Don't Go Electric, It's a con.

[con]

Having understood the parameters of production of these vehicles I now see that there's no advantage ecologically and they will not save the planet.
On the contrary, this new technology is going to rip up our ocean floors and the scientists have no idea of the destruction it will cause to the marine environments down in the deep of the seas.
China is already doing it with absolutely no restrictions so the USA have begun the same race to the bottom and we can only surmise that this is going to be another terrible disaster for the planet.

https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/live...hXJfc36sSgPRhKhGE09sf-ZDHHeghNE1_C0fJ-UrKsd0Q

https://www.wired.com/story/the-race-to-send-robots-to-mine-the-ocean-floor/

I am sorry you think so. But you are factually incorrect - scientists DO know what has been happening to our ecology and have been warning us for over 20 years but we haven't been listening or rather we have been ignoring them; preferring to listen to the loud mouth "shock jocks" or should I say "cash for comment" jock.

Australia is an ignorant and backward country - we are still discussing what the rest of the enlightened world has long ago agreed upon.

 

[schlitzaugen]

The main advantage right now is that we do away with greenhouse gas (hopefully). We'll deal later with the new/remaining problems. Business as usual.

But yeah, I've been saying the same thing about Oz for a long time. D

 

[robmac]

The main advantage right now is that we do away with greenhouse gas (hopefully). We'll deal later with the new/remaining problems. Business as usual.

But yeah, I've been saying the same thing about Oz for a long time. D

There are too many with the "ignore it and it will go-away" attitude. Which is ultimately and sadly true.

 

[Richard W]

I am sorry you think so. But you are factually incorrect - scientists DO know what has been happening to our ecology and have been warning us for over 20 years but we haven't been listening or rather we have been ignoring them; preferring to listen to the loud mouth "shock jocks" or should I say "cash for comment" jock.

Australia is an ignorant and backward country - we are still discussing what the rest of the enlightened world has long ago agreed upon.

With respect, I think you may have missed the point. I didn't understand Luthier to be denying climate change. Rather, if you read the articles, I took his point to be that in our bid to build EVs, the irony is that we are now decimating more of the ocean floor - one of the few parts of the earth humans haven't already destroyed.

Sometimes it would be nice if we could respond to environmental issues by just consuming less, rather than building a new kind of machine to allow us to continue consuming exactly we do now - eg, a luxury Tesla even bigger and heavier than most ICE cars with 'ludicrous mode' supercar acceleration hardly feels like an advance to me.

 

[Beano]

Sometimes it would be nice if we could respond to environmental issues by just consuming less, rather than building a new kind of machine to allow us to continue consuming exactly we do now

Unfortunately when growth economics is dying, it thrashes around like a dying dinosaur...

 

[schlitzaugen]

There are too many with the "ignore it and it will go-away" attitude. Which is ultimately and sadly true.

That may be. I think what we lack is ambition.

 

[luthier]

With respect, I think you may have missed the point. I didn't understand Luthier to be denying climate change. Rather, if you read the articles, I took his point to be that in our bid to build EVs, the irony is that we are now decimating more of the ocean floor - one of the few parts of the earth humans haven't already destroyed.

Sometimes it would be nice if we could respond to environmental issues by just consuming less, rather than building a new kind of machine to allow us to continue consuming exactly we do now - eg, a luxury Tesla even bigger and heavier than most ICE cars with 'ludicrous mode' supercar acceleration hardly feels like an advance to me.

