I think we are seeing things very differently.

How important do you think fossil fuels are to modern society right now and over the last hundred years? Do you believe that they have been net negative or net positive influence on humanity in that time?

That's why you and Trump are leveraging everything you own and buying up cheap coastal properties that will jump exponentially in value right after this fraud is exposed, or when the sea doesn't rise....no? Why not? If you believed what you spout, it's an absolute no brainer, the fact you (and others like you) don't act on it is proof that you don't believe your own position yourself.

Perhaps it's because the people who tell you there's a vast scientific conspiracy perpetrated for the sole purpose of milking that sweet sweet research money are paid by fossil fuel industries. Perhaps it's because the Pentagon agrees with the science and even Trump agrees when his money is on the line. Perhaps because of the hottest 18 years ever recorded, 17 occurred after 2000. Perhaps it's because these immigrants you are so afraid of are migrating in part due to climate change already. Perhaps it's because numerous Pacific islands are disappearing. No matter why, it's clear you really do believe in climate change, or you would own a huge chunk of Florida coast already.
Pathetic, Bob.


*nochannel
*politics
*nature
*science

Nuclear energy is the only way we can do it, we can run the planet forever and do things cleanly and more densely to leave more of our planet for wildlife.

The trouble is almost everything we hold as common wisdom about it is completely wrong, using breeder reactors have enough uranium to run the planet forever leaving almost no waste and removing the possibility of big accidents which actually aren't as harmful as commonly believed anyway.

We have thorium too, and many designs of each that can do the job. In fact we have a wealth of of options, but also a decades old and highly effective PR campaign from the fossil fuel industry to convince us otherwise.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'CSN, No Young, cover' to 'CSN, No Young, cover, Foxes and Fossils' - edited by blutruth

Even limestone? Fossils? ;-)

Also, I think you're conflating the particles age with the stone's age. There are almost zero stones that old on earth, most has been dissolved and reconstituted a few times over by now, with new (and new old) dust added constantly from space.

I think the value was in the insane impossible to recreate pattern, something the universe manufactured on it's own timeframe for it's own reasons.

Conservatives: FAKE DATA. NASA is just saying this to make money [but the denial stuff is all sponsored by the fossil fuel industry who somehow isn't biased]. Climate change is fake. If you think about it, CO2 is good for plants [most are doing their max exchange, and it makes them have less nutrition... plus most of the globe isn't green, it's blue or desert... would be one thing if there was a way to keep that CO2 where the plants actually were and down where they were], its what they breath. It's a war on coal and oil. Ice levels in the Antarctic are rising [some data suggests it has, and may, but it is offset by Greenland ice loss alone, let alone ice loss from every other place like Alaska, Canada, Russia, the Nordic countries, etc]. It's cold here on January 3, so much for global warming [odd they never mention the problem on August 23 or whatever]? They said there's going to be an ice age back in the 70's [they can't show the science papers, just an article in Newsweek or Time], and just last year or so, they said solar minimums will result in another mini-ice age [again, no, nothing about climate in the actual science paper, just the press running their own version of the paper].

Hardly a brilliant analysis - more like a brilliant piece of advocacy that, like most of its kind, is long on optimistic projections and very short on real numbers and a real analysis of those numbers. For instance: what is the megawatt hour cost of a solar power generation station that can replicate the power responsiveness and availability factor of a fossil power generation station (over a similar life cycle). He quotes the kwh cost for solar and wind power systems but each and every one of them is "backed up" by a much larger conventional power generation system that, ultimately, is burdened with the costs of maintaining grid stability, grid voltage, and grid frequency. There are huge engineering problems and substantial costs associated with maintaining a power supply that we now require to operate a modern economy. Just ONCE, I would like to see the green power advocates address those challenges and costs in a realistic way instead of glossing over them with their fantasy projections.
And I will say, as an aside, that I have spent my entire working career working in the renewable energy sector and fully agree that we need to transition to a renewable energy economy - but unrealistic projections are going to doom our economy if they are taken as being possible in the near term.

Nuclear prices are going up because they are under attack from the fossil fuel industry and they are not allowed to innovate with new technologies that are much safer and cheaper.

So wait...he talks about how important the weight is because it determines the load that can be carried. He does the weight calculations and then immediately starts talking about the cost of the truck and never finishes his weight analysis.

According to his estimation, the weight of the unloaded truck with trailer is 7 tons. If the batteries on a 500 mile truck weigh 8 tons then the total 15 ton vehicle is lighter than the ~17 ton average for a standard semi with trailer. I'd round up for the weight of the motors and since his empty weight calculation seems a tad low. So you can assume the weights of a Tesla truck and stardard truck are at least within spitting distance of each other.

Range is less of an issue since a driver is only allowed to drive a maximum of 11 hours in a 14 hour period. So assuming they drove a solid 11 hours at 60 miles per hour (since that's what the 500 mile range is based on), the standard truck can drive 160 miles further. But if you're driving 11 hours without a break, you're an idiot. And Tesla indicates that a battery can fully charge in under 30 minutes.

