I have first hand knowledge of owning an eGolf. The amount of regeneration depends (in that vehicle) on the charge state of the battery. If you're below about 70% charge, then under normal circumstances, all braking is regenerative. Above that charge level, or when you use particularly heavy braking, and the actual disks will get used a certain amount.

Thanks for pointing out the typos. My spelin is bahd at the best of tymes.

Number 1 is already happening:

http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/1...

Saudi Arabia just made major replacements in it's government to deal with the collapsing income crisis.

Most oil countries based their economy on $100 or higher oil prices and their citizens do not want to give up the perks now that it is in the $40s.

"intentionally or knowingly causes physical contact with another when the person knows or should reasonably believe that the other will regard the contact as offensive or provocative." TX Statutes Penal Code 22.01.

Or try 242 of your CA laws. "A battery is any willful and unlawful use of force or violence upon the person of another." Some places, like Texas, count battery under assault. Other places separate them out. Assault and Battery is a single charge in Texas, under the Assault statute. That's the most common now, as states simplify and unify penal codes over time. But California still has battery listed explicitly separately. So it wouldn't be assault in CA, but would be battery. But looks to still be a felony, but I'm not as familiar with CA's laws as some other places.

Only in Nevada.

Is this from the paper? I saw no indication that the total land area was growing in the paper.

Hog Island, New York - I'll be amazed if any of the Man Made climate change folks knew about it before frantically googling it.

The climate is changing. Eventually we'll lose Lake Michigan because the topology of the area will continue to revert to pre ice age conditions. I won't be alive when Illinois is tropical again. Growing up in Lockport , Illinois and seeing the shale with fossils embedded sorta made me look farther than less than 50 years of data.

But I'm silly that way :)

Making heat (for your home) is a heck of a lot simpler and more efficient than turning burning fuel into something that can power an engine.

The summary definitely overstates things. But the paper itself is guilty of none of the things you imply.

There's actually a link to the entire paper with the abstract, I'll even helpfully bold the important bits:

Low-lying reef islands in the Solomon Islands provide a valuable window into the future impacts of global sea-level rise. Sea-level rise has been predicted to cause widespread erosion and inundation of low-lying atolls in the central Pacific. However, the limited research on reef islands in the western Pacific indicates the majority of shoreline changes and inundation to date result from extreme events, seawalls and inappropriate development rather than sea-level rise alone. Here, we present the first analysis of coastal dynamics from a sea-level rise hotspot in the Solomon Islands. Using time series aerial and satellite imagery from 1947 to 2014 of 33 islands, along with historical insight from local knowledge, we have identified five vegetated reef islands that have vanished over this time period and a further six islands experiencing severe shoreline recession. Shoreline recession at two sites has destroyed villages that have existed since at least 1935, leading to community relocations. Rates of shoreline recession are substantially higher in areas exposed to high wave energy, indicating a synergistic interaction between sea-level rise and waves. Understanding these local factors that increase the susceptibility of islands to coastal erosion is critical to guide adaptation responses for these remote Pacific communities.

I don't see these definitive claims you speak of, instead I see "sea level rise predicts X, here we observe and analyze some X that's consistent with sea level rise". I'd be more careful before making sensational claims of sensationalization.

Ditto.

How about your action in your personal short term interest harms both your and everyone else's long term interests. For example, you might not want to train your dirt cheap replacements a year from now. Your best hope to head that off is the union.

Keep in mind, it isn't always the union alone that wants an all union shop. The ability to negotiate once and be done for the whole workforce can be good for management as well. Will it make you feel better if management signs an exclusive contract with a particular employment agency? (especially one of those with an unofficial Americans need not apply policy).

OH NOEZ!

Say it ain't so Joe! Say it ain't so!

They are 24% heavier than the same-sized ICE vehicle.

That is the whole problem with this nonsense: thinking that there is a "we" that is somehow divorced from the control mechanism. We are our brains and all they do.

