151–160 of 250 posts
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Processed foods are not cheaper than healthier options. People constantly repeat this, but it's flat out wrong. The best way to apologize for people who, is to say that they don't have enough time to cook between all the jobs they have.
> Processed foods are not cheaper than healthier options. I have bad news for you about flour
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First, 300 mph (480 kmh) is not on the cards. It's feasible technically but the energy usage rises exponentially, so it's quickly less attractive. (Obviously planes are even more inefficient for exactly the same reason, but wind resistance is at least reduced at altitude.) This is why speeds tend to top out at around 300 kmh, with only a very few prestige services (in China mainly) going marginally faster. The good n…
> Beijing to Guangzhou (same as NY to LA!) in 12 hours at an average speed of 180 kmh I don't understand. It looks like the Chinese route is ~1200 miles and the US route is about 2500 miles. At the same 180kmh, wouldn't that imply a full 24 hours on a train? re: LA-SF, I do think HSR could make a big dent on each side of the continent. But the reality is Americans are accustomed to crossing the entire continent quick…
(Tangential - the source of my faulty research was Claude Haiku 4.5, which I will quote verbatim: "Two major US cities separated by approximately 2230 km are New York City, New York and Los Angeles, California." I know that figure is too low but believed it anyway. I've just asked for better figures and it's completely unable to answer accurately. Well well.)
The other figures were from memory and pretty correct.
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Obviously a choice, but also at 200mph it's obviously a vastly slower experience in a lot of way for many of the most-trafficked US domestic routes. Even at 300mph, which IIRC is much faster than normal operations on existing system, transcontinental travel becomes "too slow." The opposition would be insurmountable to making it take 12+ hours to travel from NYC to LA, for example. Effectively would split the continen…
What’s creepy is how little the people arguing for this kind of thing seem to care that the policy would be hated by a majority, and experienced as cruel oppression. They just say “this is the right thing to do.” Climate/degrowth people seem to be the most anti-democratic politically. It seems they NEED to install a monarchy to get their way, because any system of government that allows the people to have any say wil…
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Ouch. There's one plantation of under 1000 hectares in Papua New Guinea that makes biodiesel from coconut oil to power their own operation and vehicles on the island.[1] But they don't export. On an island with few energy sources, the process makes sense. This is more like an industrial process that self-powers from its own waste. Sewerage treatment plants do that - the process produces methane, often enough to power…
^^^ this I cringe thinking about more biofuel ideas getting forced through. Sure, let’s all spend a ton of petroleum energy on fertilizing, farm equipment, and processing, and raise food prices by using all the land for producing ethanol-corn, and jet fuel coconuts, just to get a slightly worse petroleum replacement fuel.
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> Should every Chinese and Indian visit Venice, even though it destroys the city little by little? Should we send things as futile as watermelons by plane Who are you to dictate where Chinese and Indians can and cannot visit or enjoy delicious watermelons? If someone wants to eat a watermelon like a dirty slave that is their business and you are not going to deny them that right. This is pure insanity. China and Indi…
> If trains were more effective Well they're more convenient by virtue of being faster. The well off will inevitably pay for convenience if allowed. > If California has taught us anything it's that implementation of high speed rail is a joke. The only thing California stands as an example of in that regard is political dysfunction. A hypothetical benevolent dictator could have built out high speed rail there on time…
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> The opposition would be insurmountable to making it take 12+ hours to travel from NYC to LA, for example. It already takes 6 hours to fly. Add in security, checked bags, getting to and from the airport and it's close to 10 hours. Also you waste a day or ruin a night's sleep on the redeye. Compared to that an overnight train with a bed sounds delightful. People could do almost-day-trips, coast-to-coast, with no ill…
> It already takes 6 hours to fly. Add in security, checked bags, getting to and from the airport and it's close to 10 hours. 10 hours is still significantly faster than a hypothetical HSR. Remember that it would also have to stop along the way. Secon, not everyone lives/is traveling to a place that is near a hypothetical train station; you have to keep in mind that American cities tend toward sprawl. HSR leaving fro…
Why?
> Highly dependent on the individual & service class.
There are flights that offer lie-flat seats for most of the passengers on board? I have to confess I haven't ever seen any domestic flights in North America that have lie-flat seats. But maybe I'm just poor.
> But the point of this is you're actually physically there in less time.
And more tired when you get there. I'd rather sleep during my travel and enjoy the destination than waste time recovering in my hotel room. The alternative is to waste your day flying out so you don't lose sleep.
> Most of them do not have private jets, it's just a common thing Americans do.
I'm sure there are individuals who do the redeye consecutive nights. I'm pointing out that doing it instead on a train, sleeping in a bed, will leave you way more well-rested. You might fly out Friday night and return Sunday morning. But you're going to need all of Sunday to recover from those flights.
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Maybe it's time to develop new sealing materials? edit: thanks for the downvote. I should've said "Maybe it's time to _invest into developing_ new sealing materials?" ;)
Maybe it's time to stop burning food as fuel. What are the jets going to do anyway, bomb Iranian children? Remember when George W Bush signed into law the corn ethanol bill. Corn tripled in price within 8 years. Fuel didn't get cheaper. In fact it cost more to produce the ethanol.
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I'm skeptical of any application for hydrogen where electricity could be used directly. In your case, I think hydrogen would better be used in a more centralized power plant as a backup for renewable sources (perhaps with the waste heat then used for district heating), and the power used to drive your heat pump.
The issue is long term, high capacity storage. To store enough energy to last an entire winter using batteries just isn’t practical today. I think you’d need around 100 power walls at today’s capacity to make a house completely off grid, meaning you store excess solar from the summer and draw it down in the winter. With hydrogen stored in pressurized tanks, a 20 m3 tank could be enough to last the whole winter, which…
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> The opposition would be insurmountable to making it take 12+ hours to travel from NYC to LA, for example. It already takes 6 hours to fly. Add in security, checked bags, getting to and from the airport and it's close to 10 hours. Also you waste a day or ruin a night's sleep on the redeye. Compared to that an overnight train with a bed sounds delightful. People could do almost-day-trips, coast-to-coast, with no ill…
You still need all those things for a high speed train. The only reason it’s a little less today is that almost nobody takes passenger rail. Keep in mind these old downtown stations built in 1900 won’t be able to handle the kind of passenger counts that would “need” to be shifted from the airports, so don’t delude yourself into thinking you wouldn’t need big train stations built in the outskirts, crowded and irritati…
No because you can actually sleep on the train and be well-rested. Even non sleeper seats are wider and can recline better on a train.
On planes your sleeping neighbor drools on your shoulder and your seat reclines 5 degrees if you're lucky. Sure technically you could take a redeye two nights in a row. If you don't mind being a zombie for the next 2 days.