Favorites January 4th 2022

Jan 05, 2022

Yes, electric vehicles require lots more minerals than ICE vehicles -- mineral supply chains will need to be substantially beefed up. And manufacturing an EV generates marginally more emissions than manufacturing an ICE vehicle. However:

He goes on to point out, the yellow bar will go away as we clean up electricity sources, the orange one will not.

ryan cooper @ryanlcooper

lmao. literal hot dog guy situation wfaa.com/article/news/s…

And once again Texas' gas production is falling, which could again lead to shortages. They had a year to prepare after last time. Definitely a 'hot dog guy' situation.

NASA Webb Telescope @NASAWebb

This is it: we’ve just wrapped up one of the most challenging steps of our journey to #UnfoldTheUniverse. With all five layers of sunshield tensioning complete, about 75% of our 344 single-point failures have been retired!

Image from October 2019 after the completion of deployment testing for the Webb telescsope's silver 5-layer, kite-shaped sunshield.

Yeesh, 344 single point failure possibilities sounds like a lot. (I wonder what the number is for a simpler launch)

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

I think if the decisive vote is a senator from West Virginia and you can get him to do some good climate stuff, the answer on everything else should be “whatever you want.” https://t.co/xviaoaezKg

Jeremy Dillon @jeremydillonDC

Manchin just now to reporters on his comfort level of climate provisions in Build Back Better: "I think that the climate thing is one that we probably can come to agreement much easier than anything else."

As long as Manchin is the deciding vote, this is just how things are, we've gotta be able to be willing to cut elsewhere to meet our climate policy goals.