Another "you can't make this #### up" story
- Thread starter PsyOps
- Start date
PsyOps
Pixelated
My apologies.
PsyOps
Pixelated
I know this sort of tax has been a thing for some time, but the way Buttigieg put it... "We're going to destroy the gasoline market to save the environment, which will cause less taxes for us, so we have to tax people that are saving the environment."
glhs837
Power with Control
I know this sort of tax has been a thing for some time, but the way Buttigieg put it... "We're going to destroy the gasoline market to save the environment, which will cause less taxes for us, so we have to tax people that are saving the environment."
That sort of thinking is like holding back the tide. Gas as a fuel will go away, leaving [petroleum for things its better suited for than burning, like plastics and lubricants. But those millions or cars on the roads wont go away over night, 15-20 years easy for most of them to be gone, if that fast.
Hijinx
Well-Known Member
It will take a hundred years to build that many batteries.
But let's just mention the wind generators. They last 20 years, They use a lot of petroleum products for lubrication, the blades ice up in the cold and helicopters have to fly to de-ice them, When they wear out the blades do not just go away right now they are burying them to get rid of them. Really environmentally sound-------------------my ass.
Grumpy
Well-Known Member
1876: "The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys." — William Preece, British Post Office.
1876: "This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication." — William Orton, President of Western Union.
1889: “Fooling around with alternating current (AC) is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever.” — Thomas Edison
1903: “The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty – a fad.” — President of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford’s lawyer, Horace Rackham, not to invest in the Ford Motor Company.
1921: “The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to no one in particular?”
1946: "Television won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night." — Darryl Zanuck, 20th Century Fox.
1955: "Nuclear powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality within 10 years." — Alex Lewyt, President of the Lewyt Vacuum Cleaner Company.
1959: "Before man reaches the moon, your mail will be delivered within hours from New York to Australia by guided missiles. We stand on the threshold of rocket mail." — Arthur Summerfield, U.S. Postmaster General.
1961: "There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television or radio service inside the United States." — T.A.M. Craven, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) commissioner.
1966: "Remote shopping, while entirely feasible, will flop.” — Time Magazine.
1981: “Cellular phones will absolutely not replace local wire systems.” — Marty Cooper, inventor.
1995: "I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse." — Robert Metcalfe, founder of 3Com.
2005: "There's just not that many videos I want to watch." — Steve Chen, CTO and co-founder of YouTube expressing concerns about his company’s long term viability.
2021: "It will take a hundred years to build that many batteries..'" — Gurps, News Aggregator
Louise
Well-Known Member
Yes, and they don’t compost when they are buried; and kill birds before they are replaced. Doesn’t make any sense at all. Welcome to America. Our Gov sucks, no matter which side you are on. Our Founding Fathers are responsible for global warming because they have been rolling in their graves for over 200 years.
Louise
Well-Known Member
OMG
It”s not funny. I don’t care about me, but I care about what my children and grandchildren, and what they will face.
WingsOfGold
Well-Known Member
Does this mean I can SELL my surplus miles????? 
Buttiplug, you go girl!
Buttiplug, you go girl!
WingsOfGold
Well-Known Member
Well, yeah, half of them anyway.
PsyOps
Pixelated
Well...
- I'm trying to imagine every car being replaced by battery cars.
- I'm trying to imagine every diesel-driven semi being replaced by battery-operated trucks.
- I'm trying to imagine our trains being run on batteries or solar panels.
- I'm trying to imagine how power plants will produce power to every person and business using solar panel farms and windmill farms (without butchering birds and destroying the ecosystems that these massive farms will occupy).
- I'm trying to imagine how a plane will get off the ground carrying tons and tons of passengers and cargo using tons of batteries.
I think there is a big difference between providing a new technology - like electricity or the telephone - and replacing existing technology. I'm not one to say it can't be done, but it's a pipe dream thinking this will happen in our lifetime. Our fossil resources are limited. We will eventually dry it up. So, it's prudent to invent new means to produce energy. But, doing it on some false premise that the world will come to an end because we are causing global warming is not going to get us there.
PsyOps
Pixelated
They'll be fine, like every generation has figured out a way to work through these sorts of things. I'm just fed up with people telling me we're destroying the globe and we need the government to fix it, therefore they need to take over the energy sector.
