It is a big deal. I don't know why you would want to oppose stuff like this anyway. Or don't you want the world to start cleaning up its act.? Change was never going to be overnight. But it will eventually snowball. Musk is acting as a very big catalyst.
I'm not in opposition of the technology, my next car will probably be electric or PHEV, what I object to is Elon Musk: snake oil salesman.
I should also say that I was highly suspicious of him and his claims only up until about 12 months or so ago. I've since read up enough about him to make me realise that he might be the real thing. I'm still cautious. That's always healthy in new technology. But I'm now optimistically cautious.
I just don't trust him. His ideas sound brilliant, his actual products not so hot. If he was genuinely trying to guide the world towards electric vehicle take-up, why doesn't he produce a car that could sell for £10k, instead of aiming at the luxury market (model S)? What Elon Musk sells is Elon Musk, and he does it with other people's money.
I'm 'a person, no-one has really heard of' get me out of here, is back on our screens tonight. Only really posting as I know thesecondstain must be getting uber excited about Ant and Dec being back on tv.
Electric cars . Save on fossil fuels , how much energy does it take to make a battery , how long do they last , how do they get disposed of , what is in them . My point being , you don’t get something for nothing . I am not anti electric vehicles , but am very wary .
It’s the batteries that worry me, which is why I think hydrogen has to be the way forward, at least until they can build a cold fusion plant small enough to fit in a car. The main point is though, that we simply have to move away from fossil fuels and fuel which produces CO2 as a waste product. There really isn’t any choice about that.
Gaia Pope . Police saying nobody else was involved in her death . Sounds like a tragic incident or fit . I am glad if that is the case , does that make sense ?
My alternative John Lewis ad. (Other department stores are available) Music. Sam Cooke, a change is gonna come. Scene 1 6 year old saints supporter Jack leaving st marys, sad face, dressed in saints hat and scarf looking really sad. Scene 2 A new day, Jack putting on his saints shirt getting ready for the match. «will we score today daddy» . Dad shrugged shoulders. Repeat scene 1 Scene 3 Jack talking to his teddy bear «this is it, today's going to be the day» repeat scene 1 Scene 4 Christmas morning, Jack runs downstairs to the presents under the tree. Unwrapps a magic set. Beaming smile on his face as Jack takes his magic set to his room. Scene 5 A very happy Jack and dad leaving Wembley on boxing day after a 0-3 win against spurs. It starts snowing. #whenthesaintsgomarchingin
Oh yes, I certainly see what you mean there. Quite right, he's making things to make a big profit. He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty capitalist boy.! However, the price of these things will come down eventually. But it always starts with something and someone which and who have to be in the vanguard. These are where the risks are really taken and the real profits or losses are made. I wouldn't say that Musk does it entirely with other people's money. He has come close once or twice before to personally becoming bankrupt. But if someone [Musk for example] has enough victories then believers with money can become backers. If there are enough then someone can stop taking their own personal risk to the edge. SpaceX [another Musk company],for example, was one disastrous flight from caving in. Every time they took off their rocket malfunctioned for some reason or another. Finally, they ironed out the problem and got one error free outward flight which saved them. Then, several years later, we were able to witness the first successful return landing of a used up rocket. They had had loads of the bloody things go wrong, for various reasons. Now it's almost routine - the rocket comes back and lands on its tail. So SpaceX, as a company, have gone from a pie in the sky outfit to one that is justifying its claims. And incidentally it's not the only one. They're all getting things up there now. And, sad to say, they are doing it more economically than NASA.Then again, NASA were in the absolute vanguard donkeys years ago when they routinely broke the rules on what was possible and not possible.
Ha.! I promise you I won't be watching, RAWMOK. Thanks for the warning. Perhaps you can advise me of broadcast times.
R.I.P Jana Novotna 49 , taken by Cancer . 49 , that's no age nowadays . http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/42049507
To say nothing of how much pollution is produced by simply manufacturing something. It has been measured [I'm not 100% sure it is still true, but I've seen nothing to the contrary since], that, for example, a car produces more pollution in its manfacture than it will ever produce in its lifetime of operation. That statement in itself is astonishing, and just goes to show how simply making things is a major contributor to our worldwide problem. And so it goes for the production of almost anything. Batteries, Hydrogen, you name it. Possibly the only thing that does not directly cause pollution is to make something out of wood, provided you cut down the tree yourself by handsaw. Even so you've needed that steel handsaw [I did mention directly, not indirectly] to do it, and that caused pollution to make that. Obviously, the ultimate goal is to move away from producing CO2. But first we have to stop producing more complex pollutents. We're still not doing it enough, although it has reduced in certain areas. Indeed, we even started to raise the levels of deadly chemicals in the atmosphere again by going diesel over petrol with our private cars in the last 20 years, and because of worldwide economies growing rapidly, such as China and India, we are chucking out greater quantities overall. In the short term we can actually plant trees like crazy [no bad thing] instead of cutting them down, to cut down on the short term build up of CO2. Plus they are a resource that can be itilised in 50-100 years [too slow for many businesses I know, but look at the benefit]. On the subject of batteries versus hydrogen. A few years ago I thought this was a no-brainer. Hydrogen all the way. But we have problems with infrastructure there. It took petrol and diesel something like 50 years to get a decent infrastructure together to run vehicles. It shouldn't take Hydrogen anywhere near that long, as the infrastructure at the selling poing is almost exactly the same. And it only takes a few minutes to refuel a hydrogen vehicle. However, with modern lithium batteries [let's totally leave aside that grim and greasy old lead-acid technology] a refuelling point is anywhere you can plug in or stand the vehicle over. You can embed solar panels into the upward face of the vehicle and the car will charge itself as it goes along [during the day only, of course]. And because battery maintenance systems can keep the battery in top order, modern batteries can last for years and years. So it's not as cut and dried as it might seem, but I still favour Hydrogen overall. I believe that both are going to be interim measures anyway, as Chilco points out, when a compact cold-fusion/lenr power unit is developed. That will see a vehicle which will only need to be refueled possibly once or twice a year, with common abundant elements. That should take care of power requirements for the next couple of hundred years or so.
Lithium reserves are pretty huge (and that's just known reserves). Demand tends to force a search for new reserves (witness the oil not running out in 2000, as I was promised at school). Lithium's also reusable (though not worth doing so for economic reasons at the mo). There are also other energy storage technologies coming along, along with research into technologies such as supercapacitors utilising graphene. e.g: https://www.economist.com/news/scie...r-batteries-graphene-may-help-sheet-lightning - similar or higher energy density than lithium ion and a 4 minute recharge. Thing is, there's so much money available for anyone who invents better energy storage solutions that it's pretty much guaranteed to happen. The demand isn't just from cars; it's from solar and wind farms along with energy suppliers and big electricity users. You can't beat profit as a motive force towards innovation. As a final point, I've said it before, if cold fusion works in my lifetime as a reliable and verifiable source of power, I'll walk stark bollock naked round St Marys stadium. I'd love to be wrong and have to take the walk but the fact that it's so far outside mainstream science makes me tend strongly towards disbelieving it. I know it's fashionable to consider the lone voice being the truth fighting "the man" but that's vanishingly rare. Generally they are just misguided and/or conmen. Vin
