Mind you, some of them have got a clue.. BP [British Petroleum] are rebranding themselves as Beyond Petroleum, and have started getting out of the oil business already. They're the ones that funded the research into that crab-shell plastic.
Then you have Shell and Exxon... who are basically going; "What meteorite? There's no meteorite, it's just a bit of warm weather!"
In 2014 my co-worker bought a LEAF. Not because he's a treehugger (nor is he against the trees, he's your typical Northwest dad working in tech trying to make a buck - environmentalism is cool, but ya gotta get to work!) but because he figured out that the payments on a new LEAF were _less_ than what he was paying in _gas alone_ for his little Honda to drive 30 miles in to work. Nevermind that the Honda was starting to give him maintenance hassles.
Now, granted, he had a longer commute than most people, but the point being, that _was_ the tipping point. It started to be, and is more and more true every day, _cheaper_ (and more feasible from a logistical point of view) to run electrics than petrol. It's not true everywhere, in all cases, not by a long chalk, but the tipping point is but a speck in our rearview now.. hybrids are like flies around here, Bolts and Leafs and C-MAXen and such are easy to find... the petrol industry is dead man walking. Boeing had better catch up, because Airbus is flying electric prototype aeroplanes....
The problem with that is people think we can transition entirely to electric cars. We can't. It's the scale.
Why do they cost so much? Not the frame, but the battery. Those big, long-range batteries require rare earths. We don't have enough to put everyone in an electric car, not even if we stopped making all the other things we make with those materials -- which we can't, because they're already in other important things. So far, every innovation in better batteries has used rare materials.
Unless one of the people working on biological batteries discovers one with features equal to or better than rare earth batteries, electric cars will remain a fringe item. Not because people don't want them, but because there aren't enough resources to replace more than a fraction of combustion cars.
I was struck by there being absolutely no mention of the economic value of non-carbon-based energy production activities. The hand-wringing and whining in the article would map very well to what was being said a century ago about the economic value of people and industries whose job it was to tend and supply animals that were used to haul stuff around as they were being replaced by machines -- and likely about as productive.
The future will belong to the people, companies, and governments that successfully transition away from carbon-based energy production. Those that don't (hello, Mr. "coal helped make us great, we aren't so great any more, we need more coal production"?) are likely to fade into irrelevance.
Not to mention all the people who lost their livelihoods when horses were phased out, which was the same size, and a large problem. It's a problem because, historically speaking, society cares fuckall about people and thus doesn't take effective steps to help those abandoned by shifting industries. If you think that's not your problem, remember this is how #45 got elected: he gained a lot of votes and money by promising to bring back jobs in dying industries.
There's another one coming that most people don't know or care about: truck drivers. Right now, we have millions of people employed who like working with their hands, like spending most of the day alone driving, and don't need advanced education for it. Not an easy job, but a decent living. There's talk about automating that with driverless trucks, which few people are happy about -- most citizens don't want to be on the road next to driverless trucks, and the driverless tech companies want to be shielded from liability when their tech inevitably kills people.
But think about the truckers. Think about taking one of the few remaining jobs that employs a ton of people with those traits. What are you going to do with those millions? The government might cough up a few "retraining" programs, but that won't help. With few exceptions, truck drivers aren't academics. They're comfortable being alone, or with maybe one partner for long haul alternate driving, and often not a big fan of crowds. There aren't enough jobs to absorb that many workers, but even if there work, those aren't the right kind of jobs for those people. Or the younger ones coming up after them. We need to have jobs for that type of people, because they won't stop existing. Either we employ them, or we deal with the consequences of them being unemployed. This is already a problem as automation has swept through other industries. There are whole counties in the South now where almost nobody has a job -- percentages in the 80s and 90s like on reservations, because not only is the economy dead there, skills cluster.
In the handful of articles I've read predicting the trucker disaster, nobody has suggested that we simply avoid it by leaving long-distance trucking to humans. Society considers it more important to enrich a tiny number of already rich individuals than to avoid impoverishing millions and damaging the economy. >_
>> Not to mention all the people who lost their livelihoods when horses were phased out <<
I didn't go there because the article didn't go there. Thanks for bringing that up.
>> most citizens don't want to be on the road next to driverless trucks <<
I don't want to be on the road next to a truck being driven by someone who's been washing their stimulant pills down with "energy" drinks because that's the best way they've come up with to keep their income stream sufficient to save themselves from financial ruin. But that happens more often than it should -- for exactly the reasons you cited elsewhere in your post. Not sure yet whether driverless trucks are better or worse than those.
The vast majority of the long-haul trucks I encounter on the road are driven by responsible drivers who are very skilled at operating their equipment safely and would strongly condemn any behavior of that sort. I remember to drive so as to not make their job harder than it already is. It's just hard to tell the dangerous ones from the safe ones, although it's easy enough to filter the set a bit.
>> the driverless tech companies want to be shielded from liability when their tech inevitably kills people. <<
We don't have much of any law, let alone good law, to work this out right now. We better get some.
