Well, they're the ones who have been running a pilot plant. Presumably their efficiency figures come from their real world electrical power requirements / production. However, I must confess I share your scepticism. If we look at each component of the plant individually alongside their typical efficiencies (Compressor: 70% - 90%; Turbine: 40% - 95%; Electric Motor: 75% - 95%; Electrical Generator: 85% - 98%; Thermal Insulation: 80% - 98%) and factor in frictional / pressure losses in the pipe network (tbf will be small, but let's for now assume 5% losses, so 95% 'efficient') the overall efficiency will be a multiple of all these factors. This gives us, for the 'round trip':
Best Case: ~74%. Ok, this is essentially what they're claiming. So, their claims are feasible, assuming that they've installed 'best in class' everything, and that the motor / generator is operating in its optimum range.
Worst Case: ~14%. Slightly below your bottom figure, but given the terrible bottom-end efficiency for some types of turbines* (and I'm not sure, if I'm being honest, that these numbers apply in this scenario) that's not too surprising.

* Full disclosure. It's not entirely clear to me why the Betz limit wouldn't apply in this situation, which would limit the turbine efficiency to ~59%. I realise that the work is actually being done by the phase change, rather than simply the velocity, of the working fluid, but thermodynamics / fluid mechanics still presents conceptual challenges to me... :-/

Um, what? You've heard of valves right? Or taps? Picture, if you will, a CO2 fire extinguisher. Is there a constant energy burn required to maintain pressure within it? No! Just (mandated) yearly checks to see if the internal pressure is within spec. For a system that's designed to cycle over an 8 - 24 hour period this is very much a non-issue.

Not sure what your point is here. Industrial processes regularly use supercritical CO2. Why is this (^) relevant in this instance?

Cryogenics is usually defined as utilising temperatures below ~120 K (-153 C or -238 F). At 1 atm CO2 solidifies at -78.5 C. Their claims in this regard are solid, unlike the CO2 they're using...

Indeed, a lot of thermal mass will be required for the heating and cooling. Their illustration shows them using water, which has a SHC ~ 5 times that of CO2, and a larger single phase thermal range. Factor in phase changes and, once more, water's latent heat of vaporisation is much larger (~ 7 times) than that of CO2. In other words, you'd need, at most, one fifth the mass of water, if, and it's a big if, the temperature variance of both substances is the same. But it's not. The temperature range of the CO2 isn't going to vary that much, most of the energy will come from / be used in it changing phase (~348 KJ/kg). Factor in water's SHC (~4.2 KJ/kg/K), and limiting the acceptable temperature range of the water to, let's say 50 K you'd need (as an absolute minimum estimate) ~1/500th** the mass of water to 'buffer' the (temperature and) phase changes. 2000 tonnes of CO2 -> 4 tonnes of water -> 4 m^3 of water -> a 6' x 6' x 3' water tank.

How ever will they manage to build a system with such onerous requirements?***

** Again, full disclosure. Even I am doubting this figure. It seems ridiculously low, so my sarcasm above might not be warranted. You're definitely going to want to check my maths before relying on anything I've written above.

*** Yeah, I've obviously brushed past issues regarding (de)pressurisation temperature changes, and how the system actually manages the flux, but these are not new or unsolved problems. Heat exchangers are a thing. More water than my back of a fag packet calculation suggests will be required. Parent is also correct that there will be (potentially significant) pumping losses involved in such a system, which have not been factored into the overall efficiency calculated at the start.

It's a compressed gas battery. They are not new. It's not a 'breakthrough', it's a logical extension of well understood physics and engineering, with the only novelty being the fact that it's utilising CO2 as the working fluid and that the system might be cheaper than Li or Na batteries.

Hyperbole will be the death of us!

You're picking the wrong fight, with the wrong person here.

My personal belief system essentially starts with the principle - well, it's more a corollary of the first principle - that everyone has the right to choose how / when to end their life. I find the notion that suicide should be illegal is ludicrous, not to mention non-sensical - it's a little hard to prosecute someone who's dead! Likewise, I'm definitely not advocating banning conversations about suicide. It would be hard to talk someone out of it if the entire subject were taboo; it would be (and, alas, currently is) impossible to share 'best-practice' if we can't talk about it - which leads people to do really inconsiderate things like jump in front of moving vehicles, with no thought for the feelings of others or the effects it might have on them, e.g. the driver of said vehicle, who didn't choose to get involved.

