On 05/17/2017 05:08 PM, Steven Schear top-posted (see below):

On May 17, 2017 4:47 PM, "Razer" <g2s@riseup.net> wrote:
On 05/17/2017 11:25 AM, John Newman wrote:
Kinda off-topic, but interesting.

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

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

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. 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.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/apps/g/page/world/as-appetite-for-electricity-soars-the-world-keeps-turning-to-coal/1842/

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

On 05/17/2017 05:08 PM, Steven Schear replied:

If you want to see what many large cities will look like once driverless cars become available to the upper 10% consider how traffic is often jammed in Mumbai around popular entertainment and shopping areas as massive numbers of cars of the wealthy continuously circle, driven by low-paid chauffeurs. Why wait for your car to pick you up from a possibly distant lot when it can be there much sooner from circling school of driverless cars?
Warrant Canary creator

What does this have to do with the need to breath oxygen, and not get parboiled in our own atmospheric greenhouse? Rr PS. Take your ted bs down the road. The technology that got us into the mess will NOT get us out anymore than the "banksters" who broke the global financial system intentionally, for profit, and their so-called 'regulators' will EVER fix it in any way that affects their profits in the least.