[DiabloD3]

From what I can tell, this is a political maneuvering by the oil industry to not be nailed to the cross like the tobacco industry did: knowingly selling a highly toxic product that is conclusively linked to many disorders including cancer, and covering it up or minimizing it in the media for decades to continue profiting.

Unfortunately, it's not going to work, and they will be ran out of business through the political will of the people, just as the tobacco industry is now having done to it.

You're not cool if you smoke, and you're not cool if you don't drive a Tesla. It isn't often that the right thing is also the cool thing; everyone involved should pat themselves on the back for a job well done.

[RcouF1uZ4gsC]

People who compare oil and tobacco ignore the benefits side. For tobacco, the positive benefits are very small. The oil industry on the other hand powers our entire modern way of life.

* Ever fly in an airplane - thank oil

* Ever ride in a car or bus - thank oil

* Live in a cold climate and heat your home in winter - thank oil

* Ever use plastics - thank oil

* Ever buy something on Amazon and had it shipped to you - thank oil

* Ever buy something manufactured in another country - thank oil

* Ever use electricity on a still night - you should probably thank natural gas or coal

* Ever mail a letter - thank oil

If tobacco and tobacco products were suddenly unavailable tomorrow morning - the world would probably be a better place

If oil and oil products were suddenly unavailable tomorrow morning - it would probably result in the collapse of civilization as we know it and millions of deaths

Let's not pretend oil and tobacco have anywhere near the same pro/con trade offs.

[chadgeidel]

Oil is in everything. Transportation of course, but it's in our clothes, our houses, computers, our food (fertilizer for example), etc. It's very difficult to point to something that oil ISN'T in (here in the US). I'm sure I'll get responses which do.

NPR Planet Money recently did a series of podcasts about oil - it was pretty good. #4 was the episode where they talked a bit about what oil goes into: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/08/19/490408060/oil-4...

[acusticthoughts]

>People who compare oil and tobacco ignore the benefits

That's wrong. This article compares the two because it seems both groups committed fraud via funding misinformation campaigns that had a goal of affecting legislation on regulation.

Extremists are the ones who cannot deal with the obvious negatives of oil along with the benefits.

[IsaacL]

    Unfortunately, it's not going to work, and they will be ran out of business through the political will of the people, just as the tobacco industry is now having done to it.

Cool, and what's your proposal for an alternative energy source to power modern civilisation?

https://www.scribd.com/document/320110894/Alex-Epstein-Moral...

[wildmusings]

How about nuclear power? It's the most viable energy source that we have. It doesn't emit carbon. It could power the world.

Funny that the people who get labeled "climate deniers" are also the most pro-nuclear, while the loud environmentalists are the most anti-nuclear.

I frankly don't give a damn what they believe or don't believe, if they're going to solve the problem anyway.

[IsaacL]

Yes, fossil fuels, nuclear or hydro are the 3 feasible options. Long-term, investing in safer nuclear power is the way forward.

[fma]

Nuclear would solve a lot of problem if we are able to overcome power transmission issue. Not everyone wants a nuclear power plant anywhere near them. But oil would still be used for plastics, transportation (airplanes, tankers), heating, etc...

[xxpor]

Putting a nuclear reactor in every car and truck sounds like a great idea!

[wildmusings]

1. If fossil fuel use is reduced to cars/trucks, the problem is largely solved. In the US, only 26% of emissions come from transportation.[1]

2. Electric cars will make this irrelevant, since they'll draw their power from the grid. In the meantime, ICEs/hybrids are becoming increasingly efficient.

[1] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...

[ocschwar]

"Cool, and what's your proposal for an alternative energy source to power modern civilisation?"

We have several alternatives.

The only problem they have is that most of them are difficult to store in a self-contained moving vehicle that turns rubber wheels to move on flat blacktop.

So, we increase reliance on vehicles that turn steel wheels on steel tracks, and get their power from overhead wires.

Next question?

[4ad]

Most of the electrical energy comes from burning things that create carbon-dioxide as a side product. The only real alternative is fission, and the public opinion against nuclear is even worse than against oil. How do you solve this problem?

Getting people and things moved by train is a great idea, but in the grand scheme of things we're dependant on oil for so many other things.

[ianai]

Recreate the nuclear industry.

[Retric]

Well over 40% of US electricity comes from things that don't create carbon dioxide. Exact numbers are hard to come by because a lot of solar power for example never ends up on the electric grid.

[4ad]

I know this is very hard for this forum to consider at times, but the world is not only the US, and the question about what do with coal, oil, and gas is a global, not a US problem. United States is a somewhat lucky outlier when it comes to energy production. Unfortunately, even in other currently lucky nations, the public sentiment is strongly against nuclear power.

In 2013 91.6% of the energy cames from CO2 producing sources[1], and nuclear production is decreasing[1], having peaked in 2005.

The exact percentage, whether it's 91.5% or under 60% doesn't even matter though, what matters is that fossil fuel burning is increasing in absolute terms[1].

[1] http://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication...

[Retric]

Energy != electricity.

Easily, 99.9% of all energy used by humans comes from sunlight just looking at farms. Plants store a tiny percentage the ~200+watts per meter of sunlight* average over 24 hours, but if you needed to grow them indoors it would take ridiculous amounts of energy.

* You can approximate that from 4 pi R ^2 as surface area of a sphere / pi * r^2 surface area of a circle. So ~25% of 1050 W/m2 of direct sunlight on the surface. We don't farm above the arctic circle for example so that's just an approximation and most places have winters etc.

