A battery invented 120 years before its time
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I found the reference links on the wikipedia page for Nickel-iron batteries are yielding interesting information for a first look. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel%E2%80%93iron_battery
For example the article below, where the use of graphene and carbon nanotubes is described as improving the speed of charge and discharge by several orders of magnitude (though graphene production is still an area of research rather than a mature industrial process from what I understand). https://news.stanford.edu/pr/2012/pr-ultrafast-edison-batter...
A simple search also yielded this patent, assigned to the US department of energy in 2016, but I am not sure how relevant it is. https://patents.google.com/patent/US20150086884A1/en
Would we still have the problem of climate change?
Would we be on the same level of development?
Who knows... but it is impressive that edisons thinking machine of engineers developed this battery technology 120 years ago.
Would we still have the problem of climate change?
Would we be on the same level of development?
Expanded explanation. Due to economics you'd invest in a more expensive technology, using more manual labor, having less free time to think to more advance tech, which in turn leads to slower development. Using more manual labor would also, in turn, lead to less need for coal and oil demand and that would mean lesser climate change problem. My 2 cents
How can collective transportation be more expensive than cars, as a whole? Most western countries had really well connected railroads going in all the very small towns and did that for pennies compared to the overall price of car society.
The overall cost of cars is not just the individual car. It's also infrastructure that caters to cars, which requires roads everywhere (otherwise your car is pretty useless), parking spaces.. etc..
While i agree with the conclusion (better for the environment, and probably for everything else), and i agree manual labor is usually (though not always) preferable to industrialized labor, i don't understand why collective transportation would require more manual labor.
So it sounds like they don't dream of it in the same way that many people in the US don't dream of being chauffeured everywhere in an Uber. It's so expensive that it's not even within the realm of possibility.
Having "good" public transit as an option is very nice. I once lived in a city like that. But it's not hard to see why a lot of people (and not just in the US) choose suburbs and sitting in traffic as the option that sucks less than the others.
Schedules, dirty environments, people uncomfortably close to each other during traffic hours, static dropoff locations.
We might get there with Uber-like carpods if autonomous driving ever succeeds.
I think you'll find it interesting to learn about thow the car corporations convinced the US govt to focus on motorways instead of public transportation, which had huge implications for the way the US works.
but US govt is the representative of what significant amount of US people want.
Public transportation sucks because it doesn't take you to where you want, when you want, from where you want.
How so? When you have a "choice" between a limited set of candidates, serious restrictions on voting rights (eg. following a conviction), and when candidates aren't bound to any form of contract (they can promise anything, do the opposite)? Also, what's even a democracy in an age of mass corporate media? I don't know about the USA, but here in France all major media are owned by billionaire sociopaths, and i can count on one hand the number of nationwide independent newspapers. Also, voter turnout for last USA presidential election was only 62% of voting age population, not accounting for minors and immigrants. That's not even close to representing anything.
That's nothing like a "democracy" (power of the people). Democracy is when people make decisions for their lives. Not when they have to choose between a few power-greedy politicians to make decisions for them.
> Public transportation sucks because it doesn't take you to where you want, when you want, from where you want.
Only because we let governments/politicians dismantle public services to the point they're essentially useless. It is not the case everywhere, and was not always the case through history.
The government people are elected by the people.
>When you have a "choice" between a limited set of candidates
Choice is still a choice. If there is a limited set of candidate then they can themselves try to be the candidate (not implying that it is easy)
>serious restrictions on voting rights (eg. following a conviction)
Reasonable restriction
>when candidates aren't bound to any form of contract (they can promise anything, do the opposite)?
Democracy doesn't care about that. Its up to the people. Its still democracy even if people choose lying politician.
>Also, voter turnout for last USA presidential election was only 62%
People are free to make decision to vote or not vote, democracy doesn't mean people are forced to vote.
>Only because we let governments/politicians dismantle public services to the point they're essentially useless. It is not the case everywhere, and was not always the case through history.
