[Newfie]

Mousepad,

A number of us here understand that pretty well. Not all but some.

[REAL Green]

I don't know about being trapped. But the great realization that we have to live WAY poorer. That realization still has to sink in. There's still plenty of folks who think buying high tech tesla will solve earth's problems.

All this is part of a process across a great big planet. We might think the planet small until mobility is lost. Once in a local with far fewer human connections the nature of the earth and people changes dramatically. This is part of the problem with humans today and that is until they scale properly their actions are significantly dysfunctional and irrational. I say this because look around and ask yourself does your local have what it takes to support you without global support? If it doesn’t why are you there or why are you not adapting? Currently we are in a high performance modern civilization operated mostly by the global 1BIL rich. The rest are along for the ride whether the like it or not meaning if this delocalized global world fails, they fail too by association. NUKs know no borders.

There is a break point on how poorer this delocalized global world can get before it self-destructs because vital nodes of support no longer function. Remember in complex systems it is generally the weakest link that disrupts the whole system. This can often be something seemingly insignificant that cascades out of control. In the meantime, this destructive change in this system under stress can be happening regionally and locally but the core elements hold. It might be the case that the failure on the periphery eventually destroys the core or the core self-destructs and takes out the periphery. Nobody knows how this self-organizing self-adapting system of billions of actors with billions more decision will react with any level of surety. It may also be the case tech saves us but I doubt it but to be fair it must be included.

Personally, I think proper behavior could save us but I doubt humanity has what it takes at the macro level. Locally much can be done with proper behavior at the global level it is a free for all when the chips are down. This becomes more complicated when put in the context of a planet changing epoch of stable cycles and systems being forced into destructive change by human interference. This includes the planetary web of life in an extinction process with localized ecosystem failure imbedded with overall decline.

The trap I speak of is more related to the most potent parts of this equation and that is the modern human arrangement. This arrangement is clearly in overshoot with population and consumption so if there is a trap it is limits of going forward with growth and technological expansion but also going backwards into the degrowth of these. How far forward or backwards is a huge question. I personally think it is vital our best and brightest minds accept the trap we are in and focus knowledge resources on a determination of how far forward or backwards civilization can go and then once good actionable intelligence is available take proactive action to stabilize and mitigate the worst of what could be ahead. This will not happen at the top because science is corrupted by power but also dellusionals with solutions. Science is clear on causation but delusional on the curative way forward. Techno solutions lead to more problems and so on.

This is why I point to the local of enlightened and awakened individuals to strike their own course and do these vital actions locally in small groups. Hopefully enough pockets of wisdom with coalesce and become a meaningful force of constructive change in an overall world of destructive change. The difference between enlightened and awakened is the awakened take their enlightenment and turn it into action.

[Newfie]

Real,

I like your characterization of space, once we loose mobility the world expands.

The same applies to our perception of time, it will lengthen, things will happen slooower. Space AND time will stretch out. Things will not be so immediate.

For better and worse.

[mousepad]

Remember in complex systems it is generally the weakest link that disrupts the whole system. This can often be something seemingly insignificant that cascades out of control.

Yes, that's the key takeaway from your post, but also the most problematic.
Nobody knows what the weakest link is and nobody knows how weak it is.
The doomers shouting the breaking of the link is imminent. The cornucopians believing tech and policy changes can strengthen a weak link into all eternity. And not only that, most links are very flexible, they can be pulled far before they break.

In the end the old question remains. How much time is left? 5, 50, 500 or 5000 years? It makes a lot of difference.

[Plantagenet]

In the end the old question remains. How much time is left? 5, 50, 500 or 5000 years? It makes a lot of difference.

How much time is left until what? Complete collapse?

That depends mainly on where you live and how much money you have.

The future will not be evenly distributed......

Some areas will do pretty while for quite a while longer.

Other areas are already seeing their forests burn up in wild fires or their coasts be flooded by rising sea level or their farms and crops devoted by droughts or their downtown business districts burned out and looted by mobs and businesses are closed by government mandated lockdowns and in many areas people are already seeing their jobs disappear forever.

Good luck and happy holidays!

Cheers!

[mousepad]

In the end the old question remains. How much time is left? 5, 50, 500 or 5000 years? It makes a lot of difference.

How much time is left until what? Complete collapse?

What some people call "collapse" is simply "change" for others.
So I won't even try to define collapse.
Maybe that's the right way of looking at it? It's just change. And you have to change with it?

[Plantagenet]

3000 years ago Heraclitus said "Everything changes," so I think that some amount of change is always with us.

But collapse, IMHO, is something different. Collapse occurs when normal society stops functioning.

Climate Change has the potential to cause large-scale collapse.

So does nuclear war.

So does crop failure and famine.

A truly deadly plague or pandemic could really shut things down.

