Hi, I don't see anything in your list about carbon sequestration. Can you point me to any companies investing in advanced robotics to assist in silicate mineral crushing & spreading, as it's the only sensible, achievable sequestration technique? Thanks.
For readers interested in carbon sequestration, please check out the following paper: "Enhanced chemical weathering as a geoengineering strategy to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxid e, supply nutrients, and mitigate ocean acidification"[1]
All the other technologies satisfy some currently existing demand, but there's no demand for carbon sequestration - as in, nobody is willing to pay for large scale carbon sequestration.
It's currently fit for theoretical research only. There's no political will in sight to do that in the coming decade(s?), so it's too early to start practical R&D.
If something like this existed, with the source code on Github with a detailed contributing.md document, I would spend time on it. We have great tools available to do this and it is a worthy cause.
If you're going to talk up preservation of the atmosphere while downplaying the enormous technological progress and bold, financially uncertain moves that SpaceX is making, you need to give your head a shake. The atmosphere has already been killed. And the methane that's being unlocked because of it's desecration will kill you, and it will kill me. We killed ourselves with the same type of ignorance towards new, uncertain technology that you have displayed in this comment chain. We took existing, working, and bad technology (ICE vehicles) and paraded it around to the world, and it worked, because we could show people how to use them to make money. We had an MVP with gasoline powered vehicles. People ate it up. Yet electric cars, the correct technology choice, get no mindshare with the serfs because they're heavier, slower, and can't exactly carry a dump truck full of aggregate rock up inclines for 24 hours a day.
You need to stop with the sour grapes, the tall poppy syndrome, and you need to start supporting the people who are actually doing shit. And you need to do it before the window of opportunity to use our technology to save ourselves closes. Keep in mind that me writing this comment to you is an enormous waste of my time, and I really thought it through, so please absorb the meaning in my words and stop having these pissing matches on the internet over things you completely misunderstand.
If you're saying climate change will kill any significant fraction of people alive today - enough that you expect it to kill you personally, then I think you need some evidence for that. It seems like quite an unbelievable claim - effectively the end of civilization within our lifetime.
I don't believe it's going to kill a lot of people. The planet went through this before during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum[0]. Basically a quantity of carbon roughly equal to our industrial output estimate up to 2100 or 2200 was released into the atmosphere over about 20k years. It stayed there for several hundred thousand years, raising global temperatures by 8 degrees. We're talking aligators and crocodiles living in jungles on Antarctica. Massive die-outs of microbes in the oceans due to acidification and sea levels rising. 70m of sea level rise is locked up in polar ice and then there's also thermal expansion.
None of that is going to happen in our lifetime. But the lifetime of our great grandchildren? There's a good chance. After all, this isn't the first time. However we will have several centuries to adapt. The real issue is we're destroying the natural environment faster than it can possibly adapt or evolve, but we'd be doing that even without climate change.
I haven't downplayed the tech advances at all here so that's a false narrative you concocted to make a point that ignores what I have done. That is I pointed out a few things that we should be discussing about this.
I really don't care if that causes some shade to fall on your fantasies of what this project might lead to. Not a bit. In fact, I couldn't care any less.
We are not discussing "Sci-Fi" here. This isn't a "Trekkie" convention, it's the real world effects of this we're talking about.
I see your point. Have you thought about how such a militia would communicate, if they were working together? They would have to come up with new communication channels, seeing as how the government has it's hands in all telecommunications today. I think that would prove a great barrier, and perhaps it's insurmountable.
It's the seemingly fruitless effort that builds up our familiarity with a problem via intense focus on each small detail. With the clear, detailed problem built up, Poincare could look at it from a distance and see the solution.
It would be an overstatement to say that it's way beyond our technological ability to get to Mars. That's just a long trip in a rocket away. Making it habitable is also within our ability - Live in the lava tubes, or radiation-protected inflatable shelters. To live on another planet is to take a collection of solved problems and engineer the solutions into existence.
Good point. It does seem within our engineering ability to live inside a habitat on Mars, true.
When I wrote that comment I guess I was probably thinking habitable in a similar way to Earth. Possible to thrive on the surface under ambient conditions.