Where is the case of public transportation that can take you where you want, when you want and from you want ?
By a tiny fraction of the people, because we are presented with no alternative. Most people would rather give their own opinion than elect corporate-sponsored sociopaths. Also for perspective, given our respective country's history, "the people" voting used to be white men above a certain age, if not only landowners.
> Choice is still a choice.
That's not how consent works: not being able to refuse is not consent. If you're unfamiliar with this concept from other areas of human life, you can read up interpretations of GDPR consent regarding cookie banners.
> they can themselves try to be the candidate (not implying that it is easy)
It's more than "not easy". It's rigged. In France there's at least a semblance of equal chances: if you get a certain number of mayors to support your candidacy, your campaign is paid for by the State and all candidates have free campaign clips produced by national television (following their directives) and broadcast on most channels ; also this will cover printing fees for your ballots. Also, donations to political campaigns are only allowed from individuals (not companies) and have a limit (a few thousand euros). Also, there's strict regulations (though never respected) on airtime equality between candidates/parties for the whole duration of the campaign.
Despite these better chances, the system in France is still rigged through other means and the result is terrible as well. But at least in France there's an appearance of plural opinion during the campaign. The United States doesn't even try to pretend.
> Reasonable restriction
I strongly disagree. Everybody breaks the law rather often (because there's so many of them) but whether you will face consequences is mostly a factor of race and class. For example, higher-classes kids doing drugs are usually not the target of police repression and therefore have no fear for their voter rights.
Also, it's just one of the many factors leading to people not able to vote. See for instance voter purgers, or for when they are in fact capable to vote, gerrymandering.
> democracy doesn't mean people are forced to vote.
I agree. However, no matter who votes, those who refuse to vote will still be governed against their will. That's not democracy: democracy is empowering citizens to take decisions in their lives and the lives of their communities. Government is the powerful entity above that prevents people from taking decisions in their lives and the lives of their communities.
> Where is the case of public transportation that can take you where you want, when you want and from you want ?
Trams, buses, trains, shared bikes, shared cars. There's a bunch of those. They may be slightly less convenient in some situations compared to an individual car. However, when you take into account maintenance cost and breakage factor, you're not necessarily better off. If you're not convinced, i recommend reading Ivan Illich who does a perfect demonstration that walking is faster and more efficient (when everything is accounted for) than car transportation. Of course i'm not saying everyone should always walk. There's plenty of good reasons to use a car, if only for accessibility concerns.
Disagree, and I don't agree with GDPR.
>In France there's at least a semblance of equal chances: if you get a certain number of mayors to support your candidacy, your campaign is paid for by the State and all candidates have free campaign clips produced by national television (following their directives) and broadcast on most channels ; also this will cover printing fees for your ballots. Also, donations to political campaigns are only allowed from individuals (not companies) and have a limit (a few thousand euros). Also, there's strict regulations (though never respected) on airtime equality between candidates/parties for the whole duration of the campaign.
I don't called this rigged, this is just how to game to be played.
>Trams, buses, trains, shared bikes, shared cars
None of these take me where I want, when I want and from I want.
Bus: I have to go to the bus stop, at the specific time and it arrive at another bus stop.
>They may be slightly less convenient in some situations compared to an individual car.
slightly less convenient for you but its highly inconvenient for many other people, including me.
In theory, why not? However, this relies on car-oriented road infrastructure as it is today, which has a serious environmental price (seriously look it up), and also some social impact. So it's still a very "expensive" solution.
But even given roads, it would be interesting to run a survey of ecological impact of autonomous electronic vehicles compared to conventional (gasoline) cars. I'm pretty sure an autonomous vehicle full of electronics would have a considerably more negative impact, if only because of all the gasoline needed to mine/refine all the fancy rare earths and metal you'll need for that (but there's considerably more externalities to account for).
Also worth considering: here in southern France it's really not uncommon, when the bus is not too crowded, that i just ask the friendly driver to take a small detour and drop me where i need. That's the kind of thing you can envision in a civilized society, where not everyone is only thinking about their own personal duties and desires.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_rent
You can see this today in dense cities where everyone leaves as soon as they have kids because they can't afford space.