Yes thanks Richard, what the articles show is that the scientists are still quite confused or being deceptive about the effects of the subterranean mining and there's all the usual subterfuge about making it safe by running the machines in a criss cross pattern instead of total 'clearfell' and as we all know those arguments are simply indicating that the whole thing should probably not be happening.
However in the immortal words of Dr John, 'if I don't do it , someone else will.'
So the issue is we are between a rock and China if we want to stay ahead of the game in the West or else we'll be buying all the batteries from China, which is likely anyhow.
Still for me the whole issue is one of political correctness by world governments to move us all from Internal Combustion to Electric to 'Save the Planet'.
And seeing what has previously been hidden about some of the ways that these electric cars are going to be possible it shows us that really if we could get more efficient and cleaner with the older technologies we could have a much more beneficial effect on the planet than going forward the way it seems we are all going to be pushed.
Yeah I know we shouldn't be political on this forum so I will just say I believe in the older cars and I also believe in modern Turbo Diesels and their efficiency. Plus the newest 3 cylinder Pugs are also incredibly efficient.
I really don't think there's a total answer due to overpopulation but I hope the world doesn't end up converting everything to electric only to find the problems it causes are as bad or much worse than intelligent use of fossil fuels or hydrogen or methane or some other less damaging technologies.
Right now electric motors seem to be very easy and this worries me.

 

[Kenfuego]

I think I will keep out of this one, but it is good that people start to look at the plusses and the negative, Bob is correct that investors will leave the wind farms where they are and the farmers on whose land they stand are responsible for remediation - they walk away, There might be a scrap price, but farmers might have to pay the cost of hauling the scrap or just leave the sentinel to rust - that was what the local told me during our trip earlier this year and he was an enthusiast, mainly as it boosted rates and the companies were sponsoring civic activities.


Many sides and too many emotions not to mention the monetary incentives. Hard to stop mining in the open ocean, not like land based activity where there are stricter conditions.


My hope is that electric vehicles will become so cheap and utilitarian in design longevity that our roads will be shared by milk floats and bicycles. I did see one electric car using the multiple charging bays at the Heidelberg Woolworths today, it looked pretty ordinary, certainly not a Tesla sports, so maybe there are a few around here.

 

[bob]

G'day,

I think I will keep out of this one, but it is good that people start to look at the plusses and the negative, Bob is correct that investors will leave the wind farms where they are and the farmers on whose land they stand are responsible for remediation - they walk away, There might be a scrap price, but farmers might have to pay the cost of hauling the scrap or just leave the sentinel to rust - that was what the local told me during our trip earlier this year and he was an enthusiast, mainly as it boosted rates and the companies were sponsoring civic activities......

the amount of good-will money that is being splashed about by the windfarm developers is amazing, there's gotta be a smell in there somewhere....

.........My hope is that electric vehicles will become so cheap and utilitarian in design longevity that our roads will be shared by milk floats and bicycles. I did see one electric car using the multiple charging bays at the Heidelberg Woolworths today, it looked pretty ordinary, certainly not a Tesla sports, so maybe there are a few around here.

There were three !! vehicles at the Ballarat charging station last week. I remarked to one of the guys that one sees no one at these things for six months and all of a sudden it's crowded, he indicated that they were all Tesla mechanical crew checking the installation....

As to windfarms being good for the environment, anyone that believes that really ought to go and look at one and check out what is involved in construction. The visible effect on the landscape is obvious with the ever increasing size and numbers of the windmills together with the attendant cobweb of transmission lines. Then there's the bit below ground to consider, it takes a rather large hole to hold up infrastructure of this size, there are already local concerns about effects on groundwater.

Power Poles, 28m to 42m high, base 2m wide, and spaced about 300m apart, 18m clearance required each side. There is a mass of these fellas at the local 'farm' site with a 75km string to the sub-station.

Two quarries have been established to provide some 800,000m3 of materials, with approved permits for more if required.

The Beafort-Skipton zone, from the Stockyard hill development alone, wins, at last count, some 149 turbines around 180m high, each with a swept area said to be around the size of the MCG turf, and with minimum foundation volumes of 590m3 or about 100 trucks of cement for each pour, some are said to require twice this. Out of interest the bottom section of the tower weighs over 90 tonnes. The next section over 80 tonnes, etc. All up with the nacelle the wind turbine weighs over 500t. Yes, quite large, good for the environment ? just ponder on that for a while..... and this is just one development...... others are planned to abut this one......