Not even that. Electric cars use regenerative braking. So if an electric car going 100 kph needs to stop, the engine runs backwards to slow it down to about 10 kph, and the brakes just handle the last 10% of the speed reduction, but since energy is proportional to the velocity squared the brakes are only dissipating the last 1% of the energy.

Electric cars produce far less brake pad dust than gasoline cars, and the brake pads often are good for the life of the car. The fact that the authors include brake pad "emissions" indicates that they know nothing about how electric cars work, collected no actual data, and just made up their results to generate clicks.

Actually, I pay NO attention to the news sidebar, and very, very little to sponsored pages.

But then, I'm a Conservative, raised to question even those I think I agree with.

1) Not all energy comes from burning fossil fuels. Nuclear, Wind, Solar and Hydro could also be used to power an electric car. That alone should make it comparatively cleaner.

2) As for efficiency goes, in a car about only 15% of the fuel energy is converted into motion. The rest is wasted as heat. Power plants are more efficient at using that heat and turn it into electricity, making again electric cars get more efficiency per unit of fuel burned.

3) Gasoline must be carried to gas stations. Think of it as a hidden energy cost: The cost of running you car = the fuel it burns + the energy it took to get it to your car.

On the opposite side, batteries are not as efficient storing energy as gasoline is, and there is also loss of power on transmission lines. I haven't done the math myself, but overall electric should be more efficient than gasoline cars.

Caught me!

2 years old? You need to go younger than that. Like before they are born! :P

As a savvy owner of a Prius c hybrid, I think I have some insight into this... Basically, the brake pads *are* used quite a lot by aggressive drivers who tailgate and have to brake hard when the car in front of them slows down. People who drive with a proper following distance ahead of them will rarely have to use the disc brakes.

Hybrid vehicles (and EVs, probably) have smaller brake pads than similarly sized conventional vehicles (though the actual stopping power of the disc brakes in an emergency is just as good as regular cars). The brake pads are about half as thick on my Prius c as the brake pads on my Honda Civic. That's because the manufacturer expects you to use them less often. I'm sure there are some insane drivers out there who can burn through the brake pads on a vehicle like mine in well under 50,000 miles, but those same people would burn through the brakes on any vehicle just as quickly.

I've learned to "feel" the difference between the cut-over between regenerative braking and the disc brakes. The disc brakes slow you down WAY faster. There's not a discrete and obvious jolt when you gradually depress the brake pedal; it's incredibly smooth; but to use an analogy, as long as I'm slowing down at about the same rate as a truck can slow down when using the jake brake (engine braking - that loud "farting" sound that large trucks sometimes make when slowing down), I'm using the regenerative braking system only. If I'm slowing down much faster than that, the disc brakes are being engaged (the brakes and the regenerative braking can be active at the same time, unless you are braking at what would be considered "emergency" speeds, in which case the regenerative braking system disengages, perhaps because it can't handle that amount of torque or current).

As for the article itself: 24 percent?! That's total bullshit.

The Prius c is literally a Yaris Hybrid (it's marketed as such in some parts of the world). It's the Toyota Yaris -- a compact car -- with the Toyota Hybrid Synergy Drive in it. So, it's a Yaris, *plus* the weight of the HSD.

The curb weight of the Yaris is 2335 pounds. The curb weight of the Prius c is 2500 pounds. That's only a 7.066% increase. That's a far, far cry from the 24% the article cites.

OK, you say, let's look at *electric* vehicles specifically, not just hybrids. Because hybrids don't have to lug around 500 pounds of lithium-ion batteries. Hybrid batteries tend to weigh under 200 pounds, with the smallest hybrids' ~1 kWh batteries weighing less than 100 pounds.

Let's take the Chevy Spark. The conventional Spark weighs in around 2270 pounds. The EV? 3000 pounds. That's a 32% increase for basically the same passenger and cargo volume. Fair enough. But 3000 pounds isn't out of this world, and is in the ballpark of many upscale compact cars like the (conventional) Honda Civic.

