I think we do agree in principle. Do something about energy usage, do something about our completely depending on fossil fuels to power pretty much every $#@!ing thing on the planet, do something about pollution, continue doing something that continues improving humanities lot. How we do it is very important and the road we are currently taking that CO2 levels reduced to 180 will drive some pretty serious repercussions even if we hit home rum after home run after home run. If the whole CO2 is causing global warming thing turns out to be a wee bit overblown, let alone wrong *shudder*, the gen pop will turn on science the way they do the current flavor of the day pop star. Won't that just be lovelygermloucks wrote:QUOTE (germloucks @ Feb 10 2013, 07:16 PM) MrC, you and i are on different time-scales here. I feel like you are looking 5-7 years into the future, while i am looking at a half-century+ timescale. Global warming is going to take an absolute minimum of that long to become a serious enough that we just cant put it off any longer. (with the best info ive seen)
My argument is that, in that time, we will finish figuring out several key technologies that will make full electric adaptation not only possible, but likely. Not only is electric better for the environment, once we solve the problem of clean power production, we also have a large and robust distribution network already in place. Yes, we will require many more power plants, although i feel like several hundred may be a high estimate.
Its really a no-brainer to me. What exactly is your alternative? How exactly do you plan to ration out a non-renewable resource in the long-term? No partisan politics there, we've only got so much of it. Dont you agree that we need to transition to another source of fuel?
Ive spoilered the electric car bit as I feel Im being redundant but I did reply if anyone gives a crap at this point
I am on the same time scale as you fwiw. Just building the necessary infrastructure will take many years. Remember you are moving the energy production to power plants from 100,000.000s of cars. Its roughly a 1/3 of all energy used here in US for example.
In order to make an electric car more efficient and pollure less so it makes sense to use them you must:
1. Rebuild the entire electrical distribution backbone to improve the efficiency penalty you pay for every watt you produce at the plant and to handle all the new electricity to be used
2. Decommision as many coal fired power plants as you possibly can and replacing them with those that pollute less
3. Build many many more, it is hundreds and hundreds of them just in the US, I urge you to run the numbers
4. Build a recharging infrastructure whether parking lot charging pads, plugs, battery swapping stations, strips in the road or magicly beamed from heaven
The things you will have to solve for electric cars to be more then a curiousity
1. A new battery, all of the current versions materials to build them are quite limited. As in there is not enough of the stuff to support a large number of cars
2. Improve stroage capacity another 100%, something they have been trying to do for literally a hundred years now. Btw even late 1800s electric cars had ranges over 100 miles in some cases
3. Find some way to reduce charging times without effecting the battery. Something that all current systems do rather poorly atm
Once you get most of the above under control electric cars will sell and when they do we'll get used to the idea of battery swaps for extended trips, and shutting down the power draw during traffic jams etc etc etc etc.
Until you get to that point I say make selling electric cars for use on public roads illegal or less draconian limit their usage to areas that actually will produce a net benefit. Its is best for the envirnoment. IF you can find a better way to make electricity, while polluting less, get it to the end user more efficiently, then lets sell the things including manadating numbers that need to be sold. Its the easiest of all of them to do... even a MrChaos can do it