Effect on wildlife ? The place is not even operational yet, but, there was a local track "Dunnarts Lane", this is now a multi-lane mud highway and needs to be renamed "No-Dunnarts Road"..... It doesn't take much imagination to work out the likely effect of all these spinning blades on large slow flying birds like brolgas and wedgies.

When the Minister was asked at a local meeting to clarify what "local employment" constituted, the reply was "Australian or New Zealand citizens". So much for that Furphy.

But it's all good for us and the environment isn't it.....

cheers,
Bob

 

[56 Fregate]

You know: If all the cynicism being displayed on this topic was converted to care and action the earth could be a better place.

Meanwhile I'll continue to try to live within the planet's environmental means.

If everyone did the same we would't be in the situation we are in.

No doubt this 'living within means' philosophy would include not consuming alcohol, cigarettes, farmed animal products, unnecessary use of fossil fuels, using mains electricity, owning a car, owning more than 1 car, avoiding anything made from plastic, reproducing or excess farting.

 

[schlitzaugen]

Yes thanks Richard, what the articles show is that the scientists are still quite confused or being deceptive about the effects of the subterranean mining and there's all the usual subterfuge about making it safe by running the machines in a criss cross pattern instead of total 'clearfell' and as we all know those arguments are simply indicating that the whole thing should probably not be happening.
However in the immortal words of Dr John, 'if I don't do it , someone else will.'
So the issue is we are between a rock and China if we want to stay ahead of the game in the West or else we'll be buying all the batteries from China, which is likely anyhow.
Still for me the whole issue is one of political correctness by world governments to move us all from Internal Combustion to Electric to 'Save the Planet'.
And seeing what has previously been hidden about some of the ways that these electric cars are going to be possible it shows us that really if we could get more efficient and cleaner with the older technologies we could have a much more beneficial effect on the planet than going forward the way it seems we are all going to be pushed.
Yeah I know we shouldn't be political on this forum so I will just say I believe in the older cars and I also believe in modern Turbo Diesels and their efficiency. Plus the newest 3 cylinder Pugs are also incredibly efficient.
I really don't think there's a total answer due to overpopulation but I hope the world doesn't end up converting everything to electric only to find the problems it causes are as bad or much worse than intelligent use of fossil fuels or hydrogen or methane or some other less damaging technologies.
Right now electric motors seem to be very easy and this worries me.

No IC engine regardless of how efficient it is can avoid converting fossil fuel into heat plus greenhouse gas. That is the problem we are trying to solve. Electric is just a band aid, and it will no doubt come with its own problems, hopefully not contributing to what we're trying to alleviate in the first place. Scientists have pointed out some of these a long time ago, you can read about it at a general level in New Scientist going about ten years back or so.

Another thing scientists seem to agree about is that we are on borrowed time with greenhouse gases. You can disagree and they might be wrong, but the risk is that we have to pick up and go if they are right.

Going back much farther, scientists have told us that we are using low level energy (easy pickings) and the trajectory is that we will have to move away from it for deeper reasons (insufficient resources is one of them). They predicted the next step is to use atomic energy and then gravitational. We seem to have taken a step back, giving up atomic energy, which would be plentiful for our foreseeable future and the technology is right here right now. Small nuclear power batteries have been made already and sent into space and they still work fine (see Voyager), Our cars could be easily powered by such batteries for their entire life (and ours) but what manufacturer will by their own volition agree to sell everybody just one car for their entire life? What power company would be happy to see you come home and plug your house into your nuclear car to power it? You see, it is you who are the problem, not scientists or companies. You are the one with the vote.

Not that I like it muchly, but maybe the military will come up with a solution (again), seeing that Russia has created (they say) a nuclear powered rocket.

Just sayin'.

 

[con]

With respect, I think you may have missed the point. I didn't understand Luthier to be denying climate change....

I don't think so - read the Title “Don’t Go Electric, It’s a con”.

Also, the statement made was: “… (I) having understood the production parameters of (Evs)…” what relevance does this and the above Title have to the two links provided?
Trying to discredit attempts to reduce man made carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a well known tactic used by the “climate change deniers”.

