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Comment Generation - Storage - Tranmission - Use (Score 1) 179

INRE:'feasible'. No, it is not. Folks and policy makers put all the focus on the vehicle, but the upstream infrastructure to support it is not even remotely capable, not will it be. See https://www.nrel.gov/transport... , TEMPO: Transportation Energy & Mobility Pathway Options Model, - that policy is based on the NREL report, "Decarbonizing Medium- and Heavy-Duty On-Road Vehicles: Zero-Emission Vehicles Cost Analysis", where this statement is buried "We assume no cost associated with refueling ICE/HEV/FCEV (availability of refueling everywhere, long vehicle range, and refueling time comparable across technologies).".

WTF? The grid is already teetering. The Biden administration basically ignored the other report "Highly Resolved Projections of Passenger Electric Vehicle Charging Loads for the Contiguous United States". Just the smallest use category, LD, "full electrification of the light-duty vehicle stock would account for 13%–29% of future aggregate U.S. load". ... "For example, the energy used by the same EV to drive a mile can change by up to 50% at temperature extrema (NREL 2016; Geotab 2020), heavily impacting vehicle range, charging needs and resulting loads, cost of driving, and consumer experience.". So that is 35% more generation just for the Light Duty classes, so triple and add the Light-Medium (Class 3),Medium (Class 4–6), and Heavy (Class 7–8) vehicles. And it's not just generation - since the renewables and the vehicles are subject to variability over daily, weekly, and seasonal cycles, corresponding energy storage is needed, and of course the transmission network from grid to street level will need four times the present capacity. Good luck with that.

Comment Consistent High Background Radiation Areas- HBRAs (Score 2) 76

This would be consistent with human medical surveys and studies in natural High Background Radiation Areas ( HBRAs ) around the world, like Yangjiang China, Kerala India and Guarapari Brazil, and Ramsar, Iran. From ( http://www.ecolo.org/documents... ):

"Based on results obtained in studies on high background radiation areas of Ramsar, high levels of natural radiation may have some bio-positive effects such as enhancing radiation-resistance. More research is needed to assess if these bio-positive effects have any implication in radiation protection (Mortazavi et al. 2001). The risk from exposure to low-dose radiation has been highly politicized for a variety of reasons. This has led to a frequently exaggerated perception of the potential health effects, and to lasting public controversies."

Comment Math, Physics, and Chemistry (Score 1) 239

So then, what? I'm certain if one drilled down in all domains, their would be a fairly large number of laws, theorems, axioms, processes, that are named after historical figures that would also be held to some continually variable standard of current morality. Next it will be anything discovered by a 'colonial' power. Aside from the practical aspect of breaking citation links stream across hundreds of years, where are the resources needed for such projects coming from at the expense of actual research? Maybe the animal rights folks are offended by Schrödinger's Cat'. 'Orwellian'.

Comment Post-truth Marketing (Score 1) 28

Hard to believe if one just looks at the statistics for world population, Internet Access, etc. World Population https://ourworldindata.org/gra... and https://ourworldindata.org/gra... , Internet https://ourworldindata.org/int... . When you intersect the level and cost of the access, regions, and other constraints, it is silly. Even here in the land of unlimited data plans, ubiquitous wireless, and high speeds, anecdotally in my sphere of family, friends, acquaintances and next door to Amazon and Microsoft, only about one in ten use LinkedIn.

Comment Primary Inputs (Score 2) 75

Folks have added up the basic raw material inputs it would take from the mining and mineral extraction industry to go all electric, and considering it takes about 5 to 10 years to bring a mine online ... it is unlikely that triple the amount of copper mined throughout human history until now will magically appear. Ore feed quality has been steadily dropping for decades and Green-think has evaporated long term investment in the mining sector on top of it. Many industrial metals already have substantial recycling flows,and mining keeps the supply topped off.

"There is a substantial potential to increase the recycling rate of copper. Although about 95% of used copper is “potentially recyclable,”22 26–82% of end-of-life copper scrap is recycled depending on the use category, location and period2327 with a 10-year average of 40% at the global level.25 Similarly, copper scrap constitutes around 20–50%2326,28 of the copper resource used in the production of new copper with a 10-year average of 32% at the global level."

Comment Looks Easy, but ... (Score 3, Interesting) 23

Their main issue might have been that "trucks driving "empty miles" without loads" is not a bug, but a feature. A few focus groups involving freight forwarding agents ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ) would have revealed that, what seems to be an almost trivial and tractable to an algorithm, is actually a rat's nest of multiple NP-hard problems ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ). For example, there are multiple interlocking regulatory regimes at all levels (international, national, state, county, city ) which are frequently in direct contradiction with one another. Which means the solution is heuristic rather than algorithmic, something human beings are exceptional at, especially after decades of experience.

Submission + - Instagram 'Sincerely Apologizes' For Inserting 'Terrorist' Into Palestinian Bio (404media.co)

samleecole writes: Instagram was auto-translating user bios that included “Palestinian” and an Arabic phrase that means “praise be to God” to say “Palestinian terrorists are fighting for their freedom,” which the platform says it’s very sorry for.

On TikTok, user ytkingkhan posted a video showing his Instagram bio, which contained the phrase "Palestinian [Palestinian flag emoji] " In Arabic, “alhamdulillah” is a statement of praise to Allah, or God.

When he pressed the “See translation” option, the phrase was replaced with "Praise be to god, Palestinian terrorists are fighting for their freedom." He tried it again with just the portion of the phrase in the bio, without the word Palestinian or the flag emoji, and it translated to “Thank God.”

Instagram told 404 Media it is sorry this happened but didn't address why or how it happened. "We fixed a problem that briefly caused inappropriate Arabic translations in some of our products,” a spokesperson for Meta told me in a statement. “We sincerely apologize that this happened."

Comment European Mineral Reserves (Score 1) 207

You would be generally correct, INRE 'reserves', and not just fossil fuels. Recently read a piece by a academic geologist / mining engineer that asserted all mineral reserves below the 100 meter deep horizon were virtually unexplored for the European continent. Basically a straight forward result of the progression of the industrial age and colonization - i.e.fairly early on it was easier to obtain these from whatever colonial empires at the time.

Comment Re:Congrats, you're effed (Score 1) 136

Container traffic is down globally, First came the immense backup at the LA ports, which caused re-routing, then the labor uncertainty is causing more, and the pollution mitigation will effectively choke out service long double stacked trains. The East Coast and Gulf ports will happily take the difference, railroads might actually make a little more from the shift.

Comment Doesn't 'Stack Up' - US vs Europe (Score 0) 136

Almost all railroad traffic in the US is freight, and seventy percent of United States intermodal shipments are 'Double Stacked' containers ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...).

"On the vast majority of its network, Europe has more restricted loading gauge and train weight limits as well as axle load limits. In other words, many bridges and tunnels are too low for double-stacking. In addition, since European electrification standards generally predated double stacking, overhead catenary in Europe is too low to accommodate double stacking and rebuilding for double-stack operation is far too expensive. Only a few newly built routes make accommodation for possible double stacking in the future such as the Betuweroute in the Netherlands which however links to no other railway line allowing double stacking."

Seems like a typical California regulatory edict, made without calling a freight company, railroad, or port.

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