It's not the number of long trips, it's the circumstances and maximum length that often set the requirements for a vehicle. It's easy to base planning on the idea that everyone needs the same thing, on average, but I don't think it works that way in practice. When buying your own vehicle, you plan for something that meets your needs for the edge cases, not what you do on the average.

For example, consider the driving needs of an amateur astronomer: travel comfortably cross country to a dark site, carrying spouse, luggage, camping gear, and a ton of equipment. At the end of that, travel offroad to the end destination that may be on a mountain, in a field, a ways off of dirt roads, etc., and set up, then return. There's no chance of charging infrastructure in those locations, and little chance of quick rescue (or sometimes even cell signal to call for help) if a battery runs out. Plug-in hybrid SUV, ok, but not BEV, no way, no how, the risks are just too great.

Algae generated biofuels probably also help with another issue: converting CO2 to O2. In the early days of the space program, algae tanks were hypothesized as a real option for space stations to scrub CO2 and produce breathable oxygen, because various algae varieties do so much more efficiently for their mass than most plants.

Frankly there's probably room for that alongside a whole lot of other energy tech. The main complication I see with renewables at the moment is they seem to be offering Megawatts and low Gigawatts when we need to be thinking about how to efficiently produce Terawatts and Petawatts going forward.

The real problem is that there are several simultaneous complications that each on their own are really large, but together they are enormous.

First, there's an enormous increase in demand from data centers and other IT resources. A single data center can use somewhere between 5 and 100 MW of power, depending on the size. In Virginia, there are already plans to build about 50 GW worth of data centers over the next few years in comparison to the whole state's existing energy draw of something like 23-25 GW. Small scale solar installations on homes won't even make a dent in this.

Neither the generation nor the transmission/distribution infrastructure exist to support this, nor the electrification of existing demand once coal plants go offline. Conservation (while potentially good in its own right up to a certain point) will never, ever compensate; aside from COVID, there has almost never been a time in history in which energy demand went down for any period. It's overtaken by increased need for more people and more technology (not all IT).

So what we need are simulltaneous huge increases in distribution and transmission, probably using higher voltage lines and more advanced line materials science than in the past, at greater expense, to carry the load. At the same time we build large amounts more generation, probably on a Terawatt scale.

Also more renewables means storage facilities, and provisions to protect them from things like forest fires which at present may be a real hazard.

At the same time, the move to EVs calls for more charging stations and higher power transmission delivery for faster charging, and new battery tech that still needs to be refined and made safe.

What we really need is a common sense approach to spacing out all of this over a couple of decades, so the infrastructure is there when it's needed, and there's time to complete all of the necessary but currently too ambitious plans.

...No bloody A, B, C, or D.

The problem with most single payer systems is that they incentivize medical care to allocate resources to prioritize overall outcomes of the most number of people over your individual outcome. The only real way to incentivize your doctors to put your medical care first is to pay them on that basis, for your treatment, rather than for bland statistics. It's the same incentive that drives health care companies to invest in developing more advanced treatments for difficult things, even when they are expensive, which is why many of the advanced treatments are developed first in the US and then replicated elsewhere, sometimes at lower cost, but usually only later on. Frankly it's the only advantage the US healthcare system has. But at the same time, it isn't nothing. Both kinds of systems have their pros and cons.

Also, if you have a nice house in a driveable location with easy parking, the travel isn't all one way. The people you want to see can come to you, rather than it always having to be the other way around. Decks and patios and back yards with grass and trees and such provide for cookouts and places for the kids to play. Sure, sometimes you have to drive a bit to see your friends, but not always, and you can also turn the car the other way and drive just a bit to a lake or waterfall or mountain trail.

Plus it's a question of what do you want to do. Not everyone wants to go clubbing in the city, a lot of people would rather balance the distance it takes me to get to shopping/groceries/etc.. and the distance it takes me to get to parks/hiking/dark sky stargazing, etc.

Don't count on it being the cheapest. In the Apollo program the suits cost 15-22 million each, which accounting for inflation is like $150 million.

More realistically, burying untreated wood does sound like a recipe to instigate the termite takeover of the world...

Funny, I could have sworn this was a reference to Norse mythology. Including the environmental implications.

muor varsuuilhit sih, suilizot lougiu der himil,
mano uallit, prinnit mittilagart

Sea is swallowed, flaming burn the heavens,
Moon falls, Midgard burns

Better idea, how about every new car has to come with a short wave radio transceiver instead? That would probably be more useful than anything in a disaster/national emergency.

The problem with that calculation is that your numbers for how much power an average home needs are off by more than an order of magnitude. A more realistic number is 10,791 kwh per year, not 900 kwh. At 120 volts, 900 kwh would be only 20.5 amp-hours per day, which is nonsensical. A house typically has 200 Amp service, per code, and while the house doesn't draw that consistently it also isn't running a single 20 amp circuit for only an hour a day.

Citation: https://www.energysage.com/ele...

So it's far less homes we're talking about. That does not by any means make it reasonable to remove power production sources that don't burn fossil fuels despite continually increasing demand, but the math on all sides needs to be checked.

Why mint more coins people won't use? The real argument against $1 coins is that most people don't want to carry the weight of coins rather than bills. Heck, the biggest trend in wallets is micro thin wallets that mostly do away even with cash bill storage in favor of cards.

I would gladly swap out all of the pennies we have stored up for the equivalent value in raw copper and zinc, or even somewhat less to cover the cost of smelting/recovery of materials, provided that it's more than the face cost of the pennies. I doubt I or my family are unique in that regard. I expect we will hit that point soon since pennies really are unsustainable economically and that deal may become reality. In the meantime, the cost of storing a piggybank with pennies is pretty miniscule.

Power cost probably isn't the only factor, there's proximity to high bandwidth network switching centers and a good percentage of buried power lines less vulnerable to weather disruption that make some of these areas like certain Northern Virginia suburbs appealing.

Seriously it's time to stop being shocked every time something new needs a lot of electric power, suck it up, and build more generation and transmission capacity to meet people's needs. We keep thinking megawatts and gigawatts when for long term planning we probably need to think terawatts and petawatts.

Usually that makes sense, but coral is one of those things where it truly doesn't really feel like anyone knows what they're talking about when it comes to what an existential threat is. Case in point are the coral reefs around Bikini Atoll that got nuked with a hydrogen bomb (!) but still seem to be thriving today.

Citation: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbn..., https://www.newscientist.com/a...