook for £20-40,000 in costs retrofitting an old London brick house to take a modern HVAC/heat pump system).
Given your age, you are not going to do that. Most likely the next owner of your house, some time after 2030, will do it as part of a total renovation. (This ... doesn't happen ... to American homes: it's only cost-effective in the UK because the cost of housing is so ridiculous: the average London house price is currently around two-thirds of a million quid, and I suspect Greg's is probably somewhere above the median unless it has only one bedroom.)
Since you mentioned it, I'm curious to know what music is on your phone.
Apple Music, with full streaming. My music library via iTunes Match ... I stopped keeping track of how much stuff I had after the 128kbps AACs overflowed a 160Gb clickwheel iPod, and that happened about a decade ago.
Must recently-added albums:
So: loads of EBM, techno, some industrial, some krautrock descended stuff, goth, synthpop ...
Re electric cooking.
Another factor in a new construction or gut remodel home or apartment (which do happen in the US, btw) is that modern standards of air-tightness make it a bit insane to burn stuff inside your house.
A hood and a source of makeup air from the outside is required, but still, you are hacking around a fundamental problem.
And then you have the issue that the gas lines under the streets will not be worth it for just cooking. When gas heat and hot water go the distribution systems will be abandoned.
People do use gas stoves from a tank in cities, so it may not totally disappear.
Gas cooking is on the way out.
(This ... doesn't happen ... to American homes: it's only cost-effective in the UK because the cost of housing is so ridiculous: the average London house price is currently around two-thirds of a million quid, and I suspect Greg's is probably somewhere above the median unless it has only one bedroom.)
Ah, well, it does.
In my fast rising prices neighbor hood, houses in good shape that went for $250K to live in now sell for $500K-%700K. And those under $500K are torn down and just replaced.
My daughters house was a gut remodel. Most of her neighbors are just teardowns. We're in the land of single family housing. In more urban areas, even around here, thing are gutted.
And in the major cities, NYC, LA, Chicago, Boston, etc... gut remodels have been going on for a while. And the prices are similar to London now.
As to gas, currently it is the fav for heat and cooking due to costs. And control in cooking and comfort in HVAC. I suspect the cooking is as much what people are used to as "better". And many folks want HOT air to come out of their air vents. Not just slightly warmer than the room temp.
My costs to swap out gas would be similar to what you posted for Greg and will not be done unless my house is torn down. Which it will within 10 to 15 years. Maybe less. My biggest concern is if my water heater goes. It is over 10 years old. And to move to a 95% or better efficiency may require some tricks to vent my flue gases. Going electric starts a process that will cost $10K when done as my house currently doesn't have the current capacity to handle such.
That was sort of my implied point upthread. A gross weight limit that is also a vehicle class limit does not protect the roadbed from axle hammer by general haulage vehicles, since they all have the same maximum axle weight. If I know this, the local roads department engineers should, and competent LGV (US Class 8) drivers will as well.
Gas cooking is on the way out.
Maybe Greg could rig up a biodigester to recover methane from his compost heap and cook with that?
That would be kinda cool — cooking vegetables with the waste product of the compost used to grow them (and presumably adding the cooking scraps to the compost heap).
This ... doesn't happen ... to American homes: it's only cost-effective in the UK because the cost of housing is so ridiculous
It happens in Toronto — older properties are purchased with the intent to tear them down and rebuild bigger, or gut the place and rebuild the interior.
Last week I was walking near the Bluffs with a friend and looking at the neighbourhood signs protesting low-rise condos being built, demanding that their neighbourhood be protected.
What's amusing is that the signs were all in front of monster homes, built by tearing down the original small houses* and rebuilding as big a mansion as possible. If you look along Bellehaven Crescent and Windy Ridge Drive, there are only a few of the original houses left. (18 Windy Ridge looks original in the satellite view, but in Street View it's been torn down.)
https://www.google.com/maps/@43.7310207,-79.2215978,419m/data=!3m1!1e3
*Small by modern standards — they were large back when they were built.
Cast-iron pots and pans work beautifully on an induction stove, as does any other cookware that has enough iron to be magnetic. My oval Le Creuset casserole pot does just fine, and you may be surprised what other pots and pans you already have that work on induction. The simplest way to test is to get a fridge magnet and put it on the pot. If it sticks, it will work on induction. The air in the house is markedly cleaner when cooking on it compared to gas, which is a nice bonus.
Indeed; cast iron and steel are the classical obvious materials for heating by magnetic induction (and BTW Greg will store Kh, so are emphatically the opposite of a good material for fast reaction on a gas hob).
Our induction stove boils water in the same kettle much faster than the old gas stove ever did. The only downside for us is not having a flat-bottomed wok, so I make stir-fry in a bigger cast-iron frying pan instead.
Charlie A possible electic heating option is a gaggle of oil-filled electric radiators in each room, with different trigger-temperature settings ... if it came to that. Cooking - nah. Even in it's present dilapidated state, nearer a million, at least - bonkers, isn't it? You do not have any music on your machine .... ( Hint to others: I tend to have Radio 3 playing & I'm list
Dropping gas: nope.
For one, in the US, at least, electic heating and hot water is THREE TO FOUR time more expensive than gas.
For another, as I've said, I want to have a gas line installed to the kitchen, so I can have a gas stove, as I already have gas heat and hot water. (Just got a new, good, 40 gal hot water heater, $1500, with labor.)
And from some cmts, as far as I'm concerned, some of you are REALLY well off, Friends on a techie mailing list were talking about gas stoves in the thousands of dollar range; I just looked, and the cheapest induction stove is over $1300, and well up from there, fast. I don't like the idea that when I do get a gas stove, of paying overr $600. Who's going to pay for the 50% of Americans who live on < $59k/yr (before taxes)? The GOP won't do anything but tax breaks... which means, since I'm on social security, and paying nothing, it won't help me get a hybrid, either.
Please remeember that in the US, a sudden medical emergency, with a you-pay bill of over $1k could bankrupt over 25% of the population.
So I'm sitting here, waiting for ideas other than crushing the billionaires, and The Revolution.
Greg For decades I considered a gas hob and electric oven the ideal for cooking. But when I moved to a village with no gas supply I found that the ceramic hob in my new house was better. All your cookware would work with a ceramic hob as long as it had a flat base. The only disadvantage is wok cookery since you have to use a flat bottomed wok. And induction hobs are now available with "bridges" which can link the cooking areas so that two or more areas can function as one. You can even use the whole area of the hob as one large heater. However I gave up making jam in pans a long time ago. Microwave ovens make better jam much more easily and in less time. But the big advantage of ceramic and induction hobs is that they're easy to keep clean.
And in answer to a different question (not yours) you char peppers under the grill (that's broiler to Americans).
Inregards to radiators.
Why would he not be able to keep his radiators? I am from another european country and know several people who have switched to heatpumps from gas, they had the boiler replaced and hooked to the the same existing pipes/radiators. Never heard about an issue with that.
Which means that you can't cook things that need taking off the heat immediately some stage is reached, which is one use of thin pans (which rapidly get warped). And you DON'T put hot cast-iron pans into cold water! I don't know how well induction hobs work on thin stainless steel pans.
To Mike Collins (#933): Yes, I know, but it's not as controllable; it was a bit of a joke. Actually, most of my use of the flame in that fashion is melting the ends of rope, cord etc., and similar substitutes for a blowtorch, which is why my use of propane/butane would go up. Not a big deal.
You are right, and it applies to the UK, too; the wealth inequality is obscene. And I speak as someone to whom those sums are something that I could just pay - which doesn't even get me into the top 2% in the UK.
No, revolutions are not nice to live through for anyone, and almost always start off by making things worse (1789, 1917 etc.), but we badly need them.
revolutions are not nice to live through for anyone, and almost always start off by making things worse (1789, 1917 etc.)
1776 as well, if you were a Loyalist, or black, or Indigenous…
Heteromeles @ 902: Biogas digesters have been a thing for awhile. Not quite hose up rectum, but a good way to turn methane into CO2 while getting a little work done.
Speaking of natural gas, one of the fun projects of the next decade is weaning cities off their natural gas pipes. Why is it so fun?
--Even in a young city like LA, turns out a lot of the pipes are old enough to leak. When someone drives around with a detector, things get embarrassing for the gas company.
--In new home developments, CO2 from burning natural gas is typically the #2 greenhouse gas source, after auto tailpipes. Pretty much every gas appliance has a decent electrical substitute, so there aren't great arguments for keeping gas when methane is such a nuisance.
--Then there's the fun of de-gassing a neighborhood. Most people will just shut off the gas at the gauge. But the pipes under the streets are still full of gas, and aging, and leaking. The real problem will come when there's only one house per block or less still on gas, and the gas company still has to maintain a large majority of the grid to supply these legacy customers. Keeping the pipes from really springing leaks is going to be hard at this point, because there's little income left to keep the system in repair. This is a general infrastructure problem whenever a system gets dismantled, whether it's irrigation ditches or neighborhoods in New Orleans mostly wiped out by Katrina.
That's going to be a problem. I have a gas clothes dryer, a gas hot water heater and a NEW1 gas stove. I'm not about to give them up. They work a lot better than their electrically powered predecessors.
About 20 years ago the Gas Company came through and replaced all the gas lines in my neighborhood. I think they did it throughout Raleigh, but I know for sure they did it here. The lines underground are flexible with a "rubberized" coating.
There has only been a single leak since they installed the new pipes. Earlier this year the contractor installing the piping & junction boxes for "Google Fiber" managed to nick the pipe. We were evacuated for about six hours, but I got to watch the Gas Company crew dig out the pipe down at the corner below my house and put a huge clamp on it to shut off the gas (I'm guessing they did the same UP the block on the other side of the cut).
1 Fairly new. I've lived in this house 46 years and I finally got the gas stove about a year & a half ago.
No, it just means that "take pan off the heat" is a literalism, rather than a metaphor for "turn heat off".
a bit insane to burn stuff inside your house.
I just spent a few days staying at a friend's place (lawfully!) and they share their kitchen with Timmy. "Timmy" is one of those indoor air quality monitors that measures CO2, HCO, VOCs and particulates, with a face icon as a summary. When Timmy starts crying you know things are bad.
Things that make Timmy cry centre on frying and using the gas stove instead of the plug in induction cooker. Frying on the latter is usually ok, unless you burn something. But just lighting the gas stove gives you CO2, CO and particulates on the other side of the room. (I have a portable CO meter and now my friend wants one too, to supplement the CO alarm). A nice stir-fry on the gas stove usually kicks the VOC count from <200 to over 2000 with from of that being HCO and some bonus particulates. All this with the range hood running and venting to the outside.
tearing down the original small houses and rebuilding as big a mansion
This is also the way in Sydney. Houses with frontage >= 12m sell at a slight premium in most council areas because they can have multiple dwellings built on them. Townhouses if it's a single property, block of flats if someone can buy two of them. But the usual pattern is to cover as much of the section as allowed with house, two storie high and dig parking underneath if that's profitable (ie, house price over about 1.5M) and spave the section to "reduce maintenance". Local governments hate this one weird trick... it means they have to provide infrastructure to support it, and deal with the effluvia that results. Just going from two flush toilets to six for the same number of people can double the sewer loading, and obviously something that big puts a lot of load on the electricity grid.
paws4thot @ 929: Indeed; cast iron and steel are the classical obvious materials for heating by magnetic induction (and BTW Greg will store Kh, so are emphatically the opposite of a good material for fast reaction on a gas hob).
I just checked. Refrigerator magnets won't stick to my "Visions" cookware. I just got a "Visions" double boiler. I do have a Le Creuset omelet pan & several cast iron skillets. Not going to give up my gas stove. I've also got a Chinese wok and it cooks a lot better on the gas stove than it ever did on my old electric stove.
The whole discussion about people here who are absolutely committed to burning fossil fuels at all costs is slightly disturbing. I like to think that at least the more intellectual side of humanity will act to see the species survive the next millennia but quite a few of you seem determined to convince me otherwise.
About the only saving grace is that you're honest enough to phrase it as "I DGAF about anyone else, I am not changing until I'm forced to" rather than the more common prevarications and denials that there's even a problem. But that's no longer refreshingly honest, it's just depressing. Business will continue as usual until the collapse, you're just hoping that happens after you die of other causes.
I'd prefer you have the guts to say "we must all change, I would rather die, so I will do that ASAP".
Just going from two flush toilets to six for the same number of people can double the sewer loading,
Cite needed. I know I don't go more often because I have 2 WCs to myself rather than sharing one. This is without this wierd Aussie idea that you can leave pee to accumulate until you pass solids (and what then if, because of your diet, the solids aren't brown?).
Moz It is NOT: "Burning fossil fuel at all costs" Its just that these supposed "Improvements" are going to COST US - in: money / time /FOOD QUALITY - in terms of replacing kit, quite serious sums of money, too! In my case, "the boss" spent a lot of money on seriously-good-quality cooking kit, that would suddenly be utterly useless - & I LIKE cooking using it - really good tools make any job you are doing, so much easier, right?
No. I was responding to the comment that 'induction-ready' pans hold a great deal of heat.
If you have ever cooked anything like that in a heavyish pan on ANY hob, you will know that simply removing it from the heat is Not Enough. And, in some cases, even putting a pan straight in cold water isn't, either. Hence the need for thin, often aluminium pans. It's a problem for anything other than gas or vaporised oil.
To Moz (#943): yes, I agree. My posts are simply pointing out that we shall have to make sacrifices.
Just going from two flush toilets to six for the same number of people can double the sewer loading
I'd be surprised at that. Increasing the number of separate showers might increase the water loading — if everyone can shower at the same time there's not as much pressure to get out of the washroom so the next person can take their turn. My neighbour regrets getting a tankless water heater, because now her three sons take longer showers — she said with a tank at least it ran out of hot water so they came out when the water started running cold…
OTOH, upsizing the house means more people can live there. It's not uncommon here to have multiple families (or one extended family, depending on how you count it) in the same really big house. Which does increase the sewer loading from the original three bedroom designed for 2 adults and 2-4 children…
whitroth @ 932: Dropping gas: nope.
For one, in the US, at least, electic heating and hot water is THREE TO FOUR time more expensive than gas.
For another, as I've said, I want to have a gas line installed to the kitchen, so I can have a gas stove, as I already have gas heat and hot water. (Just got a new, good, 40 gal hot water heater, $1500, with labor.)
And from some cmts, as far as I'm concerned, some of you are REALLY well off, Friends on a techie mailing list were talking about gas stoves in the thousands of dollar range; I just looked, and the cheapest induction stove is over $1300, and well up from there, fast. I don't like the idea that when I do get a gas stove, of paying overr $600. Who's going to pay for the 50% of Americans who live on
Please remeember that in the US, a sudden medical emergency, with a you-pay bill of over $1k could bankrupt over 25% of the population.
So I'm sitting here, waiting for ideas other than crushing the billionaires, and The Revolution.
I looked at those $1500 gas stoves. Lots of cool bells & whistles.
I bought my stove at Lowe's Home Improvement. It's a 5 burner Frigidaire. I bought it during their annual July appliance sale and I remember getting it for about $600 (discounted from something like $750). I did the hook-up myself.
You could probably get something similar for about what you paid for your new water heater (including labor). Since the July appliance sales are over for this year, you've got about 11 months to save up for the new stove if you start now.
Interesting links, thanks. Re the "UK and Ireland among five nations most likely to survive a collapse of global civilization, study suggests" stories, the paper is interesting(well, amusing at least), but the weight of the "isolation" metric isn't properly justified. (I have a paperback book on a book shelf from 1970(read it later), The Coming Dark Age (Roberto Vacca). It didn't age well, though it made a few interesting arguments. Global heating is rather stronger and more existential, though.) An Analysis of the Potential for the Formation of ‘Nodes of Persisting Complexity’ (Nick King, Aled Jones, Global Sustainability Institute, Anglia Ruskin University, 21 July 2021, Open Access) Re the top 5 list, New Zealand, Iceland, United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland, Gulf Stream and UK/Ireland has been in the news: Observation-based early-warning signals for a collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (Niklas Boers, 05 August 2021)
(via Ocean current system seems to be approaching a tipping point (August 5, 2021))
Black Holes can emit data Obvious wordplay is obvious but I can't help it: "Black- Sholes can leak money"
The UK shares our North American grey squirrels (sorry about that). (My father used to live catch them and paint their tails yellow with florescent yellow paint and release far away. Never had a returnee.) This is about fox squirrels (Sciurus niger), but interesting (paper is paywalled though): Leaping squirrels! Parkour is one of their many feats of agility (August 5, 2021, University of California - Berkeley)
I think they did it throughout Raleigh,
Nope. The main distribution line down my street for the area is steel. Stainless I suspect but it was installed 1961 or earlier.
Just to weigh in to the induction cooking conversation, I have gas at home, which is generally great.
EXCEPT I have a Kuhn-Rikon 12L Hotel pressure cooker (intended for large amounts of beef stock to then be reduced to a glaze) which is a titanium/steel alloy.
It's the perfect capacity but the material is SO sensitive to fluctuations in temperature that I can't leave it unattended - need to stand over it and keep adjusting the temperature to keep it in the sweet spot.
I've got an induction hob purely for the reason that the temperature should be constant enough for me to set up some stock to cook and have the luxury of being able to do anything else but watch it for the next 4-6 hours.
Haven't tested it yet, but hopefully my theory is correct.
Here's some news:
1.a. Starlink had a download speed 97.23 Mbps and latency of 45 ms compared to 115.22 Mbps and 14 ms average for the US https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-starlink-internet-elon-musk-speed-test-broadband-2021-8
b. While the US is worse, in the UK "The proportion of homes without internet access appears to have fallen from 11% in March 2020, as the UK entered lockdown, to 6% of homes – around one and a half million – in March this year." I wonder what the average download speeds are in the UK? https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/latest/media/media-releases/2021/digital-divide-narrowed-but-around-1.5m-homes-offline
India is ready to export the Brahmos supersonic cruise missile to ASEAN countries, starting with the Philippines. This missile may not be able to sink aircraft carriers, but it can sink most other warships, US or Chinese. This should hopefully bring balance to the South China Sea https://www.financialexpress.com/defence/indo-russian-brahmos-missile-to-be-exported-to-the-philippines-check-details/2206231/
Astra is planning to launch Aug 27, making it the 3rd Western SSLV (not counting Pegasus and Minotaur). Below are the Chinese SSLVs and (successful,total flights): Long March 11: (11,11) Hyperbora-1: (1,3) Kaizhou: (11,13) Ceres-1: (1,1) Kaituozh-2: (1,1) Jielong-1: (1,1)
Japan also has SS-520-5 with 2 successful flights
RocketLabs is planning on launching the CAPSTONE lunar cubesat later this year https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/rocket-lab-will-launch-its-first-moon-mission-from-new-zealand-in-late-2021/ar-AAN4Min?ocid=msedgntp
Falcon Heavy is slated to launch both Europa Clipper and Psyche
China will activate its Thorium reactor next month. https://www.livescience.com/china-creates-new-thorium-reactor.html
Since RocketLabs is going public via SPAC, here's a summary of the company's status https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/07/rocket-lab-not-yet-close-to-profitability-proxy-statement-reveals/
I wouldn't be too worried about the lack of profitability. It'll take years for them to reach the point where they break even, and they've had 18 successful flights out of 21
China is progressing with its own reusable rockets: the Tianlong-1 and Hyperbora-3 vehicles. Any resemblance to the Falcon rockets is purely coincidental. /s https://twitter.com/AJ_FI/status/1419294433296662533 https://spacenews.com/chinese-rocket-company-space-pioneer-secures-major-funding-ahead-of-first-launch/
China is making progress with Maglev. This technology should reduce the advantage planes have when it comes to speed: " At 600 kph, it would only take 2.5 hours to travel from Beijing to Shanghai by train - a journey of more than 1,000 km (620 miles). By comparison, the journey would take 3 hours by plane and 5.5 hours by high-speed rail." https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-unveils-600-kph-maglev-train-state-media-2021-07-20/
China is cracking down on video games, calling them "spiritual opium". I wonder if Xi has come across the modern Catholic view with regards to porn and video games: "Young people are not getting married because online porn and video games satisfy their sexual and social needs." https://www.reuters.com/technology/tencent-falls-after-china-media-calls-online-gaming-spiritual-opium-2021-08-03/
I hear the rich are very tasty this time of year.
My grandmother made delicious food on her electric stove. You just have to learn to cook differently.
Eat the Rich is one of my favourite films...
I've never seen the film, I just think it's a good idea.
You'd probably enjoy the film, then :)
China is making progress with Maglev.
I've ridden the Shanghai maglev, which was a venture with Germany's Transrapid. The route was too short to achieve the maximum design speed of 500 km/h, only reaching 431 km/h before we had to start decelerating to stop.
The plan was always to use maglev to substitute for short-haul air traffic, as over a decade ago it was obvious that demand for fast transport would exceed capacity.
Basic design looks similar to the German train: a steel guideway with a T cross-section, with the train having both lift and alignment magnets and driven by a linear motor. (Note that the lift magnets use attraction to the steel guideway, rather than repulsion from electromagnets in the track, to suspend the train; similarly the alignment magnets also use attraction to keep the train aligned with the guideway.)
Maglevs are really quiet; there's no engine noise, so it's just the whoosh of displaced air. Energy costs are pretty low: the lift magnets require less than the air conditioning, and propulsion is efficient.
Sadly the search space is a horrid mess of "how many toilets do I need" and "how to save water" information. Even the "26% of household water use is for flushing" type pages don't cite sources. I'm unfortunately going to do the same because I can't even remember where I saw the report on the topic. Probably a Melbourne water board publication during the drought a few years ago... but good luck with their website.
https://www.melbournewater.com.au/search?search=statistics
IME the people for whom more toilets is important are much more likely to flash every time, including those times they drop something into the toilet to get rid of it. And as someone who has seen water bills for my house when I rented it out... the difference between water misers, somewhat careful people and DGAF is more than an order of magnitude.
http://chartsbin.com/view/44463 has some numbers.