Another example. The 2016 Nissan Leaf weighs around 3150 pounds. I did some research to try and find a conventional vehicle with similar interior measurements (headroom, cargo space, etc.) and I came up with this: The 2016 Honda Civic EX has a total (usable) interior volume of 110.1 cubic feet with a curb weight of 2799 pounds. The 2016 Nissan Leaf has an interior volume of 116 cubic feet. So for 6 more cubic feet of interior (5.4% more), the vehicle weighs 351 pounds (25.4%) more.

Based on these limited comparisons, it seems like the article's claim about the increased weight of electric vehicles is factual. However, it is absolutely not valid to make the leap to saying that plug-in hybrids or conventional hybrids are anywhere near as bad in terms of added weight.

What I'm not convinced of, however, is the severity and environmental impact of tire and brake wear, regardless of vehicle weight. EVs and hybrids also run with low rolling resistance tires, which should reduce the amount of tire "stuff" in the air, in any case. Did they take that into account?

However, switching out a gasoline engine for a TDI diesel engine adds about 300 pounds to a sedan-sized vehicle. A 2900-3000 pound, gasoline-powered Volkswagen Jetta suddenly weighs almost 3300 pounds when putting in a diesel. That's a 10% increase, a bigger increase percentage-wise than hybridizing a Yaris. So shouldn't the article also go after diesels for adding weight to vehicles and contributing to emissions, on top of the particulate matter emitted by the diesel's tailpipe?

In summary:

  - Article claims EVs weigh "24% more": Appears mostly factual, when comparing vehicles that have an EV model and a conventional model, or comparing vehicles across brands that have similar interior volume.

  - Someone might think that hybrids or plug-in hybrids are just as bad (not saying the article argues this): Nonsense. Don't be mislead into thinking that hybrids contribute to this problem. With a very small (and light) battery that requires relatively little well-to-wheels heavy metals to produce, and a mere 5-10% increase in vehicle weight, the reduced brake usage due to the regenerative braking, coupled with the 20-50% reduced tailpipe emissions for similarly-sized vehicles, should land hybrids squarely in the "win" column, in terms of a net emissions savings.

  - Diesels have much worse tailpipe emissions (in terms of particulate matter, the stuff the article demonizes so aggressively, and rightly so I guess) AND weigh a lot more than gasoline-powered vehicles. I'd think they'd be an even bigger target, especially considering there are a lot more of them on the road than there are EVs!

Afterthought: Diesels and conventional vehicles seem to be at a standstill in terms of how efficient they can be, and also in terms of how light they can be for a given interior volume / cargo capacity. What's *not* at a standstill is the transformation of the electric grid from being primarily derived from fossil fuels to depending on renewables (and nuclear). Another thing *not* at a standstill is the energy density of batteries; current lithium chemistry may have reached its limits, but there are numerous next-generation battery chemistries that are on the verge of being commercialized and may bear fruit before the decade is out. If you don't like the environmental picture of EVs, just wait a while. Nothing will change on the conventional side, while EVs continue to get cleaner.

> Slave or master, choose now ...

False dichotomy! I choose "cable select."

(No, I'm not too proud of that but it was there and I had to. I'm sort of sorry but not sorry enough to not post this.)

I agree, I've been there. But we're not unique, we're skilled in a difficult profession. This practise is to pit us against one another so that they can have both and reduce us to beggars. They can only change the state of play, whereas I think we can change the rules if we don't let them pit us against one another.

Either by chance or personality type, the IT field workers lack one important thing. It may be because of the independent nature, whatever. I'm not a head doctor - i don't know but I do see it. In one word?

Solidarity.

You've made some excellent points, as have other posters in this thread.

When I first saw the source, I immediately thought "Bullshit!"

However, upon reading the TFS, it's possible that they're technically correct.

CO2 is a form of pollution to be sure, but it's decidedly not particulate matter pollution.

