You are talking nonsense. A Tesla Model Y battery is 1700 pounds, whereas a full gastank of a typical sedan is less than 150 pounds

SIGH.

First off, none of the battery packs in the 3/Y are 1700 pounds. The SR pack is 350kg / 772 lbs, while the LR pack is 480kg / 1058 lbs. This includes the charge cabling.

Secondly, unless you drive around in a vehicle that is nothing more than a gas tank or a battery pack, you're kind of forgetting a few things. Let's help you out.

ICE engines typically weigh 150-300kg (~330–660 lbs), and high-performance engines can exceed this. On top of this, the transmission usually adds another 70-115kg (150-250lbs). EV powertrains are light. An entire Model 3 drive unit, including gearbox, oil pump, filter, etc is ~80kg / ~175lbs. And actually this plays it down, because except in the performance Model 3 - which matches up against quite powerful / heavy ICE powertrains - they're software locked, so they're actually well oversized relative to what they're allowed to deliver.

ICE exhaust systems add ~25-45kg / ~50-100 lbs. Obviously absent in EVs.

ICE fuel systems (pumps, lines, etc) add another ~15-20 kg or so (maybe 30-50 lbs)

ICE vehicles, due to their inefficiency, require much larger radiators, coolant reservoirs, hoses, etc (again, another ~15-20kg extra over EVs).

The battery pack in an EV makes up the floor pan. Again, that cuts mass by a couple dozen kg.

The battery pack is a stiffening element, and eliminates the need for many dozens of kg of extra stiffening mass.

The needs of an engine block impose a lot more difficult design constraints on an ICE car, including a larger front end, a higher centre of gravity, a less compressible front end in an accident, etc. The need to compensate for these things also adds significant mass.

ICE vehicles have all accessories driven by the engine, and all electrics on low voltage (heavy wiring). EVs do it either with a DC-DC converter or direct HV, saving many kg again here. New EVs are also ditching the low-voltage battery altogether.

I could go on and on. The simple fact is, while EVs add (significant mass) in the form of one part, ICEs nickle and dime the car for mass all over the place. ICEs still win out mass-wise, but on a class-and-performance comparison, like-to-like, the mass differences just aren't that much (again, unless the designer is just bad at their job or doesn't care - *grumbles again in Hummer*).

(Also, re: serviscope_minor above: You don't compare vehicles by length; it's not a very useful metric. For size, you can compare by interior space specs - trunk / frunk volume, driver/front passenger head/leg/shoulder/hip room, rear passenger head/leg/shoulder/hip room. Length isn't a good proxy because it ignores packaging; a 1960 Chevy Corvette might be "long", but has very little interior space. Interior space and overall profile are often included as part of the category of "class" (for example, the Model 3 and BMW 3-series both have very similar interior space metrics and profiles). Also part of "class" is perceived / marketed luxury, though people differ over what counts as luxury, so it's not a very clear-cut metric. Performance is another axis, as higher performance cars tend to be heavier and/or have less interior space relative to their footprint (though EVs suffer a lot less on this than ICEs).

You can't get sunburned from far-UV like you can with normal UVC. It doesn't penetrate deep enough to reach living skin cells (e.g. the (dead) stratum corneum is 10-40 microns on most skin, up to hundreds on e.g. palms and soles) - in human tissue, 222nm penetrates only a few microns, with most of the energy deposited in the first micron; the deepest any degradation was seen in one study was 4,6 microns (for 233nm, it's 16,8 microns). As mentioned earlier, the only cells it can kill are the outermost layer of cells in the eye (corneal epithelium), but they're constantly being shed regardless (the entire corneal epithelium is 5-7 cells thick and has a ~1 week turnover, so on average just over 1 day per cell on the surface).

The comments about material degradation probably are also not true with far-UV. It's certainly ionizing, but again it doesn't penetrate deeply into surfaces . Paint is generally many dozens of microns thick (a typical two coats of interior paint is ~100 microns), while epoxy is typically millimeters or more, so you're only going to be affecting the extreme outermost surface. I doubt you could even tell.

