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Post by slh1234 on Mar 30, 2021 2:19:02 GMT
The particulates in the North Africa area are huge, they are a different mix of material but if I had a choice SiO2 or C as a particulate in my lung I am not sure the SiO2 would be my choice. Cancer rates from particulates that have been there for centuries are not sensational so we need to assume that the ability of humans to survive a measurable level of particulates is quite good. The photochemical smog basically NOx is bad and it is well reduced nowadays the particulates are well down and way lower than North Africa why throw more massive resources on the pretext of saving lives or whatever. The spending of money on a nonissue is a way of throwing more of the poor under the bus. It's not a big one for me but, is there an agenda when the world tries to ban something on week data. We all have different drivers clearly. California in the strip adjacent to the sea and bound to the east by mountains is very vulnerable to an inversion as well as being a massive population. difficult at any level. The numbers on that NOx, and contributions from cars vs. industry. is what I've been asking you for. With as many ozone alerts as even small cities are having these days, it certainly seems to be an issue.
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Post by slh1234 on Mar 30, 2021 2:15:58 GMT
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Post by slh1234 on Mar 29, 2021 18:49:49 GMT
I think there is data and I also think cars emit a lot of dust such as from tires etc. Trucks are problematic because they occupy such a large portion of the problem and unlike cars are loaded so batteries would back out load weight demanding more trucks. An argument for bigger tonnages is valid we did it here in NZ out to 44T no issues. I think the particulates are a real issue and I don't see SiO2 as better than Carbon PM10 or 2.5 but have a look at the Sahara sand particulates. earth.nullschool.net/#current/particulates/surface/level/overlay=pm10/orthographic=-35.04,29.69,338 I guess I'm not seeing what you're wanting me to see in this. Can you explain these, please?
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Post by slh1234 on Mar 27, 2021 3:28:12 GMT
I have read that particulate matter has improved in the LA air. It's not clean by a long shot, though, which means it definitely NEEDS to improve more. That's where discussions like different transportation become relevant. I'd like to see an authoritative source to compare what the air was like in the late 1970s and 1980s to now so we have something more objective to base it on.
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Post by slh1234 on Mar 27, 2021 0:58:08 GMT
Nonentropic, I'm going to have to respectfully disagree.
I was stationed in Sacramento from 1987 - 1989, and in Merced from 1991 - 1992. I subsequently lived in the Bay Area from 2005 - 2010, and again in 2017 - 2019. In the last two stents in CA especially, I often travelled to SoCal for work. Sometimes I flew, but when my family wanted to come with me, I would drive it. We also drove it occasionally just to visit friends in LA.
In that first window when I lived in Sacramento, I could look out my window most days and see the Sierras in the distance. When I visit my Daughter in that area now, most days the Sierras are obscured by the pollution. Driving down I-5 from Sacramento or from the Bay Area to LA, in the central valley, there is, indeed, dust from agriculture, and a couple of feeder lots that make you not want to breathe for about 5 miles, but unless there is a fire, the air is not like Los Angeles at all. In fact, when I-5 and Highway 99 meet (not terribly far from Bakersfield), the air is desert-like, but as the highway starts up through the San Gabriel mountains, on the east side, it is still pretty clear, but as you get into the mountains, it becomes increasingly smoggy, and visibility becomes increasingly less. In Lancaster (where I've been for work a few times), it's not usually as bad as down in the valleys around the LA Metro, but there are times it gets bad. Consistently, as you start down into the valleys where most of the LA metro area is, the air changes pretty drastically. It has a taste to it, and a smell to it, and it feels different to breathe. It's not dust.
Beijing has pollution problems, and it also has yellow dust problems. I've lived in Shanghai also, and travelled to Beijing to work several times. LA visibility isn't as bad as Beijing when the wind is coming off the deserts, but it's the closest city I've seen to that. But even in Beijing, the air doesn't smell and taste as thick as it does in LA.
These days, the area around Sacramento is also very polluted as my description about not being able to see the Sierras may indicate.
Interestingly, the Bay Area may have improved since those days since I don't remember smog in the hills where those windmills are east of Livermore like I remember that from when I was stationed in Sacramento. The air moves a lot through the valley that houses San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose, but occasionally, it will get still for a few days. When it gets still, temperature rises there, and the air becomes very dirty again. I've seen this several times, and this makes me think that the dynamic that brings the marine layer in over that area most mornings is just blowing the pollution out of the area, and that's why it doesn't look worse than it does most of the time.
