Exxon (oil market), Climate Change, Tesla

[ggies]

The coal industry is dead and the oil industry is next, it's not personal, it's straight up economics. We are moving to a clean energy society because it cost less. This article shows the job transition can be done.

I've always been a proactive person, so it's nice to see articles like these trying to think of solutions before a big job loss hits our nation at one time. If we don't do anything now to help these people, there should be no complaining from politicians or other citizens when the jobless numbers rise due to failing companies.

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The decline of the U.S. coal industry is largely out of the president’s hands, since it is influenced by global markets and the advent of cheaper energy alternatives.

In states with the most coal jobs, many workers could be retrained for the growing solar PV industry -- some at a cost of just a few thousand dollars. For many coal companies, even those filing for bankruptcy, the cost of retraining all employees would be less than a year’s pay for the CEO.

Arch Coal, which has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, paid its executives and directors more than $29 million in the year leading up to its bankruptcy filing,

Remember this company, I posted up thread about them as one of the coal companies giving money to organizations that spread the denial of climate change........

[ggies]

Great accumulation of answers to why Tesla matters.....[Only registered users can see links.]

This is a great visual to understand why EVs are so much better than ICEs:

It is complex and inefficient. You have so many parts which can fail, you need to do oil changes and other crazy stuff to maintain it.

Tesla Motor:

[Jayes]

"and other crazy stuff to maintain it." It's gotten pretty streamlined if you think about it in the grand scheme. I see where you're going with it. BUT, I dont believe for a second that there won't be any maintenance required on EV's.

As usual, thanks for the update

[ggies]

Originally Posted by Jayes "and other crazy stuff to maintain it." It's gotten pretty streamlined if you think about it in the grand scheme. I see where you're going with it. BUT, I dont believe for a second that there won't be any maintenance required on EV's. As usual, thanks for the update

Over hundred years, true. You are welcome

Tesla is working on making their drivetrains work for a million miles and that motor will work for 100 years. The key is less maintenance, far less......

Edit: Wanted to clarify that Nikola Tesla created the technology of the AC induction motor Tesla uses....that's where the name comes from....

[ggies]

This is from 2011. Wall Street had extremely high short interest on the stock (and still does today) and wanted to see Tesla fail because they didn't think they could get the Model S out. Hmmm.....I wonder how that went......onto the Model 3! Haters gonna hate!



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[ggies]

Two articles on coal.


First: [Only registered users can see links.]

Earlier this year the state passed legislation that requires utilities to stop generating electricity from coal by 2030.

After the legislation passed, Pacific Power put out a request for bids for renewable energy projects, and developers came back with prices much lower than expected.

Pacific Power spokesperson Ry Schwark. “We went out in the market and found that there is such an amount of renewable energy coming online in the next couple of years that we were basically able to move our coal-free compliance date up two years to 2028” without much of a rate impact on consumers, he said.

And then to follow, transitioning the jobs: [Only registered users can see links.]

Turek said SEI focused on recruiting miners by going to workforce offices, other career transitioning programs and using their own connections with the coal-mining sector. He said the miners’ focus on safety, as well as their experience with mechanics and electrical engineering, can be easily transferred to the solar industry.

[ggies]

oh man, I love John Oliver

"Go fuck yourself API."



EDIT: What the hell is wrong with this site lately......damn youtube code won't work......Here is the link:

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[ggies]

Wow, another impressive article by Bill McKibben. This time, he takes the view on this subject as war and that we need to come together as a nation like we did in WWII.

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This is a long article, but here are a few quotes worth mentioning:

Even if every nation in the world complies with the Paris Agreement, the world will heat up by as much as 3.5 degrees Celsius by 2100—not the 1.5 to 2 degrees promised in the pact’s preamble. And it may be too late already to meet that stated target: We actually flirted with that 1.5 degree line at the height of the El Niño warming in February, a mere 60 days after the world’s governments solemnly pledged their best efforts to slow global warming.

And if we do it by building solar factories of our own, rather than importing cheap foreign-made panels, we’ll be positioning America as the world’s dominant power in clean energy, just as our mobilization in World War II ensured our economic might for two generations. If we don’t get there first, others will: Driven by anger over smog-choked cities, the Chinese have already begun installing renewable energy at a world-beating rate.

[ggies]

So I'm not sure how many of you keep up with this, but there are more companies than Tesla going towards autonomous driving. Ford has announced their plans, GM has partnered with Lyft and then there is Uber.

The CEO of Uber said about two years ago that if Tesla could get their cars to full autonomy by 2020, they would buy 500,000 cars from them. Since then, Tesla has announced their own vision of how they see the future, so it seems Uber has moved on. Here is an article talking about Uber's first integration of their move with autonomous driving:

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Bloomberg talked to Raffi Krikorian, Uber’s engineering director, about the details: “....The goal is to wean us off of having drivers in the car, so we don’t want the public talking to our safety drivers,” Krikorian says.”

I would just like to reiterate that all these companies going towards full autonomy with ICE vehicles will still not be as cheap as autonomous EVs. First, EVs are digitally controlled which makes having autonomous software work that much better. Second, the cost per mile over a long-term time line will be crazy cheap due to the fact that there is less maintenance on an EV than an ICE. Like I said, Tesla is working on making their drivetrains work for a million miles....no ICE can compete with that. So economics wins again with EVs vs. ICEs.