I suspect it might well wind up being treated much like hiring a driver. If a trucking company hires a driver whose record shows they are not competent at handling their equipment, I believe they can be held liable for that. If a driverless tech company says "this is what our product can do, it's your problem if you use it for something else", they might only be in difficulty if their product doesn't meet the specs. With that kind of setup, trucking companies might strongly prefer to install responsible driverless tech -- and the tech companies would have an incentive to compete on reliability and not causing deaths or major damages when something breaks.
>> leaving long-distance trucking to humans <<
Something I haven't seen much mention of: trucks break down. A mechanically ept driver in the rig knows what can be done to get the cargo to the next transfer point fastest and/or cheapest -- and is able to do appropriate field repairs when that's the best answer. Try and get *that* out of your shiny robo-driver!
>> I don't want to be on the road next to a truck being driven by someone who's been washing their stimulant pills down with "energy" drinks because that's the best way they've come up with to keep their income stream sufficient to save themselves from financial ruin.<<
Neither do I, and in fact most people are sleep-deprived today. It's a serious problem that would require widespread changes to fix, which people don't want to do.
>> Not sure yet whether driverless trucks are better or worse than those. <<
Think about how often your computer glitches, or someone else's glitches that you see. Think about damage done by virus outbreaks. Now imagine that on a highway full of semis. O_O
>>I suspect it might well wind up being treated much like hiring a driver.<<
That would be fair and probably effective. But the companies aren't aiming for that. They want what the vaccine makers have: total insulation when their products kill people. That's a problem. Remove accountability, and you lower the incentive to make good products. Especially if people are forced to buy them and/or defrauded about the risks. Even if the product is useful, its makers should be accountable for damages and its users should have a product which is reasonably safe and effective.
Since the overall trend in law is currently stripping victims of their right even to take a case to court, I suspect the programmers are more likely to get their wish than consumers.
For me, of course, there's the added tendency to kill technology. It doesn't matter if I choose not to drive an automatic car. As soon as they're on the road near me, if I affect one, it could go haywire and kill me. Or someone else. It's bad enough that vehicles are now computers with wheels. At least there's still a steering wheel and a brake, although in later models, those may not be connected to anything but a computer anymore. Remove the human element, and you don't even have those options.
>>Something I haven't seen much mention of: trucks break down.<<
Companies are trending toward banning people from fixing products -- indeed, banning ownership. This has farmers in an uproar because their profit margins are too narrow to afford an expensive mechanic. They need equipment they can service themselves. Companies no longer want to permit that.
If I made tractors, I'd be advertising "Buy a combine, get a free course in home repair!" Grab market share hand over fist, and the farmers would still have to hire mechanics for the big repairs they can't do in a barn.
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dancing_serpent
(no subject)
Date: 2018-08-12 10:05 am (UTC)Last days of the dinosaurs man, and none too soon.
Yes ...
Date: 2018-08-12 10:07 am (UTC)Re: Yes ...
Date: 2018-08-12 10:15 am (UTC)Then you have Shell and Exxon... who are basically going; "What meteorite? There's no meteorite, it's just a bit of warm weather!"
(no subject)
Date: 2018-08-12 03:06 pm (UTC)In 2014 my co-worker bought a LEAF. Not because he's a treehugger (nor is he against the trees, he's your typical Northwest dad working in tech trying to make a buck - environmentalism is cool, but ya gotta get to work!) but because he figured out that the payments on a new LEAF were _less_ than what he was paying in _gas alone_ for his little Honda to drive 30 miles in to work. Nevermind that the Honda was starting to give him maintenance hassles.
Now, granted, he had a longer commute than most people, but the point being, that _was_ the tipping point. It started to be, and is more and more true every day, _cheaper_ (and more feasible from a logistical point of view) to run electrics than petrol. It's not true everywhere, in all cases, not by a long chalk, but the tipping point is but a speck in our rearview now.. hybrids are like flies around here, Bolts and Leafs and C-MAXen and such are easy to find... the petrol industry is dead man walking. Boeing had better catch up, because Airbus is flying electric prototype aeroplanes....
Well ...
Date: 2018-08-12 06:01 pm (UTC)Why do they cost so much? Not the frame, but the battery. Those big, long-range batteries require rare earths. We don't have enough to put everyone in an electric car, not even if we stopped making all the other things we make with those materials -- which we can't, because they're already in other important things. So far, every innovation in better batteries has used rare materials.
Unless one of the people working on biological batteries discovers one with features equal to or better than rare earth batteries, electric cars will remain a fringe item. Not because people don't want them, but because there aren't enough resources to replace more than a fraction of combustion cars.
But what about...
Date: 2018-08-12 04:13 pm (UTC)The future will belong to the people, companies, and governments that successfully transition away from carbon-based energy production. Those that don't (hello, Mr. "coal helped make us great, we aren't so great any more, we need more coal production"?) are likely to fade into irrelevance.
Re: But what about...