Last point, he estimates the battery cost alone will be $108K and $180K but Tesla has set the expected price of the actual trucks as $150K and $180K. Considering a traditional truck runs $80K - $150K, it seems the return on investment for a Tesla truck might be shorter than a traditional truck, given the economy of electric compared fossil fuel.

Great video though. Love all the math.

No Netflix for me, and no luck on a quick search of torrents, but I'll keep my eye out for that show/series.

Many metrics to compare. Ecologically, that system sounds great for static locations with enough of an elevation gradient and reservoir areas to make it work. On the other hand it seems like the ecological damage done by constructing batteries, factories, and disposing of them is likely quite small compared to many other alternatives, particularly fossil fuels (which also have long-term scarcity concerns on top of plenty of other issues).

A major advantage of battery tech over hydro storage would be mobility. If the thing consuming energy doesn't sit in one place, hydro storage won't work. Another somewhat less significant advantage is the ability to install anywhere -- a battery farm recharged by mains and/or a solar/wind farm could be installed in places where hydro storage couldn't. And for one more item in favor of batteries, I'd wager that the land area footprint required for batteries is much smaller per kWH stored, although that might be wrong for extremely large reservoirs (ie. a hydroelectric dam, pretty much). But by the time you're getting to that large scale, the location requirements and ecological disruption are also much more extreme.

Anyway, I don't mean to pooh-pooh the idea of hydro storage -- it really does seem like a very good and ingenious idea where it would be applicable. But there's certainly room for improved battery tech, too. I don't think that we're going to get fully or even significantly weaned off of fossil fuels quite as fast as the video would have us hope for, either. Fossil fuels were the primary tool in our toolbox for a LONG time. And as the saying goes, since all we've had is that "hammer", we've started to think of everything as a nail.

Hadn't heard of that, but I get the concept. Cool idea.

Off the top of my head, I'm concerned about pump and generator efficiency. You're going to use some amount more energy to pump a volume of water up to the high basin than you will get back by gravity feeding it through generators. To be fair, efficiency is a problem with using and recharging chemical batteries as well, but the limited amount that I remember from college engineering courses tells me that efficiency in the electrical / solid state world tends to be more easily obtained than in the mechanical world.

And as another "to be fair", efficiency is a bigger concern for things like fossil fuels, where burning one unit of fuel produces a set amount of energy and you have to improve efficiency to get the most value out of that energy. With things like solar and wind being "free" energy when active but requiring storage for when the source is inactive (night / calm winds), efficiency still certainly matters, but not as much as with a scarce / non-renewable source of energy.

Anyway, I'd like to see concrete numbers comparing the utility and efficiency (in various metrics) of your hydro storage vs battery storage.

I would like to think "punch a nazi" isn't especially extreme though, certainly not extremely leftist. You can certainly pickup a large number of right leaning people who are on board for punching nazis.

It's other things from the left that I fear are needlessly driving away right leaning folks.

Calls for halting parts of the economy to save the world from catastrophic climate change, be that banning coal or oil or to a lesser extent carbon taxes. Instead taking the positive approach of promoting non-fossil fuels on the power grid and electric vehicles accomplishes more and doesn't directly attack the industry and livelihood of a large part of middle America.

Anything that amounts to calling it immoral to define a man as a human with a penis and a woman as a human with a vagina. How many voters do you really need to alienate over semantics?

Anything that amounts to demanding everybody accept and encourage your life choices, sexual or otherwise. The notion of judging one another based on our decisions and behaviours is a big deal to right leaning people, telling them that certain behaviours or choices are not only unquestionable but must be approved of is again pointless and needlessly drives away voters. There is common ground in love and let live, pushing beyond that to get back at the old guard is driving away potential allies at a time that can't be afforded.

Labelling any criticism of Islam as Islamaphobia. For that matter, use of pretty much all the morality-a-phobias should be done away with. Go back to demanding people live and let live without the requirement everyone embrace or endorse other people's decisions without being shouted down as immoral.

BLM

Refusing to allow rational discussion of statistically factual trends or differences between populations because it's racist or sexist. Those differences are a part of our reality and just demanding everyone put their heads in the sand drives many people unwilling to do so away. It also is damaging because many problems in society that we need to fix are informed by that data.

Since you agree that they're trying to influence the debate, is there any aspect of let's call it 'global warming scepticism' that you think is basically a lie perpetuated by the industry to make their argument more persuasive?

It's pretty easy for say, a fossil fuel company to pay (what is pocket change to to them) a PR company quietly to spread ideas that are misleading but sound convincing right?

Also where did Inconvenient Truth say the planet would be basically dead? I don't recall that at all.

Genuine question, do you think that the fossil fuel industry tries to influence the debate in their favour?

I'm asking regardless of whether global warming is true or not.