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Some Interesting Predictions
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Nov 13, 2018 15:24:51   #
neillaubenthal
 
Lotta pipe dreams there methinks. Cheap and clean electricity...where’s it coming from? Solar or wind ain’t making it and tree huggers define fossil fuel and nuclear as dirty and bad...what else is there? Fusion maybe...but the Sierra Club won’t like that either. You can have clean...or you can have cheap... it we have nothing that will provide both. I would love for solar or wind to be the answer... it the good places to make power that way don’t have much demand...and we don’t have the grid to get it from Mebraska to where the people need it at this point...I can’t even guess now much that infrastructure rebuild would cost.

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Nov 13, 2018 15:45:10   #
CaptainBobBrown
 
I already produce and sell to grid more electricity than I use for residence including charging 2 all electric vehicles. Our 3rd vehicle is Prius C which gets about 55 mpg.

Other than the Prius our household (5 acre farm) consumes zero fossil fuel (all grounds maintenance done with electric tools) and the grid on Hawaii Island is at about 30% wind/solar. More wind/solar coming each year with 2040 as Hawaii's statewide target for 100% renewable sources only for grid based electric production. Maybe the old "too cheap to meter" nostrum used for nuclear power will come true but not for nuclear. Other countries are much further ahead...Netherlands, Germany, Portugal. Portugal last year had several days where TOTAL electric consumption was met by wind/solar.

Electric cars ARE much much simpler and the distributed generation model being popularized by Tesla/Gigafactory/Powerwall will only get cheaper so less and less reliance in near future on centrally produced and distributed electricity. That's just here in the U.S. Elsewhere, like in Germany wind/solar are a much bigger component of national electric production.

Meanwhile start thinking about implications of distributed generation. DC is more efficiently used than AC which was mostly adopted because of need to move electricity over longer distances with less loss. With distributed generation DC will be more efficient so DC appliances will make more sense too with lower production costs and higher efficiency.

Now if we can just figure out how to use the huge quantities of methane escaping from fracking/tundra melting/and potential methane clathrate boil off as Arctic Ocean warms we might survive as a species ... but probably not.

Still, NASA and ESA are working on methane decomposition to produce water and O2 as part of environmental effort required for Mars habitation and long duration space voyages so maybe we can figure use the methane release threat to our advantage somewhere else other than on earth.

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Nov 13, 2018 18:10:36   #
Bipod
 
Sidewalks will be replaced by moving sidewalks.

Everyone will have a personal Jet Pack.

Cars will fly.

A robot maid will clean your house.

You will have a daughter named Judy and a son named Elroy.

You will walk your dog on an automated treadmill.
"Help! Help! Jane, stop this crazy thing!" -- Geroge Jetson

Reality

I'm still waiting for my personal jet pack.
Flying cars haven't proven very successful either.

But Amazon.com says its going to build a Zeppelin book warehouse
and use drones to deliver books to your door!! Scheduled date:
when hell freezes over. (Picture the size of drone required to lift
lift a box of books. If you don't know, ask a model airplane enthusiast.
Now picture it crashing into your living room.)

OK, aviation may have cost and safety limitations, but what about computers?
Surely they can anything?

Alas, advances in artificial intelligence have been few and far between
But larger, faster computers--aided by blizzards of corporate PR--have given
the appearance of progress.

In 1996, after 11 years and $4 million dollars in development, using a roomful
of custom-designed computers, IBM finally beat one middle-aged man at a
board game.

In a related story, Caterpillar has just announced that, it's latest 390F L
96-ton excavator has successfully moved more dirt than one laborer
with a shovel.

Which shows you the difference between AI and mechanical equipment:
the very first earth-moving machine ever built moved much more earth
faster than a dozen men.

Since 1996, no famous chess masters have been beaten by computers
because nobody wants to pay $4: the game ain't worth the candle.

The problem with AI is that neuroscientists still don't know how the
brain works. And the brain wasn't designed by an engineer or programmer--
it evolved over millions of years.

Nevertheless, AI has raised more investor money in stocks schemes than
anything since the South Sea Island company.

So we have driverless cars are crashing into pedestrians, fire trucks, police cars,
buildings...with loss of life and no tangible benefit to society. But man,
is it "high tech"!

In the future, anything is possible--if you tell big enough lies.

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Nov 13, 2018 18:47:03   #
Architect1776 Loc: In my mind
 
FrumCA wrote:
Auto repair shops will go away.

A gasoline engine has 20,000 individual parts. An electrical motor has 20. Electric cars are sold with lifetime guarantees and are only repaired by dealers. It takes only 10 minutes to remove and replace an electric motor. Faulty electric motors are not repaired in the dealership but are sent to a regional repair shop that repairs them with robots. Your electric motor malfunction light goes on, so you drive up to what looks like a Jiffy-auto wash, and your car is towed through while you have a cup of coffee and out comes your car with a new electric motor!

Gas stations will go away. Parking meters will be replaced by meters that dispense electricity. Companies will install electrical recharging stations; in fact, they’ve already started. You can find them at select Dunkin Donuts locations.