SamSpade
Well-Known Member
OMG
No kidding. A hundred and fifty years of failed guesses about our technological future - both for and against technologies - just shows that we have a very long history of people making huge mistakes. Some of them have even been made by the inventors themselves or otherwise famous people.
In similar fashion - others have long since conjectured that the planet could not sustain anywhere near the poppulation it now possesses - I could run my mouth all day spouting Malthusian projections of mass starvation.
We were supposed to run out of oil worldwide last year - multiple predictions. The Earth was supposed to be 6 degrees warmer by now. The snows of Kiliminjaro were supposed to be gone.
Ditto the environmental devastation the planet was supposed to have - remember, by this time the northern ice cap was supposed to be gone and navigation through the Arctic was supposed to be wide open.
Of course, there have been REALLY GOOD predictions with regard to technology as well. We were supposed to have video phone calls; wearable computers; we'd buy more stuff online than in person, and we'd pay all our bills online; robots in our homes; GPS everywhere; robotic prosthetics; watch movies on our computers; digital photography; GPS - and so on. LOTS of stuff has been predicted and came true.
LOTS of technologies - came and went. Floppies, VCRs, cassettes and CDs are gone. Personal digital assistants have been replaced with tablets and smartphones. Smartphones are so ubiquitous - it is HARD to find a 'dumb' one.
ONE thing however I've noticed has driven technologies to arrive and others, not to. Consumer interest. Remember the "killer app" - a term no longer in vogue? The phrase referred to how an APPLICATION of a given technology DRIVES the consumption and advance of that technology. Word processing drove the need for PCS - and printers. Ditto spreadsheets. Desktop publishing advanced the GUI interface. The World Wide Web - the web page - advanced the Internet - which had existed for years.
GIVE people a reason to buy your product - find an advantage for them to use something - and they will do your work FOR you. War is particularly good for this - create a weapon that gives you a huge advantage - a bow, a sword, a gun, a cannon, a machine gun, an airplane, a helicopter, a missile - and people will advance it because it keeps them alive. Ships, trains, trucks gained popularity because they moved goods instead of just people.
Right now, too many in government think that MONEY and INVESTMENT popularizes a technology. You want electric cars? Make an affordable car with a battery that recharges in minutes and can go 500 miles on a charge. Make it CHEAPER to maintain. The big tech companies are starting to realize some of this - they're no longer making cell phones or software with marginal increases in speed, efficiency and capability but significantly greater costs. They need the "killer app" - the reason to make it SO compelling, we will easily choose it.
SamSpade
Well-Known Member
As a friend once observed - himself a HUGE believer in green technologies - "it's hard to beat digging a hole in the ground and getting something as energy dense as oil".
plenty of desert out west
the other option depopulation by removal or 75 million Trump Supporters
SamSpade
Well-Known Member
The concern with this is - we have a limited amount of land - but a considerable GROWTH in the need for electricity.
Some years ago we had the "Pickens Plan" - the idea of achieving energy independence by a MASSIVE investment on wind energy, literally covering all of our unused land with windmills - and just barely pulling even.
Every bit as troublesome as greenhouse gases is the constant generation of HEAT from various sources - including electricity.
PsyOps
Pixelated
I remember learning about how people fueled their lamps before electricity. The whale population was nearly destroyed providing the fuel for lamps. That was, until kerosene was invented. Now we have electricity, which is provided primarily by fossil fuels. The first power plant was coal-driven. Our power plants have been run by fossil fuels for nearly 140 years. We have learned to do it cleaner and more efficiently. Going from coal to nature gas was a pretty easy transition. Making the leap from gas to solar or windmill is a much larger leap.
This doesn't even address the impact on the economy by destroying an entire industry - fossil fuels.
The Trouble With Solar Waste
The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) in 2016 estimated there was about 250,000 metric tonnes of solar panel waste in the world at the end of that year. IRENA projected that this amount could reach 78 million metric tonnes by 2050.
Solar panels often contain lead, cadmium, and other toxic chemicals that cannot be removed without breaking apart the entire panel. “Approximately 90% of most PV modules are made up of glass,” notes San Jose State environmental studies professor Dustin Mulvaney. “However, this glass often cannot be recycled as float glass due to impurities. Common problematic impurities in glass include plastics, lead, cadmium and antimony.”
So what, we just bury them? When the lead and cadmium leech out into the groundwater we just ignore it and create Love Canals all over the country?