FWIW there's a lot of complete garbage stats out there for water use, where (for example) someone looks at the water use of feedlot cattle in the US, scales that to the number of cattle in Australia and says that's the water use of the Australian beef industry. So it takes a lot of digging.
average download speeds
Not a knock against you but I hate averages for things like this. AT&T offers both DSL and Fiber. So you can get up to 25Mbps (give or take) or up to 1000Mbps. With the latter offered in steps of 100, 200, 500, or 1000. Or similar.
Then you also get uploads vs. downloads. Work at home with 5Mbps upload for video can suck if you have an adult or two plus 1 to 4 kids at home.
I want to see medians. Or better yet give me percentile breakdowns in steps of 10% or 20%.
And tying it back to where it started, a gut remodel / tear down in the US will some non trivial number of times replace a house of 4 gallon per flush toilet(s) with 1.8 gallon per flush toilet(s).
Why not keep radiators?
Heat pumps literally pump the heat from the inside to the outside or from the outside to the inside.
The amount of energy they use to do that depends very much on the difference in temperature between the inside and outside. If you are heating the air in the room, the difference is small and the energy needed is also small. If you're heating water that you then pass through radiators, the water needs to be heated to about 60 degrees. That means that even if it's 10 degrees outside, and you only want to heat the room to 20 degrees, the heat pump sees a 50 degree temperature difference. That means it needs to use (very roughly) 5 times as much energy to move the heat up 50 degrees as it would have used to move it up 10 degrees. To move the same amount of heat per unit time it needs to be 5 times as powerful as well. Which makes it 5 times as expensive to buy, 5 times larger, 5 times more disruptive to the fabric of the house, 5 times larger electrical supply and 5 times more costly to run.
About the only benefits of retaining the radiators is to allow EC to exclaim that he's not going to spend 10 000 pounds remodelling his house and upgrading the electrical supply to put in a heat pump (none of which is needed if you just install a small air to air reverse cycle aircon). It also allows people to say "I know someone who put in a heat pump and it was terrible". Which is handy if you want to continue to burn fossil fuels and you need some sort of justification for yourself.
The whole discussion about people here who are absolutely committed to burning fossil fuels at all costs is slightly disturbing. I like to think that at least the more intellectual side of humanity will act to see the species survive the next millennia but quite a few of you seem determined to convince me otherwise.
That is the problem, isn't it? I'd point out that SFF is in many ways the literature of the Boomers and the Xers (us, in other words), and we're the ones in large part responsible for this mess, helped along of course. Who else is so defined by "greed is good" and "conspicuous consumption?"
The flip side of this is that the kids coming out of college right now want us out of the way pronto. While I don't blame them, unfortunately, they're not seasoned enough yet to really grapple with the horrid mess we've made of things. Booting the wise old enviro-coots who've been restraining the monsters for decades really isn't the brightest thing to do.
Anyway, I cooked for a couple of decades on NONINDUCTION electric stoves, and they worked fine. As Troutwaxer says, it's adjusting for recipes, not throwing your pots out. And yes, I did check, and NON-INDUCTION electric appliances are as cheap or cheaper than comparable gas ones. Induction is the top of the line, so when you compare gas and induction, you're comparing Volkswagens and Porsches.
About the only halfway reasonable arguments for continuing to use gas are: --arguing with one's spouse about how to rebuild a kitchen in a space that's difficult to optimize (my excuse. I'll point out that it's massively cheaper to get a single induction burner, an instant pot, an electric kettle, and other appliances than to figure out how that messed up hunk of dyed granite should be expensively removed. Bad design metastasizes) --Worrying about the electricity going off for days in Santa Ana weather (a reasonable concern in much of rural California now, because power lines have sparked a lot of huge fires) --You're generating biogas on your farm, and you need a use for the methane you're making.
and we're the ones in large part responsible for this mess, helped along of course.
Yes. No.
Our parents and grandparents (born before WWII) took the approach that there wasn't anything wrong with generating prodigious amounts of waste and tossing it "over the hill" or "down in the gully".
We thought we did great by getting the crap (mostly) out of the water and not dumping lead, mercury, and everything else in the "big hole we'll cover later".
The problem with our generation, like the previous one, is that we don't like to admit the NEWLY noticed problems are caused by OUR habits. We did recyling. We switched from leather to plastic based faux leather. Our cars get 30mpg instead of 15mpg. Didn't that take care of things? And the up and coming generation is not really there yet. Especially outside of first world counties. (Define that as you wish.)
On cooking, here in Finland a gas stove is a rarity in urban areas. I think you can still get gas in the Helsinki area (not even as sure about other cities), but there are not that many places where you can get it, and not that many users. It's more common in summer cottages, perhaps single houses, and of course in RVs and caravan trailers. These mostly work with gas bottles instead of gas lines from a company (obviously in the case of mobile cooking places...)
There are also a lot of gas barbecues, in my circles they seem to be the most common real choice - some people have electric ones for use on balconies, though.
The usual hob is an electric one. The 'traditional' one is the cast-iron plate type. We got ours replaced with an induction one just a couple of months ago. It seems that induction is nowadays the high-end choice. The old type is cheap so gets installed by default, then you have to pay extra to get the other electric types. Ceramic hobs were somewhat of a thing but from what I can see induction is more common nowadays. Obviously people do not get new ones that often, so the turnover is small. (Our kitchen was last renovated in 1997...)
I'm used to cooking with the slow and unreactive hobs. I've also used gas sometimes on holidays, so it's workable, but I don't like it that much, see reasons from Moz in @940. Induction is nice and fast, so it approximates gas, for me. It was more expensive, but renovating the whole kitchen was even more expensive, so it didn't really matter at that point. We had one pot which didn't work with the new hobs, I think it was mostly copper inside. Hundred years old cast iron pan works fine, as does the flat-bottom wok pan, and all the others.
I've had to learn to make everything ready before turning the stove on, but that's not really a problem. The fast control is fun, though boiling water still takes some time. Our flat only has one electrical phase for the stove, so it's not as fast as it could be. There will probably be some renovation to get three phases to the apartment, so that'd make it faster.
Anyway, for me as long as I don't have to burn wood to cook I'm fine. Gas would be sub-optimal at this point, and I don't see a situation where I'd need to use it except on special occasions, and I can work with electric hobs. I now have a good system which I hope doesn't need replacement for at least twenty years.
Plastic.
How can we live in anything better than the 1820s and get rid of all but trivial amounts of plastic?
I just setup a network for some spaces in a warehouse built around 1905. Multiple bays & floors, an alley between them, some businesses, some residences. I had to order a small amount of networking bits.
Just how do we get rid of all or most the plastic in anything dealing with modern networking. Wire insulation, jacks, enclosures, packaging. Oh my the packaging. Blanks for unused keystone openings are plastic. They came in individual plastic bags. With 25 of those in a bigger bag. And that bag in a box with seal air bags inside of cardboard. Now much of the packaging can be changed away from plastic but the rest?
And our low cost food systems are based on plastic. Without it food costs will skyrocket.
Greg, you are obviously not going to switch to an induction hob unless natural gas ceases to be available.
Funny you should mention that.
And right on cue, UK naturals gas benchmark NBP settles today at its highest level in more than 15 years. And Dutch TTF (the EU natural gas benchmark) hits an all-time high | #EuropeEnergyCrunch https://twitter.com/JavierBlas/status/1423320869166854149 Javier Blas, Twitter, Aug 5th, 2021
It's worth tracking his tracking of this - >100 has never happened in the UK during Summer before this year.
They "whys" to it are complex, but, essentially: over 100 in summer (least demand, and the UK hasn't had a particularily cold summer) is bad news once Santa Clause turns up.
We've got a gas line to the house but it is capped as we don't have anything for it in the house. My understanding is that gas came to our neighbourhood about 10 years before we did.
Stove and hot water are electric, and we also have baseboard electric heating. On top of that we have a wood pellet stove. It heats well enough but has a fair number of moving parts which I've had to switch out over the years. The manufacturer went bankrupt a decade ago so spare parts are available only through Ebay and not cheap.
I've learned a lot about pellet stoves, but the biggest lesson is that once this one dies for good I'll never have another. I'll likely install a gas fireplace and (perhaps) a heat exchanger. Meanwhile I've got upgrading the attic insulation and windows on the to-do list.
I worked with gas stoves when I was a short order cook, but honestly almost never in a home. One learns how to work with what one has. For grilling I use the propane BBQ out on the deck, year round. Honestly I have no desire to install gas with all the risks and hazards that go along with it, now that I've spent 40 years cooking on an electric stovetop. I'm also looking to burn as little carbon fuels as possible (while still occasionally grilling a steak or salmon).
Ok, not sure about squirrel commentary, other than if your paps painted a male squirrel's tail luminous yellow, the reason it didn't come back is because it died of exhaustion in mating season:
https://www.welcomewildlife.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Fox-squirrel-tail.jpg
The brighter, the bushier and the more flagrant the tail, the more "poon-tang" said Monsieur Squireel gets. So... your father essentially super-charged a breeding program artificially. There's a PHD in that! And, ironically, he was responsible for so many many more squirrels than he imagined.
Humans: not great at unforeseen consequences, even on the micro level.
S1: "I got nabbed mate, was raiding this chump's bird feeder and he grabbed me!" S2: "Aww, man, that blows: what he do, try to hit you with a spade or set the dags on you?" S1: "Nah, this dude was messed up, took me into a little dark basement room, got out this tin of paint and a real sick look to his face" S2: "... this don't sound good blud" S1: "And then... he put me in a vice, ass up, and grabbed the root of my tail" S2: "Blud.. this is dark stuff, humans don't do this shit normally" S1: "And.. then he painted my tail, like so" flashes the squirrel equivelent of the biggest cock you've ever seen and then drove me into the forest and set me among all the ladies S2: "...." S1: "Yeah..." S2: "So... why you never go back?" S1: "Maaan, this cat had tins and tins and tins of paint. Take the luck, don't push the Devil too hard going back and getting greedy"
~
For the record, "Moon over Soho" is not the first book to wyrd cat-girl sexuality (he's too vanilla to do cat-boys, his are (yawn) cat-men-tigers oc into a kink that's a magically created crime against Humanity, but it went there. We're really hoping Mr B. Aaronovitch doesn't get "Rowling'd".
~
"...has a type" "YUCK"
~Hey, there's only a certain flexability you get doing a mammal body, and you didn't understand the meta-fucking, so polite advice: you know shit all about sex, magjick and squirrels.
You should probably focus more on the Men painting the Tails/Tales and Promising Things[1] and unleashing entirely unforseen consequences, which is what we took Mr B's morality tale (ooh Medaeval) to mean.
[1] Subject is too intelligent to "fall for this". Direct quote, one of your OPs, KGB honey-pots were never solely the purview of the USSR, were they?
"...has a type" "YUCK"
The meta-commentary here is that [redacted] are "getting up to speed" from their rather byzantine origins (locked away for soooo long) and hungrily devouring Minds to garner language.
It's like Natural Gas: you might want to blame the evil Ruskies, but it's not really about that.
And yes, unlike our imaginary Squirrel Chat, that's two [redacted] talking. They sure as shit ain't Mammals, either, although they're working hard on the old 'interfaces / interfractions / interdimensions' of it.
"BABYLON"
H discussion about people here who are absolutely committed to burning fossil fuels at all costs Sorry, you still don't get it. I have investigated putting solar panels up on my approx W-facing main roof or the approx S-facing blank wall ... THE COST (!) & the return on that expenditure are simply not worth it - it's rigged against small homeowners & for the big power companies, who have tory friends. Conversions exist for older petrol/diesel cars, right ... about £35k for my Land-Rover ... maybe not? "Oh you can get a new, small car, instead" - ... Which I then have to take to the garage to service, won't carry big loads, etc etc etc .... And, of course, purchasing the L-R back in 2003 was an environmentally-positive decision ... like never, ever, buying another car again. IIRC, Heat Exchangers are ridiculously expensive &/or difficult to retrofit, here at least.
I get the distinct impression that the whole set-up is rigged against the little, private person, so that making environmentally desirable choices is MORE expensive - & I suspect you might agree?
Greg, I have spent most of my life working myself into a situation where I can say with confidence that your unfortunate choices are absolutely not the only ones that can be made. Yes, it's hard. No, it's definitely possible. Yes, it's expensive, but the money you save by not doing painfully stupid shit will go a long way to covering the cost of doing the right thing.
Unfortunately it would require a complete about face on your core personality: you need to stop looking for reasons to commit suicide and start looking for reasons to live.
Plastic is a whole other problem. Let's talk about building. The plastic built into the building is often less than half the total expended during the project, and both can be significant... think tonnes rather than kilogrammes. Some of it ends up in the soil of the site and surrounds, often in the form of sawdust or sanding dust from building. Sometimes plastic is a big win, like plastic plumbing instead of lead pipes, sometimes it's a giant loss like vinyl siding, but sometimes it's hard to know. And there's professionals who do that kind of sustainability analysis for a living, specialising in the construction industry.
There are many options and they are very location specific. Saying "use blocks of granite for the exterior, they last forever" works for Scotland but doesn't apply to Aotearoa for seismic reasons and Australia for availability reasons. OTOH I gather there are various types of mud house all over the UK as well as all over anglonesia. Some of them have lasted quite well (kiloyears, not the 5-7 years you get as a building warranty).
And there are modern fun materials, like OSB, sprayfoam, hempcrete, ecofoams, glass fibre reinforced concrete (GFRC) and many, many others. The trick is picking winners, and that's where most of us are better off choosing to follow the bleeding edge and use stuff that's been around for a few decades, albeit often with modern twists. Modern GFRC, for example, has solved the alkaline embrittlement problem and is now expected to last more than the few hectayears some of it already has.
Hempcrete is a fun combo of ancient (lime mortar and chopped hemp) with modern rendering and design, making it easy enough for owner-builders to use but well understood enough to pass stringent certifications like Australia's "flame zone" ratings, or Germany's PassiveHaus. My girlfriend is an eco building designer specialising in hempcrete. With any luck she'll be qualified to certify my granny flat as PassiveHaus by the time it's built. And yes, there is only one person like that in Australia... self-doxxing complete so here's the website: www.shelterbuildingdesign.com.au
This is another one of those circle things: I met her because I hang round with eco-geek types who follow modern building technologies, and she's interested in me partly because of that. So something that seemed difficult, risky and expensive now seems like the obvious solution... apparently I'm going to owner-build a hempcrete granny flat.
In the UK, there are plenty of 'mud' houses (clunch) that are a good many hundreds of years old and still in use - the keys are that they much have a durable brick base, and the roofing and rendering must be well maintained. Timber, lath and (lime) plaster houses last as long, IF the timber is good quality and they are well-maintained; the lath and plaster may need replacing every couple of hundred years if the woodworm get into the laths.
That video I referred to in #972 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meJp2lj_NnM and it only runs 8.5 minutes.
I cooked a lot on electric hobs, as did my wife and many of the other serious cooks I know. We ALL find that gas is a lot better, though we can (sometimes with difficulty) cook almost everything on either electric rings or gas. Apparently, most professional chefs share that opinion.
You missed insulation for fibre, copper and power. I really don't want to have to think about making that out of textiles again!
I think you were aiming at me but pointed to Greg but either way.
I wasn't be exhaustive. Just pointing out how much plastic was in the upgrade/install of what is an almost trivially small network. Physically spread out but only 4 APs in total.
I look around my house at the TV, AC, kitchen, and there's plastic or petroleum products everywhere. (ICs are toast without it.) And most let us live a nice comfy lift. In so many ways there are no substitutes. At least not that don't require metal smelting in large quantities. Or chopping down a forest or 100. And with the substitutes you're looking at moving from 1820 to 1880 or so.
And let us all remember that a major engine of the 1820 or so era was whale oil. Oops. Can't really go back to that one.
I suggest that you avoid indulging in gratuitous and petty attempts at abuse, especially when you get your facts so spectacularly wrong. You could also try rereading the moderation policy.
I am not going to bother correcting the nonsense you posted, but essentially none of it applies to me.
What almost everybody (I don't mean you) seems to miss is that the time for a short-haul trip is dominated by connectivity, not speed, and it is surprising how far that reaches. When flying from the south of England to Scotland is faster than other methods, it is more often because it has better connectivity than because the main trip is faster. Exactly why most people completely ignore the 'overheads' of such trips when thinking about the times is beyond me. It's a bit over an hour's flying time from my nearest airport to Edinburgh (300 miles), and 5 hours by train, but the total times are much the same and the latter is less hassle.
500 KPH maglevs are good for willy-waving, but I suspect 300 KPH ones wouldn't actually be much slower.
paws @ 970 # 961 Never mind the increased volume of ejecta if one has a healthy diet with lots of fresh vegetables & the fibre in them .... ( Guess how I know this? )
Moz SLIGHT Problem - it's a variation on Vimes' Boots I need to get the money in the first place, to do this/these things ....
Sorry, I misquoted you. Not 10 000 pounds. You actually said that having a heatpump would require: "demolishing and rebuilding [which] would destroy most of our architectural heritage".
But I'm also drawing a line under that as OGH is deeply bored with heatpump discussion.
And even that was about the UK in general, NOT my personal situation, which is different.
There are also a lot of gas barbecues, in my circles they seem to be the most common real choice - some people have electric ones for use on balconies, though.
Gas barbecues are illegal to use on balconies here. Which doesn't stop anyone, and apparently as simply storing one on a balcony isn't illegal the only way someone can be charged is if the police actually witness them cooking — which is difficult from the ground when the person is multiple stories high.
When I was living in Edmonton there was a fire started by someone BBQing, which displaced a quarter of the residents of a multi-story building.
Exactly why most people completely ignore the 'overheads' of such trips when thinking about the times is beyond me.
I always look at door-to-door travel times when planning a trip, which means adding an hour to get to the airport and two hours to check in, get through security, etc. (because I don't want to risk missing my flight).
In Canada, though, taking the train almost invariably means extra travel time to get to the station, because most train stations are no longer located downtown but are somewhere out in the boonies. Toronto is an exception, but as I'm in a suburb of Toronto it's actually faster for me to get to the airport than it is to get to Union Station.
In terms of door-to-door travel time, visiting rocketpjs in BC is equivalent to visiting my niece in Beijing. The final train-bus-ferry-bus with associated waiting* to cover the final 50 km actually takes longer than flying the first 3400 km.
*Because unlike other places like Holland, there's no scheduling coordination between transit modes.
Yes. I have had that trouble with airports and even railways (including in Markham!) The worst are ones miles from anywhere with a bus service that may or may not run at unspecified times (or no bus service) and no taxi rank.
But, for international airports, I also allow an hour to get OUT of it, and that's not always enough :-(
Gas barbecues are illegal to use on balconies here.
They're not strictly forbidden here, and even the housing association rules nowadays mostly recommend not using them instead of forbidding them outright. Making an open fire is a no-no, so portable barbecues (like this https://shop.primepartner.eu/fi/a/elise-pikagrilli-25-x-31cm-hiilta-noin-600g ) are forbidden, and coal barbecues are somewhat difficult.
However, there should be as little fire risk as possible, so the recommendation is of course to use electric barbecues on balconies. The enforcement problem is of course same. Our balcony does not even have a power outlet, so using an electric one would mean running a power cable from inside to outside, and I think that's kind of risky, too.
Personally I don't need a barbecue that often, we can go visit friends a couple of times a year to do that.
I have no idea how common are fires from balcony barbecues here, though.
Electric barbecues are as good as gas without the need to store and refill gas cylinders. I have an electric barbecue for use at home and a portable charcoal barbecue for trips and the rare occasions when we have lots of guests. The taste of barbecued food is the same whether you use gas or electricity
Yeah, I don't really care either way. I'm really fine even with making food on a regular stove. ;)
I think our oven has a barbecue setting, too, but that's going to be a bit different, I think. I think I've used it a couple of times to bake bread, but never for properly barbecueing stuff. The bread has been naan-type bread ('bread-type bread', yes) or focaccia.
From Dumbarton, maybe 45 minutes walk to station plus train to Glasgow Central. For Glasgow airport either 15 to 20 minutes to the airport by taxi or 90 by train + bus. (as above into Glasgow, then bus back to airport) Having done that, add 2 hours for checkin, security theatre and boarding queue.
But not if you use charcoal or (as I do) wood :-) And I can guarantee that the latter is cropped sustainably, because it comes from fallen or pruned wood from either my brother's or my garden.
I have no idea how common are fires from balcony barbecues here, though.
Not too common in most places. But if things go wrong they can go spectacularly wrong. And thus the prohibitions.
You may be correct for Europe, but there's a few reasons that the article chose Beijing-Shanghai as an example.
It is the busiest and most profitable high speed rail route in China, if not the world. Despite this, the complimentary air route was the 7th busiest in the world in 2018. I'm using 2018 numbers as the baseline for this discussion
Using your metrics, this means that train travel from Beijing to anywhere in core China (excluding Tibet, Xingjiang, etc). This includes Beijing-Guangzhou, a long standing goal for high-speed rail buffs. It's not perfect: Guangzhou to Harbin is still not competitive, but you get the idea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China#/media/File:China_high-speed_rail_network.png
If you look at the busiest air routes in 2018, Tokyo to: Sapporo, Fukuoka, and Osaka were the 2nd, 4th, and 13th busiest in the world. Traditional Shinkansen already service those routes. Btw, Sydney to Melbourne was 3rd. It should be noted that the busiest US route is 29th (NYC-LA), and there are no European routes. The busiest such route was Madrid-Barcelona, probably used by tourists who wanted to see both cities in the same trip?
The busiest air route in the world is Seoul-Jeju Island. That island is South Korea's Hawaii. It has almost 50% more travelers than the second busiest air route, and 3 times more than the NYc-LA air route. There have been tons of proposals to build a tunnel from South Korea to the island, but traditional high speed trains are too slow to make the idea practical. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_passenger_air_routes
BTW, here were the 20 busiest air routes in Europe in 2016: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/articles/europe-busiest-air-routes/
Some of them look like it would be beneficial to add faster trains.
PS: "Using your metrics, this means that train travel from Beijing to anywhere in core China" is now competitive with air travel.