What I was trying to do, poorly it seems, was point out that you weren't just talking about suicide, you were telling someone that their mere presence on this earth was enough to make you want to kill yourself. That's not a discussion, that's just an insult!

I have no insight into your life whatsoever. I have no idea what you have or haven't tried. I would just say though that, from a professional point of view, no one patient is 'more important' than another, and, while that may be your perception of the situation, that's unlikely to be the reality. Depression makes us think strange things, things that are, on reflection from a 'happier' place, simply not true. As someone who has been there all I can suggest is that you trust me on this.

I don't see you as a problem. I see some of your behaviours as problematic. There's a world of difference!

Life isn't about cost and / or efficiency. Neither should death be!

That said, when I choose to go: fuck the legality! And, to a degree, I have considered both the cost, efficiency, and effectiveness of my chosen method. However, I've also considered the effect my death, and the manner and nature of it, would have on others (the only thing that stopped my taking a long drop ~25 years ago), as well as any 'discomfort' or pain that I might experience during the process.

Finally, as it happens, I have day-dreamed about starting a chain of "Departure Clinics": what rules / conditions for use I would want to impose; what kind of atmosphere I'd want to foster; what method they would use; and so on. Cost-effective - debateable, because there's a lot of factors to consider, and a lot of unknowns. Efficient - absolutely. But, and I think this is a key question, this is a solution to what, exactly? It's not a solution for depression; it's not a solution for society's ills; it's not a solution for a bad break-up; it's not a solution for unpopular people.

So, what are we trying to solve here?

Are you sure that it's the fact you respond as opposed to the content of your responses. I mean, seriously, let's take just one example from above: "Why not legalize suicide, since living around people like you makes me not want to live?"

What possesses you to think that people 'want' to be treated / spoken to like that, or that people will tolerate being treated / spoken to like that? If anyone spoke to people like this in real life they would quickly be ostracised. Why would you think that an online community should be different?

I'd suggest you start by accepting responsibility for your words and actions, rather than blaming others. And, honestly, you should probably seek professional help for your (current) mental health crisis.

This is not really the place to get it...

It's fair to say, hard science is complicated. Understanding what that 'science' then tells us is (apparently) harder still. Let's examine what is actually being talked about in those links, one at a time...

The first link, where you're getting your 2030 date from, is talking about solar cycles, specifically the 'travelling' magnetic waves that the sun generates. To refer to the consequences of the processes they're talking about as "an ice age" whilst omitting the qualifier "mini" from in front is to misrepresent both the headline and the article. After all, there's a substantial difference between a 20 to 30 year long 'cold snap' and a 10,000 year long, kilometers deep, glacial period. However, that's not the worst of it - and your portion of the blame here only goes as far as, presumably, an uncritical recounting of a terrible piece of 'journalism'. First up, the words "ice age" do not even appear in the paper that link refers to. Secondly, I can't figure out where the article gets the line "...causing reduction in solar activity by as much as 60 percent" from. You don't even need to read the entire 4 pages of the paper, it's in the abstract: "...will lead to a reduction of solar irradiance by about 0.22% from the modern level and a decrease of the average terrestrial temperature by about 1.0C"

Now, I'll be honest, I hadn't come across their paper before, so I'm glad you linked to a newsie about it. Thanks! If I wanted to criticise it, however, I might question whether their model has been 'over-fitted' to historical data, meaning that its predictive power is ... unreliable and could be wildly wrong. Given the failure in error detection in the first line of the abstract "The recent progress with understanding a role of the solar background magnetic field in defining solar (^ sic) and with quantifying the observed magnitudes of magnetic field at different times activity (sic) enable reliable long-term prediction of solar activity on a millennium timescale" it's probably not an unfair concern either, even if mathematical ability and proficiency in English are not directly related.

That said, even if their paper is accurate, and their predictions correct, the actual scientist hasn't predicted an ice age, mini or otherwise, starting in 2030.

The moral of this story is: don't swallow hyperbole whole. It will disagree with you and others. And, there really are some exceedingly bad science journalists out there.

The second link is discussing the vagaries of Earth's orbit around the sun, its eccentricity, obliquity, and precession. On that page it states: "If these patterns hold true, the next ice age could arrive within 11,000 years".

Phew! I can stop clenching / holding my breath...