So, really it's just a question of how and what we are counting.

PS: ~200w average * 10,000 * 134,000,000 = 2,300,000 terrawatt hours. Oil and coal combined provide less than 40 terrawatt hours per year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption#/medi... You can play with the numbers but we also depend on plankton to feed fish and of course enough sunlight to keep the earth from freezing.

[sha257]

I think part of the coolness of driving a Telsa comes from the cars being a symbol of wealth, although maybe the Model 3 will be a little different in this regard.

[CalRobert]

"and you're not cool if you don't drive a Tesla"

Woe to the bicycle commuter, I suppose.

Also, I think you forget there are huge chunks of the world where this is utterly untrue.

[VLM]

> bicycle commuter

And I propose the e-bicycle conversion kits, generally for the price of a commuter class cheap bike the cost per watt of motor and cost per KWh lithium battery has been dropping by half every couple years. Today in 2016 you're looking at about two watts of motor power per dollar (so $500 kit would get you more than a horsepower, and riding on horseback seems adequately fast) and about $30 per mile of battery range so $500 of lithium ion should get me around 15 miles on a charge (depends a lot on speed, hills, how much you pedal, etc)

Of course the government is getting in the way with all kinds of regulation and outright banning in some more backwards cities (NYC, etc). But I don't live in a backwards city so no problemo.

Until 2016 I'm not going to ride a bike to work because I'll be all sweaty during the roughly two months per year the weather is good enough to ride a bike. However my son is very interested in the mechanical work of assembling an ebike conversion, and it sounds like a fun teen boy and dad project to work on together, so in 2017 I could slowly ride an ebike to work mostly sweatless. Its an interesting technological development. I have not gone beyond a couple hours of online research on this project, but I'm figuring for a couple grand, which isn't much, we can build matching ebikes.

[oslavonik]

> However my son is very interested in the mechanical work of assembling an ebike conversion, and it sounds like a fun teen boy and dad project to work on together

Sounds cool! Let me suggest (if you haven't thought about this already) to document all steps and publish it on a blog or something. Other interested dads, curious kids and DIYs in general will love it and might give a shot.

[CalRobert]

ebikes are great!

I actually don't have one, though, but that's only because everything I do on a regular basis is within 2 miles. My ride to work on a normal pedal bike is 6 minutes.

I agree that cities are absurd for banning small 2 wheeled vehicles with little momentum while permitting large 4 wheeled vehicles with massive momentum (and with it, massive ability to mangle and destroy human bodies).

[pjc50]

you're not cool if you don't drive a Tesla

Transport for the 1%! I'll just carry on with my bus. Some of them are already hybrid.

[deelowe]

If you roll on your competitors, you can do quite well for a very long time: https://www.google.com/#q=phillip+morris+stock

[fucking_tragedy]

> You're not cool if you smoke, and you're not cool if you don't drive a Tesla.

PM has been trading for more in the last 5 months than it has in the last 8 years.

Cool to who? Tesla ownership is a sign that you have money to spend but are not informed enough to purchase a vehicle that's worth the money. You might be cool in tech circles, but people that know cars will roll their eyes.

[chrisbennet]

Car guy here: None of my car guy friends "roll there eyes" at Teslas. Myself and my "car guy" friends are all Porsche guys who all work on their own air cooled cars - we rebuild our own motors and transmissions, corner balance our cars for the track, etc. Then again, we probably aren't cool though. ;-)

[stonogo]

Have any of your car guy friends driven a Tesla? They're some of the worst-handling cars on the market today. Quick 0-60 times land them in lots of headlines, but the second you have to turn the car, it's really frustrating.

My car friends fall into two camps: those who have never driven a Tesla, and those who have. The former group is optimistic and looks upon Tesla products with naked desire; the latter group has already dismissed the entire company as The Sharper Image of car sales.

[secabeen]

I haven't found a Tesla to have bad handling. I'm not a handling expert, but during a test drive, it met my needs for handling. I'd buy a Tesla for the zero emissions and driver assistance features. The handling as-is is sufficient for me. (I don't recall any of the major automotive publications mentioning bad handling in their reviews. Do you have links to the C&D, R&T or Motor Trend reviews that mention this issue?)

[stonogo]

Very rarely do mainstream auto reviewers talk about this sort of thing. A couple of exceptions are in the case of a car that is damn near dangerous to drive, or a car that is expected to handle properly and fails to excel.

Since the Tesla is a car that competes with luxury cars rather than sports cars, it falls into neither of these categories. A reviewer calling it out for poor handling will thus generate a ton of ill-will and angry comments sections from the 'who-cares' crowd, so they don't bother with it.

Here's an example of what passes for an excoriation from mainstream auto media:

http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/tesla/model-s/ride

The phrasing here, combined with a lead-photo of abysmal body roll, indicates to car people that this thing handles like a boat. I've verified this myself behind the wheel.

I understand and agree that this car handles just fine for the mass majority of people, but "meets needs" is kind of a shitty bar to set for a car priced to compete with the BMW M4.

[chrisbennet]

I have driven one (two?) and was very impressed with it's straight line acceleration. I didn't press the handling at all (the owner wasn't the kind of guy who would/could appreciate that) so you may have a good point.

[oldmanjay]

I feel it's important to note that the entire world of "not car guys" spends pretty much every interaction with "car guys" rolling their eyes about everything. Generally speaking, people just don't care about being cool for the sake of subcultures.