It's nothing to do with where it is, but the distance and connectivity needed, and (most importantly) whether the total trip times are dominated by that leg (*). That's just over 1,000 km, which would be 80 minutes' difference (300-500 KPH). While I agree that is generally called short-haul, some airlines would call it medium-haul. Whatever. I wasn't being clear. Yes, it is an important factor at that sort of distance. Paris-Berlin is rather shorter, but it would still be a significant difference.
(*) Which I simply don't know.
Some of them look like it would be beneficial to add faster trains.
Bergen to Oslo for instance?
It's a very pretty route that, but I suspect the Norwegian mountain ranges mean that getting an LGV-class line in would be difficult.
(I've been on a TGV crossing the Swiss border where I could see the other end of the train almost opposite our window. TGVs really don't like near-hairpin bends.)
I was thinking Berlin <--> Frankfurt, Paris <--> Tolouse/Nice, Madrid <--> Barcelona, Berlin <--> Munich, possibly Rome <--> Catania and Copenhagen <--> Stockholm.
Btw, these statistics look at just one leg, and don't consider connecting flights. Also, Lonon <--> Dublin is much higher when you consider city pairs. Still, my focus was on East Asia, not Europe or the US. Sorry if I wasn't being clear. I don't know how practical it is to build a high-speed line from Hanoi to Saigon, or Jakarta to Surabaya (although the former was proposed for the BRI). It's a pity: a Singapore to Hong Kong high speed line would have been sweet (part of the original plan).
My biggest complaint with Europe is that the rail network still follows the Cold War boundary. There are very few high speed lines in Eastern Europe. Possibly those air routes will overtake the Western European routes after the pandemic subsides?
Alternatively, the Boring Company is less showy than Tesla or SpaceX. Who knows if they have anything useful?
Well, London to Glasgow by the West Coast Main Line is 401 miles, presently covered in just under 5 hours Euston to Central. If it could run at its service speed of 125mph, a Pendolino could cut that to more like 3.5 hours.
Against that, it takes roughly an hour from central London to Thiefrow, 2 hours for checkin, security theatre and boarding, an hour flight time, and 30 minutes from Glasgow airport to the city centre, which I make 4.5 hours. (BTW I have done this trip more than once)
Look on the bright side. If you live to 2100, HS2 might just about have reached Preston.
I got curious and looked up travelling from Toronto to Ottawa (450 km). Via Rail has a nice comparison chart: https://www.viarail.ca/en/explore-our-destinations/trains/ontario-and-quebec/toronto-ottawa
Problem is, that chart is very misleading. For one thing, it totally ignores getting to/from the train station. I flew that a couple of years ago for a weekend consultation (they were paying) and there were no long queues at the Island Airport (unlike Pearson), and security was minimal and swift. (Not to mention, working in the Island Airport was much easier than Pearson — no hordes of screaming children, just quiet businesspeople on their laptops, and free tea, coffee, and biscuits.)
So a flight is an hour, with an hour in front for checkin and security (so two hours). Train is 4.5 hours, plus you'll want to be there a bit early so more like five hours. Travel too/from airport/station is equally inconvenient.
Train could be faster if (a) freight didn't take priority, and (b) it stopped less so it spent more time at speed, but it will still be slower than the flight. The proposed high speed link with dedicated tracks and faster trains (177 km/h max) would cut travel time to 3.25 hours.
Driving is about five hours, door to door, so actually faster than the current train because you don't have to get too/from a station (and for me, Union Station is over an hour away by public transit, with a 20 minute walk with luggage as well). Also, you aren't left at the mercy of Ottawa's patchy public transit system, or Toronto's overcrowded one.
Talking of which First of all - EC ... I note that Parliamentary Powers are being sought for the HS2 extension to Crewe & Manchester ( Presumably with upgrades for N of Preston, to run faster? ) Second: Th IPCC report Third: COP 26 ... BoZo's misgovernment, full of symbols & posturing, no actual movement - I guess Fourth: As an indicator for the previous two: DfT & The Treasury are STILL RESISTING railway electrification. Yet more lying hypocrisy
I often think that Canada is uniquely suited for high speed rail, particularly a line strung from Calgary through to Quebec city. The distances are such that high speeds could be sustained between major cities.
The barriers are political, if we accept that air travel cannot continue as currently configured and the cost of doing so is very high.
Phase 2a to Crewe was approved by the Commons in 2019, but not submitted for Royal Assent until 2021 (I hear alarm bells). I have heard that about Phase 2b (west), which has an (optimistically) scheduled date of 2035 for completion, but Phase 2b (east) has been suspended sine die with instructions to do no work on it until it has been 'reconsidered'. Liverpool is still not even on the chart.
Given that, I think that 2100 is a fair estimate for Preston (or, with an eastern route, York). Assuming the UK doesn't collapse completely, of course.
Are the Governments taking climate change & pollution / emissions seriously? Well, all the delegates for COP26 are flying to Glasgow. Make your own mind up.
I often think that Canada is uniquely suited for high speed rail, particularly a line strung from Calgary through to Quebec city.
One of the political problems that will slow it down if the pressure to put stations in every little city the line passes through. Not so bad in the Prairies, but through eastern Ontario that would seriously slow down the trains.
(It already slows down Via Rail on the Toronto-Montreal run, which isn't even running high speed trains. Like the subway line, location of stations has more to do with political pressure than actual utility.)
One problem with evaluating the scope for high speed rail or maglev to replace domestic air travel is that some air travelers are flying to the airport, not the destination city, because they're on a connecting flight.
I refuse to use LHR or LGW, but if I didn't (like most Brits) then I'd be a frequent flyer on the Edinburgh/London routes. Not because I'd be visiting London, but because LHR (Heathrow) and LGW (Gatwick) are the national hub airports.
Similarly, you almost certainly won't get me to start using a hypothetical maglev connection between Edinburgh and Amsterdam or Paris because I mostly visit those cities to use AMS or CDG as a hub for onward travel.
I suggest that unless the high speed rail links connect to the main airports, and there's some sort of ticketed connection available (eg. the way it's possible to book some EU flag carrier airline tickets with a train sector on top) a lot of the airline traffic won't migrate.
Finally, I've taken the sleeper train from Sydney to Melbourne a couple of times and unless things have changed a lot there's a good reason why sane people fly instead (and if I have to make that trip again, I'll be flying too -- it's 550-650 miles by road and there's not a lot to see or do en route, as I discovered when the second railway journey was terminated by a landslide and I spent seven hours on a coach).
I was amazed at how quick and easy it was to get from Amsterdam to Schiphol - I think that you are mistaken, there. I haven't done Paris to CDG, but it looks pretty simple (it's on the RER B line) and not much slower. And that assumes that a maglev doesn't stop at the airports.
They are very unlike the abominations that are are the 'London' airports.
Well there's your answer: if you want to fly from London to Glasgow or Edinburgh, don't fly via LGW or LHR -- you want to fly out of LCY. Much closer to the centre of London, and much shorter queues, because it's a tiny wee toy airport rather than a monstrous hub.
(I used to fly EDI/LCY on CityJets, a low-cost affiliate of Air France who operated the route with BAe-146/RJ-85s, until they ran into financial trouble and shitcanned the route. Which then added an hour to my London/Edinburgh travel time by forcing me to switch to the ECML.)
Are the Governments taking climate change & pollution / emissions seriously? Well, all the delegates for COP26 are flying to Glasgow. Make your own mind up.
If they were serious about pollution/emissions, they wouldn't be holding COP26 in Glasgow. Forget the flying: the problem is holding an international conference w-a-y the hell away from the places all the delegates will be coming from.
A more sensible location (if they have to do it face-to-face at all) would probably be Berlin: within direct range by rail from the whole of the EU25, the UK, and Moscow. (Doable by rail from Beijing, too, although nobody would expect a head-of-state level delegation to spend 12 days riding the rails each way -- it'd be a horrible waste of very expensive time).
The US, Canadian, Aus, and NZ delegates would have to fly pretty much wherever it was held, unless air travel collapsed globally and we were back to sailing ships.
Paris Gare du Nord to CDG takes about 50 minutes, in my experience. Sometimes a bit longer. The trains stop everywhere, it's almost as bad as the Piccadilly Line out to Heathrow.
Schiphol to Amsterdam Central is about a 20-30 minute ride with trains every few minutes -- vastly better.
(But as I said, I mostly fly through those airports rather than visiting their cities.)
Charlie, the ECML could be at least 15, possibly 20 minutes faster if "they" ... (1) Built a fast loop-connection avoiding the Morpeth speed restriction ( 50 mph IIRC ) (2) Built a completely new line between approx Burnmouth & Cockburnspath, with steeper gradients but much larger-radius curvature.
train from Sydney to Melbourne a couple of times and unless things have changed a lot there's a good reason why sane people fly instead
At least you (probably) didn't have the prolonged pause at Albury/Wodonga to change over the rolling stock. That was one of the less entertaining features of interstate rail travel in Aus up into the 80s when the XPT service came in.
It's still operated by NSW rail, so while technically there is a BNE-MEL offering, as both Victoria and Queensland have currently declared all of NSW a COVID-19 hotspot, these passenger trains are not currently going outside the NSW border.
Mostly since the 80s rail has been around as expensive as flying anyway. Coaches have been the mainstay of low-budget travel for as long as I can remember, though budget air carriers have eaten into that quite substantially.
Re: Travel in the midst of global warming
A couple of questions:
Which modes are likely to be least affected and/or easiest (cheapest) to set up and maintain going forward? I'm guessing that the violent weather patterns are still ratcheting up.
I'm also guessing that there will be a 'pattern', i.e., some predictability except the most common prediction is to expect unpredictability. If so, then how do you plan/budget? Do you change how you build these conveyances - cheaper/simpler, easier to replace, etc.?
I seem to be seeing more articles about more regions promoting electric (vs. gas) autos. I'm not sure how electric cars compare in various driving/weather conditions -- most previous discussion that I recall seemed focus on battery life/mileage. I'm guessing someone here probably knows or could point me to reliable info. Thanks!
One problem with evaluating the scope for high speed rail or maglev to replace domestic air travel is that some air travelers are flying to the airport, not the destination city, because they're on a connecting flight.
And to the comment by Rocket about Canadian rail making too many stops.
In my very limited experience with traveling around Germany, I was impressed by the mix of local, medium, and long distance passenger rail. All electric. You could get on a local train ride it for up to 30 minutes as it made a stop every 10 miles or so then switch to a medium or long distance train. All on the same fare ticket you bought weeks earlier. And eventually we wound up at FRA airport.
As I said, my limited experience. I'm sure there are issues I didn't see.
Now to do such in the US would require all kinds of eminent domain actions that would be tied up in the courts for decades.
Driving vs. taking a plane.
I can fly "free" on one major US airline if there are empty seats. I can fly very cheaply on others. And I have a huge pile of miles that will let me "buy" a ticket if I want to make sure to get a seat.
I've discovered that my limit is about 4 or 5 hours. That or less and door to door it is better to drive. Plus I can take with me whatever I want. Like a cooler of food and drink or a collection of power tools.
And for some situations it is longer. From central NC to the wilderness of Penn State at State College PA is 7+ hours. Even though that long of a drive (you MUST pay attention driving through mountains) beats me down... It would take the same amount of time to fly as you "can't get there from here". And, again, I have MY car when I get there. Until last year this was an annual thing for me going to a conference.
Let's expand this question: driving vs train vs flying with all of these modes being electric. It seems that electric planes work better for Europe, due to the problem Charlie mentioned. Same with Australia, and likely the US. Not sure about Asia. Both electric aircraft, cars, and trains are poorly suited for long-haul travel. Too bad.
Now I recall, I have done CDG to Paris - yes, it's like the Piccadilly line (and no more comfortable), but it's fairly low stress and somewhat faster. I agree that a maglev would need to stop at CDG to be useful for catching a flight there.
Schiphol to Amsterdam is still faster and less stress than some of the Thiefrow terminal changes (yes, I agree with you, but I don't get the option).
But those pale into insignificance compared with the stroke-inducing nightmare that is transit at LAX - I would sooner change at Ulan Bator than ever go near that advertisement for needing a tactical nuclear device.
Coaches have been the mainstay of low-budget travel for as long as I can remember
One really annoying thing about NSW Countrylink trains is their approach to bicycles. Bicycles have to be in a box, and are grudge luggage - they will be mishandled and if there's any problem it will not be dealth with. I've seen someone run the box back and forth over the edge of the train door until a few loose items in the box fell out, onto the tracks, then the bike was thrown onto the platform and left for the owner to discover.
Outside NSW bikes mostly just go in luggage cars as they are, and at least once they "forgot" to charge me for the bike. The person taking my fare chatted about the bike, charged me $15 or so for my trip back to Melbourne, and helped me wheel my bike into the car and secure it.
But buses have been like that every time. I've had a driver rearrange a luggage compartment to get my quad in, while saying "no, no, leave it how it is, no need to take it apart to meet the rules, it'll be fine". And it was. Getting a trike back from Melbourne to Sydney I just rocked up to the bus depot (at a train station!) and told the ticket-seller that it was a bicycle. Bus driver loaded it in, stacked a few surf boards on top of it, and that was that. Getting the trike into a bike box to go on the train wasn't possible.
I'd be doubtful about a UK long distance coach being able to carry a recumbent trike (based on having helped drivers and loaders with hold luggage a few times).
I'm glad everyone's talking about transportation modes. It's sad we can't easily bring back efficient oceanic travel yet, and cruise ships emit more than planes on a per person per mile basis, reportedly.
While I haven't read the IPCC latest doom-scroll, I have been wondering about a science fictional question:
Supposing we pull off decarbonizing by 2030. What the heck does that actually look like? It's a whole lot of extraordinarily creative retrofitting most likely (squadrons of miniature nukes installed in gutted coal-fired plants to take advantage of existing cooling and power infrastructure, instead of a purpose built big nuke), no fusion (30 years from now is 21 years too late), electric appliances put into the holes left by non-electric appliances, etc. And it's a lot of mass scaling of stuff we know how to build that we can build rapidly (wind, solar, battery). Plus it's a metric fucking terror-watt of various, diverse, and semi-predictable disasters.
Oh, and it's like that coronavirus will be a normal part of life, much as that sucks.
It's also every permutation of the sunk cost fallacy, as people say that they've lived their lives with XXX, and no one' going to take it away from them because YYY.
So it's kind of a weird world. What I'm trying to figure out is how to frame this so that it's unambiguously better than the alternative.
"What I'm trying to figure out is how to frame this so that it's unambiguously better than the alternative."
I've been thinking about that for a really long time. Maybe what's required is an alternate reality kind of story; going back and forth between who the character is on one side and the other of the dimensional veil.
"It's also every permutation of the sunk cost fallacy, as people say that they've lived their lives with XXX, and no one' going to take it away from them because YYY."
That's true, but deceptive. The best example: look at the most popular airline routes. Seoul to Jeju is the exception. Most of the flights are domestic with 34 of the top 50 flying less than 1200 km. Even the connector airport idea Charlie mentioned seems to me to be a significant component only within the Western world, with the exceptions. Very few western countries are in the top 50 air routes. Even before the pandemic, most passenger flights were short-haul. Even if some are reclassified as medium when connections are taken into account, it doesn't change the fact that long-haul flights will remain a minority. You'd also be correct to point out that they've been increasing in absolute terms before the pandemic hit.
Even with cars, it took decades for SUVs to overtake sedans in the US. Tesla became popular because the type of long distance driving that critics were citing in 2014 remains a minority, no matter bow many anecdotes.
"Supposing we pull off decarbonizing by 2030. What the heck does that actually look like? "
Which country? Is it done globally? If so, I wonder how African or SE Asian countries will develop under those constraints? Also, define decarbonize. Does that mean net zero? No human emitted release of greenhouse gases, not matter how miniscule?
I would sooner change at Ulan Bator
Really. Ulan Bator was a horrible airport to be stuck in when our flight was delayed. Worse than a crowded un-airconditioned bus with no windows in a heatwave (which it somewhat resembled).
Another reason for keeping a gas stove: Your electricity comes from a gas powered plants so it’s more efficient to turn gas directly into heat than run it through a 50% efficient heat engine to turn it into electricity, then turn the electricity back into heat.
One more reason we decided to get rid of the gas appliances is the earthquake risk in BC. In the 1995 Kobe earthquake "Fire raged on and off for two days, and gas and water mains were ruptured." https://factsanddetails.com/japan/cat26/sub160/item863.html
BC also has hydro-electric power, so it's relatively clean.
Which country? Is it done globally? If so, I wonder how African or SE Asian countries will develop under those constraints? Also, define decarbonize. Does that mean net zero? No human emitted release of greenhouse gases, not matter how miniscule?
This is the sunk cost fallacy (we can't because....). The answers are: --Yes, global. Most countries are at worse risk than the developed ones. I don't think Vietnam wants to see the Mekong Delta underwater. And Kiribati's going to be underwater entirely. Development doesn't matter when everyone's dead or fled. --Decarbonize. The IPCC defined this, I think, https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/, so look it up yourself. In general, we've got about a decade's worth of CO2-equivalent emissions left at current rates. If we'd started bending the curve earlier, we'd be in better shape. --No carbon emissions? Can't even get there with total nuclear war with no human survivors. No, what decarbonization means is that as much or more is coming out of the atmosphere than is going in.
Seoul to Jeju Island. I was supposed to go there last year. Oh well.
Anyway, Jeju's the southernmost part of South Korea, on about the same latitude as San Diego. It's one of South Korea's major tourist attractions, after Seoul itself. There are also ferries.
Onefun factoid is that it's a popular honeymoon destination for South Koreans, starting in the 1970s. Since South Korea was rather strait-laced until recently*, many Korean newlyweds had not had sex ed in school or anywhere else. As a result, attractions like Loveland opened up on Jeju in 2004. Attempts to build one in Mainland China foundered in 2009, per Wikipedia.
*Possibly something about being conquered a few times in the 20th Century, perhaps. And/or being missionized in the 20th Century.
Even with cars, it took decades for SUVs to overtake sedans in the US.
And that was with lots of marketing push and cooperative laws to support them.
Your electricity comes from a gas powered plants
Not if you're decarbonized.
If it does, you're scrubbing CO2 out of the smokestack, which you couldn't do on a gas stove.
Once we’re decarburized the electric stove is clearly better. But at the present time it depends where your electricity comes from.
David L @ 948
Nope. The main distribution line down my street for the area is steel. Stainless I suspect but it was installed 1961 or earlier.
I don't know what the inside of the pipes are here. The outside is a yellow plastic of some sort and they were able to shut the gas off to make the repair by squeezing it flat with a big clamp. It had a screw like a pipe clamp. And after they made the repair the pipe sprang back to round when they removed the clamp.
I'm pretty sure the change-over came some time in the mid-1980s. Raleigh "inside the Beltline" used to be serviced by a gasometer located on Cabarrus St. I remember it being there when I first moved to Raleigh in 1967, and I don't remember when I first noticed it wasn't there any more, but it was after I moved into this house in Dec 1974 and I'm pretty sure it was after the new distribution pipes were installed in downtown Raleigh.
The new pipes were installed to allow higher pressure gas & the gasometer was removed at that time. It may be that gas pipes outside the Beltline in Raleigh was already suitable for the higher pressures. I remember they replaced my meter at the same time & the new meter has a pressure reducer.
https://www.legeros.com/ralwake/photos/weblog/pivot/entry.php?id=2876
Troutwaxer @ 952: My grandmother made delicious food on her electric stove. You just have to learn to cook differently.
My grandmother made delicious food on her coal burning range. So what!
My mom elected to get a gas stove as soon as she & my dad bought a house. Also a gas water heater & gas furnace (part of the reason they bought that particular house), plus a gas dryer. With four kids we washed a LOT of clothes and often they needed to be dried quickly so we could wear them to school that day. I learned to cook on that gas stove.
I can make delicious food on an electric stove. But I can make that delicious food more efficiently on a gas stove.
AuntyJack @ 953: Eat the Rich is one of my favourite films...
Too much fat and other unhealthy chemicals.
Worse than a crowded un-airconditioned bus with no windows in a heatwave (which it somewhat resembled).
No idea about Ulan Bator but getting OUT of LAX makes getting in look trivial. Under a 100' wide street for drop offs above. In the summer it's 85F to 95F. 4+ lanes of traffic (cabs and Ubers) doing 0-5mph. You're in a 3 sided box with lousy air quality year round plus heat and humidity in the summer. At least the drop offs for departures are on mostly open air.
LAX is in the wrong place. And due to politics didn't really connect to the highway system for decades. But now there is nowhere to move it unless you want to really move it 2 hours away or float it on the Pacific.
The airplane gates in general don't have the spacing to handle larger planes. So schedules have factored in that a 777 "here" means that nothing can be "there".[1] So when things don't happen on time everything goes nuts. My wife dealt with airline signage (the TV screens) for a while and it was a mess when dealing with OSO (Off Schedule Operations). Not to mention trying to get baggage onto the correct plane.
[1] The airport is land locked and the terminal buildings can't really expand in any directions. Look at a Sat view from a mapping site and you can see how it is just a bad idea to have the airport where it is now.
David L @ 1014: Driving vs. taking a plane.
I can fly "free" on one major US airline if there are empty seats. I can fly very cheaply on others. And I have a huge pile of miles that will let me "buy" a ticket if I want to make sure to get a seat.
I've discovered that my limit is about 4 or 5 hours. That or less and door to door it is better to drive. Plus I can take with me whatever I want. Like a cooler of food and drink or a collection of power tools.
And for some situations it is longer. From central NC to the wilderness of Penn State at State College PA is 7+ hours. Even though that long of a drive (you MUST pay attention driving through mountains) beats me down... It would take the same amount of time to fly as you "can't get there from here". And, again, I have MY car when I get there. Until last year this was an annual thing for me going to a conference.
I've looked into some international travel. I'd have to ship most of my "tools" by FedEx or DHL and have them held at the destination ... then ship them back when I was ready to come home.
Traveling here in the U.S. I can load them all in the back of my car ... and now even take my little dog along.