That was more of a rental than an ownership situation, which I suspect changes the equation a bit. Either way, co-ops are definitely not a magical solution.
I'm sorry but how is that different from the present situation? There's slums around most cities in the world, including here in France or in the US. People may more than half of their wage (sometimes all of it) to get stuck into often-indecent housing. For most people, ownership is not even a dream, because the worry of having to struggle for monthly survival does not give you time and mindspace to dream.
In fact, i would argue a serious public policy for public transports would have opposite consequences. The very real rural exodus has been exacerbated by public policies favoring life in big cities, but we could turn the tide. The continuing closing of many local shops (bars, bakeries, smaller supermarkets) on the countryside has consequences: it makes life on the countryside less possible/attractive without a car, it makes life more expensive for those who have a car, and it destroys social life and neighborhood culture.
So the problem of housing is very real. However, it's an artificial problem. There's tons of unhappy people stuck in the ghettos around the big cities (here in western Europe the rich live in city center, not the suburbs), and tons of empty houses on the countryside to be bought for the equivalent of 5-100 months rent in the city (good opportunities for ownership), but there is no government program to make the connection between these two worlds that do not know each other.
Also, even in the big cities, the prices are not driven by population but by speculation. For example, in Paris it's more than 1 million empty housing units (not secondary housing, actually ABANDONED housing), which is more than two apartments for every homeless person in the whole of France. Why are there laws (private property) to prevent people from having a home, that's another debate. But it's evident from statistics all across the western world that there is something wrong, and if someone in power really wanted to help anyone (spoiler: they never do) they could just do it by snapping their fingers.
But you can't expect the same in the US Midwest, for instance, where countryside and suburban living is prevalent. It's just impractical, so cars reign supreme.
And a dedication to dense urban living would also seriously impact the development of those regions. Remote mining/lumber towns. Enormous farmsteads. The loan cowboy walking a fence for days. These are romantic concepts but they are also how resources are extracted efficiently. If people only ever stayed near mass transportation hubs North America would not be the powerhouse it is. To this day, huge areas of economic activity rely on that most common of tools: a person with a truck able to go where needed on a moment's notice. Beyond the suburbs, when your power goes out at 3am or your farm catches fire, the first and most likely only people on the scene will be driving their own vehicles.
For example, I am taking classes 5 days a week, but live 100 miles away in a farming community. Due to the nature of the course work, a significant portion is hands-on and cannot be done online. The campus has no charging stations and only relatively recently have electric cars had sufficient range.
Oh, and once it's cold out, you might find out that you now no longer have the range to make it to where you need to go on a single charge. Maybe the car tells you in advance, or it doesn't and it runs out of juice, which a simple jerry-can isn't going to solve for obvious reasons.
Electric cars are inferior to gasoline-powered ones in the long term due to their very nature as a consumable product and require more expensive maintenance to continue being useful than a gasoline car will over its useful lifetime. That is, if the car company even bothers to make replacement batteries, since the battery is the bulk of the cost of the car in the first place.
Countryside living in some parts of Europe gets a bus even half an hour - enough to be useful for people who have a choice (but still annoying)
If you need a car at your destination, then shared transportation moves way down the list of preferred options.
That a car is practical in many situations, i have no doubt. However being on the countryside doesn't mean you can't get trains near you. Half a century ago in France most folks on the countryside had a train station within walking range (or at least biking range) with a few trains going through every day.
But these stations/rails have been discontinued in orchestrated policies dismantling public services (along with the hospitals, schools, etc). You can clearly see the result of such policy on a map of railway networks in France through time:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/Railway_...
Simply because modern capitalist politics consider the countryside as an enormous farm or waste dump doesn't mean it is the only way.
Also related, some french regions still have countryside buses going regularly and for a cheap fare (1-2€). It's simply a matter of policy/will.
