Diesel 4Runner actually coming? Tacoma next?

But don’t worry. If you do flip burgers I made college in NY “free” for everyone, and raised the minimum wage to $15/hr. So you’ll be just fine....

Doesn’t take a genius to see where we’re headed... if I ran my household like they run this state my Taco/ House/ and everything else would have been Repo’ed long ago...

 

Yep... we don’t need energy.... we’re NYC it’ll just magically fly to us... but if you don’t mind upstate, we’re going to truck our garbage to you and dump it because we don’t have any place for anything....

 

As a upstate NYer who enjoys the outdoors for a multitude of purposes, I COMPLETELY agree with this ban.

I don't see the point in potentially ruining our lakes, streams and forests for a resource that WILL run out, and isn't even really economically viable to extract. Yeah some people will get rich, but the companies that do fracking don't make money.

 

The R&D side is changing rapidly. Just a bit more efficiency and it may flip the equation.

 

they said the same thing about Nuclear energy in the 60's-70's now you u cant run your AC 24/7 in the summertime without nukes

 

Like the advent of the internal combustion engine in cities at the turn of the last century alleviated the "horse manure problem".

Technologies rise to serve needs and fall when something better comes along.

Solar energy is here to stay, since the sun is such a convenient power source.

The electric vehicle is the gateway to the autonomous vehicle- once that tech is fully online, no more need for trafffic lights/ street light, parking lots will go away freeing up lots of real estate.

Probably for most of us living I'm metropolitan area, vehicle ownership itself will also disappear- imo.

But all this is still a way away.

 

Nuclear energy doesn't pollute billions of gallons of water by design, cause earthquakes or increase heavy truck traffic on roads. While it certainly has it's own issues, mostly with what to do with spent fuel rods that are dangerous for thousands of years, accidents and contamination are rare. With fracking they are pretty much a guarantee.

I've been living within 25 miles of a nuclear plant my entire life, never had an issue with it. I'm not willing to risk the water that I drink, and my food drinks, for what would be beneficial to few.

 

I can’t believe that this thread is still going

 

Exactly right, regardless of solar/ wind/ or otherwise the actual "Grid" requires what is called a base load, which is ALWAYS provided by a Nuclear Generator, or Gas/ Coal. These are the large plants that can't go online/ offline quickly and fulfill the standard electrical demand from the grid. Wind and Solar are fine, but unless you can somehow store that energy in batteries that we can't even imagine there's just no way to do without large scales plants providing this base line of power. It's actually the very reason Nuclear Plants are not "economically viable" unless they have a rate locked in. By design they provide power to the grid all the time which means when power is $3 per MWE they are only making $3 (nights, off peak ext) when power is $3000 per MWE all those peak power plants, small gas plants, wind/ solar ext come online and make the big bucks, soon as demand and price go down so do those plants.

I'm not saying that someday this may be different, but if you look at how the actual grid functions there is a massive power requirement that needs to be there day in and day out, not just when it's sunny with a nice breeze. A very long story short, Battery technology will be the future, without it things can not change.

Also I will state on record right now, that "solar panel waste" will be a CRISIS in this world in the next 10-20 years. There is going to be literally millions of tons of heavy metals and waste that we are going to have to deal with from solar cells as there life expectancy comes up.

Oh and BTW, my last tangent, Batteries and solar panels ARE very toxic and require mining and a lot of other very bad things for the environment, so pick your poison and be careful what you wish for....

 

We've changed direction, kind of a "proof of concept" as to why Diesel isn't completely out of the question and EV's are a lot farther off than people would like to admit.

 

Same, with anything there is waste... People who drive a Toyota Prius who think they don't burn fossil fuels are just silly, a greater understanding of how things work is needed for almost everything in this country...

Sadly we are a country of "headline readers" we don't generally get the meat of the story before we lose interest.

 

Exactly. Energy storage is a tricky wicket, fossil fuels are fantastic in their energy density and battery technology has a lot of catching up to do.

Finding a way to recycle all the toxic waste we are generating would be a game changer.

 

Um, do a bit of research lol. They do make money... a lot of it... and that is why the US has continued to prosper.
I love the outdoors. I live outdoors. There is room for me and the frac guys in the woods.
As far as ruining our lakes and rivers, let me know when water decides to run uphill. Fracking happens several thousand feet below the surface. Your water table is a few hundred feet deep at most. Again, research goes a long way.

 

Can't agree with you more. Tesla's EV Semi is the perfect example. Great concept but I don't think it will work out to well in reality. They claim 500 miles per charge, but does that account for the 20+ Tons trucks haul and how long to charge? With both tanks currently diesel semis can pull 1500 miles plus. I'll probably get flak for this especially being on this site, but I currently own the diesel Colorado and I love that thing. 30+ MPG highway with a crew cab long bed is very impressive.

 

I have.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/arthurberman/2017/07/05/shale-gas-is-not-a-revolution/#351d6ad731b5
I don't see spending $1.42 for every $1.00 you make as good business.
It's not the actual process of fracking that contaminates water, if everything goes perfectly then it would be safe. But nothing goes perfectly, the vertical shafts can leak or waste water can leak, trucks can spill etc. Multiply that by hundreds or thousands of wells...

Even if there were NO leaks, each well uses millions of gallons of water, most of which ends up unrecoverable underground. Clean water will be a huge issue in the near future, and I personally don't think squandering it on cheap gas is a smart move

 

nuclear energy hasn't had a lot of accidents or issues because it is heavily regulated by Government agencies the Nuclear regulatory commission and they will have another commission to regulate Fracking for natural gas and any contamination accidents will also be extremely minimal if at all.

 

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Good luck dude, and I read the article you linked. The one problem is companies don't spend money unless they can make money. If a product costs more to produce than the selling price, then money is being made somewhere else, like incentives or write offs. I work in the off highway mobile equipment industry and about a tenth of our business is in the fracking world. I have visited many frac sites during all phases and I was impressed with the way they operate. Can accidents happen? Yep, as long as humans are involved accidents can and will happen. But until you have a better idea and its feasible then this is what we have to work with.

 

The use case for an EV OTR truck make sense to me if they can get a range and charging that works. What I mean is if Telsa or whomever can get a truck to run 11 hours and recharge in 10 then it would work without interrupting the way drivers have to work now under 11/14 rules.

 

True story the dealership where I bought my Tacoma told me that Subarus have a Boxster motor, as in Porsche. This was six years before I bought my truck, I was with a friend while Scion shopping.

 

That's kind of my point, the only reason they are actually profitable is the government would rather subsidize local production rather than import. If it was a truly free market the money just wouldn't be good enough right now for those companies to use that process.

That really brings me to my other issue, which lies at the basis of resource extraction. The first things exploited are always the easiest to get to, once that runs out you find the next easiest source until it no longer makes you enough money to bother getting it.

With something as obviously finite and currently vital to our way of life, moving as far down that ladder as we can right now is exteremly short sighted and dangerous. Keeping a healthy reserve of fairly easy to extract energy IN THE GROUND is the best way to protect ourselves in the event "shit goes down". Having a proven say ten year reserve that can keep our economy from grinding to a halt if we lose all imports is, in my opinion, a good idea.

Fracking is not the evil bogey man many make it out to be, but it's also not an easy cheap solution to all our problems. Unfortunately everything has both obvious and intrinsic costs, and making the right call will require tough choices about our way life now and in the future.