@bison

Quote:

bison wrote: @bhabbott Quote: So Elon Musk is about the future of automobiles, right? Maybe, maybe not. It will be hard to generate enough electricity for everyone to drive electric cars without relying on nuclear power, or burning a lot of coal, and neither is politically popular.

This century's promise of an electromagnetic future cannot be fulfilled without nuclear energy.
1. Modern nuclear fission power plants are extremely clean, and for all intents and purposes are impervious to meltdowns.
2. The popularity of a thing can always be altered, much like the case with Black Pearls. Also technically, upcoming fusion plants are nuclear.

Last edited by agami on 18-May-2022 at 09:39 AM.

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@bhabbott @Jose

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I'm all for bad actors being held responsible for their actions, including their lies. But I would rather know what they are lying about than not. If Musk can take the heat for making Twitter an unmoderated cesspool I'm all for it. Let's embolden the bad actors to tell us what they really think, then we can judge them accordingly.

Quote:

Sure, and who'll protect the rest from the new protectors ? Most of the problems of social media today are not even because of misinformation, it's because of outright censorship of completely valid information and there is a huge potential for the new misinformation ministries

The real trouble is where creating a lazy society, that only have time to read the headlines, or a story within 120 charters when there a usually a lot more to it. Plus media and social media, must make the headlines stand out for a more for the clicks, we all seen the "You wont believe what happened!" , "Outrageous Comments made by.." , "Horrific Moment", "Shocking Scenes" then you click on the stuff and its a load of crap, now have they lied?

https://twitter.com/emmyale/status/512995048787832832
Here a perfect example of things can be twisted, there a picture of Tony Blair (UK PM) while the iraq war war on, now Im not a big fan of him, but it show him putting his feet up on a coffin, now it fake, but I can see how easy it is for people to fall for, but i keep seeing it every now again by people who dont know any better and say Never vote Labour, it creates hate, now usually it gets pointed out it was fake to this person but guaranteed next election it will creep online again, should it be banned, i dont know but stuff like this isnt good for our society, and when it come to health information it get even more nuance, I dont have the answers because like i said Im more free speech, I feel that I can spot most scam, but there a reason why Scam are popular in the society, it because they work, millions fall for them every year and I think it is unfortunately a thing that has to be taken into account of all out free speech.

Last edited by amigang on 18-May-2022 at 11:09 AM.

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@agami

Quote:

1. Modern nuclear fission power plants are extremely clean, and for all intents and purposes are impervious to meltdowns.

And don't need to be built near heavy populate areas, coastal areas, or recreational zones.

Just put a bunch of them in the desert between L.A. and L.V. and be done. That'll solve the political induced California energy crisis.

@matthey

Quote:

matthey wrote: In my opinion, gasoline powered vehicles still have the convenience and cost advantage over EVs while they can continue to improve in fuel mileage as EVs improve.

I highly doubt that. There's a reason Volkswagen had to cheat on their emission tests.

The New Zealand government recently reduced the tax on fuel in an effort to keep the price down, but it's still going up - NZ$2.83/l (~US$6.75/gal) the last time I looked. Meanwhile I'm paying the equivalent of $0.50/l for electricity (and I'm on a high rate due to my low usage).

As for convenience, I just plug it in at home. Don't have to go out of my way to fill up at a gas station, don't have so much downtime for maintenance, don't have to warm the engine up to get it running properly on cold mornings - just jump in and go! The smooth quiet instant power and lack of fumes are nice too.

Quote:

I can see both being successful

Gas cars are being quite successful at stuffing the planet, but I'm not sure how 'successful' that will be for us.

Quote:

We need diverse energy sources including oil, natural gas and green energy. Many of the liberals here in the U.S. used to be for diverse energy sources but radicals moved them to the left with an exaggeration of environmental damage.

'Radicals', like the scientists who have been warning us for years about what would happen if we didn't get off fossil fuels, and now it's happening?

@agami

Quote:

1. Modern nuclear fission power plants are extremely clean, and for all intents and purposes are impervious to meltdowns.

I don't really buy this. No matter how safe they are to run, the waste they produce is not safe and once their operational life is over, they pose the same decommissioning challenge as every other fission plant. The materials the reactor cores are constructed from can only absorb so many stray neutrons before they become contaminated with all sorts of radioisotopes.

I don't necessarily buy that fusion is going to be much better in the immediate short term either. If fusing deuterium is the plan then most of the reaction energy is released in a thermal neutron that has to be captured in order to extract usable heat. On the plus side, as soon as you cut the power, you aren't left with a bunch of hot, radioactive fuel pellets to worry about.

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@Karlos

Quote:

I don't really buy this. No matter how safe they are to run, the waste they produce is not safe and once their operational life is over, they pose the same decommissioning challenge as every other fission plant. The materials the reactor cores are constructed from can only absorb so many stray neutrons before they become contaminated with all sorts of radioisotopes.

The nuclear waste argument is blown way out of proportion, e.g. The combined waste produced from all US nuclear power plants to date can fit in the space of a football pitch, to a depth of about 10m. Most of which is from Gen I and Gen II reactors.

Gen III+ rectors are designed to use improved fuel, which allows for greater recycling of fuel for secondary and tertiary uses, prior to storing it safely. They run safer and for much longer.

While I am a big fan of renewables, they will not be able to power the mid-century demands of ~9.5B people. All things considered, nuclear is way better than fossil fuel powered plants.

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@agami,

This highlights the need for micro reactors, enough to run a city, that's it. to go big would require the need to rebuild the whole grid, NO. Way to much at once, start with parts and pieces, local. But local Governments can't control "their" wants, they spend too much and it will never happen.

Chris

bhabbott Quote:

I highly doubt that. There's a reason Volkswagen had to cheat on their emission tests.

Emissions are not the same as fuel mileage and Volkswagen cheating does not imply anything about the difficulty of emissions testing. Part of the problem is that there are hard limits on types of vehicle emissions where a reduction in one type should be able to offset another that is over the limit. More flexibility like this could allow vehicles to get better fuel mileage without increasing overall emissions and would be easier for automobile manufacturers. Still, the majority of internal combustion engine vehicle manufacturers are meeting standards and there is room for improvement.

Why Gas Engines Are Far From Dead - Biggest EV Problems
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hatav_Rdnno

EVs are being subsidized which encourages EV mal-investment where investment in internal combustion engine improvements is more practical according to the EV owning author of the video I linked above. He has some very good arguments. There can be hidden environmental costs in supposedly green energy replacements as well. EVs have an environmental cost which the following video explores.