 

[CC1701]

Small nuclear power batteries have been made already and sent into space and they still work fine (see Voyager), Our cars could be easily powered by such batteries for their entire life (and ours)

They are called RTGs. Widely used on spacecraft, and the Soviets used them to power their artic installations (then promptly forgot about them).

A Plutonium powered car would have benefits:

- 100 years between refills

There are some issues though:

- Plutonium 238 (238Pu) produces about 0.5 watt per gram @ microvolts. But a kg can produce 500 watts for almost 100 years.

- will there be self-heating leather seats in the car? Given 1 kg of 238Pu costs $12,000,000. Yes that’s 12 million south pacific pesos per kilogram! Tesla:- great value.

- In sub zero temperatures, the energy conversion is about 20 to 25% efficient, at 0°C. - 3 or 4%, at 30°C. - very close to 0%. Might be needing more than a kg for climates warmer than a Melbourne winter.

- Would they opt for the thin, light graphite and iridium shielding or go for the much, much cheaper (weaker) 25 mm thick lead shielding?

- Traffic accidents may render the surrounding area uninhabitable for 100 years. Drive Very Carefully.

Just sayin', with a smile

 

[Kenfuego]

I don't think so - read the Title “Don’t Go Electric, It’s a con”.

Also, the statement made was: “… (I) having understood the production parameters of (Evs)…” what relevance does this and the above Title have to the two links provided?
Trying to discredit attempts to reduce man made carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a well known tactic used by the “climate change deniers”.

Sad that you smear with "Climate Change Deniers" No one that I am aware of deny's that climate changes, so why introduce that smear?

What is at issue, is the ability to stimulate debate where there should be a debate, particularly when serious economic decisions are being made that will have long term economic and social ramifications. People should be encouraged to ask questions and not take any authority statements made on both sides, often without data or evidential facts underpinning those authority statements. More so, when some just use smear tactics, because they don't accept the right of the other side to question "their" authority statements that in the main "might" (on either side) be totally wrong.


The best thing that needs to be said, is go and check the statements, and data to work out for yourself that is actually happening. i.e. what CAN be proven and what cannot, as that is important to understand, some aspects will be above your pay grade of learning, but much will be just a matter of commonsense and asking the right questions of the right people.

The big trouble is, and why, Climate Change is not for discussion on A/F is that fixation only on an authority which no one bothers to check for themselves. This often leads to uninformed entrenched belief systems and that is not science it is more like religion! That is also not to be discussed here. Sadly what I see is lots of discussion where one side only is pushed on belief systems in a rather snide way while preventing others from presenting a very different side as would be done in formal debate.


WE do have an interest as motorists as to what we may or may not be driving in the future and as far as I am concerned all including myself, want no harm to our environment. WE need to debate those harms and side issues, so we are aware of what governments may present us with and that means clear costs, pollution issues, both in production and long term remediation.

All forms of transport have side issues and hidden environmental costs and these should be teased out by the motorists themselves, as there are some costs that are worthwhile and some that are not, but all should be well understood before we politically opt one way or the other.

And there is another subject that we try not to discuss, but I see politics in most threads that touch on these subjects and when you boil everything down there are politics firmly reinforced both practically and emotionally that get slipped in when we are not supposed to discuss politics either.


One thing that I will say after watching and participating for years is that when someone introduces any smear or put down of another, that that is a clarion call for everyone to go and check for themselves. Even if you are not a scientist in the particular discipline your own commonsense and BS detector will soon alert you to the insecurity of many unsupported claims.

Now can we get back to discussing the issues without pointing fingers or dodging debate as we, as motorists, will have to make up our own minds or just accept what is foisted upon us by fiat, when we should really be looking for ourselves instead of making belief based authority statements or hopping into trenches and so forth.


so up to you.