To be fair, in this case it is apples to apples. The average car consumer does not weigh in the electric component with so much weight to overlook poor interior quality. Tesla's cars must be on the same level if they are to win the public's heart.
If you had a 100km*100km grid of easily maintained solar panels already manufactured and in operation, electricity is generated _without expense or by-products_
Batteries and electric power have bad by products:
1. heat generation
2. by-products of manufacturing
3. electricity generation by-products
Complete nonsense. We have 8 billion people driving cars that are decimating our air quality and have already drove the carbon cycle so many standard deviations from the mean levels in pre-industrial society that I am doomed to live on a scorched, dead earth. The negative effects of battery creation and usage are infinitesimal in comparison.
I am 22 years old. Because of society's slow uptake of carbon-neutral power generation and consumption, I will live through every consequence of past generation's short-sighted power decisions. The clathrate gun will happen before I am middle-aged. Your comment, complaining about things that are solved problems, is quite detached from the reality of Earth.
It's sad that you feel my comment was detached from your concerns. I sense you are upset about the world being left to you, and I can relate, I am not that much older than you are (35). I have all the same concerns.
I think you missed the point of my complaints, they aren't justifications for going against green tech, if anything, it's more like a list of obstacles to be solved. In your opinion, already done, so then we should be positive since you feel that way. Woohoo! No issue.
For the record, you should know that I have always been an ardent supporter of alternative/greener transportation, in fact, I put my money where my mouth is as much as humanely possible, which is why I drive a plug-in hybrid (I can't afford a full electric like a Tesla).
If my job wasn't 20 miles away, I would ride a bicycle or take public transit and forgo a car completely. Just not possible where I live.
Again, sorry you feel the way you do. I'm on your side.
"What if it's late," "What if someone dies", "It has to go perfectly or else." Mate there's no reason to slow down or criticize science and engineering for being late, having a death, or riding the razor's edge. Just get shit done. That's all that matters, this kind of internet fear-mongering is absolutely detrimental, even if there are huge risks involved in the process. We're not going to mess up the planet, but nay-sayers will absolutely slow us down.
Incumbent automakers are cash cows, not startups. Tesla will spend all of it's money on the Gigafactory. GM will destroy new product lines that threaten it's current profits.
Remember, incumbent auto makers are not fast moving or innovative at all. They are all cash cows. Although they can predict that a move to EVs will keep them alive long-term, such a move will always be done with a small fraction of GM's resources and labour in the coming decades, and Tesla with Elon's burning desire to destroy them are probably going to win.
Remember, GM can't sell these two products on the same lot: One which is a cash cow, and one which only exists to combat some distant threat of GM becoming obsolete.
Also you're forgetting that Tesla cars are just better in every sense. Better brand, faster, longer range, novelty...
There's a lot of companies out there, and dismissing them outright is the same brand of arrogance that lets startups win over incumbents, but reversed.
> better brand
GM/F/Honda/Toyota/etc are reliable, BMW/Audi/Lexus/etc are luxurious and have a package that's been very carefully tuned
> faster
Doesn't matter to 90%
> longer range
Debatable, also price constrained
> novelty
Not what you look for in a massive purchase that you want to last 10+ years
Just so we are clear, the Bolt is a hatchback, not a tiny hatchback. At 56 cu ft, it's a hair 2 cu ft) less than a Model S. The footprint isn't significantly smaller than that of the Model 3.
Bolt's website calls it a subcompact car. Despite what it's actual volume is, it looks like a small car and is classified as one. The Model S is classified as and looks like a luxury full size sedan. Yes, the Model 3 is comparable to the Bolt, but it's not being shipped yet. So comparing the distance of a Model S and a Bolt isn't a fare comparison as the Model S is bigger and heavier, hence my earlier comment in reply to the comparison. If you think comparing the EV range of a 3,500lb subcompact Bolt as being good compared to a nearly 5,000lb full sized sedan then fine, we can agree to disagree.
For readers interested in carbon sequestration, please check out the following paper: "Enhanced chemical weathering as a geoengineering strategy to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxid e, supply nutrients, and mitigate ocean acidification"[1]
[1]: http://www.greensand.nl/content/user/1/files/rog20004.pdf