Most (the smart) major auto manufacturers have already designated money to start building new plants that only build electric cars.

Coal industries will go away. Gasoline/oil companies will go away. Drilling for oil will stop. So say goodbye to OPEC!

Homes will produce and store more electrical energy during the day and then they use and will sell it back to the grid. The grid stores it and dispenses it to industries that are high electricity users. Has anybody seen the Tesla roof?

A baby of today will only see personal cars in museums.

The FUTURE is approaching faster than most of us can handle.

In 1998, Kodak had 170,000 employees and sold 85% of all photo paper worldwide. Within just a few years, their business model disappeared and they went bankrupt. Who would have thought of that ever happening?

What happened to Kodak will happen in a lot of industries in the next 5-10 years and, most people don't see it coming.

Did you think in 1998 that 3 years later, you would never take pictures on film again? With today’s smart phones, who even has a camera these days?

Yet digital cameras were invented in 1975. The first ones only had 10,000 pixels, but followed Moore's law. So as with all exponential technologies, it was a disappointment for a time, before it became way superior and became mainstream in only a few short years. It will now happen again (but much faster) with Artificial Intelligence, health, autonomous and electric cars, education, 3D printing, agriculture and jobs.

Forget the book, “Future Shock”, welcome to the 4th Industrial Revolution.

Software has disrupted and will continue to disrupt most traditional industries in the next 5-10 years.

UBER is just a software tool, they don't own any cars, and are now the biggest taxi company in the world!
Ask any taxi driver if they saw that coming.

Airbnb is now the biggest hotel company in the world, although they don't own any properties.
Ask Hilton Hotels if they saw that coming.

Artificial Intelligence: Computers become exponentially better in understanding the world.
This year, a computer beat the best Go-player in the world, 10 years earlier than expected.

In the USA, young lawyers already don't get jobs. Because of IBM's Watson, you can get legal advice (so far for right now, the basic stuff) within seconds, with 90% accuracy compared with 70% accuracy when done by humans. So, if you study law, stop immediately. There will be 90% fewer lawyers in the future, (what a thought!) only omniscient specialists will remain. (We welcome that day!)

Watson already helps nurses diagnosing cancer, its 4 times more accurate than human nurses.

Facebook now has a pattern recognition software that can recognize faces better than humans. In 2030, computers will become more intelligent than humans.

Autonomous cars: In 2018 the first self-driving cars are already here. In the next 2 years, the entire industry will start to be disrupted. You won't want to own a car anymore as you will call a car with your phone, it will show up at your location and drive you to your destination. You will not need to park it you will only pay for the driven distance and you can be productive while driving. The very young children of today will never get a driver's license and will never own a car.

This will change our cities, because we will need 90-95% fewer cars. We can transform former parking spaces into parks.

1.2 million people die each year in car accidents worldwide including distracted or drunk driving. We now have one accident every 60,000 miles; with autonomous driving that will drop to 1 accident in 6 million miles. That will save a million lives plus worldwide each year.

Most traditional car companies will doubtless become bankrupt. Traditional car companies will try the evolutionary approach and just build a better car, while tech companies (Tesla, Apple, Google) will do the revolutionary approach and build a computer on wheels.

Look at what Volvo is doing right now; no more internal combustion engines in their vehicles starting this year with the 2019 models, using all electric or hybrid only, with the intent of phasing out hybrid models.

Many engineers from Volkswagen and Audi; are completely terrified of Tesla and so they should be. Look at all the companies offering all electric vehicles. That was unheard of, only a few years ago.

Insurance companies will have massive trouble because, without accidents, the costs will become cheaper. Their car insurance business model will disappear.

Real estate will change. Because if you can work while you commute, people will move farther away to live in a more beautiful or affordable neighborhood.

Electric cars will become mainstream about 2030. Cities will be less noisy because all new cars will run on electricity.
Cities will have much cleaner air as well. (Can we start in Los Angeles, please?)

Electricity will become incredibly cheap and clean.

Solar production has been on an exponential curve for 30 years, but you can now see the burgeoning impact
And it’s just getting ramped up.

Fossil energy companies are desperately trying to limit access to the grid to prevent competition from home solar installations, but that simply cannot continue - technology will take care of that strategy.

Health: The Tricorder X price will be announced this year. There are companies who will build a medical device (called the "Tricorder" from Star Trek) that works with your phone, which takes your retina scan, your blood sample and you breath into it. It then analyses 54 bio-markers that will identify nearly any Disease. There are dozens of phone apps out there right now for health purposes.

WELCOME TO TOMORROW – it actually arrived a few years ago.
Auto repair shops will go away. br br A gasoline... (show quote)


Who knows what the future will bring.
Independent minded Americans will avoid self driving cars seeing as they are incredibly limited in where they can go. I enjoy wandering in a city even looking at sites like in Charleston. I enjoy desert trails over 4 peaks, AZ. Or wandering all over the Mogollion Rim which would not work.
I will stick with gasoline until I can get at least 500 miles and then refill in 5 minutes to full capacity for another 500 miles.