Even in Seattle, a beautiful area nestled into a temperate rain forest, in the summers when it is not raining regularly, Seattle air becomes quite visible. I can assure you Seattle is nothing like California's central valley - not a dusty place at all.
I grew up on a farm not too terribly far from Tulsa. That area is prairie, but the areas around rivers like where I grew up are heavily wooded with hardwoods. I remember being able to look at ridges in the distance and seeing only the blue haze that trees themselves produce. The air around that area doesn't look like that anymore. A few years ago, when I went back to that area for a relative's funeral, I couldn't even see the blue haze anymore. When I was a boy, we used to go into Tulsa maybe once every 3 months, the skyline of Tulsa was clear. It's not like that anymore.
In all of these areas, traffic has increased significantly.
You keep saying it is industry and not cars. What is your source on that? I've tried searching for that, and almost every article I read attributes NO2 to the burning of fuel including vehicle emissions, power plants, and some other processes, but none of them are breaking it out. I know when I was stationed in CA, we even had to keep track of how many spray paint cans we had used, and we were limited to how many could be used. I know there are significant restrictions on industrial emissions, too. I'm not buying that cars don't contribute to the pollution, but I also believe that industry still contributes significantly to it. So what is the breakdown of that? I think it will be a hard (impossible) sale to convince people that cars don't make a significant contribution to that on just one's word.
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Post by slh1234 on Mar 26, 2021 16:44:06 GMT
Battery technology is like fusion energy. Read that it is just around the corner. Problem is, that corner is a long ways down the hall. Battery technology is currently here. You're seeing a development in battery technology in production now. Looking at newer developments like what I was talking about above, NAWA currently has carbon nanotubes in production, but they're not in cars currently. The question should be "Can they be put in production for cars?" If so, then energy storage looks to be about 5X what current lithium ion is. That is worth following, I think.
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Post by slh1234 on Mar 26, 2021 16:36:35 GMT
Ultimately the engines, or fuels, all of them are clean, very clean. From there it's just about economics, the idea that we have a climate emergency is daft, it's built around RCP8.5 the world is actually running at half of RCP2.5 so if a CO2 tax feels needed on some precautionary basis then it would be around the $20/T mark but it must include the full cycle costs not some cock and bull play that we have now. would ICE or EV prevail I would suggest that the biggest electric sector would be hybrid without the plug-in option? The good news is that this would allow a learned understanding of electric and localized full-electric usage say city centers. My beef with all this is the obvious fraud yes fraud with wood chip burning etc. the politics stink and so do the proponents. This is not a climate change issue in my mind. This is what it is about: I'm sorry, but that's not clean, and it is not healthy. That's a normal day in Los Angeles. Many of our other cities are not far behind. Let's take a few cities where I have actually lived. Seoul: Busan definitely has its days: Tulsa: I'd put San Francisco, but in the pictures, it's rather difficult to tell if I'm looking at a bad air day, or a foggy day. I don't want to exaggerate. "Clean" needs to be quantified even when we're talking about emissions from cars. One thing those pictures illustrate is that what we've been doing in not adequate. I can't blame the younger folks for wanting to do something different because honestly, this emperor we're praising has no clothes. Economics must be there, and that's where I've been saying fuel cells still fall short. ICE vehicles are where they are today because of more than a century of development. EVs have nowhere near that history, but by the time fuel and maintenance costs are figured in, they are likely as economical, or more so than ICE vehicles - especially in places like Korea where gas prices convert to over $5.00 USD/gallon (It may be less so in the US where our gas is relatively cheap, but I still think it works out to be more economical here.) The air in cities is a real health issue. Regulating cars by themselves is not the whole answer, but it has to be a part of the solution.