Also, contrary to popular myth (and indeed, our pre-COVID medical understanding), most common communicable diseases (influenza, COVID, most cold viruses, etc) spread by direct airborne transmission, not fomites (surface transmission). So how well surfaces are cleaned has no bearing on this primary means of transmission. That's not that surfaces don't matter - said diseases still *can* be transmitted from fomites, and some other diseases (esp. fecal-oral route ones like norovirus) are still believed to be primarily transmitted via fomites.

Again, honestly, the only thing I would have concerns about are plants. Most plant cuticles are only like 0,1-1 micron thick. Xeriphytes (desert plants) can be thicker, though, like 1-20 microns, and are in general adapted to more UV exposure, so might be able to deal with it. But I'd think a plant with only a 0,1 micron thick cuticle and a 0,1-0,3 micron thick cell wall will get its leaves pretty badly burned by far-UV. I'd expect any epidermis and stomata exposed to the light to be almost entirely killed. But if you had a cactus or plant with really waxy leaves, it might be fine.

That we should be cool with them blowing through billions of our taxpayer dollars so that they can throw shit at a wall and see what sticks.

SpaceX has saved the US government an immense amount of money. What are you even talking about? Falcon 9 / Falcon Heavy is by far the cheapest launch system out there, and is also, FYI, the most reliable launch system out there. And it go that way by exactly the process above. And that process cost far less than NASA spends to develop its super-expensive launch systems.

Tesla has been at approximately mass parity with its closest class/performance competitors from BMW (with a full tank of petrol) since 2017 (the 330i vs. the SR, the 340i vs. the LR, etc). This "EVs are super-heavy thing" is a myth. I mean, sure, if you're terrible at your job you can design a really heavy EV (*grumbles in Hummer*). But usually, if the designers did their job right, the weight difference is small when matched up on class/performance competitors.

And beyond what others pointed out - that PM emissions are only a fraction of pollutants, and that they come from both brakes and tyres, and EVs have far lower brake emissions - it should also be pointed out that tyre PM tends to be mainly *coarse PM*, not fine PM. Both are harmful, but fine PM is significantly more harmful per amount produced. Brakes have a higher ratio of fine to coarse than tyres do, exhaust is higher still.

Cars also have air filters which capture PM. Generally well less than is produced, but I've seen a proof of concept where they amped up the air filtration so that the car was net negative. If you really wanted to, nothing is stopping you from mandating that. Still, economically your best bet is surely on taxing tyres (esp. studded ones) to incentivize people to choose durable ones and ones that don't wear down the roads, to limit hard accel / braking, etc.

I think they expected that since they had paid to purchase the game, they would be able to play that game for as long as they cared to, i.e. same as the deal you get when you purchase a book or a DVD.

You can argue that they were wrong to expect that, but that's the usual way of thinking about items that you buy, so that's what people (who haven't yet thought through the implications of software shrink-wrap licensing agreements) naturally expect.

If being able to play the game perpetually isn't a viable business model, then perhaps the publisher should be required to specify up-front how long (at minimum) they will guarantee purchasers access to the game; that way nobody will be surprised when their access goes away, because they understood the time-limit on what they were purchasing before they made the purchase.

... and in 2020 it was "anyone but Trump", as it will be again in 2028, assuming we still have elections then.

Step back a bit, and you realize the real voting pattern is "anyone but the incumbent", because the system has deteriorated to the point where problems don't get solved anymore, so voters are just blindly switching back and forth from one party to the other in the hopes that doing that will somehow lead to improvement. American Democracy has devolved into the world's most elaborate ring oscillator.

Close as I remember, no, it started in 2005 or so. It started to go downhill rapidly in 2019.

I see no facts or evidence to blame them for Google's decline on Trump or Trumpers.
Many other things, yes. Just not Google's enshittifcation.

You also have to consider that the US has a long way to go before its even remotely competitive with China, if we're talking about total tons of CO2. They produce 2x what we do, and that's not including how much they breathe - which puts it more like 4-5x the total of what the US produces, for both India and China.

That's largely dependent on relative oxygen concentration in the air, which is the biggest reason indoor air quality is poor/low in oxygen - not CO2 directly. CO2 is the second order issue.