Or something like "peak oil"or "peak lithium" or "peak something else" could cause real problems ...if something civilization is dependent on suddenly goes into short supply we could see economic collapse.

Or the economy could just collapse all by itself......its happened before.


The modern Four Riders of the Apocalypse......Climate Change, Nuclear war, Plague and Pandemic, and Crop Failure and Famine.

Cheers!

[JuanP]

"China develops electric hub driverless tractor"
https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1208245.shtml

My ICE tiller at one of the farms broke down. I use a BCS at the other location, but I don't want to have to move from one place to the other. Does anyone know of an electric alternative to a BCS? I would like to find a battery powered alternative. Corded alternatives are not an option because we are off grid. I will probably end up buying a Mantis tiller, but I'd like something more like an electric BCS with more power. This is to be used on a 1/3 acre field that is already in use. I just need it to till beds that have already been cleaned and broadforked.

This is the one I am thinking of buying now:
https://mantis.com/product/mantis-58v-c ... ator-3558/

[careinke]

"China develops electric hub driverless tractor"
https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1208245.shtml

My ICE tiller at one of the farms broke down. I use a BCS at the other location, but I don't want to have to move from one place to the other. Does anyone know of an electric alternative to a BCS? I would like to find a battery powered alternative. Corded alternatives are not an option because we are off grid. I will probably end up buying a Mantis tiller, but I'd like something more like an electric BCS with more power. This is to be used on a 1/3 acre field that is already in use. I just need it to till beds that have already been cleaned and broadforked.

This is the one I am thinking of buying now:
https://mantis.com/product/mantis-58v-c ... ator-3558/

Why would you till the soil? I have two tillers, haven't touched them in five years.

[Outcast_Searcher]

3000 years ago Heraclitus said "Everything changes," so I think that some amount of change is always with us.

Written history is a picture of lots of change. Between wars, weather variations, and resource issues, and competing societies grappling with those, that's grist for frequent change right there. Then, since, say, the Renaissance, add an ever accelerating technological push to the forces for big change.

Unless there actually is REAL collapse and humanity crashes back to the early agricultural age, just with technology, it's hard to imagine lots of change NOT being with us for centuries.

As far as the odds, who can say, but those predicting certain short term "collapse" on this site as an ongoing hobby are less accurate than broken clocks, based on their track record (noting words have meaning, and collapse isn't a synonym for minor or moderate inconvenience). So the odds for some sort of collapse in the long term are virtually certain, but that doesn't mean trying to time it / predict it is productive. The world is a very complex place.

[JuanP]

"China develops electric hub driverless tractor"
https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1208245.shtml

My ICE tiller at one of the farms broke down. I use a BCS at the other location, but I don't want to have to move from one place to the other. Does anyone know of an electric alternative to a BCS? I would like to find a battery powered alternative. Corded alternatives are not an option because we are off grid. I will probably end up buying a Mantis tiller, but I'd like something more like an electric BCS with more power. This is to be used on a 1/3 acre field that is already in use. I just need it to till beds that have already been cleaned and broadforked.

This is the one I am thinking of buying now:
https://mantis.com/product/mantis-58v-c ... ator-3558/

Why would you till the soil? I have two tillers, haven't touched them in five years.

I farm in a farming coop. Some members wanted a tiller. I practice no tilling on all of my own beds, but I do need a cultivator for my baby greens. My preferred choice was the Tilther, but it has been out of stock for months. I use a cultivator to mix in ammendments and the previous crops residue in the top 2" to 3" soil. The only other options would be removing the crop residue, which removes all the carbon and nutrients in it, and is very labor intensive or covering the beds to let the crop residue rot in place, which would reduce my income and productivity by extending the planting cycle by 10 days, and implies using plastic to cover the beds, which I'd rather avoid.

I sell around 100 pounds of baby greens a week. I add fertilizer and/or compost and mix it as I explained above, then I use a 30" wide roller to flatten and compact the soil a bit for better germination and easier harvesting, then I seed using a Jang JP1 seeder. I cut my first harvest after 21 to 24 days, and my second and third cuts at 7 to 10 days intervals. I use the Quick Cut Greens Harvester to do this. After that the harvest is not of a good enough quality to sell, so I add more compost, mix into the soil while chopping and mixing the crop residue using a shallow cultivator, and plant the bed again the same day. This allows me too get 3 baby greens harvests from the same bed every 35 to 45 days, depending on the weather. To use the Jang seeder and Quick Cut Greens harvester I need a perfectly smooth and flat bed.

[REAL Green]

I farm in a farming coop. Some members wanted a tiller. I practice no tilling on all of my own beds,

What I want to know JuanP is how this relates to EV's?????

