This response seems to have a few gaps in it, but here's what a company rep said:

"And then there's our apex seals, they're like our piston rings," he continues. "In the Wankel engine, they're inside the rotor, again. They move at a high speed, and bounce around, they're very hard to lubricate. In our case, they're stationary, they don't bounce around, and you can lubricate them directly from the housing.

"So we basically solved the key challenges the old rotaries had with combustion and with oiling. Those oiling challenges caused both durability issues and emissions problems. By making those components stationary, we solve the challenges of the old rotary. And we also upgraded its cycle to give it much higher efficiency."

https://newatlas.com/military/liquidpiston-rotary-x-engine-army-generator/

Finger-pointing's great and all, but I'm just optimistic about the future.

California passed a law that only zero-emission vehicles can be sold as of 2035, the same year GM vows to be selling only zero-emission vehicles.

Awww, no love eh? that's okay, I hate you too. I don't say that lightly either. You are a piece of human garbage. That's why I'm happy to place a bet with you, I do actually have several methods if you don't like the first I provide, for escrow.

He's not a fighter, he's a traitor. He sold out his country for his own wealth. You left out the part where he stepped back from the nuclear agreement and now Iran is enriching weapons grade uranium. OH WELL, at least the bible thumpers here are happy about pulling one over on muslims or something, im not sure.


The wall? nope
Repeal and replace obamacare? nope

rather than repeat all this, see for yourself https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/trumpometer/?ruling=true


Fuck you and your socialism-for-the-rich-only president.


"I want all to succeed. I've posted TESLA video to show you that hopefully you will look into them and invest in them.
This is the decade of EV ( electronic vehicles). Get in on it."

From the guy who still supports a president who defunded electric car subsidies and removed lower emission standards. What a joke.


And trump being an A-hole is not something anyone should ignore. I've seen this in various forms for 4 years "Yes i don't like his morals or the way he talks or the way he deals with other people or the way he runs his businesses and cheats on his wife or talks to veterans or women but..."

But nothing, those are aspects of a person's character that you are a fool to ignore.

I love 84!

I had some friends into exotic cars and we'd take 84 over to the coast now and again, mostly because we had a shit-ton of money and a shit-ton of spare time to kill -- the Dot-Com fucking rocked!

There's a bend in the road just outside La Honda on the coastal side that's a 15mph hairpin with a tree at the apex. It's a lovely goddamn thing, especially when you forget it's there. So here we all come, lane-trading and exercising general assholery in cars that cost what a nice single-family home does.

Oh FUCK, the turn!!

My friend in the 911 does this beautiful trail-brake and swings through the curve. Elise follows suit, complete with smoking tires. Next up is Countach. He BARELY holds it together, but gets through without any real drama.

Now it's my turn.

Did I mention I was driving a '97 Camaro Z-28? Yeah, Camaros of that year are good at exactly one thing: driving very fast in very straight lines. Corners? Yeah, not so much. I realize I'm in trouble and I'm coming into the turn WAY too fast. I grab the shifter and get ready. My plan is that I'm going to slam it into first, let the rev limiter do its thing to save the engine, pull the e-brake and swing the tail, then punch it and swing the ass-end around and launch out of the curve with smoking Z-rated tires and all!

And HERE WE GO -- grab the shifter, yank it all the way down and...

That's when California emissions standards fucked me.

You see, when you buy a Camaro Z-28 in California, you don't actually get first gear. You get what's called a California First, which is actually SECOND gear, because if you were actually able to use FIRST gear, the goddamn car would belch enough emissions to make a farting Brontosaurus blush. And second gear ain't exactly gonna work for my little plan.

tl;dr is that I hit the no-lock brakes hard enough to get my speed down and was able to bring the ass around with the little e-brake trick. I wasn't out of the woods because I over-corrected on the way out and spun. The same God that I spite and don't believe in actually saved my ass and I didn't end up going off the road. Apparently, he loves fools and Z-28 Camaros.

I honestly had more fun in that car than the law allows: sometimes literally, like when I got clocked at 110 coming onto the straight at King City. Good times, man, good times.

Interesting, but not surprising.

Fireworks (and bbqs) took LA air from poisonous to deadly on the fourth. It was already pretty ruined on the third. Last I read living there was like being a heavy smoker on the lungs. As I recall, the LA basin air quality was the main reason California enacted our own emission standards decades ago. That was my point, not that fireworks don't pollute, but that LA air quality is legendarily awful.

