If I were you, I’d worry about commenting on a country’s car industry of which you know so little, you didn’t even know what The Knowledge was. I’d take that as a good indication that there would be more to learn about its parliamentary system before commenting on that, too. But hey, I am not blessed with your confident ignorance.

Oh Jesus fuck you people are so fucking parochial, and unable to comprehend that things exist outside the US. Like “The Knowledge”, the famous test taken by London black cab drivers to get a licence, which includes questions like “describe the route from eIslington Police Station to the British Museum, listing the streets and turns”. The OP is no doubt also referring to the controversy over the use of satnav, which Uber drivers et al have long used, partly to compensate for their much weaker knowledge of London’s streets and landmarks, and which is now also being used by cabbies as well.

The logic is much more base and basic: Trump hates wind power because he wasn’t able to stop turbines being built near one of his stupid Scottish golf courses, and that’s that. There’s no more logic to it than that.

British streets are narrower, junctions are often irregular, lots of roundabouts, lots of parking on the kerbs, tons of pedestrians and cyclists everywhere, and lots of roads where you have to take turns to get through. I shudder to think of what a self-driving car would do heading down Redington Road in Hampstead during a January morning school run, having to squeeze past an angry parent in a Cayenne with an inch to spare on either side and five seconds to do it before the driver coming the other way closes the gap and makes it impossible to move anywhere, and the rain is sheeting down and it’s completely overcast.

CO2 can operate at ambient temperatures vs cryogenic requirements for liquid air. That’s a major advantage

Renewable energy at scale requires a mix of generation types, of storage types, of locations, of temporal phasing, etc etc. And that’s what we’re getting: for storage, we are getting short, medium and long term storage solutions using thermal, chemical, kinetic, gravitational and other mechanisms. This heterogenous approach lowers risks associated with single points of failure such as materials supply chain crunches or inability to meet demand spikes. It means a higher initial cost per kWh because we’re not just scaling the very cheapest solution, but like an investment portfolio, a mix of investment types generates more reliable returns.

I understand this, but the capex of the batteries etc has always made the economics seem very tough to me, ever since A Better Place tried and failed at this a long time ago. And China is pretty big, so the dispersal and diseconomies of scale and network effects seem even tougher

Who do you truly think you are convincing with this crap? It’s the most moronic line of argument. No one thinks that NCAR does the modelling that NOAA does, and no one has argued it does, so why waste your time arguing as though they have? Everyone just looks at you pretending that someone made this argument and thinks you’re a dipshit. Because everyone can cope with second order effects, except you. You sound like someone arguing that a doctor doesn’t need to learn chemistry because doctors don’t do chemistry; totally cretinous.

If you think Trump was ever something other than the reification of grievance politics, you’re either stupid or batshit. His entire fucking political career has been about grievance. Yes, he was a drunk driver. But he was so much more than that: he is a doddery old mean-minded drunk driver who is out there trying to knock people over like skittles whenever he sees someone he has a grudge against, which is all the fucking time. And he’s removed the seatbelts and keeps insisting the brake is the gas, etc.

Downplaying Trump’s ability to act serves no-one’s interests. There’s more than 100 dead people who were on boats in the Caribbean; the East Wing of the White House no longer exists; tariffs were in fact imposed and have drastically worsened the US econom; ICE agents have sat on the bellies of pregnant women and crashed into the cars of others, etc. What was legal of this? Very little, but Trump pays no mind to that, and what matters is what he actually does. It’s also unimportant that this is much less than he has said he will do. Again, what matters is the real damage he has been able to wreak and what further damage lies ahead.

1. I agree with the challenges of EV swapping, which is why I’m curious to know how Nio make it work in China
2. Long-haul trucking has less need of this than you’d think, because the ladder-frame can fit a heckuva lot of.structural battery in it

I’m not excusing, I’m explaining. And specifically, I’m explaining why people are capable of change even after having been dragged deep into the mire. I feel a deep sense of loathing for these people, for their stupidity and bigotry, but I am willing to be open to the idea that they may change, and there’s some evidence that this is happening.

(Also, plenty of voters this time round were first time voters, as they always are. New immigrants, young adults who were below voting age last time, etc).

This makes no sense, even on its own terms.

Oh, so Arabs and Jews are white enough for you now, are they?

It really really boils your piss to imagine anything being done by someone besides a straight white guy, doesn’t it? Poor little fragile thing you are.