Note from a man slightly older than me - July 27
Posted: Mon Jul 27, 2020 6:52 pm
I've actually had conversations with young people something like the one below, so I thought you'd enjoy this.
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I was putting gas in my 61-year-old car at a filling station in my little town the other day when a tourist from California came out of the co-located shop and asked me, "What year is that car?"
"1959."
"Huh. What is it, some kind of MG or something?"
I smiled. "It's a Jaguar… XK 150."
"Hmmm. Well, it looks nice. Too bad it's a dinosaur."
OK, I've been to two county fairs, one war and a dog show that went ugly. I'm pretty even-tempered so I simply asked, "Why would you say that?"
"Well, in 10 years there won't be any gas stations. Just pollution-free electric battery charging stations for pollution-free cars like mine."
I allowed as how his car looked nice, too, then asked, "Where do you think the electricity that powers your EV -"
"It's not an EV, it's a Tesla!"
"Where do you think the electricity that powers that Tesla comes from?"
"That's a dumb question. It comes from the battery."
"And when the battery needs charging?"
"From a bigger battery, um, at the battery… places. Stations."
"And when they need to be recharged?"
"Who the hell cares? It's only important how… how green it is." He turned to respond to his wife who was driving the diesel pickup that was towing the gas-powered boat with the two gas-powered jet skis in the pickup bed with which they would soon be polluting my lake.
I never got to continue this illuminating conversation by pointing out that electricity, at least on a usable scale, was not produced by rubbing two balloons together. Nor is it a gift from the gods stored somewhere in Iowa or Nebraska or somewhere else that he might consider flyover country.
Electricity at the scale needed for transportation, lighting, heating etc. comes from either the photovoltaic process where light is turned into electricity, or from turbines that turn electric generators, effectively doing the same thing - excite and extract electrons into a moving flow. Those turbines might be powered by wind, water or biomass, but in most of the developed world, they are powered by the carbon fuel we call natural gas. (The developing world mostly uses coal, which is cheaper.)
The United States is the top producing country of natural gas in the world. Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM) is the biggest producer of natural gas in the United States.
Read more: https://seekingalpha.com/article/436068 ... ent=link-0
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I was putting gas in my 61-year-old car at a filling station in my little town the other day when a tourist from California came out of the co-located shop and asked me, "What year is that car?"
"1959."
"Huh. What is it, some kind of MG or something?"
I smiled. "It's a Jaguar… XK 150."
"Hmmm. Well, it looks nice. Too bad it's a dinosaur."
OK, I've been to two county fairs, one war and a dog show that went ugly. I'm pretty even-tempered so I simply asked, "Why would you say that?"
"Well, in 10 years there won't be any gas stations. Just pollution-free electric battery charging stations for pollution-free cars like mine."
I allowed as how his car looked nice, too, then asked, "Where do you think the electricity that powers your EV -"
"It's not an EV, it's a Tesla!"
"Where do you think the electricity that powers that Tesla comes from?"
"That's a dumb question. It comes from the battery."
"And when the battery needs charging?"
"From a bigger battery, um, at the battery… places. Stations."
"And when they need to be recharged?"
"Who the hell cares? It's only important how… how green it is." He turned to respond to his wife who was driving the diesel pickup that was towing the gas-powered boat with the two gas-powered jet skis in the pickup bed with which they would soon be polluting my lake.
I never got to continue this illuminating conversation by pointing out that electricity, at least on a usable scale, was not produced by rubbing two balloons together. Nor is it a gift from the gods stored somewhere in Iowa or Nebraska or somewhere else that he might consider flyover country.
Electricity at the scale needed for transportation, lighting, heating etc. comes from either the photovoltaic process where light is turned into electricity, or from turbines that turn electric generators, effectively doing the same thing - excite and extract electrons into a moving flow. Those turbines might be powered by wind, water or biomass, but in most of the developed world, they are powered by the carbon fuel we call natural gas. (The developing world mostly uses coal, which is cheaper.)
The United States is the top producing country of natural gas in the world. Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM) is the biggest producer of natural gas in the United States.
Read more: https://seekingalpha.com/article/436068 ... ent=link-0