Kinda lost me when he claimed wind creates 11g CO² per kwh with no reference, calculations, or explanation.
Wind energy production is zero emission.
Are they including every gram produced by every step of construction and estimating a short lifespan, but not doing the same for nuclear, which takes exponentially more resources to build, run, fuel, store waste, and dismantle?
I also have a problem with him saying more expensive, higher profit natural gas plants have better prices because they're much HIGHER than nuclear prices per kwh.
He seems to ignore the spent fuel disposal/storage costs, which are significant in both cases, but while the natural gas plants don't pay for their waste (massive amounts of CO² and methane), nuclear has no choice.
Diablo canyon refurbishing was canned after Fukashima, because it's got all the same dangerous issues of being in an active earthquake/tsunami zone right on the coast with no way to shield itself from tsunamis. Before Fukashima, they totally planned to revamp and continue operations.
His levelized cost of electricity slide conveniently ignores the cost of environmental damage caused by fuel production/use.
Include all costs, coal is worst, followed by natural gas, then nuke, hydro, wind, and solar cheapest. Geothermal is great, but only in areas where it can be easily tapped, which are few and far between.

In short, his vast oversimplification and inconsistencies in what's included in his cost basis make his conclusions relatively meaningless, imo.

@bcglorf Here's a tome for you....


It's certainly not (the only way). Converting to green energy sources stimulates the economy, it doesn't bankrupt it, and it makes it more efficient in the future thanks to lower energy costs. My solar system paid for itself in 8 years, giving me an expected 12 years of free electricity and hot water. Right wingers would tell you it will never pay for itself....utter bullshit.

Every gap in our knowledge I've ever seen that we have filled with data has made the estimates worse. Every one. Every IPCC report has raised the severity and shrunk the timeframe from the last report....but you stand on the last one that they admit was optimistic and incomplete by miles as if it's the final word and a gold standard. It just isn't. They themselves admit this.

The odds of catastrophic climate change is 100% in the next 0 years for many who have already died or been displaced by rising seas or famine or disease or lack of water or...... and that goes for all humanity in the next 50 because those who survive displacement will be refugees on the rest's doorsteps. Don't be ridiculous. If we found an asteroid guaranteed to hit in the next 50-100 years, and any possible solutions take a minimum of 50 years to implement with no surprises, and only then assuming we solve the myriad of technical issues we haven't solved in the last 100 years of trying and only if we can put the resources needed into a solution, not considering the constantly worsening barrage of smaller asteroids and the effects on resources and civilisation, we would put all our resources into solutions. That's where I think we are, except we still have many claiming there's no asteroid coming and those that already hit are fake news....including those in the highest offices making the decisions.

Every IPCC report has vastly underestimated their projections, they tell you they are doing it, only including data they are certain of, not new measurements or functions. They do not fill in the gaps, they leave them empty. Gaps like methane melt that could soon be more of a factor than human CO2, and 100% out of our control.

The AR5 report is so terrible, it was lambasted from day one as being incredibly naive and optimistic, and for not including what was then new data. Since its release, those complaints have been proven to be correct, in 5 years since its release ice melt rates have accelerated 60 years by their model. I wouldn't put a whit of confidence in it, it was terrible then, near criminally bad today. I'll take NOAA's estimates based on much newer science and guess that they, like nearly all others in the past, also don't know everything and are also likely underestimating wildly. Even the IPCC AR5 report includes the possibility of 3 ft rise by 2100 under their worst case (raised another 10% in this 2019 report, and expected to rise again by 2021, their next report), and their worst case models show less heat and melting than we are measuring already and doesn't include natural feedbacks because they can't model them accurately yet so just left them out (but noted they will have a large effect, but it's not quantitative yet so not included). Long and short, their worst case scenario is likely optimistic as reality already outpaces their worst case models.

Again, the economy benefits from new energy production in multiple ways. Exxon is not the global economy.

It took 100 years for the impact of our pollution to be felt by most (some still ignore it today). Even the short term features like methane take 25+ years to run their cycles, so what we do today takes that long to start working.

If people continue to drag their feet and challenge the science with supposition, insisting the best case scenario of optimistic studies are the worst we should plan for, we're doomed....and what they're doing is actually worse than that. The power plants built or under construction today put us much higher than 1.5 degree rise by 2100 with their expected emissions without ever building 1 more, and we're building more. Without fantastic scientific breakthroughs that may never come, breakthroughs your plan relies on for our survival, what we've already built puts us beyond the IPCC worst case in their operational lifetimes.

