"Just stop oil"

Goksly said:
Any sources for that? Would have thought that would have been big news.


I think 95% of the components in a battery can be recycled? But agree that existing solutions can't be the final one as it's too environmentally damaging in the first place.
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engineering.princeton.edu

Princeton Engineering - Engineers use AI to wrangle fusion power for the grid

A Princeton-led team composed of engineers, physicists, and data scientists from the University and the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have harnessed the power of artificial intelligence to predict — and then avoid — the formation of a specific plasma problem in real time.
engineering.princeton.edu engineering.princeton.edu

I cant find the second article where its been put into practice (all be it simulations) sorry.
 
Grim5 said:
Since the earth does not have enough materials to be able to build all the batteries needed to replace other forms of energy storage, such as fossil fuels, battery prices will either start rising as supply drops, or if prices remain low, then products that need batteries will get priority- for example your mobile phone or laptop can't run without a battery but a car can still run without a battery
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this is such nonsense.
1) there are all sorts of batteries, not just the stereotypical battery
2) much like cobalt is now pretty much optional in batteries at this point, there are other options rather than lithium (sodium car batteries are already a thing and will only get better, likely leaving lithium for higher end longer range vehicles). The whole argument that right now this second we cant swap every single ICE with a battery car over night is such a dishonest take its laughable......... because no one is proposing that that will happen....

its right up there with the grid cant cope!.... maybe not overnight but over the next 20 years...................... its doable and that is according to people who are actually working on the transition at the national grid!.

My hope is longer term we wont need to have anywhere near as many cars on the road anyway. Once cars can become autonomous more more people will fogo owning a car and cars will just be used to order, meaning that a smaller number of cars will do a lot more miles.

(initially i believe most families will still keep 1 car, and then get one to order as and when a 2nd is needed).

I already know a number of families who dont own a car, and rely day to day on public transport.... they then hire a car when needed. This is still a bit of a pain and is only really workable if you live in a city.

but once cars are autonomous things will get far easier.
 
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I don't think we are going to see fully self driving cars outside of controlled environments tbh. Not in our lifetime anyway. Maybe the idea will come back when we can have flying cars.
 
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Nasher said:
I don't think we are going to see fully self driving cars outside of controlled environments tbh. Not in our lifetime anyway. Maybe the idea will come back when we can have flying cars.
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maybe , maybe not but even if not it does not take away from the fact that transitioning to EVs over the next decade or so as the existing car fleet reaches end of life is a complete no brainer and despite what some of our gutter press/media like to spout, whilst not "green" it is significantly less damaging than sticking with ICE vehicles.

The fact that most people no longer whine about "but cobalt" (despite it being instrumental in running ICE vehicles, and unlike with those, it is recyclable when it is used in batteries) and are now complaining about lithium is something i guess.

hopefully give it a few more years and the argument about lithium can also be laid to rest, tho am sure there will be another reason why EVs just dont work.
 
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bigmike20vt said:
but once cars are autonomous things will get far easier.
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That would be cool, but we're so far away from that still. Not a single car has onboard software that is where it needs to be

Yes there are some autonomous vehicles on the roads around the world, and even some companies trying to manage autonomous fleets but they still regularly come up in the news for doing stupid stuff. The recent video of a autonomous taxi fleet where they couldn't get the vehicles out of the parking area as the vehicles parked in were unable to decide how to leave the parking lot and then they proceeded to hoot at eachother for 16 hours.

At least with human drivers, you can get out your car and go beat up the other driver if they do something stupid. But when it's autonomous and they cut you off, or block you, or refuse to move, or hoot at your constantly, who can you shout at and beat up lmao /s

Elon several years ago claimed you'd be able to leave your Tesla in New York, open your phone call your Tesla and it would drive across the US to you in California. Obviously we're nowhere near close to that, it's 2024 and Tesla's struggles to get out of a parking lot.

