Oil, whether we like it of not is our life blood…we stop functioning as a society without it. We can get there someday, but who knows how long that will take.
Nuclear energy is the best and cleanest way to go, but the risk/reward sucks. Europe is investing heavily in Nuclear for the future. It’s hard sifting through the articles about this bit depending what one reads, there could be as many as 100 new reactors in th e next 30 years…8 are currently under construction if what I read is correct. Germany seems to be shutting it down, while countries like France is ramping it up.
We will get there, but not anytime soon. Not in my lifetime for sure.
You've gone from asserting it would have to take "decades upon decades" to now stating you have no idea how long it would take. But then in the next breath you walk that back by saying it cannot happen in your lifetime "for sure." Why not? Are you 80?
Constantly calling oil the "life blood" serves what purpose exactly? To fix ourselves on this notion that we cannot live without it? Yes, we can. But it is precisely this kind of rhetoric that serves to obstruct progress.
Kevin, it being our life blood is just the reality. How do you think ships, trucking, and air operate? Without them we die. Without farm equipment we starve? With out factories our economy stops. Without mining equipment there are no batteries?
It is that simple.
I am in my mid 60’s
An all electric house?? You make it sound like a big hurdle to jump, but it's not exactly like asking for an all electric transatlantic airliner.
What's supposed to be so difficult? Let's think, nobody I know has a TV or a blender that runs on oil or natural gas, so that's not a problem. Microwave? No problem there. Oven? Nope. Hob? I switched to an induction hob years ago. The quickness of response is amazing, it's clean and doesn't splurge combustion products and unwanted heat into your kitchen. Lots of people already get their hot water from an electric heater in a tank ... electric radiators are no problem either. And of course no-one runs their air conditioning on oil.
So what's the problem supposed to be?
I just don't get it.
Maksutov:
That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
Mayan Elephant:
Not only have I denounced the Big Lie, I have denounced the Big lie big lie.
An all electric house?? You make it sound like a big hurdle to jump, but it's not exactly like asking for an all electric transatlantic airliner.
What's supposed to be so difficult? Let's think, nobody I know has a TV or a blender that runs on oil or natural gas, so that's not a problem. Microwave? No problem there. Oven? Nope. Hob? I switched to an induction hob years ago. The quickness of response is amazing, it's clean and doesn't splurge combustion products and unwanted heat into your kitchen. Lots of people already get their hot water from an electric heater in a tank ... electric radiators are no problem either. And of course no-one runs their air conditioning on oil.
So what's the problem supposed to be?
I just don't get it.
The Right has been constantly naysaying the efficacy of Solar/Wind. I remember back when Obama was pushing for initiatives to transition our energy dependence away from oil, FOX News, particularly Neil Cavuto, had an absolute conniption fit over the idea that we could have cars that required a plugin.
The thing is they're so blatantly dishonest because they knw as well as anyone else that Green energy is the future. They just don't want any progress to be mad if it means democrats can take credit for it.
Without mining equipment there are no batteries?
It is that simple.
Actually, electrically-powered mining equipment may end up making the mining industry more capable, and some mines more productive:
For LKAB, electrification is an essential step in allowing it to continue extracting iron ore at its two principal mines in northern Sweden, Kiruna and Malmberget.
Future mining efforts will force the operator to dig at greater depths than ever before – perhaps as deep as 2,000m – which, in turn, will require the kind of efficiencies in energy use and ventilation that can only be afforded by the use of electric vehicles.
As such, LKAB has been busy transforming its two underground mines into test beds for the latest electric vehicles and autonomous mining equipment.
I expect that the world will eventually run on solar electricity but I don't think the transition will be easy. There's one giant reason why combustion engines are great.
Suppose your car didn't keep its fuel in an onboard gas tank, but instead sucked in a little stream of fuel from the road as it ran. To keep your average-sized car zooming along the freeway at 60 mph, just how thick does that stream of fuel have to be?
Spaghettini. Less than a millimetre in diameter. To keep a car and its passengers and all their luggage moving at a speed faster than any horse has ever run, faster than most birds can fly.
Fuel is an incredibly dense source of energy. You can get an enormous amount of useful work out of a small amount of fuel. Your car engine probably delivers a couple of hundred horsepower. That's not just a conventional unit. You have the power of a large herd of horses right there under the hood, and you can sustain it for hours, from just one tank of gas.
That's why the advent of steam power and combustion engines changed the world far more than anything else in history ever has. Energetically, humans were like the Beverly Hillbillies, suddenly going from dirt poor to filthy rich just because we struck oil.
That's hard to replace.