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Nov 13, 2018 18:48:25   #
Bob Locher Loc: Southwest Oregon
 
Generally speaking I think your predictions are far more right than wrong.

But there is one place where petroleum power will likely prevail for a rather longer time - aircraft. There is no alternate power system on the horizon capable of trans-oceanic flight. Not to mention heavy-lift helicopters.


Cheers


Bob Locher

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Nov 13, 2018 19:23:00   #
Hal81 Loc: Bucks County, Pa.
 
The buggy whip outfit went belly up. I lost about $2.36.

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Nov 13, 2018 19:25:53   #
Fotoserj Loc: St calixte Qc Ca
 
Uber exist for only one reason no politician had the balls to say, we have a law to cover taxi operations abide by the law or well seized any vehicle used for breaking the law, now we have taxi owners going bankrupt and loosing five or more year of very hard work, and don’t tell me sitting in a cab 16 to 18 hours a day to support your family is not hard work, have done it and know what it’s all about.

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Nov 13, 2018 20:01:26   #
Spectre Loc: Bothell, Washington
 
Almost everything mechanical needs lube. Things may diminish but the need will remain. Portable generators will need fuel of some sort to power things in rural areas.
Solar panels are becoming more efficient and may power autos without need to be plugged in.
Many more things to come with the inventive imagination.

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Nov 13, 2018 20:09:59   #
David in Dallas Loc: Dallas, Texas, USA
 
The use of solar and wind energy for electrical power depends on reliable and inexpensive ways to store that energy, since neither source is continuous or even (in the case of wind) predictable. Solar plants (that focus the Sun) have proven to be even more destructive to birds than wind turbines. Birds flying through the focused beams just burst into flame. All solar plants take up enormous amounts of land related to the power output. Yes, we have deserts that can be used for such, but where would you put one in New Jersey?

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Nov 14, 2018 06:56:36   #
CCChuckles Loc: Michigan
 
what about China and India, 2/3rds of the Global population....?????

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Nov 14, 2018 07:50:57   #
Bison Bud
 
Electric cars are not as "Green" as their advocates believe and currently the primary power used to generate the electricity needed to charge them still burns fossil fuel. The original poster states that electricity will be plentiful and cheap, but has no real answer as to where that's going to come from or how to prevent our leaders from taxing it to death and/or restricting it's growth to keep from losing other tax income already in place. In any case, rechargeable batteries do wear out, especially in this kind of high current system, and they are currently a big problem to dispose of properly. If everyone suddenly started driving electric cars the pollution from all the worn out batteries could turn out to be worst pollution issue we have ever faced. Once many of the toxic, heavy metals from these batteries get into our water systems, we are all doomed! However, I do agree with those that mentioned the prospect of using hydrogen fuel cells. This technology is advancing rapidly and surpasses battery storage in many, many ways. Maybe when the electric cars are powered by hydrogen fuel cells, we might see a huge move away from fossil fuels, but that's apparently a ways off yet. Even though we have seen big improvements in battery technology, I think they have a long way to go before the electric car really becomes mainstream. It's certainly not going to happen within my lifetime, so I can only hope that our younger generations back up their dreams with sensible/realistic expectations and practical applications of the new technologies that become available to them.

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Nov 14, 2018 11:21:24   #
pendennis
 
Let's assume, and that's a very big onus, that driverless cars become de rigeur in the next few years, who is going to insure the masses? If a driverless car goes rogue, gets the "blue screen of death", or has a non-user controlled failure, who foots the repair/replacement/medical costs?

I don't see Allstate, GEICO, Progressive, etc., advertising their "Driverless Discount Rates". And don't even think about "flying cars". We have enough wack jobs out there that can't control a vehicle that has all four wheels on the ground, let alone levitation. And, if you think your computer aided cars are expensive to repair/replace, wait until you have to replace the main processor in an electric car. We really complain about our $500 laptops failing; what about your $40K electric wonder?

People ignore the salvage costs of batteries. There are high quantities of lead and chemicals that are dangerous to handle, those costs have to be added into the product somewhere along the life cycle of the batteries.

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Nov 14, 2018 15:55:22   #
John_F Loc: Minneapolis, MN
 
By "safer" you mean exactly what. The major and primary risk from nuclear power are the radioactive fission products. Each aton of thorium, uraniun, plutonium produce 2 fission products which head a chain of radioactive decay products.

Alan1729 wrote:
Don't rule out Nuclear power yet, there is a safer version Thorium which was ruled out because the military wanted plutonium for the bomb. There is a lot of interest in Thorium reactors in other countries so it may come the the USA after everyone else has it.

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Nov 15, 2018 15:49:14   #
NikonJohn Loc: Indiana U.S.A.
 
Maybe, time will tell. :)

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Nov 15, 2018 16:44:22   #
David in Dallas Loc: Dallas, Texas, USA
 
From what I read, using Thorium results in less dangerous fission products, much shorter half-lives, and no Plutonium. It is much more difficult to use the Thorium cycle to produce a nuclear bomb--it is not itself fissionable and it's harder to separate out fissionable byproducts.

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