torpfactory

Worst case scenario we dig up more lithium. I'm convinced the Nickel and Cobalt will be recycled. Lithium is a small percentage of total mass, 1-3%, and is abundant in the earth's crust. Maybe 5-10kg of lithium in a pack. Compare that to 40-80kg of petroleum every time I fill the tank.

These are old talking points from the fossil fuel industry. The batteries themselves will be recycled to recover their valuable minerals. The process will certainly require care to avoid localized pollution. Compare that with burning fossil fuels- baked into their design is emission of heat trapping gasses which systemically affect the entire planet. It’s clear we need to stop burning fossil fuels lest we overheat the earth.

On top of the obvious grift and bribe seeking potential there is also now an obvious mechanism for ideological control. Govt doesn’t like the way the model describes the events of Jan 6? We’ll have to see how many people get to use it…

We are very clearly proceeding down the road to a dystopia here.

Why not also require that cell companies share up to the second location data with authorities? It would be so much easier to catch criminals!

Just to expand on my ideas above about how we might manage them:

(1) Entities creating these data sets should require licenses to do so. (2) Creation of real-time location data sets would itself be a criminal offense without a license. (3) Data would need to be encrypted and stored according to a set of best practices. Failure to do so would be a criminal offense. (4) Access to data would be available through a court, ideally with the judge literally controlling access to the cryptographic keys. (5) Accessing the data without permission would be a criminal offense. (6) You would probably need to add civil penalties not subject to sovereign immunity. Otherwise cops would just ignore the law about unauthorized access and then also fail to prosecute themselves.

Or you know we could just make them illegal altogether (including the ones the cell phone company creates for advertisers). Much simpler!

I don't think any entity (including but not limited to the government) should be allowed to create or maintain data sets of people's near or real time location data. Think about all the ways this data can be misused.

We are truly creating the chains that will bind us by allowing these kinds of tools to exist. And for what? We managed for generations to do policing without LPRs. Are we so drowning in crime that we should create universal surveillance as a solution?

What are the alternatives for Europe? Continue to import oil and gas? Have some of your most important economic inputs price and supply controlled by the dumbest egomaniacs alive?

Nuclear? Good luck building it on time and on budget. Also where exactly are you getting that Uranium from? I’m not necessarily against nuclear I just don’t think there’s much you can do in five or ten years to move the needle with Nuclear.

Wind? Actually a good option as it has a strong domestic supply chain.

Solar? Buy China’s cheap panels as long as they are selling. If they stop selling figure out how to do it yourself. It’s not some big mystery how panels get made, China just had the foresight to invest in the scale required to drive prices down.

Coal? I mean at least it’s local. But solar + batteries are either beating it now or will be in the next few years if the same trends that have held for the last 30 years continue for the next 2-5. So you’d be investing in a more expensive, dirtier technology for what end?

There is no world where you get to not make a decision and the risk just disappears. I think renewables have the clear advantage here and have very manageable risks.

We aren’t making a very good case for ourselves on the world stage are we…

Solar and wind are scaling much faster than gas and oil right now. After the recent Iran war I think it would be insane to rely on new oil or gas. Yeah let’s rely on this commodity whose supply and price are controlled by the dumbest egomaniacs on the planet.

You can scale battery installations basically arbitrarily to the size of the grid connection you have. Put the batteries at the end user if you can. Then they get power outage protection and the grid gets much of the same flexibility.

Atomic power is in a bit of a sour spot as a technology. The large size of plants means we don’t build very many means we don’t get much cost reduction from learning curves. Wind and solar are getting much much better cost reductions over time. Batteries are in the same boat- small, modular, benefitting from learning curves.

A small number of large plants are much easier to target during war than distributed wind, solar, or batteries. It’s not that batteries are immune to grenades. It’s that you’d need to put grenades in orders of magnitude more places to get to all the batteries as compared to large nuclear plants.

Batteries do pose a fire risk, but so do petrol cars. We pump flammable gas into our homes in large parts of the west and have designed ways of keeping ourselves safe. I see no reason why batteries won’t follow the same path.

That land is producing food for cars. If we covered half in solar panels we’d have almost enough energy to power the country. Turn the other half over to food production and you’d come out ahead on both energy and food.

It’s weird that he’s so in the numbers but then doesn’t carry through with the battery electric truck calculations. He just dismisses it out of hand.

Your cargo may be reduced but your fuel costs will also be reduced. It’s quite a complicated calculation.

Are you hauling sand? Then you probably can’t spare a single kg of cargo limit. Doing LTL work? Then maybe you’re not totally filled anyways. It really depends. If you’re fine with a 35 ton limit you might be able to make good money with the fuel savings.