But when my car can drive across the country by itself then I'd say we've arrived at autonomous vehicles - even better, if the car can by itself drive from London to Warsaw and back then it will be autonomous and ready for mass market
 
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Grim5 said:
That would be cool, but we're so far away from that still. Not a single car has onboard software that is where it needs to be

Yes there are some autonomous vehicles on the roads around the world, and even some companies trying to manage autonomous fleets but they still regularly come up in the news for doing stupid stuff. The recent video of a autonomous taxi fleet where they couldn't get the vehicles out of the parking area as the vehicles parked in were unable to decide how to leave the parking lot and then they proceeded to hoot at eachother for 16 hours.

At least with human drivers, you can get out your car and go beat up the other driver if they do something stupid. But when it's autonomous and they cut you off, or block you, or refuse to move, or hoot at your constantly, who can you shout at and beat up lmao /s

Elon several years ago claimed you'd be able to leave your Tesla in New York, open your phone call your Tesla and it would drive across the US to you in California. Obviously we're nowhere near close to that, it's 2024 and Tesla's struggles to get out of a parking lot.

But when my car can drive across the country by itself then I'd say we've arrived at autonomous vehicles - even better, if the car can by itself drive from London to Warsaw and back then it will be autonomous and ready for mass market
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The ones that drive in to coned off areas at roadworks and then refuse to leave are pretty funny :D
 
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JonRGV250 said:
Just a quick reminder of just how brain dead/washed these people are..
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In fairness that interviewer is just as bad. I'd have simply asked what this person's credentials are and when met with the inevitable "according to some bloke on facebook" levels of credibility I'd look at my crew, laugh at them and ask them if this is the best they could find. I'd then politely remove this waaaaaaaa person from the studio and ask them to come back when they've done some proper research, or can attend with someone credible who can argue their point.

Honestly by giving them airtime we're just making it worse, laugh them off stage and be done with it.
 
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Tefal said:
Is there a good global solution for sulphur production without oil to extract it from?
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Sulphur is one of the most common elements on Earth; there's not a shortage of places to get it from. Also, most of the use of sulphur is in fertiliser production and more sensible agricultural approaches which don't result in such a large proportion of fertiliser ending up in waterways would dramatically reduce global usage as well as being environmentally beneficial.
 
Mr Jack said:
Sulphur is one of the most common elements on Earth; there's not a shortage of places to get it from. Also, most of the use of sulphur is in fertiliser production and more sensible agricultural approaches which don't result in such a large proportion of fertiliser ending up in waterways would dramatically reduce global usage as well as being environmentally beneficial.
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Sulphuric acid is also a vital use, its a big industrial process chemcial.

I'm not sure massive open cast stripmines to extract the small amounts of sulphur from earth are particularly better for the environment.

It needs to be concentrated which all seems to be biologically based, we get it as a cheap by product from oil and gas. If we have to start making mines and expending energy to get it directly its going to have an inflationary impact on pretty much everything.
 
Tefal said:
I'm not sure massive open cast stripmines to extract the small amounts of sulphur from earth are particularly better for the environment.
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I think you over-estimate the amount of sulphur needed, and the space needed for extraction. A large proportion will come as a by-product of other substances (e.g. copper) and even if it didn't the amount of extraction would be small beans compared to the space needed for other substances and, especially, the vast tracts of land currently used for coal. Obviously ramping up supply from other sources will involve effort but it's hardly an unsolvable problem or anywhere near as big a problem as climate change itself.

It needs to be concentrated which all seems to be biologically based, we get it as a cheap by product from oil and gas. If we have to start making mines and expending energy to get it directly its going to have an inflationary impact on pretty much everything.
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I'm not sure this is true. Currently sulphur is cheap because companies are mandated to remove it from oil, and it's sold at a loss as a result. That cost then gets passed on to other users of oil and oil-derived products. Transfer to other sources and the price of sulphur goes up but the overall cost may well not. Either way, the biggest cost is energy and getting away from costly fossil fuels and their even more costly environmental side effects, brings down the cost of energy.
 
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