On 05/17/2017 11:25 AM, John Newman wrote:

Kinda off-topic, but interesting.

[1]https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/17/05/16/1942252/all-fossil-fuel-vehicles
-will-vanish-in-8-years-says-stanford-study

[2]http://business.financialpost.com/news/transportation/fossil-fuel-vehicles-wi
ll-vanish-in-8-years-in-twin-death-spiral-for-big-oil-and-big-autos-says-study-t
hat-shocking-the-industry

Stanford University economist Tony Seba forecasts in his new report that
petrol or diesel cars, buses, or trucks will no longer be sold anywhere
in the world within the next eight years. As a result, the
transportation market will transition and switch entirely to
electrification, "leading to a collapse of oil prices and the demise of
the petroleum industry as we have known it for a century," reports
Financial Post. From the report:
Seba's premise is that people will stop driving altogether. They will
switch en masse to self-drive electric vehicles (EVs) that are ten times
cheaper to run than fossil-based cars, with a near-zero marginal cost of
fuel and an expected lifespan of 1 million miles. Only nostalgics will
cling to the old habit of car ownership. The rest will adapt to vehicles
on demand. It will become harder to find a petrol station, spares, or
anybody to fix the 2,000 moving parts that bedevil the internal
combustion engine. Dealers will disappear by 2024. Cities will ban human
drivers once the data confirms how dangerous they can be behind a wheel.
This will spread to suburbs, and then beyond. There will be a "mass
stranding of existing vehicles." The value of second-hard cars will
plunge. You will have to pay to dispose of your old vehicle. It is a
twin "death spiral" for big oil and big autos, with ugly implications
for some big companies on the London Stock Exchange unless they adapt in
time. The long-term price of crude will fall to $25 a barrel. Most forms
of shale and deep-water drilling will no longer be viable. Assets will
be stranded. Scotland will forfeit any North Sea bonanza. Russia, Saudi
Arabia, Nigeria, and Venezuela will be in trouble.


   In eight years?
   HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA! Gasp! Hack COUGH CHOKE (regains composure)
   No.
   Not gonna happen.
   THere's massive capital and infrastructure tied up in the shitstem just
   the way it is, and thye people who profit from it like it just the way
   it is and they own the police, and the army and your government...
   Literally.
   [3]http://auntieimperial.tumblr.com/post/85720026694 (Gilens and Page;
   Northwestern/Princeton)
   WTF paid for this? The same consultant my city paid to tell them to put
   the main branch of the public library at the city's bus station?
   (really...)

   But it begs the question; If driving is inevitable on any near horizon,
   what are people going to drive?

   Electric cars.

   Indirectly and less efficiently powered than simply burning oil as
   gasoline in cars.

   How are they going to get the electricity?

   Coal.

   [4]https://www.washingtonpost.com/apps/g/page/world/as-appetite-for-ele
   ctricity-soars-the-world-keeps-turning-to-coal/1842/

   [5]https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/electric-cars-and-the-coal-that
   -runs-them/2015/11/23/74869240-734b-11e5-ba14-318f8e87a2fc_story.html
   If you want the cush lifestyle consumer crapitalism garners, lie to
   yourself as you say, in a prozac induced haze allowing for
   rationalization and denial ... "Buh bye planet." And your children
   should kill you while you sleep.

     ROTTERDAM — In this traffic-packed Dutch city, electric cars jostle
     for space at charging stations. The oldest exhaust-spewing vehicles
     will soon be banned from the city center. Thanks to generous tax
     incentives, the share of electric vehicles has grown faster in the
     Netherlands than in nearly any other country in the world.

     But behind the green growth is a filthy secret: In a nation famous
     for its windmills, electricity is coming from a far dirtier source.
     Three new coal-fired power plants, including two here on the
     Rotterdam harbor, are supplying much of the power to fuel the
     Netherlands’ electric-car boom.

     As the world tries to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and combat
     climate change, policymakers have pinned hopes on electric cars,
     whose range and convenience are quickly improving. Alongside the
     boom has come a surging demand for power to charge the vehicles,
     which can consume as much electricity in a single charge as the
     average refrigerator does in a month and a half.
     The global shift to electric cars has a clear climate benefit in
     regions that get most of their power from clean sources, such as
     California or Norway.

   And do note. California and Norway can only produce so much so-called
   'clean energy' in any near-term future and the surge of demand will be
   met with electricity produced where you never have to see it, like
   "Four Corners" Arizona, but it still destroys the earth.
   Rr

References

   1. https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/17/05/16/1942252/all-fossil-fuel-vehicles-will-vanish-in-8-years-says-stanford-study
   2. http://business.financialpost.com/news/transportation/fossil-fuel-vehicles-will-vanish-in-8-years-in-twin-death-spiral-for-big-oil-and-big-autos-says-study-that-shocking-the-industry
   3. http://auntieimperial.tumblr.com/post/85720026694
   4. https://www.washingtonpost.com/apps/g/page/world/as-appetite-for-electricity-soars-the-world-keeps-turning-to-coal/1842/
   5. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/electric-cars-and-the-coal-that-runs-them/2015/11/23/74869240-734b-11e5-ba14-318f8e87a2fc_story.html