Date: 2018-08-12 05:52 pm (UTC)There's another one coming that most people don't know or care about: truck drivers. Right now, we have millions of people employed who like working with their hands, like spending most of the day alone driving, and don't need advanced education for it. Not an easy job, but a decent living. There's talk about automating that with driverless trucks, which few people are happy about -- most citizens don't want to be on the road next to driverless trucks, and the driverless tech companies want to be shielded from liability when their tech inevitably kills people.
But think about the truckers. Think about taking one of the few remaining jobs that employs a ton of people with those traits. What are you going to do with those millions? The government might cough up a few "retraining" programs, but that won't help. With few exceptions, truck drivers aren't academics. They're comfortable being alone, or with maybe one partner for long haul alternate driving, and often not a big fan of crowds. There aren't enough jobs to absorb that many workers, but even if there work, those aren't the right kind of jobs for those people. Or the younger ones coming up after them. We need to have jobs for that type of people, because they won't stop existing. Either we employ them, or we deal with the consequences of them being unemployed. This is already a problem as automation has swept through other industries. There are whole counties in the South now where almost nobody has a job -- percentages in the 80s and 90s like on reservations, because not only is the economy dead there, skills cluster.
In the handful of articles I've read predicting the trucker disaster, nobody has suggested that we simply avoid it by leaving long-distance trucking to humans. Society considers it more important to enrich a tiny number of already rich individuals than to avoid impoverishing millions and damaging the economy. >_
Re: But what about...
Date: 2018-08-12 06:54 pm (UTC)I didn't go there because the article didn't go there. Thanks for bringing that up.
>> most citizens don't want to be on the road next to driverless trucks <<
I don't want to be on the road next to a truck being driven by someone who's been washing their stimulant pills down with "energy" drinks because that's the best way they've come up with to keep their income stream sufficient to save themselves from financial ruin. But that happens more often than it should -- for exactly the reasons you cited elsewhere in your post. Not sure yet whether driverless trucks are better or worse than those.
The vast majority of the long-haul trucks I encounter on the road are driven by responsible drivers who are very skilled at operating their equipment safely and would strongly condemn any behavior of that sort. I remember to drive so as to not make their job harder than it already is. It's just hard to tell the dangerous ones from the safe ones, although it's easy enough to filter the set a bit.
>> the driverless tech companies want to be shielded from liability when their tech inevitably kills people. <<
We don't have much of any law, let alone good law, to work this out right now. We better get some.
I suspect it might well wind up being treated much like hiring a driver. If a trucking company hires a driver whose record shows they are not competent at handling their equipment, I believe they can be held liable for that. If a driverless tech company says "this is what our product can do, it's your problem if you use it for something else", they might only be in difficulty if their product doesn't meet the specs. With that kind of setup, trucking companies might strongly prefer to install responsible driverless tech -- and the tech companies would have an incentive to compete on reliability and not causing deaths or major damages when something breaks.
>> leaving long-distance trucking to humans <<
Something I haven't seen much mention of: trucks break down. A mechanically ept driver in the rig knows what can be done to get the cargo to the next transfer point fastest and/or cheapest -- and is able to do appropriate field repairs when that's the best answer. Try and get *that* out of your shiny robo-driver!
Re: But what about...
Date: 2018-08-12 07:43 pm (UTC)Neither do I, and in fact most people are sleep-deprived today. It's a serious problem that would require widespread changes to fix, which people don't want to do.
>> Not sure yet whether driverless trucks are better or worse than those. <<
Think about how often your computer glitches, or someone else's glitches that you see. Think about damage done by virus outbreaks. Now imagine that on a highway full of semis. O_O
>>I suspect it might well wind up being treated much like hiring a driver.<<
That would be fair and probably effective. But the companies aren't aiming for that. They want what the vaccine makers have: total insulation when their products kill people. That's a problem. Remove accountability, and you lower the incentive to make good products. Especially if people are forced to buy them and/or defrauded about the risks. Even if the product is useful, its makers should be accountable for damages and its users should have a product which is reasonably safe and effective.
Since the overall trend in law is currently stripping victims of their right even to take a case to court, I suspect the programmers are more likely to get their wish than consumers.
For me, of course, there's the added tendency to kill technology. It doesn't matter if I choose not to drive an automatic car. As soon as they're on the road near me, if I affect one, it could go haywire and kill me. Or someone else. It's bad enough that vehicles are now computers with wheels. At least there's still a steering wheel and a brake, although in later models, those may not be connected to anything but a computer anymore. Remove the human element, and you don't even have those options.
>>Something I haven't seen much mention of: trucks break down.<<
Companies are trending toward banning people from fixing products -- indeed, banning ownership. This has farmers in an uproar because their profit margins are too narrow to afford an expensive mechanic. They need equipment they can service themselves. Companies no longer want to permit that.
If I made tractors, I'd be advertising "Buy a combine, get a free course in home repair!" Grab market share hand over fist, and the farmers would still have to hire mechanics for the big repairs they can't do in a barn.