February 22, 2015

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Noted environmentalist Bjørn Lomborg says in a USA Today OpEd that the benefits of electric cars are myths. 

It is time to stop our green worship of the electric car. It costs us a fortune, cuts little CO2 and surprisingly kills almost twice the number of people compared with regular gasoline cars.

Electric cars’ global-warming benefits are small. It is advertised as a zero-emissions car, but in reality it only shifts emissions to electricity production, with most coming from fossil fuels. As green venture capitalist Vinod Khosla likes to point out, “Electric cars are coal-powered cars.”

The most popular electric car, a Nissan Leaf, over a 90,000-mile lifetime will emit 31 metric tons of CO2, based on emissions from its production, its electricity consumption at average U.S. fuel mix and its ultimate scrapping. A comparable diesel Mercedes CDI A160 over a similar lifetime will emit 3 tons more across its production, diesel consumption and ultimate scrapping.

The results are similar for the top-line Tesla car, emitting about 44 tons, about 5 tons less than a similar Audi A7 Quattro.

Yes, in both cases the electric car is better, but only by a tiny bit. Avoiding 3 tons of CO2 would cost less than $27 on Europe’s emissions trading market. The annual benefit is about the cost of a cup of coffee. Yet U.S. taxpayers spend up to $7,500 in tax breaks for less than $27 of climate benefits. That’s a bad deal. …

 

 

The New Scientist reports that internal combustion engines may soon use lasers instead of spark plugs.

… For a week last November an internal combustion engine hummed away in a lab near Chicago. Why the excitement? This particular engine sets fire to fuel with lasers instead of spark plugs, burning fuel more efficiently than normal. Laser-fired engines could lead to cleaner, greener cars.

In a normal combustion engine, a mix of fuel and air enters a chamber where it is ignited by a spark plug. Hot, expanding gases from the burning fuel then exert force on a moving part such as a piston – generating mechanical energy that can be used to turn the wheels of a car, for example. But because each combustion cycle happens very quickly, it is hard to get all of the fuel mixture to burn. The problem is that spark plugs can only ignite the fuel at one end of the chamber, says Chuni Ghosh, CEO of New Jersey-based Princeton Optronics, the firm that developed the new ignition system.

In Ghosh’s engine, a laser ignites the fuel in the middle of the chamber instead, burning more of the fuel and improving combustion efficiency by 27 per cent. Laser ignition could boost the fuel efficiency of a car from 40 kilometres per litre up to around 50, for example. The more complete burn also emits fewer polluting by-products such as nitrogen dioxide. …

 

 

Harvard Business Review speculates about Apple making cars. The iCar? 

Apple fanboys and Samsung’s “Next Big Thing”ers would hoot with derisive laughter if The Wall Street Journal or Financial Times reported that GM or Ford planned to rewrite the rules of smartphone innovation. But when media coverage suggests Apple may redesign the automobile, even the most cynical car-lovers quiver with righteous curiosity. They should. …

…  Steve Jobs’ successors are at least an order of magnitude more credible as disruptive innovators than the heirs of Ford and Sloan. The computer, software, telecoms, music, broadcast, publishing, photography, retail, and consumer electronics industries certainly believe so. Apple demonstrably understands design, UX, and global supply chain alignment in ways few organizations ever have. According to data from Yahoo finance, company’s market cap exceeds that of Toyota, BMW, Volkswagen, Ford, GM, Honda, Fiat Chrysler, Tesla, and Daimler combined. Apple’s cash hoard currently tops $175 billion.

If Apple truly wants to fundamentally transform the driving experience and global automobile business, it surely has the ingenuity and resources to do so. …  … Unlike commercial aviation, automobile economics brilliantly reward the brilliant. Apple is brilliant. Don’t bet against them.

Who knows what an iCar might look, feel, or drive like? I don’t. But the better and more challenging question is, how would the automotive industry’s incumbents respond to genuinely disruptive competition? …

 

 

Juan Williams of Fox with a WSJ OpEd on Clarence Thomas calling him “America’s most influential thinker on race.” 

In his office hangs a copy of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery in America. When his critics, and he has many, call him names, he likes to point to it and shout out, “I’m a free man!” This black history month is an opportunity to celebrate the most influential thinker on racial issues in America today—Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas .

Justice Thomas, who has been on the court nearly a quarter-century, remains a polarizing figure—loved by conservatives and loathed by liberals. But his “free”-thinking legal opinions are opening new roads for the American political debate on racial justice.

His opinions are rooted in the premise that the 14th Amendment—guaranteeing equal rights for all—cannot mean different things for different people. As he wrote in Fisher v. University of Texas (2013), he is opposed to “perpetual racial tinkering” by judges to fix racial imbalance and inequality at schools and the workplace. Yet he never contends racism has gone away. The fact that a 2001 article in Time magazine about him was headlined “Uncle Tom Justice” reminds us that racism stubbornly persists. …

 

 

Comic Kelly MacLean survives Whole Foods.

… Unlike Vegas, Whole Foods’ clientele are all about mindfulness and compassion… until they get to the parking lot. Then it’s war. As I pull up this morning, I see a pregnant lady on the crosswalk holding a baby and groceries. This driver swerves around her and honks. As he speeds off I catch his bumper sticker, which says ‘NAMASTE’. Poor lady didn’t even hear him approaching because he was driving a Prius. He crept up on her like a panther.

As the great, sliding glass doors part I am immediately smacked in the face by a wall of cool, moist air that smells of strawberries and orchids. I leave behind the concrete jungle and enter a cornucopia of organic bliss; the land of hemp milk and honey. Seriously, think about Heaven and then think about Whole Foods; they’re basically the same.

The first thing I see is the great wall of kombucha — 42 different kinds of rotten tea. Fun fact: the word kombucha is Japanese for ‘I gizzed in your tea.’ Anyone who’s ever swallowed the glob of mucus at the end of the bottle knows exactly what I’m talking about. I believe this thing is called “The Mother,” which makes it that much creepier. …

 

 

San Francisco Chronicle reports on MLB’s efforts to speed up games.

Baseball games will be quicker-paced in 2015.

The game will use a clock, batters will be forced to keep one foot in the batter’s box and managers won’t trot onto the field for every replay challenge.

The news comes in just the second month of the Rob Manfred administration. He replaced commissioner Bud Selig in January.

“These changes represent a step forward in our efforts to streamline the pace of play,” Manfred said. “The most fundamental starting point for improving the pace of the average game involves getting into and out of breaks seamlessly. In addition, the batter’s box rule will help speed up a basic action of the game.”

Here are the specifics; …

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