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Post by slh1234 on Mar 26, 2021 3:19:06 GMT
Thats why I said battery technology today. Physical limitations of energy transfer/storage will prevent what some wish. Energy density IS a large problem. Temperature high and low are a large problem. Fossil fuels do not have those problems. Another is true costs and who will bear the brunt of the cost. Those on the bottom of the ladder will pay dearly for battery technology. Fossil Fuels DO have temperature problems, especially the heavier ones like Diesel. I had plenty of military time in Korea trying to start diesel vehicles, and I know plenty of people who were not able to start their cars during the most recent cold snap. They appear differently, and they produce more heat, but it's not true to say they don't have issues, especially in the cold. The reason carbon nanotubes caught my attention was because it was one of two that promised to significantly expand the effective temperature band and also offer much greater energy storage. The other was liquified gas electrolyte lithium batteries. A company named "Nawa" actually has some sort of carbon nanotube battery in production, but I don't see where it is used. The liquified gas electrolyte lithium battery showed a curve where it is effective at temperatures between -60 and +55 degrees C, and one researcher claiming the bottom end was actually -80C. The carbon nanotube is a bit new to me and seems to be more effective at higher temperatures. A gas electrolyte, if it is as dense as claimed, would not have the problem associated with thickening and resistance that liquid and solid electrolytes have. The article made it sound like it was going in production, but when I look for corroboration, I don't find it.
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Post by slh1234 on Mar 26, 2021 1:45:54 GMT
That article led me back into reading about developmental batteries. There are a lot of interesting concepts, but there's a big difference between science and engineering, and I can't tell if many of the researched possibilities are just science projects, or if they are something that can be commercially produced. I'm from an engineering background myself, and looking at whether something can be put into production is always top of mind for me. Ratty, maybe you should look at Carbon Nanotube batteries before you invest everything in Lithium .
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Post by slh1234 on Mar 25, 2021 23:53:18 GMT
Although not really technical, that's a really good article.
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Post by slh1234 on Mar 25, 2021 20:53:52 GMT
That's exactly the article I was thinking about when I said "Don't look for ... because they're testing something you don't do." That's not how you're going to charge. He did several things wrong. For starters, he ran his battery so low that the car wouldn't pre-condition to supercharge, so he started out slow. It wouldn't matter what charger he was at at that point because the car is going to limit the charge it is accepting to protect the cold battery. Another thing he did was charge to full. That's not what you'd normally do. Normally, on a charge stop, you're going to charge to 80% full at max. When you get above 80% charged, then the charge is going to slow down, and as you get above 90%, you're probably not charging any faster with the super-charger than you would when you plug into a 220 at your home. What I think would be more representative of actual travel would be testing a charge between 10% and 80%.
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Post by slh1234 on Mar 25, 2021 16:54:47 GMT
There are many videos on YouTube of people road tripping in their Teslas. I'm not going to go find them to post them. If you go looking for them, forget the guys trying to test how long it takes to get a full charge - they're testing something people just don't do in normal travel. Look at someone actually taking a trip. Some are better than others, and some are smarter than others, obviously. But it does show that it is possible, and comfortable, and I know that was my biggest hangup before actually buying the car. I think it's the biggest hangup other people have as well. It's a different mindset, but that doesn't make in inconvenient.
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Post by slh1234 on Mar 25, 2021 16:48:20 GMT
I agree with a lot of what you are saying. The problem today, "note today", is EV are excellent for certain applications. The limiting factor is energy density. I think 40% of cars sold in 2030 will be electric. They will be practical for limited range commuters. Local haul freight will be electric. Long haul? Nope. Energy density. Construction equipment? Nope. Farm equipment? Nope. If there is a breakthrough in battery technology, that will change the equation. Wind and solar do not have the generation capacity (intermittent nature), to provide the energy requirements. Nuclear does, as well as fossil fueled electric plants. The US uses approximately 7 million barrels of oil per day for transportation. The GW requirements to replace that are huge. I think a lot of the "Energy density" question can be compensated for by efficiency, and elimination of waste, and this is an area one begins to think