The last link is referring to a paper discussing a rather complex system of co-factors / feedbacks in the oceans' carbon cycle. It's worth pointing out that the authors themselves note that "The computational challenge is simulating all these processes on the ~100-thousand-year timescale relevant to Earth’s thermostats". Or, in layman's speak, "there's a lot that could go wrong, and a lot of time in which they could too: while we think our results are interesting the number and nature of the uncertainties render our conclusions speculative at best."

But, again, even if everything they've modelled is correct, even if their conclusions are valid, that fact that, on our current trajectory "This would paradoxically lead Earth to a premature deep freeze hundreds of thousands of years in the future" doesn't particularly concern me, or my children, or their children, or... You get my point.

You'll also have noticed, no doubt, a certain contradiction between link 2's "11,000 years" and link 3's "premature 100,000+ years". They can't both be true, because if the first happens the conditions for the second disappear, while if the second happens the first clearly didn't.

Now, personally I think this is, in a sense, science at its best. Hypothesis, test, publish, then have someone else come along and pick holes in it. I have no issues with the uncertainty though, especially not on a timescale of tens to hundreds of thousands of years. I appreciate that not everyone is as comfortable with it. It would help if people were more comfortable analysing what they read though, rather than knee-jerking "OMG someone somewhere said we're going to all freeze to death in 30 years".

No, they didn't!

(Well, someone, somewhere, probably did, but they're not someone we should be paying too much mind to...)

I think I saw a documentary about this a while back...

I'm glad it's not just me who thinks this. It boggled my mind on hearing the news that they chose to differentiate between vehicles in this way. Far simpler, not to mention fairer, to just apply this new tax to all vehicles based on mileage (and wheel weight, but that's a different argument and a whole other level of complication).

Not to mention, albeit rather more controversially, if this new tax is applied to ICE cars the fuel duty could be lowered to compensate for the new tax / to reach the 'minimum' duty from driving that the government thinks they need. From an environmental and health perspective this is, obviously, not such a good idea, but from a 'social persuasion' perspective it would certainly help sell the idea.

The flip side of this objection is to ask the question "How does this tax affect those drivers from the ROI that drive on Northern Irish roads?".

One might make a reasonable, and probably not too inaccurate assumption, that the cross-border flows are roughly equal. So, yes, those people from the north are 'subsidising' those from the south to drive on UK roads, but, equally, those from the south are 'subsidising' those from the north to drive on ROI roads.

It all (roughly) balances out in the end...

The ability to focus is an acquired skill. There is a quantitative difference between watching a series of 30 second shorts and watching a 30 minute T.V. show, or a 2 hour film.

Rather ironically, however, whilst the 'just one more episode / chapter' 'addiction' phenomenon exists with all media it seems to be worse with Tiktok, or doom-scrolling in general, than it ever was with books or television (e.g. the boxed sets of 24 / GoT proved a willpower challenge for me, and I regularly read into the wee hours). This will have an influence on a user's physical, mental and emotional health, even if it takes a while to manifest.

"Only that which has no history can be defined" - Friedrich Nietzsche

There's nothing wrong with me. Not sure about you though...

From CATL's website: "CATL's Naxtra Battery breaks through the performance boundaries of the material itself, achieving the mass production of sodium-ion batteries for the first time."

This was in April...

How is that short relevant to a discussion about electric cars?

Ah, wait, don't tell us you fell for the propaganda in the title and actually thought that showed an electric vehicle blowing up? rofl!

As for a citation demonstrating "twice as good at half the cost" I'd suggest that this comes close. Tbh, given that there are plenty of others out there, it's a little strange you're unaware of what's going on in the field...

Almost certainly the latter.

Likewise.

After all, they're awfully smart people to be making such a grand yet 'unimaginative' claim.

That depends on the seed. If the seed is truly random then a 'good' algorithm will output a truly random result.

I remember reading about a company that uses (a real time image of) Lava Lamps as their seeds. Feeding in the exact same parameters is impossible, which would seem like a counter to this class of objection...

I'm a little curious as to where you get this median age from, and rather more curious as to why you think the mean (average) is therefore lower.

A recent report suggests that "[o]n average, cars are 17 years old when they head to the scrap heap", while other online sources tend to quote a figure of around 14 years...

Gosh, there just isn't enough time available for me to watch everything I want to watch!

(which explains why my TiVo has ~300 hours of stuff recorded, and generally sits at 99% full).

./troll
#needstogetalife