It wasn't hard for me. I replaced two cars with electric and I'm about to replace a third. I'll never go back to the combustion engine. Never. And I've never met a Tesla owner who didn't agree. I typically spent $30-50 for a tank of gas in our previous cars, but now I spend roughly $5 for a full charge that typically lasts a few days of daily driving. I never let the battery go below 40%, and if I really needed a super quick charge, there is a Tesla Supercharger station just two miles away. A 10 minute charge will cost about $3 and give me another 175 miles.
And by the way, Teslas typically have far more horsepower.
The quickest non-electric or hybrid production car is the Porsche 918 Spyder and it goes 0 to 60 in 2.1 seconds. The price tag is over $1.5 million. The Tesla Model S Plaid is quicker at 1.9 seconds with over 1,000 horsepower and a top speed of 200+ MPH. The price tag is less than one tenth of the Porsche.
The Cybertruck is now going to be fitted with four electric motors (one for each wheel) giving it similar performance numbers as the S Plaid with a range of over 600 miles per charge. The price tag on that is going to be far less than any of the better selling Trucks using combustible engines.
Frankly I have no idea why anyone would spend $80-$100k on their oversized monster trucks that typically get anywhere between 10-5 MPG.
An all electric house?? You make it sound like a big hurdle to jump, but it's not exactly like asking for an all electric transatlantic airliner.
What's supposed to be so difficult? Let's think, nobody I know has a TV or a blender that runs on oil or natural gas, so that's not a problem. Microwave? No problem there. Oven? Nope. Hob? I switched to an induction hob years ago. The quickness of response is amazing, it's clean and doesn't splurge combustion products and unwanted heat into your kitchen. Lots of people already get their hot water from an electric heater in a tank ... electric radiators are no problem either. And of course no-one runs their air conditioning on oil.
So what's the problem supposed to be?
I just don't get it.
First most older homes have only 100 amp panels…if you have a gas or oil home and want to convert to electric, in most cases the panel would need to be upgraded to handle the amperage loads.
Typically you can only be a 80 percent of the total load at your house panel..so adding a electric heater, water heater, dryer and oven and range would most likely put up over that. Add a 50 amp unit for an electric car…which is a new code requirement in California.
I have a shop at my house and have high amperage saws, and welder and compressor…so depending on personal need, a panel up grade is required. Then all the above fixtures will need to be bought…and then all new wiring to the areas will need to happen with associated remodeling costs.
My point is not too many people ca take a hit like that…
and this does not touch on things like hospitals and large buildings and alike that run on boiler systems and what it would take to revamp them.
Paul Osborne would understand this and just how most people could not afford to just go out and do this. Is it possible yes, is it practically possible in a short time frame…not even close.
The Cybertruck is now going to be fitted with four electric motors (one for each wheel) giving it similar performance numbers as the S Plaid with a range of over 600 miles per charge.
This is one of the key hurdles for us - range.
Both of our vehicles have around 200K miles on them, but if one of them needs to be replaced any time soon, we’ll need to do so with something that can give significant range through tank size or fuel availability. And there simply isn’t the same sort of charging infrastructure where we drive as may exist in your own more-urban setting.
Next week, I’ll need to check on two projects that are both at least 4 hours driving time away (and with a same-day out and back schedule); both are through areas largely devoid of charging stations along the way, and my schedule won’t allow for any extended time between stops devoted to a slow charge. So, an ICE car is really the only option for this, at the moment.
The other issue is that we’ve always opted for reliable, used cars at reasonable cost. The used car market doesn’t see many choices like that from EV’s yet.
We’d have loved to have been part of the ‘early adopter’ gang, but practically and economically, it doesn’t work out, yet. And for many Americans, the ‘economic’ part of that is still a deal-killer. As example, we like the Rivian’s quirky and handsome look; it would be a very functional replacement for at least one of our decades-old vehicles … but there’s no way that we can even begin to make that price tag work for us.
I’ve started to wade into the working group 3 section of the IPCC report, which is about mitigation. In terms of climate change, this is what we are facing. If we burn the amount of fossil fuels that we burned over the last decade, we have a coin flip chance of holding the increase over baseline to 1.5 C. If we use current fossil fuel burning infrastructure plus new fossil fuel building infrastructure that is currently planned for its projected useful life, we have less than a coin flip chance at holding the temperature increase to 2C. Holding The temperature increase to 1.5 C will require abandoning oil reserves and existing infrastructure valued at over a trillion dollars.
The US still has the highest per capita greenhouse gas emissions in the world when measured by consumption. But, our relatively low population means we aren’t where the bulk of the reduction can come from. China raised its population’s standard of living by going all out on fossil fuels with a plan to convert to green energy. But the conversion hasn’t happened, at least not at the rate that was planned a decade ago.
India still has one of the lowest rates of per capita greenhouse gas production. One of the major tasks required to keep India from repeating what China has done is to allow them to skip over fossil fuels and use green energy to power their economy.