Boy, does Toyota have a video for you!

Olsoc... That's the most tortured logic I've seen from you in a while. I'm half convinced you're trolling. ;-)

and can refuel in a reasonable time.

What's a reasonable time? It takes only a few seconds after arriving home to plug in an electric car. Is a few seconds reasonable?

For longer journeys, there are fast DC chargers which will charge Teslas or other brands to 80% charge in about 30 minutes. Unfortunately, there are 3 incompatible standards for the DC chargers.

We are not supposed to use electric heating because it is inefficient, how are cars supposed to be any different? What does it matter if the fuel is burned in a car or a power plant. If it reduces the weight of the car, how it is not more efficient to burn it on site?

Hydrogen storage is inferior in terms of energy efficiency.

Look, every small town in the US has a Friends of the Library that collects and recycles used book. We could relieve them of their unsold inventory, load them into C5 Cargo planes and air drop them into every little village. When the book sellers complain, back a dump truck up and bury them in free books to sell.

The price would drop. Our land fills would thank us.

Doing a two minute google search turns out the authors are an undergrad university student (according to LinkedIn) without a research background (google scholar turns empty), and a researcher with a company that develops combustion engines

Not to pull an ad-hominem here, but I'd take the paper with lots of grains of salt.

Spare tires are 12 Kg of unnecessary extra weight that every single car carries around all the time

Manufacturers are already doing this. Replacing the spare tyre with a tyre sealer and inflation kit.

Funny enough, many of the people who are free-market evangelists (for lack of a better term) have no problem with the things you cite.

I'd go off on a rant about it but I'd be preaching to the choir - at least in your case. (Having conversed with you before.) But, seeing as you're here... I wonder if mental gymnastics should be an Olympic sport. Or, perhaps, if politics (not just American) are the Mental Gymnastics Olympics®...

It's televised, it's every four years in my country (for the big one), it's got corporate sponsors, it's got back-story, it's got doping and cheating and intrigue... Hmm...

There's a Kurt Vonnegut-type of novel in there somewhere. Maybe Tom Robbins.

I've done pen tests against county governments before. I even got permission before doing it!

You won't get permission to do it without a contract. You can get permission if they're looking for someone to do it. If you're that gung-ho about it, be the low bidder.

No, a single quote to see what happens is rattling the doorknob (which if a cop sees you doing it can itself be grounds for attempted breaking an entering). Actually modifying the SQL statement to potentially return data you're not supposed to see is against the law.

I've used Opera since it first came out – when you had to PAY for web browsers. It has always been speedy, and has given the user as much control as desired.

But, a Chinese conglomerate is buying Opera. The offer was made a month ago. And, from the NYT article: "Opera’s board has unanimously decided to recommend that shareholders accept the offer."

Yikes! A Chinese-owned browser with built-in VPN, for free. Uh-huh, I believe THAT one... No back doors? Pinky-swear?

And, of course, NSA will target Opera users for their "full-take" of internet activity.

I'm sorry Opera, but your board had made a terrible decision, and I can no longer trust any of your products. Goodbye.

That's some seriously defective thinking. It's very easy to prove that WEP is insecure. No one has been able to demonstrate that cell phone RF creates cancer.

What about SUVs and light duty trucks?

According to the WSJ (http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3022-autosales.html) more light duty trucks are sold than cars.

What about the other 10,000 pollutants in the cities? They forgot to rule those out. Saying that brake dust is bad and X amount of brake dust is released and X amount of cancer exists in the cities is about as much fiction as it is science. That's extremely loose correlation molded into a rather specific headline, could be as much marketing as it is science.

Here is an article that discusses the health risks of rubberized materials such as crumb rubber on football fields.

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

Personally I do not think that this is a big issue for electric cars being the weight of batteries is what causes tire wear. It is the fact that electric cars are so damn quick off the line. If we can only make electric vehicles as sluggish as gas cars the tire problem would go aware.