I like my gas cook top. I like the $1500 stove my daughter has that came with her house a few years ago.
I did not like the cheap crappy electric stoves / cook tops I used at various times in the past.
I'm more than willing to admit I'm comparing good/better gas cooking to lousy / mediocre electric cooking.
Buy convincing my wife to go induction will be hard.
But I'd much rather work with electrical wiring than gas plumbing.
S1: "And.. then he painted my tail, like so" flashes the squirrel equivalent of the biggest cock you've ever seen and then drove me into the forest and set me among all the ladies That was funny. (It was spray paint, but your version is better.) We were more respectful of wildlife than most. (There is a related story involving raccoons, that will not be shared, reasons.) Such pranks run in the family. I was told my mother's father at least once drilled a hole through a walnut and nailed it with a thin nail to the porch railing near the bird feeder. (I am a prankster too.)
KGB honey-pots were never solely the purview of the USSR, were they? You may have misinterpreted something relative to its temporal context? (Not sure. But yes, I've been an idiot.)
The meta-commentary here is that [redacted] are "getting up to speed" from their rather byzantine origins (locked away for soooo long)... Freedom. (Am a near-absolutist about that.) Interesting Times - poking through/thinking about AR6 Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis
But tasty and satisfying when minced and served with chips - comfort food for the downtrodden and dispossessed.
Heteromeles @ 1020: It's also every permutation of the sunk cost fallacy, as people say that they've lived their lives with XXX, and no one' going to take it away from them because YYY.
It's not a fallacy to acknowledge there are UP FRONT COSTS for the change you want to impose if someone doesn't have the money to pay those costs.
And there are a lot of people who WON'T have the money to pay for them, and can't get the money. So who IS going to pay for them?
"I don't know what the inside of the pipes are here. The outside is a yellow plastic of some sort..."
That's been standard over here for yonks. There isn't an "inside"; the yellow plastic is all there is. Pretty sure it's either polythene or polyprop; I've not seen that pipe clamp trick but it would fairly much have to be for that to work.
Robert van der Heide @ 1024: Another reason for keeping a gas stove: Your electricity comes from a gas powered plants so it’s more efficient to turn gas directly into heat than run it through a 50% efficient heat engine to turn it into electricity, then turn the electricity back into heat.
Most of my electricity comes from a nuclear power plant, but point taken. I don't think THEY would be very happy with me if I tried to keep highly enriched uranium around the house for cooking. 8^)
runix @ 1025: One more reason we decided to get rid of the gas appliances is the earthquake risk in BC. In the 1995 Kobe earthquake "Fire raged on and off for two days, and gas and water mains were ruptured." https://factsanddetails.com/japan/cat26/sub160/item863.html
BC also has hydro-electric power, so it's relatively clean.
Around here hurricanes or ice storms taking out the electric lines is more of a problem.
Last year (2020) was the first time in several years I didn't have the power out for several days at least once.
After Hurricane Fran in 1996 I was without electricity for more than 30 days. But I had hot water the whole time ... and oddly enough telephone service even though the phone lines ran on the same utility poles.
It's not a fallacy to acknowledge there are UP FRONT COSTS for the change you want to impose if someone doesn't have the money to pay those costs. And there are a lot of people who WON'T have the money to pay for them, and can't get the money. So who IS going to pay for them?
The interesting part is that I know so many immigrants who arrived dirt poor, or who were refugees. And they're not on the street, they've got doctorates and careers.
This is another permutation of the sunk cost fallacy: we've got everything invested in what we are. We can't change.
I think any one of these immigrants would say, "actually, when the alternative is really bad, you'll find a way to afford it." And that's what a lot of people are saying about climate change too.
there are UP FRONT COSTS for the change you want to impose if someone doesn't have the money to pay those costs.
Sorry, are you talking about the costs of climate change or the costs of making it survivable for at least some people?
Remember that this discussion isn't about alternative A being we just keep on doing what we're doing now in a world that looks much like the one we have now; and alternative B being some ecofascist nightmare where Greg has his landrover confiscated by the thought police.
The options are more like * we just keep on doing what we're doing as climate change gets worse until the wars spread then the human population collapses from a combination of heat stress and world war * we take drastic, expensive action ASAP to reduce the impact of climate change in a desperate attempt to keep technological society going.
If you want to think of it in economic terms: the question is whether we declare bankruptcy now and voluntarily restructure our economy in an effort to make the business viable as a going concern; or we keep trading while insolvent until an external force wipes us out.
I don't see much in the way of "internal restructure to restore profitability" either as a plausible option or as something that's being actively sought after by the people who think of this in economic terms. It's more like "if we introduce slavery how many months does that buy us?"
"And there are a lot of people who WON'T have the money to pay for them, and can't get the money."
This is what infuriates me personally about the various moves to enforce changeover to electric vehicles on the current pattern: the threat of being excluded from going anywhere I can't get a train to. There will never be such a thing as a cheap second hand electric car, because even when it is too knackered to remain useful in a car the battery will still be worth thousands for static storage banks. If I am no longer able to buy petrol, it will be more feasible for me to build an apparatus for cooking liquid fuel out of random organic waste than to get hold of an electric car battery (never mind the rest of the car), because the apparatus can be made mostly out of junk while the only route to acquiring a battery is through having loads of money. (Moreover, since this is the UK and it is so addicted to being shit, I wouldn't be able to use public chargers that require payment but would have to rely on the charge I could carry from home, so I would need a big battery, which makes it worse.)
Soylent Gold...
Pigeon @ 1040:
That's been standard over here for yonks. There isn't an "inside"; the yellow plastic is all there is. Pretty sure it's either polythene or polyprop; I've not seen that pipe clamp trick but it would fairly much have to be for that to work.
I think I got kind of sidetracked before I made the point I was trying to make.
The stainless steel pipes in David's neighborhood requires the Gas Company to have frequent valves to shut off the gas to sections of the mains. Here they were able to squash the pipe closed and I think that made it easier to get the gas shut off more quickly.
There can also be a problem with the valves if they don't have really good records to help them find them when they're needed.
NOT GAS, but in 2019 Raleigh was doing another water & sewer project on a main thoroughfare up the block from my house and they LOST A MANHOLE. Couldn't find it & spent about a week looking for it because it wasn't where the records said it was.
The manhole was where it had always been, but somehow in the 70s the road got shifted over a few feet & the records said the manhole was still in the middle of the street, not on the edge of some guy's front yard where it got covered up by bushes.
"What I'm trying to figure out is how to frame this so that it's unambiguously better than the alternative"
The alternative to complete decarbonisation by 2030 is that most people die.
When faced with that reality people choose to keep their gas heating and die.
I don't know how you can phrase differently so that so being alive with electric heating is the preferred option, because dying clearly isn't enough to turn people off fossil fuels.
I understand the exclusion issue. I live three miles from the nearest bus stop.
I'll just point out that my house was built the same year (1988) that the IPCC was formed, yet it was not only not designed to deal with climate change, it was designed around conspicuous consumption of petroleum products. I'm lucky enough that we can afford to somewhat decarbonize it, is all.
That's what I'm getting at: not how hopeless it is, because Cthulhu knows we've been making that noise here for years. It's the converse: what does success look like? What's it going to be like not dying of climate change?
It's the inescapable pervasiveness of the "keep going as we are" model that is a large part of the problem. In the context of my previous post, it is its application in large that causes the concept of the electric car to be implemented in a manner that renders it inherently expensive, and that then in turn compels people like Greg and me to hang on desperately to what we've got as the alternative has been rendered infeasible from the start.
"renders [electric cars] inherently expensive"
No, it doesn't. Even high end electric cars are cheaper than medium market petrol cars, even including the cost of borrowing a larger amount up front. Plenty of studies by accountants show it.
But you don't have to buy a high end electric. The citroen Ami (to name just one example) is 6000€. If it only lasts 12 years and then has to be thrown away, that's about 10€ a week. Less than a bus pass. Even if you had to borrow the whole cost, it's less than just the servicing cost on an old car (unless you have your own full set of tools and a place to work on your car, in which case you're not the sort to be worried about finding 6000 at short notice)
Driving petrol is now a conscious choice to choose death.
I dunno, I am by nature someone who looks for ways to make things work. The whole approach of "this can't work and I am determined to prove it to you" just leaves me kinda blank and wondering what is wrong with people.
For me, the questions are not ones like "how can I prove that driving a large fossil powered car everywhere is the only possibly transport option for me", it's more like "given the constraints, how I can I obtain an acceptable means of transport".
I've posted here before, but just in case some of you forget, I have built my own bicycles when I couldn't buy what I needed. I have complete confidence that when I need a motor vehicle I will be able to find or make one. The MiEV's are available right now and do much of what I "need" motor vehicles for right now (except that paying someone for delivery is cheaper and whether it's more environmentally friendly is a hard question. Paying is definitely easier, I don't have to house a motor vehicle the other 99.99% of the time).
It's entirely possible that my "motor vehicle" will end up being an e-assist on my quadricycle and a second ebike that's more optimised to just carry me, faster and more compatibly with public transport. Both those are COTS today (Commercial Off The Shelf).
Same way I looked at the shitpile in my front yard and said "if my girlfriend can't bring herself to allow the granny flat, I'll build myself a sleepout" and now I have a bedroom-sized esky/chillybin in the back yard. I've built a four poster bed with insulation in a rented house before, there are many, many options for all sorts of things that don't end up with me sitting next to Eeyore agreeing that nothing can be done.
Mate, you're just being silly.
"The citroen Ami (to name just one example) is 6000€."
Drop that by an order of magnitude and we might be getting somewhere.
Why on earth are you talking about brand new cars of any kind, when the point was that even second hand they will always be out of reach? If second hand is out of reach then new is even more so.
"If it only lasts 12 years and then has to be thrown away, that's about 10€ a week. Less than a bus pass."
You are mistakenly assuming that they are the same thing. Ignoring the time factor is not sensible. It may be possible to find even 20 spods a week for a bus pass but that doesn't make it any less infeasible to find several grand in one hit - if anything it's even more impossible because of all the other things you're having to find 20 spods a week for instead of 10. Ask Vimes's feet.
"Even if you had to borrow the whole cost"
Forget borrowing, credit, or any other of these evil things that involve a legal obligation to part with money at regular intervals regardless of circumstances. They are simply an open invitation to trouble when circumstances change, and are to be avoided at all hazards.
"it's less than just the servicing cost on an old car"
Utter bollocks, quite frankly, triple-distilled clear-quill essence of testicle. The most common servicing operation (of those that cost anything at all) costs only a can of oil and a new filter every few thousand miles; the worst is a complete new set of tyres at an order of magnitude greater interval. Mechanical parts that need replacing come somewhere in between, and are very often cheaper than the corresponding parts for modern cars, often also by a considerable amount.
"(unless you have your own full set of tools and a place to work on your car, in which case you're not the sort to be worried about finding 6000 at short notice)"
Does not follow, and disproved by counterexample. "Set of tools" can be carried on the luggage rack of a bicycle, in one of those tough shoulder bags newspaper deliverers use. "Place to work" means waiting for the rain to stop for long enough. To be sure the latter can often be a tedious pain in the arse, but you don't magically get huge piles of money materialising when it eventually happens.
"it's more like "given the constraints, how I can I obtain an acceptable means of transport"."
Sure, but the constraints include storing enough energy for the required range. For diddling around town on journeys of a few km, that's easy: a couple of lead-acid batteries does the trick very nicely. But when the range needed is a few hundred km, electrical storage is out of the question because it is not and never will be cheap enough for me to buy it. That I have the ability to convert my car to electrical operation is of no use when a major and essential part is forever astronomically out of reach. This leaves the available options as keeping it as it is and making my own fuel if it comes to it, or any of an unbounded selection of wildly impractical flights of fancy, flocks of pigeons in harness and the like.
Moz is right, these are self serving excuses.
The lease plan from Citroen is 18 pounds a month. There's a 3500 pound up front payment, but that's what you'd pay for a shitty old petrol car up front anyway. 18 quid a month wouldn't cover fuel for a petrol car. That's what, 8 litres? Enough petrol for 100 km a month. If you drive more than 60 miles a month you'd be saving money compared to a second hand petrol car. That's before we mention congestion charge.
https://www-buyacar-co-uk.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.buyacar.co.uk/cars/economical-cars/electric-cars/1720/citroen-ami-18-per-month-43-mile-electric-range?amp_js_v=a6&_gsa=1&&usqp=mq331AQKKAFQArABIIACAw%3D%3D#aoh=16285784155781&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.buyacar.co.uk%2Fcars%2Feconomical-cars%2Felectric-cars%2F1720%2Fcitroen-ami-18-per-month-43-mile-electric-range
(I'm so pissed off I can't even be arsed to tidy up the url)
You may be happy to do a head gasket on the side of the road. Most people couldn't do it in a well equipped garage, let alone with rain filling the bores. You're out of your mind if you think you can buy a 15 year old car, drive it for another 12 years and never do anything more than an oil change. Timing belt, clutch, 3 or 4 batteries set of disks, a radiator and hoses and you'd count yourself very lucky. I own a 30 year old car and I know what it takes to keep it running. I spend a lot more than 18 quid a month and I wouldn't drive it more than 100 km a year.
If you can afford an old banger, you can afford a brand new electric. Maybe not one that will see off a Bugatti Veyron, or drive 2500 km in a day, but weather proof transport that will reliably get you to work 30 miles away and back.
gasdive @ 1048: The alternative to complete decarbonisation by 2030 is that most people die.
Ever since I saw that picture of the car ferry picking people up with the forest fire in the background I've had After the Gold Rush playing in a loop in my head.
JBS @ 1039 Thank You It's ( Some of ) those - INHO ridiculously high - "Up-front" costs that are deterring me - from making changes that I would like to do. [ Solar Panels + converter ... & electric conversion on my car for starters ] Again, IMHO - it's deliberate. Our utterly corrupt government is urging everyone to do this, whilst making sure that only "their friends" in the relevant power/distribution companies make a nice little profit at it, whilst the rest of us have to scrimp & save & have a lower standard of living, because they are too mean to help as all to help ourselves. .... As pigeon notes @ 1045 & in Spades @ 1053
Moz It would appear that we are thinking along parallel lines?
gasdive STOP IT (unless you have your own full set of tools and a place to work on your car, in which case you're not the sort to be worried about finding 6000 at short notice) I have a fairly full set of tools & I can do a 12 000 mile service, on the road, without even a jack, so bollocks. Other reasons I'm sticking with the L-R : - I use it very little, but when I need it, I NEED it. Carrying large loads, usually short distances ( 12 miles, but from out-of-London ) where there is zero public transport, or other places where there are no connected trains. Oh & the safety advantage of having a really high driving position - I'm certain I've avoided quite a few "nasties" by seeing things ahead that have caused me to slow down / stop / divert that would have had me stamping-on-the-brakes in a normal car. Yet again - £££/COST of electric conversion for it is really insane. My L-R was made in 1996, I bought it in 2003 & always intended to keep it until I could no longer drive - how's that for efficient use of resources?
So I'm going to keep it, use it even less, get a decent electric bike & probably a small trailer for same .... Oh yes: MiEV ??
#1043 - There were just over 2 million Land Rover series built over 67 years. About half of them are still extant. Let me know when you find an EV that can claim anything similar.
"Get back to me in 70 years" isn't really an acceptable answer to anything.
Supposing we pull off decarbonizing by 2030. What the heck does that actually look like?
Ask yourself first how we decarbonize agriculture, because without agriculture we all die. Next, ask about decarbonizing the food distribution chain, including everything from how food gets from the fields to the processed meal factories.
(We mostly know how it will have to get from the factories/distribution hubs to the tables, at least in the developed world: EVs, including trucks and trains. But we (us, in this discussion) don't know what the requirements are in developing nations or climate-change-induced war zones.)
I can certainly imagine a fully PV-powered, electrically operated intensive farm. I can even envisage non-petrochemical systems for pest control that maintain intensive agriculture (trying to go 100% organic simply won't produce enough food for everybody). I'm not so certain we can do it in 30 years, much less 10, but look how fast horse-drawn ploughs vanished from the British countryside once cheap tractors became available ...
It's frustrating, because it's clearly technically possible. But it's also easy to see how it's just not possible, even if the only example of the resistance you need is commentary here in this blog. If we can't abandon gas appliances because "you can't char peppers on an induction hob", we can't tie our own fucking shoelaces much less fix anything. And that, if nothing else, is the clear proof that we're basically stuffed. 2.0C is already a done deal, we're working on (much) higher.
Really. Actually, I haven't been to Ulan Bator, but I have heard that and been stuck in Khartoum more than once, and arrived at Tokyo when they had 6 jumbos in simultaneously, 3 from Korea. But words fail me describing how much more horrific LAX transit was. Nuking is too good for it.
More to the point, you can't peel tomatoes on an induction hob; why anyone wants to burn peppers is beyond me!
ObMadness
A quick way to roast capsicum (peppers, I guess, for you Yanks) is to char them over a flame and put them in a plastic bag for a few minutes. The skin becomes easy to scrape off afterwards then you can slice and dice and do what you will with them. This can also be done under the grill (broiler?) in an electric oven, but takes longer.
I don't understand what you mean by not being able to peel tomatoes on an induction hob, unless you use the same method to char the skin first. The way I was trained to do it uses boiling water and a sharp paring knife (and optimally an ice bath but not required). An induction hob works just fine for that.
The lease plan from Citroen is 18 pounds a month. There's a 3500 pound up front payment, but that's what you'd pay for a shitty old petrol car up front anyway.
I know used car prices have soared, but last time I looked a shitwagon could be had at auction for £50.
You're making the mistake of thinking about this from the perspective of a well-off middle-aged person, not a NEET who never took a driving test, can't get insurance, isn't legal to drive, and needs to get to a town 20 miles away for their zero-hours contract job (and there's no bus link or it takes two hours each way and a ticket is £3.50, so a return trip eats an entire hour's gross pay).
Seriously, what was the figure? 50% of the US population are an unexpected US $1000 medical (or other) bill away from bankruptcy. If you're in that group, forget getting a car loan ... unless you're able to swing a 100% loan at something like a 30% interest rate (or more).
Unless you can provide wheels for people in that situation, you don't have a solution to decarbonization.
(My preferred solution: regulated and subsidized bus services everywhere, provided by the government: mass tram roll-out, tax on private automobile parking spaces in cities to deter urban use. In other words, go full Eastern Block, as a matter of policy.)
Charlie @ 1060: Ask yourself first how we decarbonize agriculture, because without agriculture we all die.
Decarbonising agriculture is basically synonymous with decarbonising the entire economy. The farmer sitting in his airconditioned cab in a combine harvester is just one component of an entire system that is deeply intertwingled with the whole of the rest of our technological civilization. Nothing moves on a farm without fuel or electricity. Almost everything is done by machines that are made in factories, or uses supplies made in factories. Even the farmers are probably unable to survive on their own land without all this infrastructure, because modern farming is as far removed from subsistence agriculture as a modern car factory is from a village blacksmith. Just to take one example, how are you going to plough a field without a tractor?
(Insert episode 1 of James Burke's "Connections" here).
We can't just say that "we need agriculture, so we protect that, and never mind the rest" because once you start tracing the web of interdependencies there isn't much of of the economy that we can actually do without.
I put in a smiley so that even the linguistically challenged would realise that it was a joke - evidently that was not enough. Also, in the UK, the gas used for hobs is a piffling proportion of the whole, and enough could be produced from local, sustainable, biological sources and shipped in bottles (as much is today). It's close to an irrelevance.
The main problem is that people aren't prepared to take hard decisions and pay the cost, but a close secondary reason is that the people claiming to want those decisions aren't prepared to work out what the costs and consequences are, and minimise the problems caused by those. In the UK, we have the following:
1) We need to simultaneously increase our electricity generating capacity, national grid and local distribution networks by a factor of three AND make it entirely fossil-fuel free.
2) We need to convert our domestic heating to electricity, and provide external charging points where relevant, which means upgrading most domestic supplies (often by a factor of two). This is a HUGE problem.
3) We need to convert our transport to electricity, provide many more public charging points, and so on. Inter alia, this means backing off the juggernaut, centralised warehouse, JIT path and undoing much of the damage they have caused. This is another HUGE problem and, no, just electrification as currently being touted is not going to do a lot of good.
3a) We need to eliminate all use of aircraft where there is a viable alternative and, in my view, eliminate them altogether.
4) We need to tackle agriculture, as OGH says. We could and should eliminate all feedlot, battery and similar farming, and reduce our consumption of meat and dairy correspondingly. We need to eliminate our dependence on air-freighted food. And see (3) re transport.
5) We need to eliminate our fetish for disposable goods, including buildings (concrete, remember?)
6) And we need to do all of the above in at least the sort of semi-socialist manner we did from 1940 to the 1970s, and not the dog-eat-dog capitalist fashion we did in the 18th century, oops, 21st century.
I think good vision systems and cheap ass robotics will do in a lot of pest management in farming. Something that is solar powered, can crawl a field and turn a wide variety of pests into worm food (while leaving non-pests alone) could cut off the pesticides market. Even something large and autonomous, that comes in like robotic header that you rent a couple of times a year could mix it up. Maybe it's time I build a tiny little murderbot and pitch it to Topcon.
"gasdive STOP IT"
Happy to, as soon as you, EC, Pigeon, and Paws Stop saying things that are so obviously wrong.
Now on this subject, I give you a pass, because Land Rovers are of course known to be the most reliable vehicles ever made by the hand of man, and a simple 12000 mile service now and again is all that's needed to keep them on the road for 70 years. (Not quite sure why they always seem to have engine swaps from other brands)
However my experience with old cars comes from a Suzuki Sierra (Jimny in some markets). Well known unreliable car.
Things I've replaced in the last 12 years.