about when operating an EV. ICE engines do not make efficient use of the energy produced by burning gas/diesel. A lot of it is wasted in heat, and doesn't really get applied to the wheels. With electric generation, we cannot power down generators during off-peak because it takes too long to bring them back up, so a lot of the energy produced during off-peak hours is wasted. In your EV, you can set your charging hours so that it only charges during off-peak hours. In fact, that's how most people on time of use electrical plans do just to reduce their electric bill. The secondary effect it has is to reduce the wasted generation during those hours. I'll actually add one application that you didn't mention: airlines and military aircraft. Maybe bio-fuels in the future, but I don't have an idea currently how that can be eliminated. Increased use of EVs, though, has the effect of improved air quality in cities, and that's the biggest benefit in what I see. I promised earlier to post some screen shots to illustrate the current state of charging in the US. These screen shots come from the "Chargeway" app, and I use that because I can't easily screen shot from the navigation console in my Tesla which is used to plan trips including charging stops. The key in what you are seeing is this: Red markers are Tesla chargers. Blue markers are non-Tesla DC chargers that Teslas can use. Green markers are public AC chargers that Teslas can use. No markers are there for places like KOA campgrounds or other RV hookups which Teslas, or any EV can use. The higher the number, the more power. 7 is a 250 KW charger. 6 is a 150 KW charger. This map is set up to show me only chargers for my Tesla, and doesn't reflect chargers that will not accomodate me. For this reason, the Tesla dots usually appear on top, and will block out other chargers if they overlap. Zoomed out to get a quick view of the US: Can you spot any gaps of 200 miles or more in there? As I zoom in, more chargers become visible, and even in areas where I can't see chargers at one level of zoom, others will appear: If I start zooming in on the state where I live: And as before, if I zoom in more, more charging stations will appear. But we only use them when we travel. If you look along I-5 southbound, or I-90 Eastbound, do you see the density of charger stations currently available? What if I want to travel down and see my daughter living in California: Can you see any gaps I can't navigate even if I figure only 60% of my car's range? (Car's range is over 300 miles, and it is about 800 miles from my house to her house). Remember when I objected to the claim the guy made that you cannot drive an EV from Dallas to Denver? Here's why I objected: There is no gap in there I cannot drive, and nothing that would even give me range anxiety. But for Sig's friend in North Dakota, why I said he should have taken his J1772 adapter to go north from Fargo: You can see that Tesla has the area covered along I-94, but going North from Fargo, someone would need to be safe and carry his J-1772 adapter. This site does not show chargers currently under construction, but there is a large number of chargers currently under construction. Even if I want to go someplace like Yellowstone National Park, there's no need for range anxiety: Keeping in mind that this map does not show places like KOA campsites, what would worry me? If I go someplace like Yellowstone, I'm going to be staying either in a campground with an RV hookup, or in a hotel nearby, so a level-2 charger is all I need to charge while I'm sleeping. So the next time you run into an article, or a video where someone is talking about not being able to travel where you want to travel in an EV, you have a visual on what I'm seeing that makes it so those trips don't stress me. If I have a 75 KWH battery, and I pull up to a 250 KW charger with 20% charge, I'm not going to be staying there for 30 minutes or an hour. I'm only going to need 15 - 20 minutes to COMFORTABLY get me to the next place I need to stop and take a break. If I get to my destination, I have all night to use a level 2 charger (which is actually better for the battery anyway). And of course, the biggest point that people are missing in their discussion: I never go to a charge station when I'm doing my normal driving at home - never. I charge at home. I ONLY use charging stations when I'm travelling. Now there ARE some neighborhoods, especially some I'm thinking of in CA, where chargers need to be built in places like multi-unit housing where garage parking is limited. That's one of the challenges being discussed, and being worked on currently, so 5 years from now, the situation will not look like it does now.
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Post by slh1234 on Mar 25, 2021 2:08:01 GMT
Slightly related: I wonder if Elon has shelved plans to move operations to Texas after their recent power problems? I understand he personally/officially moved to Austin in December. The factory there is still being built even after the power outages. I don't really know if Tesla headquarters will be moved there as there was even some disagreement about whether he meant he was moving the Tesla headquarters or not. The new factory in China is now in operation, and the one in Germany is still supposed to become operational this year.