Are Electric Cars Worse For The Environment? Myth Busted
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RhtiPefVzM

Yes, EVs are usually better for the planet if considering CO2 as evil. I believe the detrimental effects of CO2 are exaggerated while the beneficial effects are often ignored like increased agriculture output. Other pollutants are far worse and have been reduced with positive effects. The most problematic environmental degradation I believe comes from chopping down half the rain forests in recent history. We have also recently been in a solar maximum which likely contributed to increased temperatures (the Little Ice Age occurred during the solar Maunder Minimum). Getting back to EVs, Tesla was recently kicked out of the S&P 500 ESG index.

Quote:

While Tesla’s stated mission is to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy, in February this year it settled with the Environmental Protection Agency after years of Clean Air Act violations and neglecting to track its own emissions. Tesla ranked 22nd on last year’s Toxic 100 Air Polluters Index, compiled annually by U-Mass Amherst Political Economy Research Institute — worse than Exxon Mobil, which came in 26th. (The index uses data from 2019, the most recently available.) In Tesla’s first-quarter filing the company also disclosed it is being investigated for its handling of waste in the state of California, and that it had to pay a fine in Germany for failures to meet “take back” obligations in the country for spent batteries.

Why Tesla was kicked out of the S&P 500′s ESG index
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/18/why-tesla-was-kicked-out-of-the-sp-500s-esg-index.html

Unfortunately, much of the climate change hype has become as much about political correctness as science. Many people want to be environmentally responsible but it is not so clear what that is. In more than a few cases, what were thought were science and technology advancements actually ended up being the opposite.

bhabbott Quote:

The New Zealand government recently reduced the tax on fuel in an effort to keep the price down, but it's still going up - NZ$2.83/l (~US$6.75/gal) the last time I looked. Meanwhile I'm paying the equivalent of $0.50/l for electricity (and I'm on a high rate due to my low usage).

Russia was one of the biggest oil exporters and it takes a while for the rest of the world to increase oil production. Oil companies were trying to be put out of business for environmental reasons. They have had to self finance and have become very conservative. Saudi Arabia is one of the few nations that could boost production by a moderate amount in a short time period. Oil is still only about $4/gal here which is reasonable. Liberals have tried to tax gasoline out of existence as well. I expect oil prices to be higher in the last decades of oil use even as moving away from it is not easy.

Isn't it ironic that you have to pay a higher rate for lower energy usage? That is the price of conserving? California mandated and subsidized people to install solar panels which raised taxes but the big surprise came when utility companies were not making enough money to provide minimum service so had to increase charges as well. It's like double taxes from subsidizing the solar panels and then paying the higher utility charges. It's one of the reasons why there is a mass exodus from California. Lowering those CO2 emissions is necessary at all costs including self sacrifice. The best is the UK's Ovo Energy utility company recommending to "cuddle pets and eat porridge to stay warm".

Ovo Energy sorry over advice to cuddle pets to stay warm
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59946622

bhabbott Quote:

As for convenience, I just plug it in at home. Don't have to go out of my way to fill up at a gas station, don't have so much downtime for maintenance, don't have to warm the engine up to get it running properly on cold mornings - just jump in and go! The smooth quiet instant power and lack of fumes are nice too.

EVs are good for short range city driving but they aren't for everyone.

bhabbott Quote:

'Radicals', like the scientists who have been warning us for years about what would happen if we didn't get off fossil fuels, and now it's happening?

There have been many more wrong climate change predictions than right ones. The apocalypse reports have generated hysteria, are often not based on science and cost the global economy trillions of dollars.

https://nypost.com/2021/11/12/50-years-of-predictions-that-the-climate-apocalypse-is-nigh/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/11/25/why-everything-they-say-about-climate-change-is-wrong/

http://www.energycapitaled.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Seven-Big-Failed-Environmentalist-Predictions.pdf

There were predictions of global cooling back in the '70s. There were predictions of mass starvation when crop production has increased while prices declined. Al Gore predicted mass worldwide flooding with sea levels rising by up to 20 feet “in the near future”.

https://scienceline.org/2008/12/ask-rettner-sea-level-rise-al-gore-an-inconvenient-truth/

The same people that keep getting it wrong keep selling their message though. Easier than predicting climate change is predicting that someone new will predict that we have less than 10 years left before the end of the world if we don't spend trillions of dollars now to stop climate change. Putin was funding green groups spreading the message while he was making a killing selling Russian oil. We found out recently the big lie about green energy's capacity to fuel the world. Germany shutting down their nuclear power while turning off the pipeline to Russia is a disaster. The UK is having to cuddle their pets to stay warm as BP has become a green energy company. Science is on the liberal extremist side according to them though.

Last edited by matthey on 19-May-2022 at 02:09 PM.

@matthey
Yes, all vehicular locomotion depends on a network of energy supply. Before the advent of refueling stations, one had to bring enough fuel for the entire journey, much like an off-road vehicle venturing way into the desert, today.

The challenge for EV "refueling" is that currently even rapid charging takes a fair amount longer than pouring hydrocarbon fluids into a tank. Here in Australia, most things are well spread out, and EVs are impractical outside the inner-city daily commutes.

While there are some very promising battery technologies on the way, the likely scenario for removing fossil fuels from the current car/truck/bus/train/ship/airplane networks is the adoption of hydrogen fuel cells.

What's more, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are essentially electric vehicles. Much like cargo and off-grid trains which use a diesel engine as an electric generator.
Future vehicles can be both battery based for short trips, and hydrogen based for long journeys.

So I don't know exactly when the last gas station will replace that last pump that serves unleaded/diesel, but the countdown has started.

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@agami
Fuel cells are a promising technology that has been around for a long time and is maturing along with battery technology. They provide high efficiency fuel to electricity conversion which works well with batteries in a hybrid setup. There are already practical fuel cell vehicles on the road in mostly Japan and the U.S. (primarily California).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fuel_cell_vehicles

The fuel cells reduce the need for EV large batteries which are environmentally less friendly to produce, add weight to the vehicle decreasing efficiency and take up vehicle space. Hydrogen refueling is relatively fast and likely cheaper than EV fast charging stations. Hydrogen fuel cells produce water so have relatively no emissions. It sounds good so why why isn't hydrogen replacing gasoline?

1. Hydrogen is much more expensive than gasoline although dropping in price. 95% of hydrogen is produced from natural gas which produces CO2.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production#Environmental_impact Quote:

As of 2020, most hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels, resulting in carbon dioxide emissions. This is often referred to as grey hydrogen when emissions are released to the atmosphere, and blue hydrogen when emissions are captured through carbon capture and storage (CCS). Blue hydrogen has been estimated to have a greenhouse gas footprint 20% greater than burning gas or coal for heat and 60% greater when compared to burning diesel for heat, assuming US up- and mid-stream methane leakage rates and production via steam methane reformers (SMR) retrofitted with carbon dioxide capture. The use of autothermal reformers (ATR) with integrated capture of carbon dioxide allow higher capture rates at satisfactory energy efficiencies and life cycle assessments have shown lower greenhouse gas emissions for such plants compared to SMRs with carbon dioxide capture. Application of ATR technology with integrated capture of carbon dioxide in Europe has been assessed to have a lower greenhouse gas footprint than burning natural gas, e.g. for the H21 project with a reported reduction of 68% due to a reduced carbon dioxide intensity of natural gas combined with a more suitable reactor type for capture of carbon dioxide.

There is more opportunity for carbon capture but CO2 reduction is debatable when using natural gas to produce hydrogen. Electrolysis using electricity can be used but is usually more expensive and in order for there to be an environmental benefit the electricity has to be produced from a cleaner source than natural gas which is relatively clean. Renewable sources are possible but large scale electrical production from nuclear power plants is appealing as the waste heat can be used.

2. Hydrogen does not have as good of energy density as gasoline. Large and expensive fuel tanks are required which take up vehicle space. The range can be better than EVs as at least the weight doesn't increase as fast from hydrogen fuel as from large heavy batteries but they are still not as practical as gasoline vehicles.

3. Fuel cells are expensive using rare earth elements like platinum which is more expensive than gold. Hydrogen tanks are expensive because they are pressurized, the molecule is small and can easily leak out, tanks have to be big compared to gasoline due to lower energy density and hydrogen is highly flammable so there are safety concerns. Fuel cell vehicles have so far been more expensive than EVs both of which are commonly subsidized.

Fuel cell technology will keep improving and hydrogen production costs will likely decrease but I'm not so sure it will be the technology to replace the internal combustion engine. Tesla changed their stance.

https://www.whichev.net/2022/04/01/elon-musk-announces-tesla-will-switch-to-hydrogen-in-2024/

There are other promising technologies like advanced biofuels. Alcohol made from more efficient sources than corn ethanol like switchgrass or waste could be used. There are grown fuels like algae that are interesting but likely further off.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae_fuel

Biodiesel, often produced from soybean oil, is available now, practical and improving.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiesel#Fuel_efficiency Quote:

One study found that the brake thermal efficiency of B40 was superior to traditional petroleum counterpart at higher compression ratios (this higher brake thermal efficiency was recorded at compression ratios of 21:1). It was noted that, as the compression ratios increased, the efficiency of all fuel types – as well as blends being tested – increased; though it was found that a blend of B40 was the most economical at a compression ratio of 21:1 over all other blends. The study implied that this increase in efficiency was due to fuel density, viscosity, and heating values of the fuels.

Corn ethanol is much better than tetraethyllead and MTBE as an octane boosting additive but decreases fuel mileage in comparison to biodiesels that are being formulated to increase mileage. Corn requires high inputs of fertilizer which is in short supply right now and fertilizer runoff has created a big dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico while soybeans replenish the soil.

America Was Wrong About Ethanol - Study Shows
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-yDKeya4SU

Gasoline and natural gas are wonderful and relatively clean. It will not be easy or cheap to get off hydrocarbons completely and I believe the view of CO2 as a major pollution is doomsday hysteria anyway (see my last post for links to failed environmental doomsday prophecies). The focus is too much on CO2 when many people don't even realize the environmental damage caused by tetraethyllead (TEL), CFCs, chopping down half the rain forests in recent history (often to grow biofuels), NOx, fertilizer runoff, ocean and river dumping, etc. Maybe the liberals have too much lead poisoning to recognize a true environmental disaster.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead#Toxicity Quote:

Concerns over the toxicity of lead eventually led to the ban on TEL in automobile gasoline in many countries. Some neurologists have speculated that the lead phaseout may have caused average IQ levels to rise by several points in the US (by reducing cumulative brain damage throughout the population, especially in the young). For the entire US population, during and after the TEL phaseout, the mean blood lead level dropped from 16 μg/dL in 1976 to only 3 μg/dL in 1991. The US Centers for Disease Control considered blood lead levels "elevated" when they were above 10 μg/dL.

Liberals in the U.S. are concentrated in big cities where lead contamination from traffic would have been the highest. Crime also seems to be concentrated in big cities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead#Effect_on_crime_rates Quote:

Reduction in the average blood lead level is believed to have been a major cause for falling violent crime rates in the United States. A statistically significant correlation has been found between the usage rate of leaded gasoline and violent crime: the violent crime curve virtually tracks the lead exposure curve with a 22-year time lag. After the ban on TEL, blood lead levels in US children dramatically decreased. Researchers including Amherst College economist Jessica Wolpaw Reyes, Department of Housing and Urban Development consultant Rick Nevin, and Howard Mielke of Tulane University say that declining exposure to lead is responsible for an up to 56% decline in crime from 1992 to 2002. Taking into consideration other factors that are believed to have increased crime rates over that period, Reyes found that the reduced exposure to lead led to an actual decline of 34% over that period.

I wonder if paranoia is one of the mental problems caused by lead. Maybe paranoia leads to hysteria.

Last edited by matthey on 21-May-2022 at 12:30 AM.
Last edited by matthey on 20-May-2022 at 11:42 PM.

@matthey

Quote:

A modern Amiga could easily be run from a small solar panel because of its minimalist design. The Vampire V4+ SA uses about 2W of power but an ASIC uses 1/3 to 1/6 of the power of an FPGA so roughly .5W. This is without power gating to turn off unused units which could reduce this further. A solar panel on a case or the lid of a laptop could generate 2-5 Watts depending on the size and light level so an Amiga as powerful as a Vampire or 68060@100MHz with Amiga custom chips could easily be powered by a small solar panel. The 68060 used power gating to reduce power to a peak of 3.9W at 50MHz nearly 30 years ago. This would be about 2.6W TDP as Intel uses today. The Vampire V4+ SA has 512MiB of memory, large caches compared to the 68060, the SAGA chipset and still draws less power using a FPGA which shows how much of a difference nearly 30 years of technology makes.

Such a device doesn't pass the Crysis test or Doom Eternal Vulkan or Cyberpunk. Telsa vehicles with AMD APU + Navi 23 10 TFLOPS shaders with 11 TFLOPS raytracing GPU can run Cyberpunk games.

SpaceX revealed that the Falcon 9 uses Linux as its operating system and three redundant computers based on dual-core x86 processors.

Last edited by Hammer on 21-May-2022 at 03:13 AM.

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@matthey

Quote:

matthey wrote: 1. Hydrogen is much more expensive than gasoline although dropping in price. 95% of hydrogen is produced from natural gas which produces CO2.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production
Methane pyrolysis method, The industrial quality solid carbon can then be sold as manufacturing feedstock or landfilled, it is not released into the atmosphere and does not pollute groundwater in landfills.

Try again

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@matthey

Quote:

matthey wrote: Fuel cell technology will keep improving and hydrogen production costs will likely decrease but I'm not so sure it will be the technology to replace the internal combustion engine. Tesla changed their stance. https://www.whichev.net/2022/04/01/elon-musk-announces-tesla-will-switch-to-hydrogen-in-2024/

1st April 2022

Hydrogen is a great way to go, where do you get it? Electrolysis? You must produce to put into it to get the energy you get out, no. You still need more power plants with no gain. Fusion is not too far off at last report.

Use all profit from oil and gas and put it to Fusion research. in the end we will be much better off faster..

Chris

Last edited by QuikSanz on 21-May-2022 at 06:13 AM.

@matthey

Quote:

matthey wrote: Emissions are not the same as fuel mileage and Volkswagen cheating does not imply anything about the difficulty of emissions testing.

Sure it does. Diesel is inherently dirty. Modern diesel vehicles use various tricks to reduce the pollution, which is balanced against performance. Volkswagen promoted their vehicles as being cleaner and more powerful than competitors, but the engineers couldn't deliver - so they cheated. Think about that. One of the biggest and most respected auto companies in the World, with top notch German engineering and design - and it was too difficult for them.

Europe embraced diesel because it was supposed to be less polluting due to the higher efficiency of diesel engines, therefore making it more friendly to the environment because it should produce less CO2. But it turned out that the practical efficiency gain was very small, and other pollutants such as NO2 and particulates actually made it dirtier than petrol. This is typical of the efforts made by the automotive industry to clean up their act.

A few years ago I noticed car manufacturers and fossil fuel advocates making claims about IC engine improvements that seemed 'optimistic' at best. So when news of Volkswagen/s cheating came out I was not at all surprised. Any gas car company that touts their products as being 'clean' is lying. Now matter how much they try to hide it, the fact remains that for every kg of petrol or diesel that goes into an IC engine, 3 kg comes out as CO2.

World oil production is ~90 million barrels per day, weighing 12 thousand million kg - most of which becomes petrol, diesel, aviation gas or heating oil which is then burned. Whichever way you look at it that's a massive amount of pollution (if you don't think vehicle emissions are polluting, please put your mouth up to the tailpipe of a running engine and breath it in to prove me wrong). We all know it, but because it's mostly invisible we can put it out of our minds and pretend it isn't happening. And eking out a few percent of improved engine efficiency (if that is even possible) won't significantly reduce it.

Quote:

Part of the problem is that there are hard limits on types of vehicle emissions where a reduction in one type should be able to offset another that is over the limit. More flexibility like this could allow vehicles to get better fuel mileage without increasing overall emissions and would be easier for automobile manufacturers. Still, the majority of internal combustion engine vehicle manufacturers are meeting standards and there is room for improvement.

The problem is simple - fossil fuel IC engines are inherently dirty, and no amount of engineering short of capturing the emissions will stop them from being dirty. In practice this can only be done by a small amount without making the engine far too expensive. So we try to make the fuel burn 'cleaner', convert the nastier stuff into something more 'benign', and just let the CO2 go into the atmosphere.

Quote:

EVs are being subsidized which encourages EV mal-investment where investment in internal combustion engine improvements is more practical according to the EV owning author of the video I linked above. He has some very good arguments.

Any arguments that start with that premise are not worth listening to. The fossil fuel industry has had a century of mal-investment which is having a devastating environmental and economic effect. The subsidy on electric cars is just to get the ball rolling, little more than a token gesture at redressing the balance and providing a level playing field.

New Zealand didn't have any subsidies for electric cars until last year, so I got nothing when I bought my Leaf 3 years ago. The only bone they threw us was no road user charges, since that is built into the price of petrol. But even that was set to go away once more than 1% of the fleet is electric (when the tax collected would be worth the administration costs). The only reason it's changing now is that we have committed to reducing our contribution to global warming, and reducing vehicle emissions is easier than cleaning up the dairy industry (another large polluter which has been getting away with it for decades).


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There can be hidden environmental costs in supposedly green energy replacements as well. EVs have an environmental cost which the following video explores.

Everything we do has an environmental impact, and this is just as important for electric cars as any other product. But Luddites who are afraid of change will latch onto anything they can to make a tu quoque.

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Yes, EVs are usually better for the planet if considering CO2 as evil. I believe the detrimental effects of CO2 are exaggerated while the beneficial effects are often ignored like increased agriculture output.

You have no clue. While it is true that some crops in grow faster in arid conditions when more CO2 is present, they also produce less nitrogen and protein which reduces their food value. Other plants have shown opposite effects, and global warming has different effects in different places.

I live in a rural area which traditionally has hot dry summers and cool winters. But our weather is becoming both warmer and wetter, to devastating effect. Crops rotting in the fields, poor grape harvests etc., and more floods which have made farmland unusable and caused massive property damage. It's even affecting me personally. Last year insects (which normally are killed by winter frosts) practically destroyed my vegetable garden. I fly model aircraft, but our club field was out of action for 3 months last year due to flooding, and many more flying days were lost due to bad weather. Now our field is out of action again due to flooding, and it isn't even winter yet!

Quote:

Other pollutants are far worse and have been reduced with positive effects. The most problematic environmental degradation I believe comes from chopping down half the rain forests in recent history. We have also recently been in a solar maximum which likely contributed to increased temperatures (the Little Ice Age occurred during the solar Maunder Minimum).

All these things have been taken into account.

Yes, cutting down and burning the forests was a bad idea. Digging coal out of the ground and burning it was worse, and sucking oil and gas out the ground and burning it was worse again due to the sheer scale. Combating global warming involves more than just reducing fossil fuel usage, changing agricultural practices is another big part of it - including reforestation. Luckily tress grow relatively quickly, but in a warming world some forests are also struggling to survive. Warmer weather has caused insect populations to explode, and dried out trees resulting in a huge increase in wildfires.

Quote:

Getting back to EVs, Tesla was recently kicked out of the S&P 500 ESG index. While Tesla’s stated mission is to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy, in February this year it settled with the Environmental Protection Agency after years of Clean Air Act violations and neglecting to track its own emissions. Tesla ranked 22nd on last year’s Toxic 100 Air Polluters Index, compiled annually by U-Mass Amherst Political Economy Research Institute — worse than Exxon Mobil, which came in 26th. (The index uses data from 2019, the most recently available.) In Tesla’s first-quarter filing the company also disclosed it is being investigated for its handling of waste in the state of California, and that it had to pay a fine in Germany for failures to meet “take back” obligations in the country for spent batteries.

This doesn't really have anything to do with EVs. Tesla got 'kicked out of' the S&P index for purported staff treatment issues and some peculiar calculation of air quality that apparently excludes dumping billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.

As for the violations, Tesla is no different from any other corporation working within our capitalist economy. That is why we need government oversight to ensure that companies meet all their obligations while they are focusing on their goals. I would be more concerned if Tesla wasn't cited for any violations, as it would indicate the EPA etc. were not doing their job. But let's not for a moment think that Tesla is even close to being as bad as oil companies with their history of massive oils spills etc., and that's not even taking into account the toxic products they sell.


Quote:

Unfortunately, much of the climate change hype has become as much about political correctness as science. Many people want to be environmentally responsible but it is not so clear what that is. In more than a few cases, what were thought were science and technology advancements actually ended up being the opposite.

Unfortunately all the anti climate change hype has been about politics not science. People want to be environmentally responsible, but the deniers are trying to make it unclear what it is. In every case, what were purportedly scientific arguments against combating global warming ended up being the opposite.

Quote:

Liberals have tried to tax gasoline out of existence as well.

Not here they haven't. The tax we pay on fuel is mostly used to fund roading projects. When the price spiked due to the war in Ukraine, our 'liberal' government didn't hesitate to reduce the fuel tax even though it is facing heavy costs for fighting the pandemic.

Quote:

Isn't it ironic that you have to pay a higher rate for lower energy usage? That is the price of conserving?

Again you misunderstand. I pay a higher price per unit to compensate for a lower supply charge. This is an option my power company gives to 'low power users' who were complaining about large bills when they were using hardly any power. Previously I was on a 'pre-pay' account that had no supply charge so I only paid for the electricity I used, but then they installed smart metering and bumped me off onto the standard plan - without telling me (it took 3 months just find out what plan I was on. Oh the joys of a deregulated economy!).

FYI, the whole world isn't in a partisan fight between conservatism and liberalism. I find it rather ironic that American 'conservatives' are anti conservation. The rest of the World follows the antics of your republicans with a mixture of horror and morbid fascination of their short-sighted selfishness and stupidity. But at least you can be happy that Elon Musk has decided to join your ranks, citing that Democrats 'have become the party of division & hate' as the reason. Of course we all know the real reason. Musk is now the richest man in the world, and the power and money has gone to his head - as it usually does.

Quote:

EVs are good for short range city driving but they aren't for everyone.

I agree. That's why in New Zealand we have incentives for hybrids too, and are working on deploying hydrogen for long-haul trucking. But modern electric cars have plenty of range for the vast majority of uses. For most people the only change is that they will be charging overnight and/or at their place of work instead of going to a gas station to fill up. It doesn't take long to get used to it, and as routine as charging your cellphone.

I know it's hard to not be afraid of new technology. I'm an old geezer myself who tends to just stick with what he knows, and the Leaf was quite an adventure for me (I bought it online and it was delivered while I was away - no chance to get a driving lesson!). But I'm glad I made the leap rather than settling for another crappy gas car.

So relax, nobody's forcing you to buy an electric car if you don't want one. There may come a day when you can't buy a new gas car, and perhaps even a day when you can't get gas for it (just like the Amiga!). But that is way into the future. In New Zealand, by 2035 all new vehicles (with a few exceptions) will have to be hybrid or electric. By that time most new vehicles probably will be anyway. The majority of people in NZ don't buy new cars, so gas cars are going to be around for long time even after the cutoff date.

And it doesn't matter. In the US you could have millions of old gas guzzlers on the road and it would be fine, so long as they are a small minority of the total.


Quote:

There have been many more wrong climate change predictions than right ones. The apocalypse reports have generated hysteria, are often not based on science and cost the global economy trillions of dollars. There were predictions of global cooling back in the '70s. There were predictions of mass starvation when crop production has increased while prices declined. Al Gore predicted mass worldwide flooding with sea levels rising by up to 20 feet “in the near future”. The same people that keep getting it wrong keep selling their message though. Easier than predicting climate change is predicting that someone new will predict that we have less than 10 years left before the end of the world if we don't spend trillions of dollars now to stop climate change. Putin was funding green groups spreading the message while he was making a killing selling Russian oil. We found out recently the big lie about green energy's capacity to fuel the world. Germany shutting down their nuclear power while turning off the pipeline to Russia is a disaster. The UK is having to cuddle their pets to stay warm as BP has become a green energy company. Science is on the liberal extremist side according to them though.

Please stop parroting denier talking points.

Al Gore isn't a scientist. He got the sea level rise number wrong, and nobody is surprised. His movie wasn't a scientific paper (nevertheless he did manage to get most of it right).

Germany shut down reactors due to safety concerns. Most were about to be retired anyway, and the intention was to replace them with greener energy when it became available. Russia attacking Ukraine is a disaster for a lot more than Europe having to get off her teat a little earlier than planned, which many see as a good thing (they could have avoided the crisis by being proactive before Russia invaded, but that's what people do - not take the situation seriously until it becomes a crisis).

Putin is a murderous thug whose word I wouldn't believe on anything.

As for the rest - you can't be serious, right?

You accuse people of hyping climate change, but your objections are even more hype. Perhaps you don't realize that the news media lives on hype - it is literally what 'news' means. And they often don't care if it is true or not, only that people are titillated enough to watch it and be exposed to their clients' adverts.

To get the real science you need to go to the right sources - and they will all tell you that global warming is real, caused by us, and a problem we need to take seriously. And if you reject that...

Last edited by bhabbott on 21-May-2022 at 05:45 PM.

@matthey

Gasoline and natural gas are not wonderful and are filthy and cancer causing. The sooner we stop using them the better. Oil companies of course will continue to spread misinformation because they don’t want to loose sales and massive profits. I don’t think a product that gives you cancer is good for society.

Last edited by DiscreetFX on 22-May-2022 at 12:47 AM.

_________________
Sent from my Quantum Computer.

Hammer Quote:

Such a device doesn't pass the Crysis test or Doom Eternal Vulkan or Cyberpunk. Telsa vehicles with AMD APU + Navi 23 10 TFLOPS shaders with 11 TFLOPS raytracing GPU can run Cyberpunk games.

It would be possible to license the IP for an AMD or Nvidia GPU perhaps even one with raytracing features but it likely wouldn't be one of the cheaper options, wouldn't be open hardware and would require a fan and more expensive power supply which increases cost. It's probably not something which would be attempted as a development team's first product.

Hammer Quote:

SpaceX revealed that the Falcon 9 uses Linux as its operating system and three redundant computers based on dual-core x86 processors.

Batteries are heavy so they must need processing power. Elon seems to favor high performance CISC over low power ARM or RISC-V architectures for embedded uses. Too bad there isn't something in between with lower power than x86-64 but higher performance than RISC, like the 68k as it competed with x86 back in day.

Hammer Quote:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production Methane pyrolysis method, The industrial quality solid carbon can then be sold as manufacturing feedstock or landfilled, it is not released into the atmosphere and does not pollute groundwater in landfills. Try again

I mentioned that there was more opportunity for carbon capture with hydrogen production.

cdimauro Quote:

1st April 2022

It would have been funnier if they said the new Tesla uses a flex fuel reactor that runs off waste. The fuel reactor would have sounded close enough to a fuel cell to hook some people and there are flex fuel vehicles that can run off multiple fuels including hydrogen already. Then it would have been a nice movie reference like the following "historic event".

F-14s vs MiG-28s - May 1986, a Danger Zone in the Indian Ocean
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7HOOLd_Sto

QuikSanz Quote:

Hydrogen is a great way to go, where do you get it? Electrolysis? You must produce to put into it to get the energy you get out, no. You still need more power plants with no gain. Fusion is not too far off at last report.

Nuclear technology could solve a lot of problems and even fission has become more efficient, cleaner and safer. Still, there are safety and security risks. In my opinion, nuclear war is a far greater risk to earth than man made CO2 pollution and that threat may grow with nuclear fusion technology. Already nuclear powers have nuclear power generation plants as targets for nuclear ICBMs to knock out energy and thus industrial production. There are leaders, terrorists and mentally ill people who would use nuclear weapons if they could yet we have minimal ways to stop them. Eastern flight 5375 of a 737-800 in China was likely an intentional nose dive into the ground which couldn't be stopped and it is not the first. How then can we stop someone from destroying Earth with more and more powerful nuclear weapons?

QuikSanz Quote:

Use all profit from oil and gas and put it to Fusion research. in the end we will be much better off faster..

Our pets would get a lot of love that way, at least before freezing to death. I guess wood could be burned to stay warm but that pollutes more than high tech burning of natural gas and oil.

bhabbott Quote:

Sure it does. Diesel is inherently dirty. Modern diesel vehicles use various tricks to reduce the pollution, which is balanced against performance. Volkswagen promoted their vehicles as being cleaner and more powerful than competitors, but the engineers couldn't deliver - so they cheated. Think about that. One of the biggest and most respected auto companies in the World, with top notch German engineering and design - and it was too difficult for them.

Speculative. Volkswagen may have cheated just to save cost instead of doing proper and expensive engineering. There was a metallurgist that fudged testing numbers for U.S. submarine hull steel for more than 30 years but it appears it had little to do with difficulty of engineering or even financial gain.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/08/us/metallurgist-navy-false-steel-tests.html

bhabbott Quote:

Europe embraced diesel because it was supposed to be less polluting due to the higher efficiency of diesel engines, therefore making it more friendly to the environment because it should produce less CO2. But it turned out that the practical efficiency gain was very small, and other pollutants such as NO2 and particulates actually made it dirtier than petrol. This is typical of the efforts made by the automotive industry to clean up their act.

Particulates are the biggest problem with diesel but there are ways to remove them. The standards are likely set based on gasoline internal combustion engines where the requirements should be more flexible if other pollutants are reduced. The fuel mileage is often reduced to lower certain emissions to meet hard limits but this increases CO2.

bhabbott Quote:

A few years ago I noticed car manufacturers and fossil fuel advocates making claims about IC engine improvements that seemed 'optimistic' at best. So when news of Volkswagen/s cheating came out I was not at all surprised. Any gas car company that touts their products as being 'clean' is lying. Now matter how much they try to hide it, the fact remains that for every kg of petrol or diesel that goes into an IC engine, 3 kg comes out as CO2. World oil production is ~90 million barrels per day, weighing 12 thousand million kg - most of which becomes petrol, diesel, aviation gas or heating oil which is then burned. Whichever way you look at it that's a massive amount of pollution (if you don't think vehicle emissions are polluting, please put your mouth up to the tailpipe of a running engine and breath it in to prove me wrong). We all know it, but because it's mostly invisible we can put it out of our minds and pretend it isn't happening. And eking out a few percent of improved engine efficiency (if that is even possible) won't significantly reduce it.

Internal combustion engines are pretty clean with modern technology. They are no worse and often better than anything else burning but you treat this like something horrible with no tolerance. Even farting is pollution to you and worse so if it lit on fire. I think you are brain washed by the absurd green movement and you think I'm some crazy biased pro-hydrocarbon fanatic. I don't have any problem with renewable and cleaner energy sources but it is not necessary to destroy the world economy to reduce already cleaned up and cheap hydrocarbon use. The nasty pollutants are on the decline.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_dioxide#Environmental_limits Quote:

The U.S. EPA has set safety levels for environmental exposure to NO2 at 100 ppb, averaged over one hour, and 53 ppb, averaged annually. As of February 2016, no area of the US was out of compliance with these limits and concentrations ranged between 10 and 20 ppb, and annual average ambient NO2 concentrations, as measured at area-wide monitors, have decreased by more than 40% since 1980.

CO2 keeps increasing but it takes a lot to move the needle and is minimally directly harmful to humans yet has become a no tolerance hysteria battle cry of the world ending in 10 more years or whatever environmentalist wants to one up the last and shorten the time period despite the missed predictions.

bhabbott Quote:

The problem is simple - fossil fuel IC engines are inherently dirty, and no amount of engineering short of capturing the emissions will stop them from being dirty. In practice this can only be done by a small amount without making the engine far too expensive. So we try to make the fuel burn 'cleaner', convert the nastier stuff into something more 'benign', and just let the CO2 go into the atmosphere.

Are you aware that internal combustion engines can burn hydrogen?

2H2 + O2 -> 2H2O + energy

There can be traces of NOx (NO2 and NO) which you will probably complain about because you have zero tolerance. Clean is not clean enough. You are programmed in your thinking.

bhabbott Quote:

Any arguments that start with that premise are not worth listening to. The fossil fuel industry has had a century of mal-investment which is having a devastating environmental and economic effect. The subsidy on electric cars is just to get the ball rolling, little more than a token gesture at redressing the balance and providing a level playing field.

Unfortunately, hydrocarbon production has received some unnecessary subsidizing. Environmentalists often like to exaggerate the tax treatment "advantages" as subsidizing but they are often treated similar to mining which they should be. Tipping the playing field often has unintended consequences. I believe there is a place for governments settings standards where businesses are not doing it like using the same standardized charger adapter for EVs.

bhabbott Quote:

New Zealand didn't have any subsidies for electric cars until last year, so I got nothing when I bought my Leaf 3 years ago. The only bone they threw us was no road user charges, since that is built into the price of petrol. But even that was set to go away once more than 1% of the fleet is electric (when the tax collected would be worth the administration costs). The only reason it's changing now is that we have committed to reducing our contribution to global warming, and reducing vehicle emissions is easier than cleaning up the dairy industry (another large polluter which has been getting away with it for decades). Everything we do has an environmental impact, and this is just as important for electric cars as any other product. But Luddites who are afraid of change will latch onto anything they can to make a tu quoque.

Better tax those cow farts. No tolerance! No absurdity!

bhabbott Quote:

You have no clue. While it is true that some crops in grow faster in arid conditions when more CO2 is present, they also produce less nitrogen and protein which reduces their food value. Other plants have shown opposite effects, and global warming has different effects in different places.

I agree that climate can affect nutrients in crops. It's nothing new. We have the technology to measure what soil and crops need and provide the water, nitrogen, potassium or phosphorus that is needed. CO2 is already taken care of. Unfortunately, U.S. food technology is used more for food quantity than quality. We do much worse than producing lower nutritional value crops.

bhabbott Quote:

I live in a rural area which traditionally has hot dry summers and cool winters. But our weather is becoming both warmer and wetter, to devastating effect. Crops rotting in the fields, poor grape harvests etc., and more floods which have made farmland unusable and caused massive property damage. It's even affecting me personally. Last year insects (which normally are killed by winter frosts) practically destroyed my vegetable garden. I fly model aircraft, but our club field was out of action for 3 months last year due to flooding, and many more flying days were lost due to bad weather. Now our field is out of action again due to flooding, and it isn't even winter yet!

Throughout history there has been climate change. At one time people blamed unusual weather on god(s) and today any weather out of the usual is commonly blamed on something. Here, the weather seems less extreme than I remember growing up. We had a warm spell and then a cool spell with moderate rainfall during the whole time. Everything is nice and green and growing well. Maybe I need to be looking for something unusual in order to find it.

bhabbott Quote:

Yes, cutting down and burning the forests was a bad idea. Digging coal out of the ground and burning it was worse, and sucking oil and gas out the ground and burning it was worse again due to the sheer scale. Combating global warming involves more than just reducing fossil fuel usage, changing agricultural practices is another big part of it - including reforestation. Luckily tress grow relatively quickly, but in a warming world some forests are also struggling to survive. Warmer weather has caused insect populations to explode, and dried out trees resulting in a huge increase in wildfires.

If all the humans had frozen to death because they didn't burn anything to keep warm then that would have taken care of man made climate change alright. There would still be volcano, forest fire, animal fart and decaying pollution though.

bhabbott Quote:

Unfortunately all the anti climate change hype has been about politics not science. People want to be environmentally responsible, but the deniers are trying to make it unclear what it is. In every case, what were purportedly scientific arguments against combating global warming ended up being the opposite.

I believe in climate change even before humans made any changes to the climate. I believe humans have affected the climate. I would like to reduce pollution and stop cutting down the rain forest but I'm more pragmatic about it. I don't believe CO2 is going to kill the planet in 10 years. In fact, if it was going to then it will but let me predict it won't. I believe cutting down the rain forests has had a larger detrimental affect on the climate, more so in certain places, than CO2 and we will continue to lose rain forests but let me predict that that won't kill the planet in 10 years either. I see a big danger coming from humans but I see the bigger danger coming from economic collapse and wars rather than our climate impact.

bhabbott Quote:

Not here they haven't. The tax we pay on fuel is mostly used to fund roading projects. When the price spiked due to the war in Ukraine, our 'liberal' government didn't hesitate to reduce the fuel tax even though it is facing heavy costs for fighting the pandemic.

That seems like a good way to do it. Here, the liberal states have up to 50% higher fuel cost mostly due to tax and they may spend the money on more than maintaining transportation infrastructure.

bhabbott Quote:

FYI, the whole world isn't in a partisan fight between conservatism and liberalism. I find it rather ironic that American 'conservatives' are anti conservation. The rest of the World follows the antics of your republicans with a mixture of horror and morbid fascination of their short-sighted selfishness and stupidity. But at least you can be happy that Elon Musk has decided to join your ranks, citing that Democrats 'have become the party of division & hate' as the reason. Of course we all know the real reason. Musk is now the richest man in the world, and the power and money has gone to his head - as it usually does.

Elon is a moderate that sees the hypocrisy and radicalism of the Democrat party for what it is. The few moderates left in the Democrat party have been attacked and demeaned by radicals in their own party. Republicans aren't perfect and Trump even less so. The division is on both sides and encouraged by the de facto 2 party system but the hate is definitely more on the Democrat side.

bhabbott Quote:

I agree. That's why in New Zealand we have incentives for hybrids too, and are working on deploying hydrogen for long-haul trucking. But modern electric cars have plenty of range for the vast majority of uses. For most people the only change is that they will be charging overnight and/or at their place of work instead of going to a gas station to fill up. It doesn't take long to get used to it, and as routine as charging your cellphone. I know it's hard to not be afraid of new technology. I'm an old geezer myself who tends to just stick with what he knows, and the Leaf was quite an adventure for me (I bought it online and it was delivered while I was away - no chance to get a driving lesson!). But I'm glad I made the leap rather than settling for another crappy gas car. So relax, nobody's forcing you to buy an electric car if you don't want one. There may come a day when you can't buy a new gas car, and perhaps even a day when you can't get gas for it (just like the Amiga!). But that is way into the future. In New Zealand, by 2035 all new vehicles (with a few exceptions) will have to be hybrid or electric. By that time most new vehicles probably will be anyway. The majority of people in NZ don't buy new cars, so gas cars are going to be around for long time even after the cutoff date. And it doesn't matter. In the US you could have millions of old gas guzzlers on the road and it would be fine, so long as they are a small minority of the total.

Right. Vehicles will keep getting cleaner with replacements. The environment is getting cleaner. Now if we just had a solution for deforestation and dirty wars like in Ukraine.

bhabbott Quote:

Please stop parroting denier talking points. Al Gore isn't a scientist. He got the sea level rise number wrong, and nobody is surprised. His movie wasn't a scientific paper (nevertheless he did manage to get most of it right).

There were plenty of scientists with crazy doomsday predictions if you read those articles I posted. Some of the predictions were actually a consensus from the majority of climate change proponents. Al Gore was a politician who was closer to becoming President than accurately predicting climate change. It's scary that someone so far off on the climate may be enacting policy based on their grossly inaccurate predictions.

bhabbott Quote:

Germany shut down reactors due to safety concerns. Most were about to be retired anyway, and the intention was to replace them with greener energy when it became available. Russia attacking Ukraine is a disaster for a lot more than Europe having to get off her teat a little earlier than planned, which many see as a good thing (they could have avoided the crisis by being proactive before Russia invaded, but that's what people do - not take the situation seriously until it becomes a crisis).

If there were real safety concerns then maybe Elon wouldn't have suggested restarting the German nuclear reactors. Elon also encouraged U.S. hydrocarbon production as he understands that there will be a shortage of energy without them. That says a lot coming from the CEO of Tesla which manufactures EVs.

bhabbott Quote:

As for the rest - you can't be serious, right? You accuse people of hyping climate change, but your objections are even more hype. Perhaps you don't realize that the news media lives on hype - it is literally what 'news' means. And they often don't care if it is true or not, only that people are titillated enough to watch it and be exposed to their clients' adverts. To get the real science you need to go to the right sources - and they will all tell you that global warming is real, caused by us, and a problem we need to take seriously. And if you reject that...

Most of the news media here is very liberal. At least Twitter won't be liberal anymore under Elon control. I believe there is some man made climate change and likely global warming but I think it is exaggerated and hyped to hysteria proportions. I see the hype as a snowball effect that grows faster than the climate problem itself. I wouldn't be surprised at all if global temperatures start to drop below predictions as the solar maximum comes to an end. The temperature data we have is only a blip in the history of Earth and we have a limited record and understanding of ice ages and solar activity on the climate.

Last edited by matthey on 22-May-2022 at 09:18 AM.
Last edited by matthey on 22-May-2022 at 09:16 AM.

@matthey

Quote:

Are you aware that internal combustion engines can burn hydrogen? 2H2 + O2 -> 2H2O + energy

Chemistry is fine, engineering not so much. Hydrogen has awesome energy density per kg, but storage is tricky. It is also explosive in air mixtures over a far greater range of concentration, temperature and pressure than octane. This makes it tricky to burn in a vanilla petrol engine. In principle though, I agree. Hydrogen has great potential as a combustion fuel.

Last edited by Karlos on 22-May-2022 at 10:45 AM.

_________________
Doing stupid things for fun...

Karlos Quote:

Chemistry is fine, engineering not so much. Hydrogen has awesome energy density per kg, but storage is tricky. It is also explosive in air mixtures over a far greater range of concentration, temperature and pressure than octane. This makes it tricky to burn in a vanilla petrol engine. In principle though, I agree. Hydrogen has great potential as a combustion fuel.

The problem is patterned thinking again. Us humans tend to think in terms of what is popular as our neural networks make associations and we become programmed based on the patterns. Yes, thinking inside the box about popular internal combustion engines (ICE) leads to engineering problems. Hydrogen injected into a hot engine cylinder can ignite prematurely, burn the fragile valves and seats in the process and backfire up into the intake manifold. I have heard that modifying a 4 stroke piston ICE to withstand hydrogen can raise the cost by 50% and efficiency is decreased in the process. Now lets think outside the box. The 4 stroke piston ICE was chosen for gasoline due to thermal efficiency which results in good fuel economy and convenience. However, the valves block air flow through the ICE which is a big air pump and this reduces pumping efficiency and performance potential due to decreased oxygen. Also, there is only one power stroke every other revolution of the engine which also reduces performance. Better performance allows a smaller lighter engine while still providing power when needed and it will be off most of the time for low speed driving in a hybrid setup. We want the hydrogen to enter a cool combustion chamber where the hydrogen will not ignite. The Wankel engine has this characteristic as it has 3 separate chambers. It has no valve train to burn the valves or backfire into. Add a hydrogen tank, lines, injectors and reprogram the ECU and that is about all it needs.



https://www.mazda.com/en/innovation/technology/env/hre/

The first Mazda hydrogen prototype using a Wankel engine, the HR-X, was demonstrated all the way back in 1991 so the technology is hardly new. Newer prototypes not only can use hydrogen and gasoline fuel but they are also hybrids with batteries and plugins to charge at home.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazda_Premacy_Hydrogen_RE_Hybrid

There is much room for improvement including with combo fuel mixtures at the same time.

Mazda Built A Hydrogen And Gasoline Powered Rotary Engine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-n5L0cXcpg

Gasoline+10% hydrogen resulted in the following.
Thermal Efficiency: +28%
Brake-specific fuel consumption (BSFC): +38%
Hydrocarbon emissions: -85%
CO emissions: -64%
CO2 emissions: -36%
NOx emissions: +137% (engineering time)

The Wankel ICE appears to have a significant advantage over piston engines when burning hydrogen. The properties of Hydrogen are more favorable in a Wankel ICE. Fuel cells may turn out to be better eventually but Wankel ICE use of hydrogen deserves more research and could provide a cheaper alternative.

A RISC core is like a piston ICE. It is efficient once data is in the registers but it is all bottled up when accessing memory/caches. CISC cores have more performance potential because they can breathe better without restrictions in the way like a Wankel ICE. A CISC core is more difficult to create like a Wankel engine. A Wankel ICE has fewer moving parts than a piston ICE but requires more engineering. The potential of a Wankel ICE is just being scratched due to lack of research.