There's a problem with that...I'm good with using real science to identify them without political obstruction and confusion, the difference being we need to be prepared for decisive action once they're identified. So far, we have plans to develop those actions, but that's it. In the event of a "surprise" asteroid, we're done. We just hope they're rare.
This one, however, is an asteroid that is guaranteed to hit if we do nothing, some say hit in 30 years, some say 80. Only morons say it won't hit at all, do nothing.
Climate change is an asteroid/comet in our orbit that WILL hit earth. We are already being hit by ejecta from it's coma causing disasters for millions. You suggest we don't start building a defense until we are certain of it's exact tonnage and the date it will crash to earth because it's expensive and our data incomplete. That plan leaves us too late to change the trajectory. The IPCC said we need to deploy our system in 8-10 years to have a 30-60% chance of changing the trajectory under perfect conditions....you seem to say "wait, that's expensive, let's give it some time and ignore that deadline". I say even just a continent killer is bad enough to do whatever it takes to stop, because it's cheaper with less loss of life and infinitely less suffering than a 'wait and see exactly when it will kill us, we might have space elevators in 10 years so it might only kill 1/2 of us and the rest might survive that cometary winter in space (yes at exponentially higher cost and loss of life and ecology than developing the system today, but that won't be on my dime so Fuck it).' attitude.

@newtboy,

"bankrupting the global economy isn't the only way to plan for asteroids, now is it? What we have done is put some money towards developing solutions that could be implemented in time, with minor exceptions for super fast unknown asteroids we likely couldn't do much about if we did have a planetary defense system."

That's precisely my point though, bankrupting the global economy to reach negative net emissions tomorrow isn't the only way to plan for climate change either.

"the probability of disastrous climate change is near 100% if you take historic human behavior into account. For many it's already hit. It's only the severity and speed that are in question, and those estimates rise alarmingly with every bit of data we use to replace guesses in the equations.

And the odds of a catastrophic asteroid hit sometime in the future is near 100% too, it's just a question of how many millions of years Earth's luck holds out. Nor has every prediction or projection underestimated future warming so far, your flat wrong on that.

More to the point, the timing and severity of the changes we face is ABSOLUTELY relevant to the actions we need to take. Similarly, knowing the benefit of reducing our emissions by X% by a particular date is also extremely relevant to the actions we need to take. Unfortunately, it must be acknowledged that we have a lot of gaps and uncertainty in our knowledge on those points.

At minimum base level, we know changing global temperature on the whole will impact us negatively, that our CO2 emissions will make things warmer than they otherwise would be, and thus can easily conclude with certainty that the science dictates policies to reduce emissions are a good idea.

Now, you seem to be hell bent on demanding those policies take the shape of staring down the face of disaster 2-3 times worse than the IPCC AR5 reports absolute worst case scenario. I've got to tell you, that the uncertainties involved with that kind of prediction are too great to warrant an honest dictate that the facts support a need for economically devastating action being taken today. It's just not the case.

Even if green tech never takes over, if the next century sees us final solve fusion power and adoption of electric cars, we already get our emission outputs off the worst track scenario the IPCC projected in AR5. I honestly do believe that we will see non-fossil fuel electricity generation and electric cars as the norm in my lifetime, so I'm hopeful for a future that tracks better than the IPCC worst case. That doesn't mean we should do nothing, but it's more like we should take a similarly rational/practical approach to it like you see us doing with asteroids.

Actually, I'm selling their audience short. When real scientists present the real data dispassionately, I think the average person gets quickly confused and tunes out. Those that dumb it down enough to be understood invariably underrepresent or outright misrepresent the problems. With so many unscientific voices out there trying to out shout the real data for their own purposes, real scientists fudging the data is near criminal because it's only more ammunition for deniers.

Yes, if you or I heard them lecture, we would likely hear that and even more, but the average, unscientific American would hear "taking in more energy than is leaving" as a good thing, free energy. If they explained the mechanisms involved, their eyes would glaze over as they just wished someone would tell them it's all lies so they could ignore what they can't understand fully. These people are, imo, the majority in the U.S.. They are why we need emotional delivery of simplified science from a charismatic young woman who knows her stuff.
Edit: For example, I had read the published summaries of the recent U.N. report saying we had 12 years to be carbon neutral to stay below 1.5degree rise, they were far from clear that this was only a 50% chance of achieving that minimal temperature rise, or that we only had 8 years of current emission levels to have a 66% chance, still bad odds. I understood they were also using horrendous models for ice melt and other factors to reach those optimistic numbers, and didn't take feedback loops we already see in action into account, nor did they make allowances for feedbacks we don't know about yet. The average reader only got 12 years to conserve before we are locked into 1.5 degree. They don't even know that's when known feedback loops are expected to outpace human inputs, making it exponentially harder if not impossible to turn around, or that 1.5 degree rise by 2050 likely means closer to 3 degree by 2100, and higher afterwards.

