I'm actually in favor of expanding nuclear energy, just not the way we're doing it now (ie: solid fuel, water cooled/moderated, Uranium). Traditional nukes are costly to build, have high NIMBY resistance, and take ages to permit and build, which makes them essentially useless (not to mention that our Uranium resource is too limited to be a viable solution). Fourth-generation nukes, such as LFTR, based on the the Thorium-U233 breeder fuel cycle are a great solution, but thus far they are not available. Whenever they do become available, let's deploy a bunch of them. In particular, I'd like to see LFTR-style power plants replacing the bunker-fuel propulsion of maritime shipping vessels and providing "process heat" for manufacturing, in addition to the normal grid applications.

In the meantime, we work with what's available now, which is renewables like wind and solar PV.

CORRECTION: For some reason I misread the US gasoline consumption as 1.4 billion gallons per year; in fact it is 140 billion gallons. So multiply the result by 100. (Makes a lot more sense that way, doesn't it?)

So we will in fact need to add more electrical capacity. However, given the expansion rate of renewables and the time frame of the switch over to EVs, I don't think we'll have any trouble keeping up with the increased demand.

Tesla has been building its Supercharger network for several years already, and they will continue to expand it for years to come.

EVs are 5~6 times more efficient than ICEVs, since only about 15%~20% of the energy in liquid fuel gets translated into forward motion of the vehicle (the rest is lost to friction in the drivetrain). Thus, we only need to replace about one-fifth of the petroleum equivalent energy with other sources of electricity. In the USA we consume a bit over 1.4 billion gallons of gasoline per year. At 33kWh per gallon, that's 46.2 billion kWh (or 46.2 TWh) equivalent energy. Now divide that by five to account for the higher drivetrain efficiency in EVs and you get 9.24 TWh of electricity per year to replace all the gasoline we currently use.

Last year, in the USA, we consumed 4,171 TWh of electricity from all sources combined. Solar PV alone contributed 60 TWh of that total, and our installed base of solar PV has been doubling every couple of years for the last couple of decades. The only reason petroleum takes up such a large slice of the energy pie-chart is because a) it's used for a lot more than just transportation, and b) so much of it is wasted on the horrific inefficiency of ICE propulsion.

So, no, we don't need to build an entire new fleet of nukes to power our cars. The current grid can handle it just fine.

PS: I do agree that biofuels will be a major player in air transportation, but again, the sun provides plenty of energy for that too.

Tesla's most serious competitor is BYD and they have only produced 35k cars to date. Chevy has sold about 65k Bolt EVs, but they are reportedly losing $8k~$9k per unit, so I would hardly call that serious competition. All of the recent "Tesla killers" -- Taycan, E-tron, I-pace -- can barely match the specs a 2012 Model S, and fall far short of the latest Teslas. By the time they figure out how to produce more than a few hundred of those vehicles per month, Tesla will have added another 50~100 miles of range to their cars.

On the contrary, some police departments have already begun buying EVs. Granted, it's not the best fit for every department, but municipal police cruisers seldom travel more than 100 miles on a shift, so there's plenty of time to recharge. Then there's Amazon, which recently contracted to buy 100k electric delivery vans from Rivian. Fleet operators are a prime market for EVs, since they can save a ton of money on maintenance and fuel.

That's all well and good, but it will take many years to build out that kind of infrastructure. The nukes in particular will take years just to get permitted. The ICE-to-EV market flip will be over with long before then.

Or they can just buy the complete teardown report from Sandy Munro. But even that won't solve their problem.

The real challenge for OEMs is what you hinted at before: inertia. The bulk of their expertise and investments are in a handful of key areas: combustion engines, body parts, general assembly, and painting. Most of the other stuff, from software to seats, is outsourced to suppliers. (Tesla is vertically integrated to a degree unmatched in the industry.)

More to the point, they are in a catch-22 situation... Moving into the EV space will require a significant investment, which can only be funded by selling more ICE cars; but selling EVs will cannibalize their ICE sales. And along the way, they'll also be paying out billions to Tesla for zero-emission regulatory credits. Oh, and they each typically spend $3~$6 billion per year on advertising, which Tesla famously does not spend a dime on.

Their only saving grace is that Tesla can only build out its capacity so fast... it will take several years to build enough factories to challenge the incumbents in production scale. But before they get that far, the market for ICE vehicles will already have started to slip, as the rate of car ownership is already starting to drop, and the superior TCO/economics of EVs becomes more widely known.

Even if they start retiring their ICE production lines, they can't just switch over to EV production so easily... because you can't just buy 20GWh of batteries off the shelf. You either need your own factory or a long-term contract with a large producer. Most of the incumbents to not have such deals in place.

Some of them will survive, but many will not. It's that simple.

I would also add that Tesla (the company) will outlast many of the incumbent auto OEMs. They are arriving late to the EV party, and very few of them have vehicles on offer that really challenge Tesla on price, range, and features. Sure, there are some cheaper EVs out there, but they don't match Tesla's range, or if they do they're more expensive. The transition to EVs is going to happen a lot faster than they expect, and they simply don't have the capability to ramp up production in time to catch up.

