Saturday, October 14, 2017

Cities are ruining our cars

An article in Verge claims that "Self-driving cars are on a collision course with our crappy cities" as if to say cities are ruining the possibilities for our fancy new self-driving cars.

¡No! Au contraire, cars are ruining our cities! Letting Google be the driver won't change that. In fact, it could get much worse.

Consider the author's statement of the obvious: "[R]ide-hailing apps like Uber and Lyft, are shockingly creating more traffic problems than they are curing," as if to say this fact could somehow be fixed if cities would only do things differently.

¡No! An on-demand taxi service carrying one passenger will deliver less than 1 person per vehicle-mile (km) by definition: the back seat has to be empty ("dead-head") en route to picking up the fare-paying passenger. 

Friday, January 6, 2017

Fossil Fuel Free Nations

Several nations have declared their intent to become fossil-fuel-free. In this post you can find websites and news articles with more details about this international movement.
NOPEC The theme of Non-Oil, Power-Exporting Countries ("NOPEC") was first presented online in 1989:
Several papers about NOPEC and the goal of 100% renewable energy have been presented at ASES and ISES conferences, and in Solar Today magazine since that time:
Several organizations have been helping to organize international commitments to 100% renewable energy: