Of course, we're all going to live in an EV nirvana so there's no need to read this paper.

[NNadir]

20. I call it as I see it. For more than half a century I've listened to....

Last edited Tue Dec 14, 2021, 01:26 PM - Edit history (1)

..."someday" stuff.

For me, it is "some day" now. Some day turned out to be 420 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere this April.

When I was a kid - I'm an old man - I heard all about recycling plastics, and used to drive my car to recycling centers. (In retrospect that was pretty clueless. ) How's plastic recycling working out?

Recycling is energy intensive and diffuse distributed materials in particular are the worst cases because of collection and transport issues. I've actually read tons of papers on the chemistry of recycling batteries. It may be feasible, but it's very, very, very dirty chemistry. Lithium batteries, like so called "renewable energy" are dependent on access to dangerous fossil fuels and products like solvents (including but not limited to electrolytes). There's nothing "green" about it.

For the record, I have been attending lectures at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory for something like 15 years. Every winter there's a few lectures that in sum could be titled "Progress in Fusion."

Anyone stating that fusion is inevitable is certainly unfamiliar with any of the associated technical issues.

Of course I'm familiar with hand waving and wishful thinking. I pay attention to energy issues, and wishful thinking in particular dominates well over 90% of what I hear and read.

Nonetheless in my lifetime the concentration of CO2 has risen nearly 100 ppm.