All the lights, all the hoses, cam belt, fan belt, the radiator core, the fuel tank, the alternator, the water pump twice, both front disk rotors and pads, rear shoes and master cylinders, 4 unijoints, steering damper, the paint, the seat covers and padding, the door cards (the interior door trim), the interior door handles, the windshield (not broken just scratched and worn), 3 batteries, the clutch, the distributor oil seal and of course the gearbox transfer case and diff oils several times. I've also cut out a heap of rust. Things not working that I haven't fixed, the radio, the fuel sender, the soft top, the windscreen washer, leaking rear shocks and gearbox rear seal and the steering damper is really tired. Plus the usual oil and filter changes.
Now I know how clever you are, but even you might have some issues doing a respray by the side of the road between rain showers or pulling out the gearbox to replace a clutch. (especially if limited to the tools you carry on a bicycle) I've done both outdoors, but it's not ideal.
Keeping 30 year old cars safe to drive is a time and money pit that you do for sentimental reasons, not a sensible economic strategy. There's a reason why old cars retain 5% of their new value after a decade of use. If you maintain otherwise you're delusional. You either buy them cheap, accept that the wheels may fall off or the brakes fail at any time, and run them until they break and then take off the plates and abandon them, which means you're required to come up with a couple of thousand with no notice at random intervals (and find some other way to get to work for a few days), or you maintain them, which means a pretty regular injection of time and money.
I was taught to hold the fruit to a flame until the skin starts "ripping" and peeling back.
Cooked on an electric stove, I hope!
"You're making the mistake of thinking about this from the perspective of a well-off middle-aged person"
Not really. I've bought at auctions. I make less than 10 000 dollars a year. I'm also too old to be middle aged, so my youth seems more immediate than the last decade. I learnt in my youth that the 50 dollar auction car often didn't make it home before the wheels quite literally fell off. I've spent months fixing up an old car enough to get it registered only to have the engine seize 3 weeks after paying for a year of rego and compulsory insurance. I've experienced being let go from work that I really needed because my car broke down and I didn't make it to work on time. I've had dealers laugh in my face when I asked for spare parts for a 10 year old car, and that caused me to sell the car for pennies on the dollar to someone who wanted the motor for a boat.
This isn't even Vimes boots. You have to pay more to have shoes that don't come with soles.
Oh, and yes, you're exactly right about what should happen. My preferred option is electric train/trolleybus/bicycle for long /medium/short transport. Public transport should all be free at the point of use. Cars are an abomination that will be the death of us all.
Yeah, I get that and saw the smiley, but it's a bit of a schwerpunkt, isn't it? If the most piffling thing is an impossible obstacle, none of the serious things you mention are even conceptually reachable. So stuffed. Fallen off the perch and joined the choir invisible. An ex-species.
This has come up here to some degree before.
But man the used car markets in the US vs UK/Oz is really different.
When my kids were buying first cars a bit over 10 years ago, $1500 was the minimum for running and would pass inspection. My daughter was pissed that I kept telling her to ignore anything below $2500. So we went to see one for $1500. No AC, drivers window didn't work. And heater fan would not turn off. Plus it likely would need $1000 of work day one to not be dangerous to drive. She wound up spending $3000 for a car that was going to need a clutch and we knew it. So within a year spent another $1000 on that.
$50 is what the scrappers will pay you to haul off a car missing an engine, roof, or wheels.
5 years ago I sold my 1996 Explorer SUV. I as asking $800. I took $400. We both got a deal. Car was gone and he knew how to deal with the issues. Driver's window needed a hand assist to go up, odometer read 180K or so but had stopped recording maybe 100K miles before, speedometer stopped with odometer, rear gate didn't always want to unlatch, slow coolant leak, and a dozen other things I have forgotten. But it would pass inspection.
The last is probably true, but you have missed the logical inconsistency in what you are saying. Exactly WHAT is the point in pushing an irrelevance, and claiming that we have to start with that?
As I have been saying for many decades, we need to face up to the ACTUAL problem, and tackle it as an engineering problem, not just choose politically easy irrelevances. Yes, I know that I am a prophet crying in the wilderness on that.
$50 is what the scrappers will pay you to haul off a car missing an engine, roof, or wheels..
You used to be able to sell cars for their scrap value in the UK ... back when we had a steel industry. (Today we have only a vestigial one making highly specialized products.)
As of a decade or two ago -- last time I had to get rid of a car with a cracked cylinder head -- you had to pay them to take it away unless it was a sufficiently modern machine to be worth stripping for parts or repairing. (The scrap steel would need to be shipped overseas for recycling.)
oddly enough telephone service even though the phone lines ran on the same utility poles
Nothing odd about it.
Land lines are powered from the local exchange, which has (or had) batteries sufficient for several days, and don't really use much energy so an on-site generator can periodically top up the batteries. Past the exchange the network is buried, and may well have redundant connections. Remember that in the last century the mandated standard for phone service was 1 hour downtime in 40 years!
Power lines are frequently suspended, not just the last leg to houses but also the big transmission cables — 220kV and 500kV and so on. Much more vulnerable.
The alternative to complete decarbonisation by 2030 is that most people die.
When faced with that reality people choose to keep their gas heating and die.
Most people deny the reality, because they think it won't happen to them, because no one they know personally has died yet. To them it's not a choice between dying and changing their heating.
Hell, look at America, where even people dying of Covid will declare it a hoax.
Question: if we don't decarbonize (ie. business as usual), how long before technological civilization as we here in the first world know it starts breaking down? I've skimmed the report but if that's stated I missed it, and I'm having trouble inferring it from the graphs on sea level rise, heat events, and the like.
"business as usual), how long before technological civilization as we here in the first world know it starts breaking down?"
My crystal ball is on the blink, so my wild stab in the dark is no better than anyone else. I've seen reports that crops are failing in Canada due to heat https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2021-07-18/us-canada-heat-wave-hammers-crops/100298598
Just losing 50% of the world grain production would probably start things unraveling. How long? A decade or two if we do nothing is my guess. I think back to how much better things were in 2000, and then I think about how it is now, then double that difference. It doesn't seem tenable. And I know the difference will be more than double.
a NEET who never took a driving test, can't get insurance, isn't legal to drive, and needs to get to a town 20 miles away for their zero-hours contract job
Frankly, if they never took a driving test, aren't legal to drive, and don't have insurance they shouldn't be driving.
How long? A decade or two if we do nothing is my guess.
So likely within my lifetime. Good, I was afraid I was going to miss all the excitement!
(Sarcasm, hopefully obviously.)
you had to pay them to take it away unless it was a sufficiently modern machine to be worth stripping for parts or repairing.
Yes, here in the US we do have Nucor. Which makes for a market for used steel.
But unless it is a hulk you can usually get $100 to $400 for a non running car. They sell the tires, alloy wheels, spare tires, air bags, ECM, lights and body panels (to repair shops) etc... Then what is left goes to the Nucors of the world.
Their are shops setup to dismantle and warehouse the better parts. A reverse assembly line.
Power lines are frequently suspended, not just the last leg to houses but also the big transmission cables — 220kV and 500kV and so on. Much more vulnerable.
And they are bare. No insulation. Even in residential areas. So a tree limb across a line or it on the ground will ground fault it and keep the line de-energized. And if any lines are near the ground anywhere they will have switch points opened for safety reasons.
Datacomm lines are insulated so unless they break they will keep working.
how long before technological civilization as we here in the first world know it starts breaking down?
I'm curious to see what they do when Las Vegas starts to have issues with enough drinking water and/or electricity. And since both come from the exact same source they are interrelated. First will be shutting down some of the turbines and not shipping the power to the LA basin. But when that is not enough will Vegas be willing to put out the "Closed due to lack of water" sign?
In the UK, you get money only (and usually less) if you take it to a breaker or its is fairly new. I had that issue with a thrown rod about a decade back.
The attitudes towards labor harbored in the english speaking world will be an impediment to cutting enough carbon emission to relieve Gaia's indigestion. The working class mostly will not have the resources to replace methane fired furnaces, water heaters or even stoves, an electric car that can safely operate on the roads to work is a distant dream and they're unlikely to have a safe place to park a bicycle, even if they live close enough for that to be a possibility. Economic justice should make a useful carbon reduction closer to attainability.
Re: 'The attitudes towards labor harbored in the english speaking world will be an impediment to cutting enough carbon emission to relieve Gaia's indigestion.'
I've watched previous interviews and read only one of her earlier books: overall, her ideas make sense to me, i.e., are implementable. Since she's doing work for the WHO - and pandemics are not going away anytime soon - it also makes sense to learn more about her perspective/arguments.
'Mission Economy: Mariana Mazzucato in conversation with Gillian Tett' (The British Library, 1:02:48)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37_cFuzunIc
There's also this article/book review in Nature:
'Lessons from the Moonshot for fixing global problems'
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00076-1
Thanks; lots to investigate.
The question was also prompted partly by your mentioning Talking Heads' 'Life During Wartime' a little while back; TH underpin my musical life in so many ways, it's not even funny.
Thanks for that link, I’ve seen her mentioned on Brad DeLong’s page, a good sign that she’s the real deal.
Paws @ 1058 There were just over 2 million Land Rover series built over 67 years. About half of them are still extant. Let me know when you find an EV that can claim anything similar. I thought it was just over 70% ... but it's a serious point. Now then, tell me again - why I should get rid of mine?
Charlie @ 1080 Yes - there was a push during WWII for British farms to use tractors, even with war production in full swing. The Heavy Horse market collapsed between 1948 & 1950 & was killed utterly by the "Grey Fergie"
EC Also, in the UK, the gas used for hobs is a piffling proportion of the whole, and enough could be produced from local, sustainable, biological sources and shipped in bottles (as much is today). It's close to an irrelevance. i.e "Gas for cooking we can afford - just" As you said/as I said - the politicians are wishing the ends, maybe directing the ends, but doing NOTING AT ALL about the means to achieve those ends. Re. your list 1: YES 2: And simultaneously make electricity CHEAPER - lots of people are struggling desperately to pay their bills right now. 3: YES ( Hang the Treasury DfT Mandarins still dragging their feet on rail electrification ) [ 3a - If possible, yes, bur aircraft, 'copters particularly are so good for rescue purposes 4: Difficult, but should be do-able 5: Should have been done years ago 6: Interesting - that could, actually, be the hardest part ... @ 1077 "An Engineering Problem" - which is exactly the sort that the politician FAIL at, yes? - see also Tim H @ 1088
gasdive I think we will drop this one, OK? Even if someone GAVE me a brand-new vehicle ( Estate Car for load-carrying ) I would not want it - I'd sell it & hope the money would pay for a 'leccy conversion on the L-R. Got it yet? HOWEVER ... Your guess of less than 2 decades means within my lifetime - or to the exact end of it, because it will kill me at age 95. NOT good.
I could afford a gas stove right now, for the lower price. The problem is that this friggin' split-level house, the whole left half of the house is on a slab, no crawlspace, etc... the gas is on the right... and there are two outside doors in the way of running the gas line.
Once I get a gas line, the stove goes to friends in Philly who need a newer one.
I have doubts food costs will need to skyrocket. They're already sky high... and part of that, the part involved fruits and vegetables, is explicitly due to freakin' suburban sprawl eating the farms around the cities that fed them.
And vertical integration by the food companies.
Hempcrete? So, like plaster and horsehair?
Like the house on the page on the right.
I suppose electric bbq's are as good as gas.
On the other hand, I don't consider either of them "bbq", they're grilling. BBQ involves smoke, so charcoal. And maybe smoking chips.
Every little town - that's a long-solved problem. a) that's for the milk run, v. express/ltd trains and/or b) in some cities, like Philly, the Market St. El alternates "A" and "B" trains, which stop at main/interchange stations, and in between, the A stops at tha A stations, not the B stations.
In the US, slowly, more and more large airports are connected by subway or commuter rail, and that gets you downtown quickly.
The eminent domain issue may not occur, depending on existing ownership by the railroads. Now, NIMBYism...
"Even high end electric cars are cheaper than medium market petrol cars"
Ok, I have zero idea what you're talking about. A Tesla is, what, $70k, while any ordinary sedan is $20k-$30k. If I were to go for a brand new, least expensive hybrid minivan, I'm looking at $35k.
I can see an electric, non-petrochemical farm easily... ASSUMING you're not using fertilizer that was created using petrochemicals. No problem... will a couple megawatts do for the farm? Fine... have more than one wind turbine installed, and use the power from one of them.
Oh, and farmers like them. Real farmers, as a friend of mine who has a small farm (his wife works a regular job) says, real farmers have to find something to sell every month of the year. Windmills are a godsend.
To make chile rellenos, first you char and scrape off the skin of the poblano pepper.
Enough. All the scraming about how EVIL gas stoves are....
I just looked. To heat a house of 1500-2k^2 feet takes about 20KW. An EV, for 100 mi, needs about 30KW. An electric stove draws, on average, about 3kw. A gas stove uses about 1.8kw.
Now, what we need to do is BAN SUVs, which gat half to two-thirds what a 2wd vehicle does. 90% of them are unneeded - people buy them "for safety".
After industry, it's cars that add CO2.
Cut the fares on all buses and trains by 50%, immediately. And double the frequency, to start.
Yep. Finding a running vehicle of any kind, that will pass a safety inspection (not rusting out, brakes, horn, and lights that work....) under $3k is mostly not going to happen.
In '13, I bought my '08 Honda Odyssey minivan, about 76k miles, for over $15k.
Oh, and this is the US. We just got back last night from a major road trip: DC metro area to just south of the NC/SC line to visit one of my SO's daughters, and be there for her newest granddaughter's 3rd bd, then drive to Fayetteville, NC, to visit my son, who I haven't seen in several years, and for my SO to meet him. Then back, then home. DC area to outside Baltimore, to pick up her middle daughter, three of us to SC, two of us to Fayetteville and back, three of us to outside Baltimore, and two of us home.
It would have cost a lot to take the train, and the bus....
Btw, my '08 minivan is averaging 25mpg highway, significantly better than most SUVs.
Every little town - that's a long-solved problem.
You've offered a technical solution to a political problem.
It requires someone telling the locals that, although the express barrels through their town several times a day, they can't get on and can only take a different train that takes much longer and doesn't run as frequently.
Easier to placate the locals by adding just one more stop to the express line…
Maybe it's different in Philly, but here in Ontario the location of stations is an intensely political matter, with studies frequently done and redone until the results show what the politicians want (at which point they can hide behind the study and claim 'no interference').
For example, Bessarion Subway station, which gets so few riders that it would have been cheaper to give every rider taxi fare for 20 years than build the station.
Or the new GO station that will actually slow trip times and (statistically) reduce usage, but is right near a development owned by a buddy of a cabinet minister…
In the US, there are signs all over the place for up to $300 or $400 for used vehicles, any condition, running or not.
Now, what we need to do is BAN SUVs, which gat half to two-thirds what a 2wd vehicle does. 90% of them are unneeded - people buy them "for safety".
And ironically, the safety is that offered in collisions with… SUVs.
It's a classic Prisoners Dilemma. We're both better off if we each have a car, but if you get an SUV and I don't then I'm worse off in a collision than I was before, and you're safer, but if I then get one too we're back to where we started (just with more expense and pollution).
I've been told SUVs are safer for women because they can see the feet of someone hiding behind them! (Person telling me this admitted to never looking, but felt safer anyway.)
Oh yes - THIS https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/the-entire-mediterranean-region-is-burning-here-s-why-it-will-get-worse/ar-AAN9HR5?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531 The "Med" is burning ....
Moz @ 1043:
Sorry, are you talking about the costs of climate change or the costs of making it survivable for at least some people?
Maybe. Partly that. And partly what has to happen for ME to be one of the survivors?
A lot of the stuff I've been arguing with seem to me to be panacea solutions ...
"YOU should make this sacrifice, so we'll all have pie in the sky, by and by, but don't ask ME what I'm sacrificing for the common good. YOUR lifestyle is bad, but MINE is OK. NO actual solutions that might ensure your survival are on offer, but I got mine so you should just shut up and do what I tell you.".
That's what I'm hearing & that's what I'm arguing with.
I mind a lot if I have to give up my car and my gas stove and the rest of my "lifestyle".
But I'd do it, grudgingly if not willingly, IF it were part of an OVERALL effort where the sacrifices are shared and include some kind of plan to keep those sacrifices from killing me by neglect. PLUS, it would be a bonus if the plan does appear to have some chance of succeeding in changing our current climate trajectory.
But if "the plan" is I have to sit here in this house and starve until the heat kills me while others go their merry way, then fuck you. And frankly those are the kind of plans I've been hearing.
Plus, those "plans" don't actually make it "survivable for some people". Those "plans" won't stop climate change, they won't even slow it down. It's survival ONLY for some self-selected tech elite, which doesn't hold all that much appeal for me, especially knowing I'm NOT part of that self selected elite.
I'm old and I'm not likely to live long enough to see how this turns out, but I'd be willing to do my part IF I thought it would help the young people I care about who will have to live with it. I'm not interested in half-baked schemes that will make life better for some while excluding me & mine.
Moz @ 1044: If you want to think of it in economic terms: the question is whether we declare bankruptcy now and voluntarily restructure our economy in an effort to make the business viable as a going concern; or we keep trading while insolvent until an external force wipes us out.
I don't see much in the way of "internal restructure to restore profitability" either as a plausible option or as something that's being actively sought after by the people who think of this in economic terms. It's more like "if we introduce slavery how many months does that buy us?"
In "economic terms" I see a lot of the ideas to combat global warming/climate change being pushed here as quite similar to the response to the 2008 Financial Crisis.
Bail out the banksters when the bubble caused by their predatory practices collapsed, but do nothing for the homeowner borrowers swindled by the banksters with sub-prime liar loans (with the banksters being the LIARS).
Heteromeles @ 1049: I understand the exclusion issue. I live three miles from the nearest bus stop.
I'll just point out that my house ... I'm lucky enough that we can afford to somewhat decarbonize it, is all.
What do you propose to do for or do about all the people who are not that lucky?
I don't think that in order to deal with Climate Change we will all be making sacrifices. (Preferably of oil-company executive.) Making those changes is extremely difficult, of course - and to some degree or other we're all waiting for an intelligent, scientifically-literate government to create the right regulations and make the right laws.
I'd say the thing to do is teach some kids you like to shoot and garden, and anything about general survival you know.
Sorry, the post above should read as follows:
I think that in order to deal with Climate Change we will all be making sacrifices. (Preferably of oil-company executive.) Making those changes is extremely difficult, of course - and to some degree or other we're all waiting for an intelligent, scientifically-literate government to create the right regulations and make the right laws.
I'd say the thing to do is teach some kids you like to shoot and garden, and anything about general survival you know.
I'd say the thing to do is teach some kids you like to shoot and garden, and anything about general survival you know.
That's close to the advice I gave my class when one of them asked what they should do to prepare for climate change. I told them to learn how to garden and preserve food, and also learn first aid and sanitary practices.
Some crafty stuff would work well too. How to make soap or clothing, and woodworking/metalworking would also be good.
Dude, it’s on the frikkin’website. M3 AWD 350mile range, us$49k. MY AWD 330 mile range us$54k.
Also, take a look at https://electrek.co/2021/08/10/august-ev-deals-vw-id-4-chevy-bolt-ev-euv-volvo-xc40-recharge-pure-electric-2022-nissan-leaf/ If you can stomach a GM vehicle, the Bolt EV is around us$32k before any gubmint subsidy. Or a quite nice VW CUV (rwd only) for around us$42k Both only about 250 mile range though.
paws4thot @ 1058: #1051 - I have looked at the Citroen Ami. It is a pure city car, with a top speed of around 35mph. This effectively excludes it from most extra-urban roads (and some urban roads) by reason of lack of ability to keep up with the traffic, never mind whether or not it has a useful range. It could make it to dialysis and back by a fairly direct route. OTOH that route involves 8 miles of 70mph extra-urban road, and on Saturday there flooding required re-routing which took the trip distance from 35 minutes for 14 miles up to 60 minutes for 17 miles, if it can ford a flooded road. If it can't, the trip would have been impossible.
I live in the city, and the Citroen Ami wouldn't do me any good even if it were available in the U.D. There's no room to put a guitar & amp in it (much less there's not enough room if I wanted to carry my Leslie cabinet. I might be able to get a halfway decent photo kit in it if I didn't include any lights or light stands.
I think I've mentioned this one a time or two:
https://www.aixam-pro.com/en/e-truck-range
Even though it costs more than the Citroen Ami, it does have room for my gear if I wanted to go play or do some photography ... around town.
Might not have the range to get me to the VA Hospital in Durham for my appointments with radiation oncology. And I wouldn't be able to use the freeway with it, but finding the back road that takes me somewhere I want to go is somewhat of a specialty of mine. It would get me there, but I'd need to find an available, compatible charging point to get back home. So maybe that wouldn't be an insurmountable problem. And I might even be able to find some way to pay for it.
I don't know what I'd do about charging it. I don't think my current home wiring would handle a charger. I only have a 100Amp service.
But it's a moot point because like the Citroen Ami, it's not available in the U.S. And everything I HAVE been able to find in the U.S. there's no comparable vehicle available, although you might be able to find something on Ali Baba & import it yourself. I don't know. Considering the story of Ali Baba & the 40 thieves I'm not really to confident buying anything from a site with him as their progenitor. Did the site inherit his questionable business ethics?
Also I don't know if I'll ever be able to get back to my pre-Covid life for which this would have been ideal. But it would still be convenient for grocery shopping especially since I've been trying to do several weeks worth of shopping at a time whenever possible & that does require a bit of cargo room.
IF it were part of an OVERALL effort where the sacrifices are shared
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I vaguely recall you talking about serving in the US military. Which is a government department specifically aimed at unequal sacrifice, where some people die so that other, more selfish American citizens, can live.
If I'm right I'd love to hear why making a few Americans richer is something you're willing to die for, but the survival of the species isn't. Is it purely a time thing? You're making people richer now, but survival is in the future?
I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909–1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
https://worldhistory.medium.com/a-gangster-for-capitalism-smedley-butler-and-american-interventionism-dff244045864
Charlie Stross @ 1066: Seriously, what was the figure? 50% of the US population are an unexpected US $1000 medical (or other) bill away from bankruptcy. If you're in that group, forget getting a car loan ... unless you're able to swing a 100% loan at something like a 30% interest rate (or more).