For those interested in the history of the "cross-strait" divide, PBS Frontline did a pretty good documentary back in the late 90s, just after the "missile crisis" in 1996, when Taiwan held its first direct presidential elections... China lobbed short-range missiles across the island, and the US Navy parked a carrier group in the strait to deter further aggression. The video covers the history history of Taiwan under the Japanese occupation and the advent of the KMT.

Where in my post did I say that I "believe" in dark matter and dark energy? I asked the question because I'm skeptical of these notions.

Ditto. And I also wonder how this "news" will affect our calculations of dark matter and dark energy.

I for one welcome our new four-day-week overlords!

Seriously though, this is what was expected back in the 60s as computers and automation made their first inroads on the workplace. It seemed like a natural result of increasing productivity. Funny how all those benefits went to the capitalists on top and the workers got none of the spoils. Maybe that has something to do with the global rise of anti-establishment populism?

That would comport with the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis of human origins. In particular, it fits with the well-established theory of recent ice ages, which date back to that period. So why don't we have fossil evidence? Well, if humans went through a transformative period in that time frame in coastal areas, then it would have happened when those coastal areas were on land that is now under a couple-hundred feet of ocean water.

Before the most recent thaw about 10~12k years ago, we have a couple hundred thousand years of human development wherein all of the coastal regions are now under water, and therefore inaccessible to archaeological exploration. Even now, the vast majority of humans live near the ocean, so there's no reason to think it wouldn't have been the same back then.

I'm just glad to see a "high visibility" politician talking about this. Yang was able to drag UBI into the mainstream discussion, maybe he can do the same with Gen-IV nuclear. It's about time somebody did.

This 45-min interview with a former VICE journalist just came out today. He's been embedded in the region for the last several years, and provides more deep-background on the situation in Rojava and the various players involved. Highly recommended listening.

Note: the first 5~6 minutes is introductory stuff, but they get to the meat of the topic after that.

To paint the entire Kurdish population with the PKK brush is akin to saying that all Americans are KKK sympathizers. As I'm sure you're aware, there's a large Kurdish population in Turkey itself, including many Kurds in elected office. Are there PKK elements inside this northeast-Syrian region? Almost certainly, but they are just as certainly a small minority there.

That's a broad, sweeping claim which requires some evidence in support. For example, do they regularly behead women in the public square for witchcraft like our "allies" the Saudis do?

In fact, this particular area of Syria that's currently being overrun by the Turks had become an island of egalitarian idealism in the last few years, with greater gender equality than anyplace in the region outside of Israel.

But even if that weren't the case... even if they were as nasty and brutish as you say, would that be a valid justification for us to abandon our commitments to them as Trump has done? Would that be a valid reason to risk the resurgence of ISIL that is almost certainly just around the corner now? Would that excuse the fact that Trump seems to have done this at the behest of an authoritarian theocrat (Erdogan)? Would that mitigate the harm done to our national interest now that the geopolitics there appear to be realigning in favor of Assad, Putin, and Iran?

Let's face it, this was a reckless, boneheaded decision by a pathological, paranoid-narcissist president who can't tell the difference between his own self-interest and that of our nation. He spurns our democratic allies while cozying up to dictators like Duterte, Putin, Kim, MBS, etc., and regularly spouts Stalinesque language like calling the press the "enemy of the people."

Even his most sycophantic toady, Lindsey Graham, is hopping mad about this decision. But here you are (apparently) defending it. Why?

That is a very long story, but it could be summed up as: Sykes-Picot Agreement + military-industrial complex + systemic addiction to petroleum == our current predicament.

It's easy to blame "the left" for all this, but the fact is a majority of Dems in the House voted against the Iraq War AUMF, and before that a lot of folks on the left were against the invasion of Afghanistan too. The Taliban had offered to deliver Bin Laden to a neutral third country to stand trial, but Cheney and Rumsfeld wanted a war in Iraq, and they needed a war in Afghanistan to get the ball rolling.

At every step of the way, the neocons on the right made things worse. When Gen. Shinseki said we'd need 250k troops to occupy Iraq, Rumsfeld went ballistic and had him demoted. We went in with 80k instead, and ended up not having enough forces to keep the peace, resulting in the looting of everything in sight. Then, the "de-Baath-ification" left all government institutions in tatters, and resulted in a vast number of Sunnis with no jobs and plenty of time and guns on their hands... leading to a civil war that still smolders today. The "left" had nothing to do with any of that.

As for this current conflict in Syria, it is probably the least deadly to US forces of any military action in the last few decades. We have lost 8 soldiers in this conflict, whereas the Kurds have lost over ten thousand. They didn't fight "shoulder to shoulder" with us, they simply did most of the fighting while we provided intelligence, logistics, training and weapons. They did most of the "heavy lifting" in neutralizing ISIS on our behalf, and in return we have just left them in the lurch to be wiped out by Turkish forces. It will take generations to recover from this blow to our credibility and trustworthiness -- if that is even possible, ever.

I'm all in favor of avoiding entanglements in stupid foreign wars. But once we've engaged, and made promises to people, our reputation as a country is on the line. Pulling out is a laudable long-term goal, but doing so on a whim is the worst possible way to do it.