Oh don't worry, there's no way a brain-eating amoeba could possibly hurt you.

Nah man, you set up a custom modifier. For the rest of us, funny is +1.

I vaguely remember a short sci fi story where most food production is done in orbit, but they put a carbonaceous asteroid into orbit and used some sort of alien factory to directly convert inorganic materials into food.

With the right technology, food production in orbit would certainly be possible. But you do realize, every pound of food that comes down from orbit must be replaced by a pound of something going to orbit, right? You can't create matter from nothing.

The only technology that makes that feasible is an orbital elevator. With that, every pound of food going down acts as a counterweight for a pound of water, oxygen and fertilizer coming up. Orbital elevators necessarily run up to geosynchronous orbit (how else would they stay in the same position over their base station?) and that far out, there is a LOT of room. Even considering that the only viable orbit is equatorial. Given that sunlight is so much more intense in orbit, you could grow a lot more food in less area. Like, enough food for trillions of people.

One way to do that would be to take metallic asteroids, drill out the core, fill it with water, plug up the ends and use big mirrors to heat the thing up. Once the metal turns plastic from heat and the water turns to steam, the whole thing inflates like a balloon. Spin it up, put some mirrors on the ends and light tube in the middle to distribute the light, and you've got a nice amount of space to grow food.

And yeah, it would help reduce insolation of the earth and lower the temperature. Plus you could do solar power generation and send the excess power down the elevator cables. Heck, you could easily move all industry off Earth at that point and turn the Earth into a beautiful garden. I'd bet the wealthy would stay groundside, and billions of poor people would move into orbitals.

That was my first thought as well. But my second thought was "But those places don't have microgravity."

This is a research initiative, it is not a production farm! And the end goal is sustainable agriculture in space, to support an orbital population without having to ship all food from Earth.

Surely you did not think this was some sort of orbital farm designed to deliver food to Earth? That just doesn't pass the logical sniff test. If something sounds completely ridiculous, but people have invested money in it, there are two possible explanations. People might be getting conned somehow. But the far more likely explanation is, you simply do not understand the concept.

But you're a liar, and admitted as much in your own post. You said California's laws mandate hiring PoC over more meritorious candidates, but then say the law was struck down. And the link you post is not about jobs, it is about board members. Those are almost always unpaid positions. The law does not say you have to repalce white men with women and people of color. You can simply add a new seat on the board for those positions.

Note that this law only applies to boards of publicly traded companies based in California. So even if the law was not struck down as you claim it was, it does not do what you claim it does. Why do you lie and then post links that prove you are a liar? Is your dumb brain being fucked by stupid?

You know exactly who I mean, people in the top .1% of wealth. Don't play stupid.

No. The blame lies with the elites, as it always does. The poor working class just trying to scrape by as the 1% steals more and more of their money and manipulates them with billions dollars of advertising and propaganda are not the ones to blame. It's the ones with power, as it always is.

And, as always, there will be cowardly lickspittle toady motherfuckers defending those rich assholes.

Show me any new technology that will increase engine efficiency more than 1 or 2%. You can't, because it doesn't exist. Most automakers have plans to phase out ICEs, whether you like it or not.

The increases in battery life, efficiency, and decreases in cost for EVs are well known, and quite remarkable. And we are only getting started with this technology.

I don't vote based on cliques, or what letter someone has after their name. I vote based on who will push for the policies I prefer.

Given that red states have such piss poor child mortality rates, I wouldn't think simply banning abortions is going to help you guys.

This isn't geographical, or at least not by state. This is about productive and multicultural cities versus unproductive, poorly educated rural areas. Right now, those rural areas have MORE of a say than they should, thanks to the way the electoral college works. Conservativism is deeply unpopular with American voters, and without dirty tricks, its days as a major driving force of politics are numbered.

I mean, unless you guys pull of the coup you so obviously desire. But that requires more than you are capable of.

Counterpoint, the transition to EVs will create incentives for private companies NOT to let their power grids go the way of deeply unregulated states like Texas. It also provides incentives for more decentralized power generation, like solar.

Oddly enough, here in New Mexico we aren't facing rolling blackouts or any sorts of downtime. I can't remember the last time the power went out. Maybe unregulated utilities are the problem?

Did you know that those same natural disasters also affect pipelines, oil storage, and processing plants?

In any case, without a real comparison of down times, this is wildly speculative handwaving. I get that you want to find reasons why EVs are bad and ICEs are good, but motivated reasoning like that only leads to foregone conclusions. You start from the outcome you want, like "EV bad, ICE good" and you reason back to find evidence to support your desired world view, while ignoring other evidence that does not support your desires.

No, I do not believe auto makers will hit those targets. Do you? What evidence do you have that they are on track to do so? Also, I firmly believe that the listed MPG is an outright lie, on every ICE sold today. I've never seen a car that gets close to its rated MPG in actual use.

It's a no brainer though that even with dirty sources of electricity, EVs pollute less than a ICE car. You just can not scrub carbon and other pollutants out of a million cars as easily as you can from a single power plant.

Funny how your side pivoted from "Climate change isn't real" to "this particular solution won't fix climate change" without even blinking. And it's all just politics. The left likes it, so you hate it.

This sports team mentality is killing the planet.

Of course there's no need to switch now. Nobody is saying there is. The point where it will make economic sense for most Americans to switch is about 5 years from now.

Batteries are the biggest downfall of EVs right now, they are toxic, and take a lot of energy to produce. But there are battery technologies in the works now which don't use heavy metals at all, and can be recharged very quickly. 2-5 years out, but still looking very promising. Couple that with new electrically excited synchronous motor technology and you will have a technology that beats EVs in terms of rare earth usage, because it will use none while ICEs still use palladium and rhodium the the catalytic converter.

I've researched cutting edge ICE technology and quite frankly, unless you can come up with some sources, I simply do not believe you.

There is no way biofueled ICE can compete with EVs in the long or medium term. Not economically, and certainly not environmentally.

So, in the end it still makes a lot of sense for government to subsidize a network of charging stations, right now.

Sorry, but the ICE is at the end of its technological cycle. There aren't really any more major increases in efficiency to be found in that outdated technology. EVs are pretty much equal to ICEs right now, in terms of total impact on the environment over the life of the vehicle. EVs are at the beginning of their technological cycle. Based on the rate of relevant inventions, they will be far ahead soon. The sooner we commit to that direction, the greater our lead over the rest of the world will be, and the greater our profits.

Now, I get that your tribe has made support of ICEs mandatory for membership and status in the tribe, but that really doesn't matter because your tribe is shrinking quite rapidly and will soon be irellevant. The rest of us don't need to factor your preferences into our decisions.

So what you are saying is that you are in favor of congress passing a law that incentivizes companies to build out electrical infrastructure, right?

He just called me a stupid westerner. While trying to convince me he's not working for the Chinese.

Yes, I am a bit jealous of how well your systems work to benefit everyone, not just the ultra wealthy.