I've heard it expressed as "one missed paycheck" away from poverty or homelessness or disaster or ...
Varies between 40% and 59% depending on who's reporting it. I think the higher end is closer to the mark.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/07/they-lived-paycheck-to-paycheck-then-the-pandemic-hit-.html
It's not a fixed dollar amount. It could be more or could be less than $1,000, often A LOT LESS for families struggling to make it on minimum wage jobs. It's often reported as an "unexpected car repair bill" or "unexpected hospital stay" or "an appliance that stops working" ...
You used to hear a joke that ...
"President So and so has created hundreds of new jobs.
I know it must be true because I'm working three of them."
But it wasn't funny then and it's not funny now.
I have Social Security and Retired Pay from the Army National Guard and MASSIVE amounts of money saved compared to my income level back when I was working. I opened an IRA account with $10 and put $10 in it with every paycheck that I could.
If I hadn't managed to hold on to this house; if I had to pay rent, I'd be living under a bridge somewhere eating dog food.
I'm fairly well off compared to some. Even though I'm now an atheist, I always try to remember, "There, but for the grace of god, go I."
Whole lot of people thinking there is an individual solution to a systemic problem. Yelling at a few left-of-center old men and women for not replacing their current housing and transportation arrangements when our governments are not even on track to shutting down coal plants.
gasdive @ 1074: Oh, and yes, you're exactly right about what should happen. My preferred option is electric train/trolleybus/bicycle for long /medium/short transport. Public transport should all be free at the point of use. Cars are an abomination that will be the death of us all.
Around here it would help if they'd just put in sidewalks to connect the inner city core (where I live) with the first belt of growth that grew up in the 60s & 70s (where the grocery stores are). It's only 2 miles to Costco and maybe 0.1 mile further to Wegmans. I could walk it and drag my little shopping trolley if I didn't have to walk out in the street 3/4 of the way.
They've been putting in bike lanes everywhere, but they haven't reached that bridge on Atlantic Ave. Can't figure out how to share the URL that isn't 4 lines of code, so just go to whatever maps you like that has street view and enter 35.803872308262186, -78.62418069287956 to see what I mean. No sidewalks, no place to walk pulling a shopping trolley and no bike lane.
Not that it matters, because I can't ride a bike. But I could walk on a sidewalk.
"Ok, I have zero idea what you're talking about."
Seems common. Communication obviously isn't my strong suit.
https://loupfunds.com/tesla-model-3-cost-of-ownership-slightly-cheaper-than-a-camry/
An investment advice company, chock full of accountants and no skin in the game of Tesla v Toyota conclude it's cheaper to buy a Tesla than the base model Camry. Note that this includes insurance rates from before Tesla started offering their own, much cheaper insurance that takes into account that Teslas have a lot of accident avoiding driver's aids.
It also includes the cost of borrowing the higher initial purchase price.
There's hundreds of similar analyses done, but this one is from an independent firm.
Electric cars are cheaper than petrol cars. There's no financial reason to ever buy another petrol car. The fact that people still do underlines again that we've collectively chosen death over capsicum with the skin not charred.
David L @ 1084:
Yes, here in the US we do have Nucor. Which makes for a market for used steel.
But unless it is a hulk you can usually get $100 to $400 for a non running car. They sell the tires, alloy wheels, spare tires, air bags, ECM, lights and body panels (to repair shops) etc... Then what is left goes to the Nucors of the world.
Their are shops setup to dismantle and warehouse the better parts. A reverse assembly line.
Around Raleigh that would be LKQ Pick Your Part
https://locations.lkqpickyourpart.com/nc/clayton/2928-u.s.-70
Those are the vehicles wrecked so badly they're never going to run again or blown engines or whatever. There are often multiple examples of the same vehicle models spanning a number of years. And you might find the part you need is on the end that wasn't damaged. When I had the Mazda (1998 626) the fuel pump started going out. A replacement pump from the dealer was going to be $1500 plus labor. I did a little research and found there was a Ford model that used the same body assembly & sure enough it had the same fuel pump ... $50 from LKQ although I did have to crawl under there and pull the fuel tank out myself to get it. The shop I use around the corner from my house put it in for $300.
There are also a couple of big auto auctions down east of Clayton on US 70; insurance auction for "lightly damaged vehicles" and a dealers only auction right next to it.
When I bought the Focus I tried to sell the Mazda on Craig's List, but there were no takers - not even scammers, low ballers or tire kickers. I took it down to an auto auction in Greenville, NC and I don't remember what it sold for, but I got $850 after they took their commission. Cost me something like $25 bucks to register it for the auction. They even had a courtesy car to take me over to my motel after the auction ended. I caught a Greyhound back to Raleigh the next morning.
David L @ 1085: Power lines are frequently suspended, not just the last leg to houses but also the big transmission cables — 220kV and 500kV and so on. Much more vulnerable.
And they are bare. No insulation. Even in residential areas. So a tree limb across a line or it on the ground will ground fault it and keep the line de-energized. And if any lines are near the ground anywhere they will have switch points opened for safety reasons.
Datacomm lines are insulated so unless they break they will keep working.
I've been living here long enough I know where the branch circuit comes off the main lines, I know where all the circuit interrupters are located and if there's an outage I have the power company's emergency phone number in my phone book. If the power goes out I can tell them which pole has the problem (or between which two poles when a tree falls on the lines) and which circuit interrupters are popped. The most recent memorable outage is 4th of July 2016 when the squirrel jumped on the transformer and set the top of the utility pole ON FIRE.
But during Fran there were so many downed trees & downed power lines that there were broken lines, broken poles and broken telephone cables. That's why I considered it odd the phone was still working.
Hempcrete? So, like plaster and horsehair?
Plaster and horsehair is normally a render rather than a core material. Typically hempcrete is a semi-porous bulk solid used inside walls, with render on the outside and sometimes render or gyprock etc on the inside. Similar to rammed earth, but (generally) not structural. It acts as both insulation and thermal mass, but it's not waterproof and air percolates slowly through it. So design for hempcrete goes against a whole lot of modern building engineering, especially the "but where is the waterproof membrane" question. The air movement is slow enough that PassivHaus certification is possible.
I'm still at the very early learning stage (oddly I know more about aerated MgO cement, which is still a research-level thing). But I'm assured hempcrete works, and I've seen houses made with it. And my gf is very keen on it... and I'm still at the conceptual design stage so that decision doesn't have to be made right now.
Yelling at a few left-of-center old men and women...
We're at the crisis point where everything has to be done ASAP.
But you're right, some of us do tend to assume that "accept that the climate crisis is real" means people are already voting Green (or, in the US, Democratic)). Once you make that political step it what's left is individual direct action.
But as we see above a lot of people, even left-by-local-standards people, are still not ready to admit that they need to take any action at all, not even changing their vote. Which is yet another reminder that the left-right political axis doesn't directly map to the green-brown one, and where it does that's generally something forced by other factors (like broken democracy or oligarchic media). The idea that we can persuade them to join a mass movement whose goal is forcing political change remains a pipe dream.
Informing and waiting has failed, persuasion has failed, begging is failing, brutal honesty seems like something that probably won't work but it's one of the few options left. Call it yelling if you like, call it yelling back if you're honest, that's where we're at.
I want to know when the Climate Army is going to show up at my house, (which my landlord owns) and remove all the gas-powered devices and install electric. The emergency is at that level right now, and the response is nowhere near that level.
You see a logical inconsistency, but I see a man, a man, I say! He's made of straw, he smells of peat, is mouldering slightly and emitting steam in the morning sun. His case is not so much fraught as taut: if one presses it, that is eats one's own scaly tail, too enthusiastically, one risks disappearing
up one's own arin a puff of circular logic."Yelling at a few left-of-center old men and women"
For me at least it's a reality check.
Can I convince some very intelligent, engaged, thoughtful people that real change is needed and is possible with minimal disruption? You'll still be warm, you'll still be able to go places and do things.
If not, then it speaks volumes for what it will take to get us out of this mess alive.
I think we have our answer.
I think that deep, brooding existential despair might come across as a bit self-indulgent, but there isn't really much else left. The chances of success in even reducing the hazard substantially (the things that might lead to 3.5C) are looking really quite pitiful, so the likelihood that 4.8C is the new baseline and we're working on worse than that, seems certain to me. I expect that at least one tipping point will be triggered, perhaps the one about stratocumulus formation and albedo, but either of antarctic ice or arctic methane would probably do. We're left with a fragile and isolated humanity in small communities, scattered in cool places with little technology and limited knowledge of its condition, a situation that could last hundreds of thousands of years. To me that sounds pretty tenuous, but I guess there are some pathways to greater resilience that perhaps are worth contributing to.
Creating knowledge resources that might both last and remain usable. Randall Monroe is a pretty engaging young fellow: his project from 5-6 years ago called Thing Explainer is at least a bit laudable in that sort of space, much as it's a concept demonstration rather than a practical resource. But maybe the most constructive things we can do are more in the line of turning the lights off as we leave.
Citroën Ami? No US equivalent.
Citroën Ami? No US equivalent known.
LMGTFY
https://youtu.be/F4Pecf2oO6U
Note that I was specifically challenged to find an EU available car for less than the price of a Dacia. A challenge typical of these discussions "unless you can find a car for less than 100 dollars that goes 1000 miles on a charge and takes 1 minute to charge while towing a boat... and so on"
Actually pointing out that the Dacia electric wasn't even the most expensive Dacia wasn't sufficient. So here's the Ami, cheaper than the cheapest Dacia. If you include running costs as you should, cheaper than a free petrol car.
There are similar cars in China made by GM, so there's no physical reason GM couldn't make them at home too.
If I can't give way to self indulgence at the end of civilisation and the destruction of everything I love, when can I?
Oh, and about 5ish C rise. I can't see any time when the earth sat at 5 C above now except for a short period just before the PETM. It only seems to pass through it on the way to 5C colder or 12-15 hotter. That's crocodiles in the Arctic and all current continental climate places uninhabitable for mammals. And that's probably my posting limit well and truly passed. Maybe I'll be back tomorrow.
Horn tooting time: I covered the PETM rather thoroughly in Hot Earth Dreams. Since then, I haven't gone back to see if the models are better, but here's the tl;dr take:
--The weird thing about Hothouse Earth with [Co2]Atm higher than perhaps 1000 ppm is that the latitudinal gradient in temperature largely goes away. Current thinking is that this is due to some complex factors which make hothouse Earth a lot less cloudy. Since clouds tend to show up disproportionately at higher latitudes, get rid of the clouds and alligators (not crocs) can live in the Arctic. There's a big difference between the two: alligators dig burrows in which they can hibernate to survive cold snaps, crocs can't do this. Greenland in the PETM still got pretty cold in the winter--like Carolina cold. --So yeah, temperature itself won't render the continents uninhabitable: humidity plus temperature intermittently will do this for a bunch of places. People will have to live underground for a few weeks of some years, along with their livestock and seeds. --The real problem with the High Altithermal (my term for the our PETM wannabe) is it's going to be fairly short, on order of centuries or less. That means there would be a lot of heatup going in (new weather patterns every decade or two for centuries), followed by a short peak, a dropoff, and then increasingly slow declines over the next 100,000 years or so. Think of this as a civilization eraser, more than anything else. If we're really stupid enough to blow that much carbon (50/50 chance, counting Arctic permafrost), the oceans will still be rising from Antarctic glaciers melting after we've already passed peak heat and headed into the Deep Altithermal of the next 100,000 years.
"It's the history-eraser button!"
JBS That "One missed paycheck" statistic form the Youessay ... And yet, a large proportion of them must be voting "R" - why?
I wondered whether the blue sky stuff had come out since Hot Earth Dreams, and that perhaps the stable loss of high clouds would reduce and slow the drop-off after the peak. We might hit a peak, then come down 4-5°C gradually over centuries, but then remain at 8-10°C above 1990ish for a few hundred thousand years until atmospheric CO2 concentration falls below 300pppm and clouds start forming again. To me this makes humanity more fragile than previously, as there is less habitable earth for much longer. I could have missed something of course.
"#1125 - TL;DR of your link seems to be "53000 < 45000". Well maybe, if you have 2_700 for up-front costs."
At some point you rrach the point where its no longer possible to excuse someone as misunderstanding, and realise that they're not arguing in good faith.
You may be convincing yourself, and perhaps anyone who hasn't followed the link, but for whatever reason you're clearly attempting to mislead.
To me that puts you in the same camp antivaxxers. Facts no longer matter, you refuse to even consider them. That makes you no longer worth responding to.
And yet, a large proportion of them must be voting "R" - why?
A fair chunk of the Republican disinformation that hits my inbox* talks about how the Democrats want to take money from poor pink people and give it to undeserving non-pink people. In some cases using synonyms for "non-pink" that would get me red-carded on this blog.
Hope that helps your understanding.
*Thanks to an American with my name not realizing that he's using someone else's email address to sign up for things.
Rbt Prior Which spills over into the next thread. The STUPIDITY of not realising that diseases affect EVERYBODY ....
Even a hybrid is markedly cheaper than an ordinary gas vehicle. I drive 30-40,000 miles a year, and I literally paid for my Prius out of the gas money I saved.
Let me unpack that: --The "blue sky stuff" is post HED. The fossils unambiguously point to a low latitudinal temperature gradient in a hothouse Earth (alligators in Greenland and such). The mechanism was thought to be something about clouds for many years, but even modeling a small demonstration wasn't possible until a few years ago. I went with the fossil record in HED.
--The HED model for the future temperature profile came from David Archer's (2010) Long Thaw and the papers he published before that. He didn't account for all the methane bubbling out of the permafrost, but did assume we'd burn all our coal. I haven't read the IPCC 6 yet nor compared that to Archer's old work, so I don't know what the total carbon budget estimates look like at the moment.
--That said, we know from a fairly good Wyoming fossil record that the PETM lasted about 100,000 years. Since Archer's model predicts a GHG excursion of 100,000-400,000 years, that's the time frame we're looking at for a worst-case hothouse Earth to come and go.
The way Archer broke it down was as follows: --Maximum heat within about 200 years after we stop emitting. Note that "stop emitting" probably actually means when the permafrost stops outgassing, not when we stop burning fossil fuels. I'm guessing we'll get off the emissions train rather sooner than the tundra will. --Temperatures about 6-8oC above baseline (we're at 1oC now) for around 1,500 years after that. In HED, I called this 1,700 year period "The High Altithermal," and it's the civilization eraser. Basically what's dragging temperatures down is the ocean soaking up CO2. Which is bad for the ocean. --After the High Altithermal comes the Deep Altithermal, which is a very long time. For about the first 10,000 years of the Deep Altithermal, the air is around 3-5oC above baseline. Per Archer, during this period ocean sediments are taking in a bunch of the CO2 from ocean water, leaving the water available to take CO2 out of the air. He didn't consider shale formation in his model for some reason. --After that 10,000 year period, the temperature gradually returns to 20th century normal over the next 90,000 years plus. At this point, weathering igneous rocks are taking up the CO2. This is a huge potential reservoir, but as you can see, it's really, really slow on the uptake. --While I think the details of Archer's model are worth questioning, the basic sequence of the smaller and faster reservoirs for GHGs saturating before the bigger and slower ones do is reasonable, and the PETM geologic record also says his timeframe of 100,000-400,000 years is reasonable.
-Sea level rise is similarly jerky, with glacial melt (up to 70 meters rise) taking about 1,500 years, and thermal expansion of the oceans (another meter) taking 5,000 years after that.
So the High Altithermal is rapidly changing peak heat over a millennium or two, with lot of suffering and sea level rise, while the Deep Altithermal is a very gradual cooling, eventually ending with a sea level drop as the glaciers reform. Whether the glaciers seriously reform during the Deep Altithermal is something I'm not sure about, since glacier formation and melting seem to be tipping point phenomena. The key thing to remember is that, over 100,000 or 400,000 years, the continents won't move very much, and the current distribution of continents is what's causing us to have ice ages. Eventually, after the Altithermals have passed, there will be another ice age or five.
Or, in comparison, we can get serious about dealing with climate change now, spend a century at +1-2oC, and miss the next tipping point to an ice age. I'd say this is an EXCELLENT IDEA, and it's why complaints about why we need to get serious about transforming civilization seem rather silly to me.
On a completely irrelevant note, I am going to be staying that the Buccleuch Arms hotel, Moffat. But how does a lowland Scots pronounce Buccleuch? :-)
Even a hybrid is markedly cheaper than an ordinary gas vehicle. I drive 30-40,000 miles a year, and I literally paid for my Prius out of the gas money I saved.
I drove about 13,000 km a year when I was working. Now I'm retired I spend less than $40 a month on gas. Ditching my ICE to go hybrid or EV makes neither economic nor environmental sense (carbon footprint for a new vehicle greater than running my current one into the ground, which is my plan).
An investment company, and how many own Teslas, and have stock money in the game.
Come on - $4k for repairs/maintenance on a 4 yr old car? Really? Does that include everything covered under a new car warranty, like oil changes?
Also, they clearly expect the Tesla to be driven less.
Hi it is pronounced as Book clue. When are you here? I live up in the hills above Moffat
Some of us do what we can. For one, I got a new roof a few months ago. When they asked me what color shingles, it was "what do you have closest to white?"
The electric company sends, monthly, how are you doing compared to energy usage by "typical" and "energy efficient" - we're always better than "typical", and a few times almost to "energy efficient".
We have a composter in the back yard that our fruit and veggie waste goes to, then to the garden. Still waiting on the large bunch of tomatoes to ripen, though we've had three, and she's had radishes, and we've had lettuce and Italian beans.
I want a hybrid to replace my minivan. The trip we just took had three people, luggage for all, a large cooler for food and drink. A small car would have been No Fun. And on the way back, I found I was getting 25 mpg. I want better, so the hybrid.
Oh, and I haven't paid $4k in repairs/maintenance on an '08 in the last three-four years.
So, now, what would you like me, personally, to do? I'm also retired, without half the energy I had 15-20 years ago.
Oh, and the US is heavily controlled by the oil industry. There is no other explanation as to why hybrid minivans were available in the EU in '08, but not until '17 here... and as of this model year, two.
And don't talk to me about "subsidies" - they're the GOP's answer to everything, tax breaks, not actual money from them to me.
No, you're attacking people on your side, who often agree with a lot, but you don't know our economic situation, or US prices, but are sure we can do what you want.
Stop attacking your allies. I was in an APA for 15 years, until one long-term member did that, and mostly killed the APA. That's what killed the Old Left: "the time is here for the Revolution, but you've got the wrong analysis, so we'll take our bat and ball and go home".
I repease STOP ATTACKING YOUR ALLIES.
BUT GM WILL NOT MAKE THEM. The US auto industry is owned by the oil industry. There is no excuse that the Prius was the only hybrid in the US for 10 years, and they couldn't keep them in stock, they sold so fast, and the US auto industry said, "oh, no one's going to buy them, here's a V8 5L engine, 12 mpg SUV....."
And the mind-bogglingly stupid cartoon I see far too often: socialism means you have a cow, the government takes it, and gives you half a cow.
Nothing about leaving you with one cow, and taking half of the rich rancher's 10,000 head, and giving you another cow.
Thanks very much. Cambridge. Moffat is about halfway from here to Lairg - and we don't intend to drive that in one day!
Right. My car was definitely at the cheap end of the market, is now 10 years old, for four years of which I was working (mostly commuting by car), and I have spent half as much on petrol as the car cost (at UK prices).
Yes, I would probably go electric if the UK didn't plan to generate so much of its electricity by burning gas, and they made a functionally suitable car. OGH thinks that they will do that by 2025; I am not so optimistic.
My car was definitely at the cheap end of the market
I bought the cheapest standard I could find with air conditioning and decent reliability. Bought it new, because in 2010 dealers here were desperate to clear out stock and new cars were basically the same price as used.
I'm planning on replacing it with an EV when prices are lower, I can drive 500 km without major planning, and (most importantly) I need to replace it.
Certainly not relevant to any author we know </sarcasm> but today's Bizarro cartoon shows an editor telling an author, "I know you wrote this as a bleak vision of a dystopian future, but today we can sell it as a fond remembrance of the good old days."
Good thing that never happens in real life, right?
whitroth @ 1154 Yes Gasdive is a "Purist" - like the corbynistas. The perfect is the enemy of the good enough
I've got a question for anyone who knows about geology. I've just finished writing a fantasy book and the local Orc-lord has a big, basalt castle. But there are also other kinds of stone used in the city which surrounds the castle.
And alpha-reader raised the concern that having two kinds of stone available in a single shire, approximately 10,000 square miles, isn't likely. (The other is an unnamed red stone) The area is mountainous, so I'm curious about the issue. How many kinds of rock can reasonably be expected in 10,000 square miles of mountainous terrain?
You are still being silly, and moreover you haven't even read the post you purport to be replying to.
"The lease plan from Citroen is 18 pounds a month."
I said: "Forget borrowing, credit, or any other of these evil things that involve a legal obligation to part with money at regular intervals regardless of circumstances." I would have thought it was pretty obvious that a "lease plan" is included in such a category.
"There's a 3500 pound up front payment"
Is that an order of magnitude less than 6000 Euros? No, it isn't. In case this is not yet sufficiently clear: I have not fucking got 3500 pounds. Or anything else with "thousand" in it. I might manage to scrape up 350, but not 3500.
"but that's what you'd pay for a shitty old petrol car up front anyway."
Maybe that is the case in Australia, but in Britain that would get you a bloody good one.
"18 quid a month wouldn't cover fuel for a petrol car. That's what, 8 litres?"
Closer to 14, but it's not for fuel anyway. It's what you have to pay even if you leave the thing sitting on your drive for the month and don't go anywhere in it at all (which I am very likely to do). It's a hole in your pocket which you can't even shut off temporarily, let alone plug, resulting from being dumb enough to sign up for the kind of legal arrangement which I have already most firmly ruled out.
"That's before we mention congestion charge."
Wossat then?
Do you think I'm in London? I'm not, and if I was going there I'd go by train.
"...citroen-ami-18-per-month-43-mile-electric-range..."