[JuanP]

"Hybrids Enjoying More Robust Sales Than Electric Vehicles"
https://www.rigzone.com/news/wire/hybri ... 3-article/

"Hybrid cars are seeing a quiet resurgence as the boom in electric vehicles spurs automakers to give the older, cheaper technology a second look.

This year has been an extraordinary one for electric-car manufacturers. Investors have embraced makers of pure-electric vehicles, driving the share prices of Tesla Inc. and Chinese competitor Nio Inc. to stratospheric levels. Drivers are also coming on board, with EV sales from China to Europe rising despite the pandemic.

But the market risks becoming a crowded one, with more than 500 EV models expected to be available globally by 2022. Many conventional automakers are mulling their options, trying to decide which technologies will reign in the decades between now and a full transition away from combustion engines. The investment decisions they make today could determine whether they sink or swim."

[JuanP]

"How Biden can get the US to love electric cars"
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic ... f=fyhEsXfZ

"Strengthened tailpipe emission limits and increased incentives for EV buyers can help American automakers compete."

Time to buy more Tesla stocks!

[REAL Green]

“Top 9 Electric Vehicles Coming to USA in 2021”
https://cleantechnica.com/2020/12/12/to ... g-in-2021/

“Rivian, Tesla, and Lordstown will be bringing trucks to market in 2021…Ford’s Mustang Mach-E (already out but undergoing a significant production ramp-up in 2021) puts Ford in the race for EV dominance…Volkswagen’s big course correction started after the dieselgate scandal a couple years back, and while Europe has seen the ID.3 for the past few months of 2020, the US has been waiting and waiting for its first ID model…The Nissan Ariya will not be arriving in the US until late 2021. However, it should hit the Japanese market slightly before that. The Nissan Ariya will have two battery options (63 and 87 kWh) and FWD or AWD. A front-wheel-drive, large-battery-pack version should get around 300 miles of range, which means the small battery pack FWD version should get sub-220-mile range, with the AWD versions slightly lower than the FWD versions…the R1S Launch Edition is the first full-size all-electric SUV to hit the market, and wow, it is magnificent. With reservations full for the Launch Edition, the earliest new shoppers can receive the R1S is January 2022. The specs impress with a base range of 300+ miles, AWD standard, 0–60 mph around 3 seconds, towing up to 7,700 lb, wading depth of 3 feet, and more variants coming in the future…Lucid is making cars we mere mortals can only dream about (pun intended). Many who may have been interested in the Model S, will likely flock to Lucid’s sexy Air. With incredible range, this car will take the long distance crown from Tesla — however, just for a short time, as the Model S Ludicrous Plaid offers a few more miles of range.”

[evilgenius]

What I want to know is whether self-driving car's ability to take themselves to go and get a charge will overcome the lack of infrastructure, or if that will indeed need a buildout? If the buildout becomes necessary, then electrical infrastructure companies could make a person rich. If charging will be distant and, possibly, distinct, then rail may play a part in taking masses of cars to remote charging lots. If that happens, steel companies could do very well. Steel companies are cheap right now! Lots could exist in neighborhoods, but whose house would get torn down to build them? Metered charging could be strung along streets like parking meters are, but that would cost more than concentrating the infrastructure in a lot. Remote lots could be cheapest. Also, it makes a big difference whether things develop according to a plan, or by way of evolution. The best way may not be the way that develops. People have ways of hanging on to the strangest aspects of things, and leaving out seemingly necessary corrections that may have been a better replacement for them. Train tracks are not as far apart as they are because they are the best width for trains but because Roman cart wheels used to be that wide, for instance. You can't know too far ahead of time which way things will actually go, unless you have access to information that others don't.

[vtsnowedin]

Consider that a vehicle driven 15,000 miles a year at 60 miles per hour is only on the road 250 hours and spends the rest of the year (8516 hours) parked somewhere with the two top places being at your home or at your place of work. Homes and work places will be the place where chargers should and will be built and a charge station where a robot plugs in a self driving car to get a charge will be a gadget that is unneeded.

[JuanP]

I've had Roomba robotic vacuum cleaners for almost 20 years. I have been through 6 models through the years and love them to death. My wife and I haven't had to clean a floor in all that time.

For the last 15+ years they have been able to seek, find, and connect to the charger on their own. If a vacuum cleaner can find a charger on its own and recharge itself automatically, why wouldn't a car be able to? This is not an issue, IMO

[Plantagenet]

Tesla Model S busts into flames while driving down the road in Texas

loud-bangs-tesla-model-s-inexplicably-bursts-flames

Spontaneous EV battery combustion strikes again!

Cheers!

[AdamB]

Tesla Model S busts into flames while driving down the road in Texas

loud-bangs-tesla-model-s-inexplicably-bursts-flames

Spontaneous EV battery combustion strikes again!

Cheers!

Before I read this article, I am forced to ask, did you? And if you did, did you represent it correctly?