Re: General Motors quietly closed the door this week on a goal to make only electric vehicles by 2035.

Catrike Ryder <Soloman@old.bikers.org> writes:

On Mon, 21 Jul 2025 11:53:12 -0400, Radey Shouman
<shouman@comcast.net> wrote:
>

AMuzi <am@yellowjersey.org> writes:
>

On 7/17/2025 3:36 PM, Catrike Ryder wrote:

On Thu, 17 Jul 2025 20:04:43 -0000 (UTC), Beej Jorgensen
<beej@beej.us> wrote:
 

In article <1vki7k10egcrhostdbs6sp6ml5pdri0r93@4ax.com>,
Catrike Ryder  <Soloman@old.bikers.org> wrote:

Gas and oil subsidies are for fuel sources. EV subsidies are to
manipulate consumer purchases.

>
I agree insofar as I agree that consumers don't purchase gas and oil.

Gas and oil are important for many more things that automobiles.
Batteries for trucks, trains, ships, and airplanes are only dreams.
--
C'est bon
Soloman

>
And ethylene for a gazillion polymer products and packages.
And asphalt, bunker fuel and solvents. And myriad other crude cracking
fractions.  Oh, plus helium (there's a shortage) from natural gas
production.

>
Natural gas for ammonia production, meaning nitrate fertilizers and
feedstock for all sorts of amines.  Fossil fuel is used for almost all
cement production, used to build almost everything.  Coke from coal for
steel production.  It's possible to imagine replacing all of these with
something else, actually doing so will be very difficult.
>
The supply of fossil fuels is certainly finite, and eventually all of
those replacements will have to be done or industrial civilization
abandoned.  Guessing when that will happen is a mug's game.

>
As resources get scarse, the market will raise prices and then,
alternate resources will emerge. We don't need the morons in the
government to fiddle with it.

When the last history of humankind is written the chapter on the fossil
fuel era will be short but colorful -- I think it's pretty safe to say
we're more than halfway through it.  It might be remembered either as a
springboard to our future mastery of matter and energy. Or maybe as a
mythological golden age, when ordinary human beings flew from one end of
the Earth to another, not like birds, but like passengers in a
horse-drawn omnibus; when most of the world suffered more from the
consequences of obesity than of starvation ...

I can't say which will be the case, what any of you believe seems to be
more of a personality test than a reliable future indicator.

Just because one has a problem does not mean there is a solution, and
how to maintain the living style to which we have become accustomed when
extracting fossil fuels requires half the energy produced is a really
big one.

I agree that our best chance is allowing people to use their ingenuity,
judgement, and initiative to better themselves by their own lights.
Philosopher kings or five year plans are not the answer.
--