Mating habits for European swallows?! How did we get from the relationship of climatology and sociology to discussing the red light district?

Ok, but don't discount the factual arguments because they are presented with passion. Ignore the emotion and focus on verifying or debunking the facts presented. Because someone on Fox presents their denial argument flatly and dispassionately doesn't make it more correct.

Yes, I agree, but the point was getting people to listen, read, and fully examine the facts rather than accept the, also emotional, arguments without fact or with incorrect, cherry picked, or misrepresented facts that dominate the discussion on both sides, but mostly on the denier side since facts and data do not support them.

That line isn't blurred, it's been pressure washed away. The emotional arguments are nearly all that's out there, the facts are so misrepresented by both sides...oddly both sides minimizing the problem, the right to ignore it for profit, the left to not overwhelm those wanting to make progress by admitting it's too late.
Note, she mentions the thoroughly reported study that said we must stop emissions in 12 (now 10?) years to stay below 1.5c rise actually said we must make that sacrifice to have a 50% chance at that (and goes on to explain why even that is outrageously optimistic since it doesn't take feedbacks and other factors into account and relies on future generations to make not only the sacrifices we aren't willing to make, but also to clean up/sequester the emissions we continue to emit at faster rates daily).
I have zero problem with the emotion of the delivery if the facts are presented clearly and in totality, which she does better than most if not all professional scientific lecturers....sadly.

What a disgusting piece of shit and outright liar.
Her achievements already outweigh his by miles...he's only managed to get himself kicked off Fox, impressively hard to do if you're right wing. Fox has apologized for his disgraceful ad hominem attacks against a child who he couldn't factually contradict....but Laura Ingram has also personally attacked her on her show, as has Trump on Twitter.

Being on the autism spectrum, she says she has aspergers, is a developmental disorder NOT a mental illness.
Being a pathological liar, that's a mental illness apparently now shared by an entire political party.
Being a fecal golem is a personality disorder he clearly has in spades.

The Carnegie Mellon study he sites said no such thing, and it's authors have stated that it's a total misrepresentation of their findings....repeatedly.
The study actually said certain produce at it's worst might be more ecologically harmful per calorie than some kinds of white meat eating by comparing things like bacon vs lettuce on a calorie to calorie instead of serving to serving rate, so 4 strips of bacon were compared to > 40 cups of lettuce. Get real.
To compound the confusion they chose a calorie poor produce like lettuce with high greenhouse gas emissions instead of kale, broccoli, rice, potatoes, spinach and wheat (just to name a few) which all rank lower than pork in terms of greenhouse gases.
The same argument holds for water usage...they chose lettuce, with high water requirements, instead of things like corn, peanuts, carrots and wheat which all use less water than all non-seafood meat.
It's also assumed the produce will be wasted at exponentially higher rates than meat, which can be preserved more easily. That may be true, but they don't include the preservatives or energy to refrigerate and/or freeze meat on the bacon side of the equation.

Of course the lettuce takes more resources if you eat 40+ cups instead of 4 thin bacon strips, just like when you compare a single fish stick to several giant pumpkins.

*rant over*

Ok...i should have said "all but guaranteed under all BUT the most wildly optimistic projections". Got me.

Since, time and time again, the UN "collaborative summary" has had to be revised upwards, and recent measurements show current melting rates it claimed won't be seen until 2075 in Greenland, yes, I have a low opinion of their political/scientific consensus...but the scenarios I mentioned are not the most extreme I can find, just the most likely if you look at data rather than projections based on the conglomeration of incomplete, cherry picked, and non peer reviewed science as well as full scientific studies.

The IPCC does not carry out original research, nor does it monitor climate or related phenomena itself. Rather, it assesses published literature including peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed sources. Thousands of scientists and other experts contribute on a voluntary basis to writing and reviewing reports, which are then reviewed by governments.
They are not the scientific community, they are an international political body chaired by an economist that makes suggestions hopefully based on real honest science, but not necessarily.