These are generally people with poor cardiovascular health in the first place.

With higher oxygen levels (as naturally happens with increased CO2) due to increased plant growth, people will/are able to withstand much more CO2 before its problematic.

Don't be silly. If you wore a mask during covid as all the doctors said you must to flatten the curve, you were breathing 2000-5000ppm CO2 all day long.

Meanwhile, that's about half of the low end of what plants prefer - 800-1200ppm.

Their alarmism about (the 180ppm) of the last Ice Age, meanwhile, was almost low enough to kill all plantlife on the planet (and with it, most animal species that depend on said plants). We were dangerously close to global annihilation.

For context, 1000ppm is going to be a stuffy office space, and 800ppm a well ventilated indoor space.

A well-fitted surgical mask like so many medical professionals insisted was necessary some short years ago? Those have been measured to result in a CO2 of 2,000-5,000 (with peaks up to 8,000ppm when its actually fit properly) for the air being inhaled. (But don't worry, that's still under the 8,000ppm 8-hour OSHA maximum.)

If plants like CO2, they're going to grow more rapidly and prolifically. That means, in turn, they'll be producing a lot more oxygen. Let's assume a moderate increase in O2 to 25% ambient... which is more than safe, and even preferable. The result would be that humans could withstand significantly higher CO2 ppm.

I'm not sure why we've ever started talking about CO2 as a "greenhouse gas" when it's 0.0425% of our atmosphere, and the facts above (about it causing significant greening of the planet). That much is well established, and it's well accepted that greening an area will decrease, not increase, the temperature of the area. We've seen this play out significantly in the last decade or so in eg. North Africa. This more than offsets the "global warming".

More CO2 is not only not bad - its beneficial and preferable.

The big problem with the CO2 hysteria (such as in the OP) is that it's myopic and agenda driven. "You've got to consume less" - which is true, regardless, but bellies the point that such propaganda is directed at Western countries which produce both less CO2 per capita and in total vs countries like India and China, which have effectively zero efforts in place to reduce its production. It's clearly aimed at the Western countries to hamper them economically. Outside factors, like solar output, are never considered in these breathless press releases about global warming. Notice how "global warming" is conveniently replaced with "climate change" in the media during periods of low solar output? We're now nearing the peak of the ~11 year solar cycle with the solar maximum likely to occur this year. Expect seeing more "global climate change" in the news in the coming years...

Exploration may be worthwhile, but it is a totally separate thing and won't provide relief for climate issues. The only possible way it could help anyone on that front is that the select few that go are hard for the desperate starving people to follow. But you'd never be able to build a civilization at any scale there without also figuring out ways to make Earth way better. Any habitat you make that can survive on Mars you could make on Earth, any CO2 scrubbing you can do in a small environment you can also scrub that environment on Earth (problem is the scale is useless for atmospheric CO2).

Plants may be happy to have CO2, but the resultant weather may not be so good for the plants.

If we could "fix" the moon or Mars, then we could fix the Earth easily. Moon/Mars colonization is insanely harder than dealing with even the harshest likely Earth climate changes.

With a more energetic atmosphere, who *knows* what the weather patterns will be, what crops will be feasible, and how much plant life and animal life we can cultivate for food. There is some non-zero chance it somehow pans out with less drama than feared, but significant chance that humanity will suffer starvation and violence that dramatically harms our population. Seems like a bet we shouldn't be taking if we can help it.

Thatâ(TM)s great. But in case youâ(TM)re not joking, Less than 1,000 people have ever gone into space and all of them simply come back when theyâ(TM)re done in months. We have forgotten how to land things on the moon, and in fact when we were good at it, we only managed to land two people six times for three days or less. Mars? Only one person wants to live there. Fine. Let him. Moving to currently uninhabited places on earth means recreating nearly all of the infrastructure of all the existing cities. Good luck with that. In the US it took 250 years to create the current infrastructure. Generously 100 years for the current generation. How about maybe we just cut back on some things? Never mind that the people who are A-Ok with the cause of the pollution have a conniption every time they see the bill for a federal space flight.