Right. It is not a replacement for a car. It's a fucking expensive replacement for my mobility scooter, with a roof. Range and speed restrict it to local urban use only, whereas if I need a car it's for pretty much the opposite kind of duty. It does not fix any problems that the scooter doesn't handle already, apart from not getting wet, and for that sort of money I'll stick to wearing a coat.
Furthermore, according to Citroen's own website it isn't even available in the UK, so it's pointless to even suggest it. http://www.citroen.co.uk/models/future-models/ami.html
"You may be happy to do a head gasket on the side of the road. Most people couldn't do it in a well equipped garage, let alone with rain filling the bores."
You get worse than rain just with the dribbles of remaining coolant. That's what bog paper is for. I've dropped a gearbox at the side of the road, too, using tools carried on a bicycle. I don't care what "most people" do, since I wasn't talking about them. I dare say "most people" would not consider the principal obstacle to converting my existing car to electric drive to be that the necessary battery is constrained to be an order of magnitude more expensive, even second-hand, than a spare engine (£150), either.
"You're out of your mind if you think you can buy a 15 year old car, drive it for another 12 years and never do anything more than an oil change."
I never said you could. I said that the most common servicing operation required that cost anything at all was an oil change, and the cost of a can of oil and a filter is not large.
"Timing belt, clutch, 3 or 4 batteries set of disks, a radiator and hoses and you'd count yourself very lucky."
My car is 50 years old. I've bought one new battery in 12 years. It still has its original brake discs, and its original radiator and hoses (I'd not expect to change a radiator anyway unless it got damaged; is this an Australian-climate thing?). It doesn't have a timing belt, and it doesn't have a clutch. I've had to replace the water pump, a suspension arm, a couple of lights, and a brake caliper. (Oh, and the windscreen, but that was because some wee shite threw a stone through it, which is not an age-related fault.) And I got it for nothing, because the previous owner no longer had room for it.
Your post #1070 conveys to me only that you bought a complete lemon, and #1073 further suggests that you are not very good at choosing second hand cars.
What this goes to show is that your experience is not mine, and you are not correct to use it as a basis to claim that I am "saying things that are wrong".
Concerning #1143 - Paws's assessment of the link is a lot less misleading than the title of the web page - "Tesla Model 3 Cost of Ownership Slightly Cheaper Than a Camry" - which is factually incorrect according to their own data.
Further down the page is a table http://loupfunds.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Screen-Shot-2019-07-25-at-2.34.38-PM.png titled "5 Year Cost of Ownership". That table states, under "Total", $53780 for a Tesla Model 3 and $45336 for a Toyota Camry LE. Therefore, according to their own data, the Toyota is in fact $8444 cheaper.
They only manage to claim the Tesla is cheaper (in their second "Total" row) by subtracting the amount they expect to get from selling it second hand. Which is not "total cost of ownership", it is "total cost of ownership minus result from then flogging it again". If anyone is guilty of "not arguing in good faith" and considering that "facts no longer matter", it is Loupfunds.
No problem. Have a look at the Lake District. Borrowdale Volcanics on top of Skiddaw Slate. Skiddaw is basically at the end of Borrowdale, and the area as a whole is somewhere about 1500 square miles off the top of my head. Or Wales; Wales is about 8000 square miles, and you get volcanics plus slate in the north and actual coal in the south. (Very good coal, too.)
No, I'm a realist who let's my opinions be guided by facts, rather than "facts" be guided by opinions.
Greg, you can't absorb the fact that you only use your LR's unique capabilities a couple of times a year, and for all the rest a little electric runabout would be fine. You could sell the LR to someone who needs that capability every day and hire a truck or get the garden centre to deliver far cheaper. You're a Land Rover enthusiast. Own it. Be an enthusiast. I've posted that I own and love an old Suzuki that my mother gave me. But I don't drive it around or fool myself into thinking it's a necessary part of a transport solution for anyone.
EC believes that batteries explode when they get wet. No amount of evidence to the contrary has been able to shift it because he wants a fossil car and wants to feel good about it. He also believes that a heat pump is expensive and requires major structural changes to his house to install because he likes what he has and wants to find an excuse to feel good about it, so he decided to live in a counterfactual fantasy and take sneery snipes at anyone who points out the real world with annoying things like retail price lists and videos of heat pump installation.
Paws has decided that he doesn't have to drive electric until they're cheaper than petrol, so he looks straight at a spreadsheet, ignores the final numbers and picks out a line part way through the calculation and declares that it shows electrics are more expensive.
Whitroth is convinced that electric cars start at $70k. A simple Google search would dispel that in 3 seconds. Even if he was furious at my temerity to suggest such a thing, you'd think he'd have armed himself with the facts so he could proudly exclaim "Tesla starts at $7X,XXX" giving the exact figure. Instead he posts his counterfactual and dearly held opinion.
I'm not saying people have to be perfect. I'm saying that using fantasy as a basis for decision making in a life and death situation isn't the best course.
Not a geologist, but it was a hobby once. You get lots of different types of rocks in 10,000 square miles.
https://geoscan.nrcan.gc.ca/starweb/geoscan/servlet.starweb?path=geoscan/fulle.web&search1=R=108954
Download the geological map and see just how many types of rock there are within a day's hike:
https://ftp.maps.canada.ca/pub/nrcan_rncan/publications/STPublications_PublicationsST/108/108954/gid_108954.zip
Just to comple'tely derail things, if anyone is interested in how the Meinpillow guys US election fraud 3 day cyber symposium is going, the answer is hilariously badly. Some noble soul has been screencapping the true believers disillusionment and it's splendid- https://imgur.com/a/FW4eZeX
These are the people that should be massively predisposed to believe in the stupid steal story. If anyone's a bit more obsessed here's the realtime mockery thread https://www.reddit.com/r/Qult_Headquarters/comments/p1voyw/mike_pillow_cyber_symposium_megathread_for/
I know used car prices have soared, but last time I looked a shitwagon could be had at auction for £50.
A guy I knew in college did that, quite literally. He needed to get from Olympia WA to Tacoma WA for something, call it 30 miles or 50 km up the highway, so a 100km round trip. He found a pile of junk with four wheels on it for $50 and made the trip. He figured that any miles he got out of it after that were a nice bonus.
It's like this $80 million recall effort on California Governor Newsom. Nobody is endorsing the wannabe Republican mayors, they're just sucking donations and selling "Recall Newsom" yard signs at $20 a pop. What a mess if Newsom's recalled. And it's not that I especially like Newsom, I just figure his face is tough enough that if it's held to the grindstone of California politics every day, it'll last. Unlike that of the competition.
Anyway, cui bono? So much of the Republican party isn't just fascism, it's Facsism, the hottest new merchandising fad! What can we sell the
suckerspatriots on now, $20 anti-vax t-shirts on Amazon? Medical bankruptcy after Covid? The sky's the limit for the inventively amoral."Further down the page is a table http://loupfunds.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Screen-Shot-2019-07-25-at-2.34.38-PM.png titled "5 Year Cost of Ownership". That table states, under "Total", $53780 for a Tesla Model 3 and $45336 for a Toyota Camry LE. Therefore, according to their own data, the Toyota is in fact $8444 cheaper.
They only manage to claim the Tesla is cheaper (in their second "Total" row) by subtracting the amount they expect to get from selling it second hand. Which is not "total cost of ownership", it is "total cost of ownership minus result from then flogging it again". If anyone is guilty of "not arguing in good faith" and considering that "facts no longer matter", it is Loupfunds"
When your argument is based on the idea that the entire accounting industry has made this obvious error in how to calculate something as basic as total cost of ownership, and the result of some basic arithmetic is not to your liking due to a conspiracy that goes deeper than anyone realises, you're an antivaxxer with a different bee in your bonnet. Ask yourself in the clear light of day, is it more likely that you and paws have stumbled on the real way of working out the cost of something that millions of accountants over centuries have overlooked, or that you're both letting yourselves abandon reality in order to maintain your preconceptions?
This TCO is also based on the cost of gasoline and electricity. In the US over the last 15 years I've paid over $4/gal and less than $1.5/gal.
And while power around the US by state aveerage is just under $.10/kwh to a bit over $.20 at the high end. And at times can vary within a state. And I understand in some European countries it is above $.30/kwh.
So this entire TOC discussion makes no sense unless you talk about where and when and what assumptions are being made about fuel costs. At least to me.
Oh, did the purchase price include some bank of kwh's or was there a big tax credit for installing an in home fast charger or ....
Currently gasoline in central NC is $2.50 - $3.00 / gal and electricity on my last bill was $.11/kwh plus $14/mo in overhead fees.
what would you like me, personally, to do?
Despite stalking you on the internet for years I don't know enough about you to make really specific suggestions. So all the following has an "(if you aren't already)" caveat:
If you haven't done an energy audit that's a good start (DIY ones are fine, but download the big list of things to look at because no-one ever remembers all of them). As mentioned, voting is good, and you don't have to be Heteromeles to go badger your politicians. You can also look at your investments and evaluate how far down the "don't fund ecovandals" rabbit hole you want to go. Likewise it's worth while deciding where you shop with a view to biasing your choices towards ethical.
Thing is, I know a huge amount about living ethically in Sydney, a lot about doing the same in Australia and Aotearoa, and SFA about the USA. So I can really only give generic advice and suggest people like you look for local resources.
It didn't include any credits or incentives. It assumed 2.75 dollars per gal (right in the middle of your estimate) with a 5% annual increase. Electricity was assumed to be 12c/kWh and I can't find any mention of a change over time. I don't think they add the supply charge (there's no mention) so I guess they presume you have a house with electricity. No mention of adding chargers, though they're not actually needed if you only drive the distances in the projection (average US driving distance per year). If you do drive more than the average, then your savings will be more and that would cover installing a dryer outlet if you don't already have one. They mention $15.43 per charge, which given the M3 SR+ has a 50 kWh pack implies that they're using 30c/kWh, so I'm not quite sure which one they're using. Either way, they're both more than your number of 11c, so they're both calculating the Tesla costs more than it does.
"I think I've mentioned this one a time or two:
https://www.aixam-pro.com/en/e-truck-range
Even though it costs more than the Citroen Ami, it does have room for my gear if I wanted to go play or do some photography ... around town."
I don't know a lot about them, but if that sort of thing floats your boat, maybe look at an Arcimoto deliverator? Longer range, higway speed, available in the USA. No price yet, but the people version is a bit under 18k.
https://www.arcimoto.com/deliverator
As I said. Where and when matters. Gas can go back up to $4/gal. And maybe back down to $1.50/gal. For me. Others pay more. Others pay less. And while MY power costs $.11/kwh others in the US pay double that. Or less.
And various places DO have incentives which will cover the cost of a home charger setup. Some friends go theirs this way.
And Europe will be different. And Canada. And Japan. Etc...
Plus individually we drive different distances per trip and per month.
I was replying to your statement:
"So this entire TOC discussion makes no sense unless you talk about where and when and what assumptions are being made about fuel costs. At least to me."
I gave you the underlying assumptions. It's the USA, using average driving distance in the USA, using the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported average prices for fuel and electricity with no subsidies or incentives included. (I didn't mention that they use financing rather than leasing which disadvantages the car with the higher sticker price).
It was in reply to someone from the USA who didn't understand that a luxury electric car is cheaper than a basic medium range petrol (gas) car.
Obviously individual circumstances vary. I didn't say that it applied to everyone everywhere, everywhen. Neither did Loup.
However, people from all over the world have done similar comparisons and the results are similar. Sometimes the Tesla works out slightly more expensive, depending on the assumptions. Generally it works out cheaper, even when compared against cars of much lower safety, equipment, luggage capacity and performance.
Google is your friend, there are hundreds of similar calculations out there for you to look at. Many from governments.
Your particular case is even more favourable to the Tesla than the US average.
Pigeon gasdive is SO CERTAIN that answers that work in AUS, with their climate & costs are going to work in Dumbarton or even London ... Actually, the Citroen Ami is a dangerous mobile road pimple, like the Smart.
gasdive NOT EVEN WRONG - again The problem is in the word "hire" - I'm 75 & I doubt any car/van hire firm would now let me use their stuff. Oh & that also involves pre-planning, rather than: "It's a nice day & I'm free, time to go & get some horse manure ..." ( In a hired van, umm ... ) As it happens, I think I'm going to buy an electric bike & a small trailer, for all local journeys. Minimum cost for an electric actual car, here, is about £24 k ... cost of conversion for my L-R about £30k+ Stop talking expensive bollocks that I can't afford Vimes' Boots ( AGAIN )
I'm not debating for or against in this. I'm just saying that the case either way gets very specific very quickly. Assumptions about average driving in the US plus typical gas and electricity costs as for a virtual situation that rarely exists. I can vary the price per gallon for gas by at least $.50/gal by driving 30 minutes. Up and down. And crossing the state line going south is a guaranteed way to get it cheaper. Not worth it for me but the many of the million or so people who live on the south side of Charlotte tend to fill up in SC a lot. (BTW the roads in SC are crap. And paid for with low gas taxes. And many of the people like my brother complain about gas taxes there being too high. Oh, well.)
Personally I plan to move to electric for my next car purchase. Which sort of pisses me off. We had two gas cars that got good gas millage till someone totaled one last October. And I really don't like my choices just now. So I get to drive the Tundra truck (5.7L) when I need to leave my wife with a car. (Over 3 years in she has driven the truck maybe 30 feet.) Which sucks for gas mileage. But I also don't want to make my next "keep for 10 years" purchased based on the choices just now. Luckily we don't have daily commutes and I leave the house alone maybe twice a week.
Or we could use #1173's $0.30/kwh, which therefore becomes $0.66/kwh.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-58177865 seems like a relevant placement. Tl;dr it's not an "electric aeroplane" but a hybrid built by taking a Cessna Skymaster, replacing the front Continental (but not the back one) with an electric motor, and filling the baggage pod with batteries.
#1169 & #1171 - This is also based on the presumption that electricity for road transport will continue to enjoy its present very favourable government tax/duty rates. Taking David L's $0.10/kwh figure, and UK duty rates, how does changing the cost per kwh up to $0.22/kwh affect the Tesla's cost per mile?
It's going to be tricky to try to split electricity used for charging cars out from electricity used for cooking, as an example. Particularly for those of us who generate our own via solar array or the like.
Separate meter if you're using a charger rather than a mains small power lead. There are also "special tax regimes" for people who're running mechanical pump diesel cars on vegetable oil.
Now that it has come up. In the US (all states I think) diesel and gasoline can be purchased untaxed (well the road portion) if the intended use is for farm, construction, or other off rood use.
I assume that the same applies in other countries?
In the US I think both of these fuels are dyed to be identifiable.
In the UK, it's only for agricultural and off-road use, "red diesel". Aside from the red dye, this also contains a chemical marker not found in normal DERV.
You've just changed your argument. YOU SAID "luxury EV", so I chose a luxury EV. YOU did NOT say "a reasonably priced or low-cost EV".
And you haven't responded to $4k for maintenance/repair on a new car for 4 years, when I noted I hadn't hit that figure number for my '08 Honda Odyssey minivan that I got used in '13.
The site you referenced, therefore, is pulling some of their numbers out of their hats. Show me something, say, from a car mag, not some never-heard-of investment firm.
Oh, and about beaters (cars), the least expensive vehicle I ever bought, a 1972 ex-Mother Bell Ford E-150, cost $500 or $550 in Nov of 1986, and I got two or three years out of it, before frame rust made it unsafe.
"It's going to be tricky to try to split electricity used for charging cars out from electricity used for cooking, as an example."
Here in Aotearoa, diesel is not taxed at the pump, as a lot of it goes to farm, marine, or stationary uses. Instead, diesel vehicles pay Road User Charges based on distance travelled as measured by gadgets on the vehicle.
The plan is that EVs will also be subject to Road User Charges in due course of time. They are currently exempt, to encourage uptake, and the petrol-heads are not happy about that.
JHomes
10 years ago I bought a Subaru Forrester baby-SUV to replace my 14-ish year old Honda CRV (which is actually still occasionally seen around town) because the service costs were climbing. The Subaru cost me $38k. Since then it has cost about the same to maintain- and no, I haven’t been paying premium Subaru dealer prices all that time. Even now it needs serious work on the AC and exhaust. It’s averaged 8.8l/100km overall and I seem to have spent about $20k on petrol.
I have a number of friends and acquaintances with various Teslas of various ages. Not one of them has had to spend more than $200/y for maintenance, except for the near-original model S needing a set of tyres, which isn’t really a surprise. My Subaru is on its fourth set. For the same mileage I might plausibly have paid around $2500 for electricity with a Tesla 3 or Y.
So yeah, as soon as I get the chance I’ll be dumping the reciprocating infernal confusion engine device.
I think “investment” here is just the most appropriately generalised way to refer to how you find your retirement. If you rely on a government pension only, it doesn’t apply. But if you have anything else that pays you retirement income, that counts, presuming that you have some choice about how it is managed and how it generates interest for you.
So for example in Oz we’ve had compulsory superannuation contributions since the mid 80s. Years ago you didn’t get much say what fund you were with at any given time, or how they invested on your behalf. These days that’s different and you can definitely specify an “ethical investments only” option with the mainstream funds.
You presumably have something different, but also still have some choice about how it’s managed, or who you bank with, etc.
Cars in general (at least in the US) have gotten a LOT more reliable as a trend. A 62 Buick Skylark I bought in 70 was ready for the wreaker by 72. (I could check the front tire tread by looking through the fender.) I doubt it had 60K miles.
My 96 Explorer was very near the end when I sold it with around 250K miles on it.
My 2016 Civic has had nothing but scheduled fluids since I bought it new in 2016. It has 36K miles. Well there was that defect that required replacement of the rear deck sub woofer assembly. But that was free. Tires still look good and brakes seem to have lots of pad left. I did just replace the battery which is the first time I got my socket set out with this car. My biggest gripe is with the Android tablet OS that runs the entertainment system. But that's not just a Honda issue. My tools are more and more feeling abandoned. Especially my timing light, dwell meter, drum brake tool, etc...
Basically if you can buy new, most cars these days seem to be well built.
CRV's seem to be expensive to repair. A friend with one that would be from around 2010 found that the dealer wanted $1300 to replace the starter. Mostly in labor charges. Seems they built the engine by taking a starter and assembling the rest of the engine around it.
But as I said, we're going to hold off replacing the wreaked Hyundai Elantra till we there are more choices in EVs. And by then our life style may have changed. Intentionally or not.
Instead of using your $50,000 to buy a new electric car (never mind the carbon footprint of manufacturing* a NEW car, the fact your old car will continue to emit carbon until it is literally broken from whoever you sold it to, or the absolutely blood-soaked safety conditions in Tesla manufacturing) spare a thought for the indigenous people putting their physical lives on the line to stop various things like pipelines and deforestation on their land. They need money for support, bail, and legal defense. Here's one such group: http://apache-stronghold.com/
*https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-blog/2010/sep/23/carbon-footprint-new-car
The gruaniad seems to have a long time dislike of EVs. It’s almost as if they consider them trans-cars.
Moz @ 1120:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I vaguely recall you talking about serving in the US military. Which is a government department specifically aimed at unequal sacrifice, where some people die so that other, more selfish American citizens, can live.
If I'm right I'd love to hear why making a few Americans richer is something you're willing to die for, but the survival of the species isn't. Is it purely a time thing? You're making people richer now, but survival is in the future?
I don't expect the sacrifices will be EQUALLY shared. I do however demand that they be EQUITABLY (adjective - characterized by equity or fairness; just and right; fair; reasonable: equitable treatment of all citizens) shared.
I believe you're confusing the nature of military service with the anathema that the U.S. peace time draft turned into during the Vietnam War. When the government allowed the draft to become an unequal sacrifice it nearly destroyed the U.S. military. Within the military, the sacrifice can't always be "equal", but it has to be "equitable" or it all falls apart. Those who give the orders take the same risks as those to receive the orders.
Consider the military and its role in WW2 - defeating NAZI Germany & the Empire of Japan. Did all nations sacrifice equally? No.
Did all military's sacrifice equally? No.
Was the sacrifice WITHIN the military shared as EQUITABLY as possible? Yes it was.
And civilians sacrificed as well in that effort.
I joined the Army National Guard AFTER the draft was ended here in the U.S. I joined it partially in the spirit of the Greatest Generation and partially for selfish reasons (I needed the paycheck). And I stayed beyond my obligated term of service because for me the benefits outweighed the costs.
Bottom line is you ARE wrong about what it means to serve in the military. Just like you're wrong about my willingness to sacrifice for "survival of the species".
PS: You were one of those I was thinking about when I mentioned demanding sacrifice from others while refusing to consider any sacrifice on your own part. Just so you know.
What are YOU giving up for the common good?
Greg @ 1140: JBS
That "One missed paycheck" statistic form the Youessay ...
And yet, a large proportion of them must be voting "R" - why?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tldGgGFe194
Why did y'all choose Bozo the Clown for your Prime Minister?
Robert Prior @ 1144: *Thanks to an American with my name not realizing that he's using someone else's email address to sign up for things.
Or it might be some asshole fucking with you. That sounds like something that was fairly common back in UseNet days before people began obfuscating their real names & email addresses. It's why I still use only my initials even here on this blog. Our host knows who I am (or at least knows my real email address from when I first signed up).
A precursor of doxxing I think.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxing
PRE-internet days they'd sign you up for the Columbia House Record Club.
whitroth @ 1156: And the mind-bogglingly stupid cartoon I see far too often: socialism means you have a cow, the government takes it, and gives you half a cow.
Nothing about leaving you with one cow, and taking half of the rich rancher's 10,000 head, and giving you another cow.
Feudalism: You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.
Socialism: You have two cows. The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.
Communism: You have two cows. The government takes both and gives you the milk it thinks you need.
(Except for Cuba because both cows escaped to Miami during the Mariel boatlift.)
Fascism: You have two cows. The government takes both and sells you the milk.
Nazism: You have two cows. The government takes both and kills you.
Libertarianism: Go away. What I do with my cows is none of your business.
Pacifism: You have two cows. They stampede you.