This doesn’t even begin to factor in just how sparse rural areas of the United States really are.
The places that would see the most benefit are the suburbs, and ironically many blue states would benefit the most; and also have a rampant amount of NIMBYism to prevent this from ever happening.
Fair enough. But that doesn't refute entirely the idea that collective transportation could (not necessarily would) be more efficient / ecological.
In principle every city should have a well-running light rail or subway; and high speed trains can (and should) connect major metros.
In reality, politics and NIMBYism makes this impossible.
Eminent domain was meant to address this but somehow it’s abused for realtors and small-scale owners and not so much for grand, infrastructure projects that it was meant for.
The United States could have gone a very direction, but we’re living with the legacy of Robert Moses—-who even then had to battle NIMBYism—who favored roads and cars.
Better still, sometimes they are completely free, in villages with high tourism.
Probably. The electricity needs to be generated somehow and it was within the same time that Arrhenius proposed the Greenhouse effect and suggested it could help crop yields for the rising population.
Yes you are. Cars are completely reliant on roads, a fact which is all too easily forgotten by drivers.
No, there really aren't. If mass transit was actually better, it would have condemned the car (and the horse-driven carriage before it) to being nothing more than a passing fad; "corruption to kill the streetcar" alone isn't enough of an excuse for why people overwhelmingly prefer private vehicles when given the choice.
Cars return so much time by themselves that every single downside (environmental degradation aside) is worth it from a utilitarian standpoint.
Let's take the biggest disadvantage of mass transit, which is its massive speed disadvantage compared to private transport (you must also account for the maximum speed that you can travel to get to it, and the maximum speed between the closest drop-off point and your destination- increasing the speed of one leg has limited value if you're still waiting half an hour for and on the bus, which in the opposite direction is why park-and-ride isn't as effective in practice as it is in theory).
Assume that, with mass transit, a daily round-trip commute is extended by 20 minutes (this is being very generous to public transit). Assuming 260 working days in a year, that's 3.5 days of your life spent on nothing but waiting to get to your destination, or more precisely, ~11 working days.
11 working days is a lot of time when you consider that even European legally-mandated vacation time is only 2-3 times that (in the US, the average vacation time after 1 year of employment is 10 days). Across 40 years of career, that's 440 working days or 1.75 working years.
Oh, and that's only covering the time it takes you to get to work. If you're going somewhere for fun afterwards, or going shopping, that'll be another +20 minutes (again, being generous) to your commute, and you best be home by 11 or you aren't getting home (most mass transit shuts down very early at night) unless you call a taxi ($$$). And if you want to buy more than 2 bags of groceries or some small furniture, even free shipping is still being passed on to you ($$$), driving prices even higher.
Now, to be fair to the bus, rents get lower if you have fewer parking lots (commutes don't get shorter, of course- more people in an area dependent on public transit means its service gets worse). Except what actually happens is that that effect isn't enough to offset the fact that under such a regime, people will try to live as close to work as possible (to minimize the inefficiency described above or even eliminate it completely- hence why all the rich live in European city centers), which means rents don't actually go down, meaning the property owner captures the value that the commons used to provide in terms of driving infrastructure.
Is it really any surprise that the class of people wealthy enough to be property owners (or afford usurious Bay Area rents), who would sacrifice the least (if not directly benefit) from a decrease in cars, are also the ones advocating the loudest for public transit?
More information about these devices: http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/baghdadbatteries.htm
Electroplating requires a much higher voltage than whatever these batteries would have put out. Apologies for the meme-y video, but Electroboom explains the issues quite well regardless:
Very interesting.
Am I remembering right that mythbusters saw it as a parlor trick at most?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Battery#Alternative_...
The artifacts strongly resemble another type of object with a known purpose – storage vessels for sacred scrolls from nearby Seleucia on the Tigris.
In March 2012, Professor Elizabeth Stone of Stony Brook University, an expert on Iraqi archaeology, . . . stated that she does not know a single archaeologist who believed that these were batteries.