There is plenty of consensus that the IPCC estimates are low....NOAA gives up to a 2.5M rise estimate for RCP8.5...the no mitigation, business as usual model we are outpacing already. Based on their numerical system, we're looking at RCP 10+ because emissions are rising, not flatlined, certainly not lowering.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/uhenergy/2018/06/15/is-the-ipcc-wrong-about-sea-level-rise/#712580f03ba0

@newtboy said: "a 3' rise, which is all but guaranteed by 2100 under the most optimistic current projections."

Lies.

The most recent IPCC report(AR5) has their section on sea level rise here:
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_Chapter13_FINAL.pdf

In the summary for policy makers section under projections they note: " For the period 2081–2100, compared to 1986–2005, global mean sea level rise is likely (medium confidence) to be in the 5 to 95% range of projections from process based models, which give 0.26 to 0.55 m for RCP2.6, 0.32 to 0.63 m for RCP4.5, 0.33 to 0.63 m for RCP6.0, and 0.45 to 0.82 m for RCP8.5. For RCP8.5, the rise by 2100 is 0.52 to 0.98 m"

And to give you maximum benefit of doubt they also comment on possible(unlikely) exceeding of stated estimates:" Based on current understanding, only the collapse of marine-based sectors of the Antarctic ice sheet, if initiated, could cause global mean sea level to rise substantially above the likely range during the 21st century. This potential additional contribution cannot be precisely quantified but there is medium confidence that it would not exceed several tenths of a meter of sea level rise during the 21st century. "

So, to summarize that, the worst case emissions scenario the IPCC ran(8.5), has in itself a worst case sea level rise ranging 0.5-1.0m, so 1.5 to 3ft. They do note a potential allowance for another few tenths of a meter if unexpected collapse of antarctic ice also occurs.

Let me quote you again: "3' rise, which is all but guaranteed by 2100 under the most optimistic current projections"

and yet the most recent collaborative summary from the scientific community states under their most pessimistic projections have a 3 ft as the extreme upper limit...

You also did however state "IPCC (again, known for overly conservative estimates)", so it does seem you almost do admit having low opinion of the scientific consensus and prefer cherry picking the most extreme scenarios you can find anywhere and claiming them as the absolute golden standard...

Almost as stupid as holding the producers of the toxic product AND the misleading or outright false information about it's hazards blameless. Because they actively misled their customers, I give them the vast lions share of blame, but maybe not 100%. There's plenty to go around.

You don't have to live in poverty to abandon fossil fuels.
Not.
Even.
Close.
I bought solar 10+- years back...it paid for itself in 8. It's lifespan is 20+-. I get 12 years of free electricity for abandoning that portion, with no blackouts, no brownouts, and no rate increases.

True, the video could be better at sharing the blame, but it stayed on topic instead, that topic being major polluters greenwashing their mage. I didn't take it as assigning ALL blame to one source, just not allowing the worst offenders to shirk all responsibility for their products.


Every one of these is the likely outcome of any anthropogenic rise over 2-3C because of feedback loops that drive us to 6-12C rise. Only the wars are likely this century, but I didn't put a timeframe on those outcomes. 140 million + will be displaced by just a 3' rise, which is all but guaranteed by 2100 under the most optimistic current projections.
That wipes out mangroves and other fish nurseries, further impacting the struggling ocean food webs. All the while it accelerates as our ability to cope erodes like the shorelines....it doesn't just halt at 3' rise.
The natural food webs on land are also struggling, and are unlikely to survive ocean collapse.

Not just from deforestation, but diatoms are near a point of collapse from ocean acidification. https://diatoms.org/what-are-diatoms. That's over 1/2....and the base of the ocean food web.


Since the IPCC (again, known for overly conservative estimates) now says at current rates we could hit as much as a 6C rise by 2100, and rates of emissions are rising as fast as carbon sinks are shrinking, they're not just a possibility, they a likelihood in the near future....but granted the hydrogen sulfide clouds are far in a worst case scenario future, far from guaranteed.

I had to stop when he showed a pie chart that said 4-8% but the sliver in the chart represented close to 2%.

I'm a supporter of an accelerated move to low carbon emission energy sources. However, this video used too many manipulative tactics and I couldn't even figure out the thesis. Is it, "company promoting itself is bad?" If you're consuming corporate promotions as if it's hard news, then you're failing a basic test of critical thinking skills.