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Post by slh1234 on Mar 25, 2021 1:54:24 GMT
There is a sappy old cartoon that I actually love about an old man and woman sitting by the fire and reminiscing about their young years. At one point in their memories, the man (young at that point) bought a car and took the woman on a date in their early model car. It was going well until the car broke down, at which time the woman (young at that point) exclaimed "Ah, get a horse!" That's exactly where I see our generation right now with this kind of critical talk. We're talking about 2035 - 14 years from now. At that time, if I'm still above the grass, I'll be well up into my 70s. Many more of my classmates and friends will have passed on. As insane as this sounds to me, our two eldest kids will be in their early 50s, and I won't have any kids younger than 40. Four of my grandkids will be college age. I hope to be retired and have travelled a lot more with my lady, and I hope she's still with me. It won't be our world then - it will be theirs. So the first point is: For us to sit here and talk about what people will want at that time is silly. My kids want very different things in the world than I did when I was young. (Remember it was my eldest son who convinced me about EVs). I don't see anything wrong with what they want, but I recognize there are some challenges to be overcome for them to get there. That's what they're talking about, and our generation is the ones sitting back telling them they can't do it, and many of the reasons we give are just showing our ages. New houses that are built these days are built with the capacity to put in car chargers. When we talk about how many chargers are needed like it's some unachievable number, it's missing things like that. There is not a 1:1 relationship to number of gas pumps to number of fast chargers specifically because most cars will be charged at home most of the time - not fast chargers. The last house I lived in in California was built to be able to install two vehicle chargers. In my current house, I had three NEMA 14-50 plugs installed specifically so three cars could charge there. Our neighborhood needs new electrical lines just so these towering evergreens don't fall on the lines and knock out power out every time we get a good wind storm around here, so it's something that is going to have to be done anyway - we might as well plan for the disruption. 3/4 standards current exist for vehicle charging, and far from what people have said about it not being successful without a single standard, they are beginning to accommodate more than one vehicle type, with the exception of Tesla. EVGo currently has Tesla connectors in their stations, and almost all of them have J1772, and Tesla has an adapter they ship with their own car to allow them to use J1772 if necessary. However; Tesla's current supercharger network is the best one out there. They may not be in the future, but it doesn't worry me. Electrify America's biggest investor is Volkswagen, and their network continues to be built out by hundreds each year. Tesla's network continues to be built out by hundreds each year. Look here for the 5 largest non-Tesla charging networks currently in the US: www.mirrorreview.com/top-5-electric-vehicle-charging-networks/Of course things are being rebuilt. Of course there are challenges. But 15 years ago most retailers didn't believe that some startup internet book seller would disrupt retail the way Amazon has, and many of those brick and mortar stores are gone because they missed it. Amazon became a disruptor in Tech as well, but Microsoft, Google, and some others saw what was coming and changed course to be disruptors instead of out-of-business. Many others, such as Oracle, didn't catch on as quick, and they dropped from prominence quickly. My guess is that in the future, there will be more than one fuel type that is used in cars. Because I have so much emotional investment in hydrogen fuel cells, I hope it is one of them, but it must be more efficient and less costly to compete. I've read many other concepts (one of them just using compressed air - I kid you not), and the battery electrical vehicle is ahead of all of them right now. It may not stay there, but it's there, now. I work with a lot of very bright millennial engineers and scientists. You can stop laughing at them - there are MANY who are VERY bright and capable, and they're NOT naïve like they're always portrayed. These things are the problems they want to take on. My bet is on them much more than a bunch of us old farts sitting around nay-saying. I'm still relevant, but if I become just another old fart sitting around nay-saying, I won't be relevant until that desired retirement date. Yes, government got involved in some places. Government also got involved when TV transmission was going SD to HD. I griped about that at the time, but in retrospect, I think it brought something better about. In this case, cities like Los Angeles, while they have come a long ways since the 1970s still have a long ways to go to get their air healthy. In a case like this, I think government entities may need to step in with a few goals, and some of those may need to be mandated. Nobody is going to be forced to live there, but if you choose to live there, you'll need to comply with local regulations, and it appears that will include vehicle regulations. LA is nowhere near cities like Seoul with their public transportation system, and they're not even going that direction, so planning for air quality with transportation that will exist is going to be necessary for more population. For that matter, even cities like Tulsa are developing serious air quality problems - how many "Ozone alerts" do they go through in any one summer? Since I haven't lived there for a number of years, I don't know now, but it is a health issue. Will electric vehicles get us there? Probably not by itself, but it is likely a step in that direction. Since it is a health issue for my kids' and my grandkids' generations, I think us old farts who won't be here when they are dealing with the situation might want to listen to what concerns them and lend our experience and expertise where it is helpful. For companies like GM, Ford, Chrysler, they all missed the boat before. They might want to pay attention to the direction of the industry and not be disrupted again, lest they wind up like Sears. That's my thought on it. There's a problem. Our kids' generation wants to work on it and do it differently from how we did it, but a lot of us are just sitting in the passenger seat saying "Ah! Get a horse!"
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