 

[luthier]

Hmm, not trying to upset or annoy anyone.
I'm not wanting to discuss anything other than what we are told is best for the Planet.
We all want that, or at least that is the premise I work with.
So my basic idea is that with new [to me] information shown to us about the mining of the sea floor for the production of batteries I can now understand that this may not in fact be any better than IC and actually could be a whole lot worse.
But y'all understood what I said at the beginning, right?
It's been a really interesting discussion, thanks guys.

 

[Kim Luck]

I think that I can quite plainly see the hand which is doing the finger pointing. Word pointing is probably a better description......

 

[draftpunk]

Having understood the parameters of production of these vehicles I now see that there's no advantage ecologically and they will not save the planet.
On the contrary, this new technology is going to rip up our ocean floors and the scientists have no idea of the destruction it will cause to the marine environments down in the deep of the seas.
China is already doing it with absolutely no restrictions so the USA have begun the same race to the bottom and we can only surmise that this is going to be another terrible disaster for the planet.

https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/live...hXJfc36sSgPRhKhGE09sf-ZDHHeghNE1_C0fJ-UrKsd0Q

https://www.wired.com/story/the-race-to-send-robots-to-mine-the-ocean-floor/

People are already taking the metal from a lot of sunken warships (war graves) so it was only a matter of time.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/n...ave-robbery-asias-disappearing-ww2-shipwrecks

Seems like a good place to get metal for submarines.

Sent from my SM-G920I using Tapatalk

 

[con]

Hmm, not trying to upset or annoy anyone.
I'm not wanting to discuss anything other than what we are told is best for the Planet.
We all want that, or at least that is the premise I work with.
So my basic idea is that with new [to me] information shown to us about the mining of the sea floor for the production of batteries I can now understand that this may not in fact be any better than IC and actually could be a whole lot worse.
But y'all understood what I said at the beginning, right?
It's been a really interesting discussion, thanks guys.

fair enough.

 

[robmac]

It's been a really interesting discussion, thanks guys.

It sure has and has practically demonstrated how little several members care about the environment :disappr:

 

[GRAHAM WALLIS]

G'day,



the amount of good-will money that is being splashed about by the windfarm developers is amazing, there's gotta be a smell in there somewhere....



There were three !! vehicles at the Ballarat charging station last week. I remarked to one of the guys that one sees no one at these things for six months and all of a sudden it's crowded, he indicated that they were all Tesla mechanical crew checking the installation....

As to windfarms being good for the environment, anyone that believes that really ought to go and look at one and check out what is involved in construction. The visible effect on the landscape is obvious with the ever increasing size and numbers of the windmills together with the attendant cobweb of transmission lines. Then there's the bit below ground to consider, it takes a rather large hole to hold up infrastructure of this size, there are already local concerns about effects on groundwater.

Power Poles, 28m to 42m high, base 2m wide, and spaced about 300m apart, 18m clearance required each side. There is a mass of these fellas at the local 'farm' site with a 75km string to the sub-station.

Two quarries have been established to provide some 800,000m3 of materials, with approved permits for more if required.

The Beafort-Skipton zone, from the Stockyard hill development alone, wins, at last count, some 149 turbines around 180m high, each with a swept area said to be around the size of the MCG turf, and with minimum foundation volumes of 590m3 or about 100 trucks of cement for each pour, some are said to require twice this. Out of interest the bottom section of the tower weighs over 90 tonnes. The next section over 80 tonnes, etc. All up with the nacelle the wind turbine weighs over 500t. Yes, quite large, good for the environment ? just ponder on that for a while..... and this is just one development...... others are planned to abut this one......

Effect on wildlife ? The place is not even operational yet, but, there was a local track "Dunnarts Lane", this is now a multi-lane mud highway and needs to be renamed "No-Dunnarts Road"..... It doesn't take much imagination to work out the likely effect of all these spinning blades on large slow flying birds like brolgas and wedgies.

When the Minister was asked at a local meeting to clarify what "local employment" constituted, the reply was "Australian or New Zealand citizens". So much for that Furphy.

But it's all good for us and the environment isn't it.....

cheers,
Bob

Concrete production is a large Green House Gas emitter.