The largest population increases this century are forecast to be in Africa. We need too repeat the same exercise with Africa as with India.
But here’s the problem: how are we going to persuade and assist these two regions to adopt measures that we refuse to adopt? From where they sit, the US is the wealthiest country in the world because we exploited the energy available from fossil fuels, meaning that we put most of the human created greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It’s irrational for people in India and Africa to accept Americans saying: yes, we got rich by creating most of the greenhouse gas problem but you have to stay poor.
The US needs to lead the effort both to demonstrate that it can be done (the technical issues are in the report) and to develop solutions that can be used by India and Africa to develop their economies based on green energy.
Markk is hung up on the cost of the transition, but only because he doesn’t consider the cost of not transitioning. He’s not counting the water depletion in the west, the cost of people soon to be flooded out of their homes in low lying parts of Florida, increases in food prices caused by diminished crop yields, increasing numbers of refugees, and wars over scarce resources. The people he keeps saying can’t afford the transition are those who will be devastated by business as usual.
I think the facts are pretty brutal: since the 1950s, per capita real gdp (I.e., adjusted for inflation) has climbed steadily in the US. But the wealth generated from those gains has gone to a tiny percentage of the US population. To make the transition fast enough to avoid catastrophic effects of global warming, we are going to have to claw back some of that wealth. Rather than investing our wealth in infrastructure, education, public health and a more gentle path to net carbon zero, we’ve simply created an investor class that doesn’t create jobs or add to productivity. Instead, they just buy and sell clumps off companies using debt that consumers end up paying off. It was a mistake that is costing us dearly in the outrageous cost of housing and the sucking up of profits from local businesses into the bank accounts of the Devon Archers and Jared Kirchners of the world.
That’s not an easy sell in the US, as we’re ideologically allergic to wealth taxes. Consider how hard the working class conservatives have resisted estate taxes that will never affect 90% of people. Warren’s wealth tax proposal is where we’re going to have to go to make the transition without harming the middle and lower classes.
The real barriers in the US aren’t technological — they’re ideological. Solving the problem involves both recognizing the problem and coming together to solve it. The mess that was the US response to the pandemic leads me to conclude that we’re unable to address serious problems in a practical and intelligent manner. When we’ve got a significant portion of the population who will go to war to preserve their right to use light bulbs that cost them more money because “freedom,” speedy change is impossible.
I can only conclude that we’re going to have to do this the hard way: mass suffering and death. At some point, the combination of reduced population through war, starvation and disease plus the eventual transition to net carbon zero will adjust the energy balance to allow gradual cooling of the atmosphere over a thousand years or so. Let’s just hope the survivors are smarter than we are.
he/him When I go to sea, don’t fear for me. Fear for the storm.
Jessica Best, Fear for the Storm. From The Strange Case of the Starship Iris.
An all electric house?? You make it sound like a big hurdle to jump, but it's not exactly like asking for an all electric transatlantic airliner.
What's supposed to be so difficult? Let's think, nobody I know has a TV or a blender that runs on oil or natural gas, so that's not a problem. Microwave? No problem there. Oven? Nope. Hob? I switched to an induction hob years ago. The quickness of response is amazing, it's clean and doesn't splurge combustion products and unwanted heat into your kitchen. Lots of people already get their hot water from an electric heater in a tank ... electric radiators are no problem either. And of course no-one runs their air conditioning on oil.
So what's the problem supposed to be?
I just don't get it.
Let's talk about Western Europe, who is so far ahead of us. Why are you still dependent on fossil fuels imported from Russia? Is that just due to political obstructionism as well?
And when the Confederates saw Jackson standing fearless like a stonewall, the army of Northern Virginia took courage and drove the federal army off their land.
An all electric house?? You make it sound like a big hurdle to jump, but it's not exactly like asking for an all electric transatlantic airliner.
What's supposed to be so difficult? Let's think, nobody I know has a TV or a blender that runs on oil or natural gas, so that's not a problem. Microwave? No problem there. Oven? Nope. Hob? I switched to an induction hob years ago. The quickness of response is amazing, it's clean and doesn't splurge combustion products and unwanted heat into your kitchen. Lots of people already get their hot water from an electric heater in a tank ... electric radiators are no problem either. And of course no-one runs their air conditioning on oil.
So what's the problem supposed to be?
I just don't get it.
Let's talk about Western Europe, who is so far ahead of us. Why are you still dependent on fossil fuels imported from Russia? Is that just due to political obstructionism as well?
Neither of the parts of Western Europe where I spend time is in any critical way dependent on fossil fuels imported from Russia.
But what has that got to do with the question of whether an all-electric house is a practical possibility? Do you have an oil-powered microwave, by the way?
Maksutov:
That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
Mayan Elephant:
Not only have I denounced the Big Lie, I have denounced the Big lie big lie.