Political Correctness: You are associated with (the concept of “ownership” is a symbol of the phallocentric, warmongering, intolerant past) two differently aged (but no less valuable to society) bovines of non-specified gender.
Talibanism: You have two cows. At first, the government makes them wear burkas, but later shoots them because “they are Hindu religious symbols.”
Surrealism: You have two slightly lame giraffes with speech impediments. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.
Anarchism: You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbors try to take the cows and kill you.
Bureaucracy: You have two cows. To register them, you fill in 17 forms in triplicate and don’t have time to milk them.
United Nations: You have two cows. France vetoes you from milking them. The United States and Britain veto the cows from milking you. New Zealand abstains. China boasts that it will soon have more cows than anyone, though the rest of the world knows their milk is tainted with unidentified pollutants.
[theoretical] Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull. Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows. You sell them and retire on the income.
Enron Capitalism: You have two cows. You borrow 80 percent of the forward value of the two cows from your bank, then buy another cow with 5 percent down and the rest financed by the seller on a note callable if your market cap goes below $20 billion at a rate two times prime. You now sell three cows to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at a second bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows. The milk rights of six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to seven cows back to your listed company. The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. The transaction process is upheld by your independent auditor, which does not provide a balance sheet. A press release is issued announcing that Enron, as a major owner of cows, will begin trading cows via the Internet site COW (cows on web).
Greg Tingey @ 1177: gasdive
NOT EVEN WRONG - again
The problem is in the word "hire" - I'm 75 & I doubt any car/van hire firm would now let me use their stuff.
Your age wouldn't be a problem here in the U.S. ... as long as you have a valid drivers licence, proof of insurance and a major credit card. I don't think the rental companies will do cash rentals any more, but that's more attributable to the shit Mohammad Salameh & Timothy McVeigh pulled with the vans they rented.
Most of the CAR rental companies wouldn't be able to provide you with a utility van, although you might be able to get a SUV. For a real utility van you'd have to go to U-Haul. Manure wouldn't be a problem as long as you returned the SUV or Van CLEAN and even not clean wouldn't be that big a problem although it's gonna cost you if they have to clean it.
Not a problem for them because you signed the contract that says they can bill your credit card if you don't return the vehicle as clean as it was when you got it.
The problem with renting a vehicle in the U.S. right now is the industry is tied closely to the airlines & when Covid brought air travel to an almost screeching halt in 2020, most of the rental companies had to resort to selling off their fleets (cash flow - they still had to pay for their inventory even if they weren't making any income from it).
Now, as air travel is coming back, the car rental companies can't meet demand and the car manufacturing & leasing companies can't meet the rental companies needs (plus all kinds of financial shit about how they're going to pay for new fleets) ... and people have resorted to renting U-Haul vans when they can't get a car, so there's shortages there as well.
Doubt it. I can tell from his Amazon purchases that he's real. (Also used my email address for that.) Not to mention his shopping for cars…
Problem went away after I sent a paper letter to his actual address (obtained from Amazon purchase confirmation emails). Then they slowly started up again…
I think he's just a stereotypical old white guy who's getting forgetful of things like what his email address actually is.
and people have resorted to renting U-Haul vans when they can't get a car, so there's shortages there as well.
While they mostly charge $20/day there IS that $.60 / mile AND UP that U-Haul charges. You really have to need one to pay that.
Better to actually check out the car rental companies for a cargo van. Unless Amazon has them all rented. Seriously. I've rented vans a few times since everthing went crazy. The Amazon thing tends to occur mostly in December.
David L @ 1183: Now that it has come up. In the US (all states I think) diesel and gasoline can be purchased untaxed (well the road portion) if the intended use is for farm, construction, or other off rood use.
I assume that the same applies in other countries?
In the US I think both of these fuels are dyed to be identifiable.
The last time I had any reason to look at this, Road Use (taxed) diesel was UN-dyed, while NON-Road Use (lower tax) diesel & Kerosene ARE dyed. If the authorities have reason to suspect you of using NON-Road Use diesel to cheat on your taxes, all they have to do is sample your fuel to see if it's dyed.
You're going to get a BIG fine and whoever has the permit that allows them to buy NON-Road Use diesel could possibly lose their permit.
"You've just changed your argument. YOU SAID "luxury EV", so I chose a luxury EV. YOU did NOT say "a reasonably priced or low-cost EV"....Show me something, say, from a car mag"
Ok, Motortrend says about the Model 3:
"Read around our site a bit, and it'll be obvious we're fans of the Tesla Model 3 sedan. Not only does it hold the top spot in our rankings of electric cars, but the Model 3 is also our favorite compact luxury sedan (as of this writing), rated above the Audi A4 and BMW 3 Series."
https://www.motortrend.com/news/tesla-model-3-trim-level-comparison/
Follow the link in the article and you'll see the Model 3 named as the winner of the best luxury compact car of the year.
Since you said a motoring magazine can be the final arbiter, can we put to bed the idea that a Model 3 is not a luxury EV? It's not only a luxury car, it's the best luxury car, petrol or electric.
You then want me to find a motoring magazine that does the same comparison. Like arithmetic varies depending on who's doing it. Arithmetic doesn't. You want to check the figures, go right ahead and post your results and workings as I have done. I've done enough Googleing for people in this thread.
The only thing you might take issue with is the second hand value. That is the only thing really up for debate. Everything else being just US averages taken straight from the government, or actual insurance quotes. I can't get Kelly Blue Book to spit out an estimate of the private sale value, maybe it doesn't like my location. Looking on Cars dot com and Auto Trader, the cheapest M3 I can find is 30 000 dollars, so it looks like the 2019 estimate of Residual Value was a gross underestimate, which makes a new Tesla even better value than a new Camry.
JBS A huge number who voted for BoZo did so for 2 reasons .. 1. They had not seen him close-up, as Londoners ( Like me ) had ... 2. The Labour party committed suicide by picking a man who had not had ( & still has not had ) a single new idea, or learnt anything at all, since 1975
Car rental ... Rules & standards are different here ... but, specially for gasdive (!) About 4 weeks back, I found that one of the panes in my greenhouse was cracked, broken & dangerous ... so I went to my local, back-street glass shop ( Founded 1941! ) for a replacement pane & a couple of spares. Standard agricultural panes are 2 ft square. How to get them home? Hire a car or van for a half-mile trip? Can't realistically carry them - both heavy & sharp-edged. Can't put them on the bike, either, can I? Went in the back of the L-R ZERO problem. Again an EV would do, except that they are horrendously expensive ....
" but, specially for gasdive (!)"
Why include me? I obviously have no idea how things work on other places. I'm just Australian after all.
If I responded I'd just be told that my solutions only work in Australia and I just don't understand that you obviously require a two tonne 4wd, fully taxed and insured incase you need to shift window panes. You can't wrap them in newspaper and put them in your bicycle panniers, or lay them flat in a bike cargo trailer, or heaven forbid, actually just ring the glazier and have them turn up and do the work for a tiny fraction of the cost of having a LR for a month.
No I CAN NOT put them in my bicycle panniers - they are simply not big enough 600 mm = 2 ft on a side. I do not (yet) have a bike cargo trailer - if, as expected I do get an electric bike I will get a cargo-trailer, but, as of right now, not possible. Also, about once every 2 months, SOMETHING unexpected happens & the L-R is the answer, where hiring is either not going to work or is going to be ridiculously expensive, assuming that I could hire in the first place!
What a poisonous little man you are.
It's worse than that. The constraints on those over even 70 are ridiculous, and hire prices START at 50 quid a day for anything suitable for carrying bulky items - plus you have to get to the collection point, which is often tricky. Both of these issues are largely due to the insurance cartel, which has gummint backing.
It would be EASIER for me to buy a car for a month's recumbent triking in Scotland than hire one - and I can do that ONLY because I already own a car (the cartel again) :-(
How to get them home? Hire a car or van for a half-mile trip?
Taxi? I thought London was famous for its taxis…
I am not going to support Greg's choice of a juggernaut, but your claims are complete hogwash. I got 3 paving slabs (210 Kg total) amd some 2.4m lengths of timber moulding yesterday, and I do that sort of thing a good many times a year. Obviously, a bicycle won't do the job, I pointed out why hiring is infeasible in #1208, and we can't get small quantities delivered. We have been trying to get a carpenter to do a small job for TWO YEARS now, and I have given up and started it myself (hence the mouldings).
I have also pointed out that I can't get go (unpowered) triking in Scotland without a car, because they have abolished the last guards' vans on the railways. Yes, I have looked up carriers, but I have to package everything (luggage and all) up securely, which is obviously impossible without somewhere to store the packaging (for the return) at the far end.
My Skoda Fabia works, and an electric equivalent would as well, BUT I CAN'T BUY ONE, NOT FOR ANY MONEY. I really don't think it is environmentally sane to replace a small, 1 ton car by a large, 3 ton juggernaut just to placate people like you - especially while much of our electricity comes from burning fossil gas!
Right. But you don't need a Land Rover for a 2x2 foot piece of glazing - the back seat of my Prius would have done just fine.
"I am not going to support Greg's choice of a juggernaut"
Ok, I will (again). He loves his LR. It doesn't do any real harm to start it up and drive it a few miles every couple of months. It's part of keeping old machines, be they LR, or steam engine, going. If he's going to start it up he may as well collect some glass or bags of shit while he's out in it. The world would be the poorer without our industrial history.
It's a valuable thing, it's part of our shared identity and he's preserving it. He should be commended, as would someone who restores a ruined castle at great expense.
What it isn't, is a valid economic or practical choice. Which is where we differ.
Sorry guv', Ah downt gow Sarf of the river. ;-)
And they definitely won't take difficult luggage, like most building and woodworking supplies - often including my trike :-(
Do they not have car share in the UK? Here in BC there are a number of car share organizations. In Vancouver there's Evo, which is run by the local car association (BCAA) and Modo, which has reciprocal agreements with others, such as the car share on the Sunshine Coast in BC. Evo has Prius cars, while Modo has different vans and cars. When you join, they check your driver's record, you pay a base fee per year (Evo charges $2, Modo a bit more) and then it costs a fee either per minute or per hour when you use the car. Fees for the car depend on which vehicle and which car-share, and include all the insurance, petrol/gas, etc. They're very popular here in Vancouver, and are really good for the sort of tasks that you can't easily accomplish on a bike but only need to do every now and again. I know quite a few people who got rid of their cars knowing they could mostly use bikes and public transit, with the option of the car-share car when they really wanted one.
gadsive An amazed THANK YOU You've got it ... I'm going to use the L-R for when I NEED IT & nothing else will do. Even before the current insanities of C-19 & the climate emrgency not being quite so desperate, I was very rarely using it more than once a week & almost always out-of-town, to where there is no Public Transport at all. I am shifting further in that direction, as far as I can, without giving up the Great Green Beast. Especially as neither an elctric conversion or EV is affordable - for me.
runix Ah a car share, after I've put 12 bags of Horse Manure in it, to put on the Allotment?
You are meant to leave them clean, but often the vans in particular are somewhat less than spotless ;-). I do assume you clean the L-R after carrying bags of horse manure in it? Or at least sweep it out, like we used to when we had one on the farm I grew up on.
Back to the subject of not having clouds are a certain point in the Global Warming process, what does that mean for rain/moisture in the air. Does it mean we don't get rain? Obviously water is still evaporating? Or does it mean that the moisture comes from the air by some other mechanism?
Yes, and it's very little use for people like me. In addition to the problem Greg mentions, driving one up to Scotland for a month's non-use (of the car) would cost as much as buying and insuring an old but usable car.
There was the time ....
When I actually has 15 bags in the back, turned into the entrance to the old ( Closed-ready-for demolition ) sports centre, where the back gate was/is into our plots - to find it almost full, with about 30 Plod & people standing around, etc. I stopped, wound the window right down, & asked the Plod who came up: G: What's going on here? Plod: It's all right sir, just wait your turn G: Um, no, I just turned in here, what's happening? P: The sports centre is SHUT, sir & we'll be with you G: I KNOW it's shut, but I was heading for those ( indicates ) gates over there! P: You sure, we're searching all the cars directed in here ... G: I wasn't directed, but if you really want to help me unload 15 bags of Horse Manure for my Allotment, I'd welcome the assistance/Help ..... P - long pause - Oh, err, I see, um. - pause - In that case, perhaps we'd better not detain you.
Nearly 3 hours later, when I'd done all that & other gardening-type things, I Unlocked the gates, rolled through, locked up behind me - & they were still at it. I "pinked" the horn & Plod all waved at me ....
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ They had parked a mobile ANPR camera back up the road, radioed plod on traffic island to direct anyone flagged as "No MoT/Insurance" to direct them into the unused car-park. But of course, I'd ignored the Plod on the island, because I was signalling "left-turn" anyway. Oops.
Congratulations, your "sarcasm" has hit a wall. Wrap 2'^2 panes of window glass in newspaper and put them in bicycle panniers? Where do you get 2'+ (need room for the paper, and larger than the 2') bike panniers? On any bike I know, that would stick out past the rear wheel 6"-1'.
Talking of electric cars Oops, as the saying goes
I give up. What in the post you replied to invoked that response to Greg?
Someone reported a 'domestic' last night at our address. Two nice young policemen (her words) came round about midnight and had a word with my wife, who pointed out that it must have been another location with the same number and street name (there are several around here) in another 'village'. I was in bed, but they didn't bother to check that she hadn't murdered me (her words again). As you may note, she hadn't :-)
I forgot to say that they said it was the most peaceful domestic they had ever been called out to!
I have actually heard a similar story, where not only were the street name and number the same, but so were the householder names, and they even suffered from the same medical condition. (They were different people, since they were both in the same treatment unit at the same time)
Indeed, “oops”. Welcome to the blocked list
I don't agree with you on the subject of electric cars, but that was very funny in the sense of "everything goes wrong at once."
whitroth @ 1150: An investment company, and how many own Teslas, and have stock money in the game.
Come on - $4k for repairs/maintenance on a 4 yr old car? Really? Does that include everything covered under a new car warranty, like oil changes?
Also, they clearly expect the Tesla to be driven less.
So, all this talk about best cars, worst cars - how much it costs to own & operate one ... this is what I know about my current ride, which I don't think is going to be replaced soon if ever. I keep a spreadsheet.
2003 Jeep Liberty Sport purchased 10 Nov 2017 for ~ $7,000 V6, 5sp manual, 4WD, AC, Cruise, AM/FM/CD w/in dash 6 CD changer
Beginning odometer reading was 43,795
2017 - 827 miles, spent $111.00 for gas, MAX $2.449/gal MIN $2.229/gal Year end odometer reading was 44,622
NO maintenance cost. Insurance $250 (to add it to my existing policy for the rest of the period).
$1,000 down + Car payments 2@$275.00 = $550.00
TCO = $1,911.00 $2.31/mile
2018 - 4,504 miles, spent $654.76 for gas, MAX $2.759/gal MIN $2.059/gal Year end odometer reading was 48,288
$1,500 maintenance - 5 new tires, one oil change, annual inspection, tags. Insurance $1,200.
Car payments 12@$275.00 = $3,300
TCO = $6,654.76 $1.48/mile
2019 - 7,795 miles, spent $915.85 for gas, MAX $2.599/gal MIN $2.049/gal Year end odometer reading was 56,944
$1,250 maintenance - replace broken windshield, 2 oil changes, tire rotation, annual inspection, tags. Insurance $1,200.
Car payments 12@$275.00 = $3,300
TCO = $6,665.85 $0.86/mile
2020 - 2,210 miles, spent $796.50 for gas, Max $2.189/gal MIN $1.499/gal Year end odometer reading was 59,154
$400 maintenance - tire rotation, electrical "repair" (bolt came out of the starter & killed the battery), annual inspection, tags. Insurance $900 (rebate for not using vehicle during Covid19 Quarantine.
New after market radio that allows me to play mp3 files from a thumb drive & connects my iPhone through bluetooth for hands free use while driving #1,000
Car payments 11@$275.00 = $3,025.00
TCO = $3,096.50 $1.40/mile
2021 - 1,459 miles, spent $214.50 for gas, Max $2.999/gal MIN $2.239/gal Year To Date odometer reading is 60,623
$300 maintenance - tire rotation, oil change, charge A/C, "repair tail lights". $300 for replacement LED tail light assemblies. Turns out the Jeep Liberty is notorious for the flaky tail lights. Insurance $450
NO car payments.
TCO = $1,264.50 $0.87/mile
I do have to look down once & touch the screen to answer an incoming call. I don't have "voice" activated. I pull off the road if I want to make an outgoing call. Also allows me to use GasBuddy on the iPhone and display it on the screen. But again, I'm going to pull off the road to do that.
Insurance, Annual Inspections, Tags are all required by law. Tire rotations are going to be required for any vehicle ICE or EV if you want to get best mileage out of those tires.
Three & one half years - One repair for road hazard (broken windshield), one mechanical failure for a 17 year old vehicle, one expense to replace an item with an OEM design flaw and one extravagance because the OEM in-Dash CD wouldn't play mp3 CDs & I do like to have my music as a hedge against there being nothing worth listening to on the radio.
One thing I left out is the $90 I paid the shop I use to inspect the car BEFORE I bought it. They really should have noticed the tires were 15 years old and warned me I needed to replace them ASAP. I'd probably have taken it back as soon as I bought it and bought the new tires from them. As it was I lost half a day out of an annual photography event. I've only been able to attend once more since then because 2020 & 2021 were cancelled by Covid. Maybe 2022 ...
David L @ 1200:
While they mostly charge $20/day there IS that $.60 / mile AND UP that U-Haul charges. You really have to need one to pay that.
Yeah, the article where I found that DID say that some people were REALLY desperate to rent ANY kind of vehicle, and when the rental companies didn't have any they were turning to U-Haul.
Better to actually check out the car rental companies for a cargo van. Unless Amazon has them all rented. Seriously. I've rented vans a few times since everthing went crazy. The Amazon thing tends to occur mostly in December.
1. I think this will go away as the rental companies build their fleets back up.
2. I don't know how desperate Greg is to get that load of horse manure.
My main point was that Greg's age wouldn't be a barrier to renting here in the U.S. (U.K. may be different), but there is some other shit going on right now that affects the availability of rental vehicles.
Besides I took it as Greg's point that he already has a vehicle for going to get the horse manure, and was objecting to being told he should get rid of it.
Indeed, “oops”. Welcome to the blocked list [2] Ah yes. You might approve of the anti-verso point of view in Lady of Mazes. Lady of Mazes (Karl Schroeder, 2006)[1] "My humble narrative", said Sophia as she sat on a moss-covered ottoman nearby. "Now, where were we? Ah, yes: it would be considered rude not to leap ahead of ourselves. We don't much tolerate old views here -- like 'objective reality' and physical bodies and such. ... "Well, anyway, versos are people who don't want inscape to weave a coherent narrative of their lives for them." said Sophia. "They disable inscape's narrative function and do horrid things like allowing accidental events to happen to them."
[1] I agree with Charlie that it would be fun to use e.g. GPT-3 to spam Goodreads with good reviews. [2] Occasionally my comments are in part probes to determine the extent of blocker usage, e.g. in the next thread. :-) Note that these comment threads have a lot of lurkers. Some might be high-profile, or high-powered but low-profile. :-)
Don't keep that kind of records. I do know I bought my '08 in '13 with 76k? 78k? was it 89k? mi on it, it's now just shy of 150k.
There are things I appreciate in the Laundry series of novels that don't get a lot of celebration.
I can't remember all of them at once, but one of them is how Stross portrayed the United States. Not just the hucksterish false Gods / false religion so many pray to, or the vast Walmart-ness of the country, but also that so much of America is a death cult.
Thanatos propels much of the country, and its Laundry is appropriately run by ghouls.
Also, in Dead Lies Dreaming, I get the sense that the 'memory London' looks a lot like those paintings from nineteenth century artists, like "Nocturne in Grey and Cold – Piccadilly, by James McNeill Whistler" and others who painted in fog.
"Where do you get 2'+ (need room for the paper, and larger than the 2') bike panniers?"
Your sarcasm detector is off.
https://yubabikes.com/cargobikestore/go-getter-bag/ 24"x18"x4" it would stick out the top a bit, but the bag has enough give to fit 2' objects if they're thin.
Largest kit I've ever transported by bicycle, dive gear ie. twin 88's, backplate, double wings, drysuit, weights, oxygen for decompression, fins , mask, reel. Total about 65kg. Largest I've accompanied, 3 piece lounge and a wardrobe, but it was someone else on their bike, I just rode with them.
On a tangent, the current mini-storyline of Aaron Williams' Full Frontal Nerdity is Laundryverse-adjacent. http://ffn.nodwick.com/?p=2289
Good question, actually. Piecing it together, I suspect I had intended to reply to a different comment, an easy mistake to make after a couple of gins. But there's no point in second guessing. From Greg's point of view, this should be welcome reassurance that I shan't try to eat him. It's important to give such assurances now and then to avert unsought-after fearfulness and terror.
Next problem - will it fit on a particular bicycle? It wouldn't fit on mine. Most importantly, your roads may be wonderfully smooth, but ours aren't, and I wouldn't expect glass to survive such a trip without substantial protection. I have transported fragile items by bicycle before, but not with great success.
However, it were half a mile, I would walk. Not everyone can carry sheets of glass that distance, though.
What are YOU giving up for the common good?
My immediate reaction to that was that you're actively trying to be an arsehole by ignoring everything I've posted on the topic and "just asking questions". But I'm reminded that you see things very differently to how I do, and that comes across in your reply that ends with the above question. So I'm answering below rather than just saying "read my post history".
So: what I have personally sacrificed? In many ways nothing at all. I've done what made me happy and comfortable for most of my life. I've taken opportunities that seemed worthwhile when I could find them, and had some fun adventures when I could. In many ways I just don't believe that living sustainably has to be awful.
But: at the same time I am exactly one of those insufferable hair shirt environmentalist fundamentalist fuckwits that nihilists love to hate. I don't fly, I don't drive, I only eat meat under protest, I nag random people in the street about their bad choices and actions.
I'm very much sitting here going... what are you asking me to do that I haven't already done?