[ggies]

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Mr. Schneiderman said that his investigation was focused less on the distant past than on relatively recent statements by Exxon Mobil related to climate change and what it means for the company’s future. In other words, the question for Mr. Schneiderman is less what Exxon knew, and more what it predicts.

But many scientists have suggested that if the world were to burn even just a portion of the oil in the ground that the industry declares on its books, the planet would heat up to such dangerous levels that “there’s no one left to burn the rest,” Mr. Schneiderman said. By that logic, Exxon Mobil will have to leave much of its oil in the ground, which means the company’s valuation of its reserves is off by a significant amount.

“If, collectively, the fossil fuel companies are overstating their assets by trillions of dollars, that’s a big deal,” Mr. Schneiderman said. And if the company’s own internal research shows that Exxon Mobil knows better, he added, “there may be massive securities fraud here.”

[ggies]

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The Tesla difference is that all that technology, power and environmental friendliness — and a few things no other car maker offers — comes in one package.

Tesla also was founded and is run by a team of people committed to the idea that the passenger car can be both exciting to drive and friendly to the environment, that performance and environmental sensibility aren’t mutually exclusive.

[ggies]

A very insightful article into the inevitable change of our transportation system. The author lists the negative impacts autonomous EVs will have on our society, but gives proactive examples of what we can do to be ready for this change.

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This gives companies like Google, Tesla, GM, Ford, Toyota, BMW, and Nissan the confidence to promise commercial sales of fully autonomous cars by 2020, less than four years away. Once those vehicles go on sale, the pace of adoption and transition will exceed any proposed speed limit, driven by compelling economics on both the demand side (us) and supply side (taxi, transit, shuttle services)

The cost of “fueling” and maintaining electric cars is one tenth that of regular combustion engine cars, and the parking would be cheaper since most vehicles could be stored in distant locations the little time they are not in use.

[ggies]

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The Model S P100D with Ludicrous mode is the third fastest accelerating production car ever produced, with a 0-60 mph time of 2.5 seconds.

[Jayes]

Enjoying the reading

[ggies]

Originally Posted by Jayes Enjoying the reading

[MaLaKaS]

I really want a Model 3

[ggies]

Originally Posted by MaLaKaS I really want a Model 3

yay! and yeah ya do!

This was on my Facebook 'On this day' feed today that I shared two years ago and thought I would share it with you guys. I love this energy fact:

"The amount of energy humans use annually, about 4.6 x 10^20 joules, is delivered to Earth by the Sun in one hour. The enormous power that the Sun continuously delivers to Earth, 1.2 x 10^5 terawatts, dwarfs every other energy source, renewable or nonrenewable."

[Caveat Emperor]

Originally Posted by ggies A very insightful article into the inevitable change of our transportation system. The author lists the negative impacts autonomous EVs will have on our society, but gives proactive examples of what we can do to be ready for this change. [Only registered users can see links.]

This is a pretty important point that really might be better suited for the Politics thread, but we're standing on the edge right now of a few technologies that will severely disrupt our economy. Self-driving cars (and, by extension, self-driving trucks) will decimate an entire sector of the economy, with no ready solutions as to where those people will go when their industry is basically shuttered.

We can't really stop this technology from happening, and the end result may be very beneficial for a lot of people, but there's going to be a lot of pain for millions of people while the changeover happens.

[ggies]

Originally Posted by Caveat Emperor This is a pretty important point that really might be better suited for the Politics thread, but we're standing on the edge right now of a few technologies that will severely disrupt our economy. Self-driving cars (and, by extension, self-driving trucks) will decimate an entire sector of the economy, with no ready solutions as to where those people will go when their industry is basically shuttered. We can't really stop this technology from happening, and the end result may be very beneficial for a lot of people, but there's going to be a lot of pain for millions of people while the changeover happens.

Oh most definitely and I agree, we really have to be proactive like the article says. And yes, we can't stop the technology, it's part of what we do - we advance.

So instead of the playing politics with people lives, we need to come together as a nation and work at this. This is why I can't stand this Presidential election this year. We ARE on the verge of a major change of how life works and lobbyists from the oil industry/Koch brothers won't stop it.

It's actually quite exciting - we are on the next major change in how the human race operates. We get to live and see the change and our children and their children will get to live in it. It's like the generation from 1903-1913 that saw the transformation from horses to cars.

[ggies]

So bringing it back to the reason we need EVs and sustainable energy (autonomous cars are just an added bonus), this is a beautifully written article on climate change.

Piers Sellers, a former astronaut, paints a great picture at the beginning of this on how amazing the world is, really brings you down to a level that we are all in this together.

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Some great quotes after his intro:

All of this is placing quite a demand on the resources of our little home planet. The facts of climate change are straightforward: there’s been a warming surge over the past hundred years, with a dramatic uptick in this new century. We are seeing the effects in the shrinking of the summer Arctic sea ice and the melting of the Greenland glaciers. That melt, in turn, has been partly responsible for the three-inch rise in sea levels since 1992. The Earth is warming, the ice is melting, and sea level is rising. These are observed facts.

Almost all the accepted theories that we use in the physical and biological sciences are not open to different interpretations depending on someone’s opinion, internal beliefs, gut feelings, or lobbying. In the science world, two and two make four.

And this is where politics and science can find themselves at cross purposes. In many political discussions, climate science gets treated like family planning or tax restructuring.