Ian

13 hours ago, Thruster88 said:

Yes the only maintenance difference between a modern well design ICE car and the EV is the engine oil, filter, air cleaner and serpentine belt. EVs have cooling systems for the battery and gears, many ICE cars now have sealed for life transmissions. All the other stuff is the same. 

There are actually real differences in the two types of vehicles which makes EV's more reliable.

The type of load and how power is delivered. Think of the maintenance schedule of a turbofan engine compared to a reciprocating engine. Yes both require maintenance however turbines have longer service intervals, higher lifetimes and lower failures. Similarly EV's components can be expected to have higher lifetimes

The other difference is where you put the engines, the only option for a large ICE is a single power plant centrally located. EVs can put the engine close to where power is needed so the drive chain is much shorter and less failure prone as there are fewer torsional and harmonic issues to deal with. Think of a truck bunnyhopping due to poorly applied power.

Another difference is the environment, ICE are high temperature chemical plants with corrosive gasses so you need to design around this environment. Yes bearings still fail in EVs but a significant number of bearing failures are due to contaminants and seal failure in hostile environments in ICE.

Yet another one which is ignored is the fact that electric engines can start under load. This removes an extremely stressful operation from their operating process.

Ethanol works pretty well in Brazil for a variety of purposes. The question is can you planes run on it?

3 hours ago, onetrack said:

HICEV is gathering pace, the only real restriction now is adequate hydrogen production, and a hydrogen refuelling network. New lightweight tank materials seem to have taken care of the storage problem.

Hydrogen is lighter than air, so any leakage dissipates quickly, it doesn't collect at ground level as with natural gas or with LPG.

 

Both Cummins and JCB are heading towards HICEV as a satisfactory, modest cost energy alternative. Toyota has a HICEV. The Japs are intent on developing a hydrogen economy.

Andrew "Twiggy" Forrest is investing heavily in solar hydrogen production, and JCB is signed up with him for a hydrogen offtake agreement. 

The "lightweight tanks" haven't taken care of the storage problem. The tanks are still huge for their energy capacity, hydrogen is leaks easily and  incredibly explosive and flamable. It ignites with air with only a 4% mixture. It possesses the highest NFPA rating of 4 which compares to 3 for Gasoline and 2 for Jet fuel and diesel.  Imagine the difference between gasoline and diesel, then think of the next level up and you have hydrogen. Read the following and you start to understand why hydrogen is unlikely to be handled by service stations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_safety

The Japanese are keen on the hydrogen economy however I suspect that it is largely dead before is has begun it is both expensive and difficult. The rest of the world has gone battery electrical for vehicles leaving Toyota's position increasingly exposed and at odds with the rest of the industry.

https://cleantechnica.com/2021/11/15/toyotas-team-japan-aims-to-save-internal-combustion-engine-from-extinction/

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4514310-toyota-stock-complacent-as-electrification-of-transport-picks-up

There isn't a ship in the world that can ship liquid hydrogen so people have proposed to convert it to ammonia. CSIRO producted the following graphic in relation to the efficiency of ammonia as a fuel (and it was a pro ammonia paper). Note that the graphs indicate "best case" scenarios. Where the bar changes colour is the probable operating efficiencies.

From the link about the paper which is a pro ammonia site.

At the outset, we must acknowledge the paper’s title: “Ammonia as a Renewable Energy Transportation Media.” The authors are quite clear that, relative to making ammonia, using renewable electricity directly “would clearly be far more efficient” given the distribution losses of only “less than 10%” in most electrical grids.

https://www.ammoniaenergy.org/articles/round-trip-efficiency-of-ammonia-as-a-renewable-energy-transportation-media/

Hydrogen for steel might make sense however you'd need to use if where you made it for it to be economical as Hydrogen is too difficult to ship. Also you need a good supply of de-mineralised water and I think that osmotic separation can't provide the necessary purity so you need to spend more energy on a flash vaporisation process. Hydrogen for steel makes the most sense when you make enough hydrogen during the day and consume it as night on site.

There will be huge efforts to make electrolytic steel win the day, it's about 30% more energy efficient and allows the use of cheaper ores and is far more space efficient. https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-industry/green-steel-without-green-hydrogen-can-it-work

Places like Korea which have a significant nuclear capability want a direct electrical process for ore refining. Nuclear provides a high capacity factor power source which can meet electrolytic production constant power requirements allowing them to keep importing iron ore.

1 hour ago, onetrack said:

I keep hearing about how the cost of batteries and EV's is going to reduce. It hasn't, and any reduction in pricing is going to be 10-15 years out, not in 1 or 2 years.

Onetrack you might have to suck it up in a couple of years if they make you start paying for your pollution. Generally there are people who embrace change, people who don't really care and can be nudged and then there's the group of recalcitrants for whom change is very upsetting, who eventually have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the new environment. On the bright side we appear to be moving pretty slowly down this path so you might get to play the "out of my cold dead hands" routine for a while yet. 🙂

The only reason that FF cars are cheap to run is the fact that they pollute without paying for the mess. If you have to pay for carbon capture, not so cheap. Batteries have been getting cheaper however the rate of this decline is slowing, when you need to replace your batteries in 10 years or so time, the costs would be essentially a fraction of their present day costs so hopefully not too bad for a present gen car.

From https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/09/the-story-of-cheaper-batteries-from-smartphones-to-teslas/

2 hours ago, turboplanner said:

Petrol is working fine, pulling ahead of diesel in the newer vehicles.

 

HICEV is nudging in but has to handle volume and Hindenberg factors.

But if mandates appear that require net zero what fuels are available. Obviously the petrol and diesel don't fit this requirement.

There are a lot of clever people hoping that hydrogen works however it's such a difficult fuel and expensive to boot.

So the biofuels, ethanol and bio-diesel both give you green brownie points.

But ethanol impacts on range. https://www.flightglobal.com/corn-to-run-can-ethanol-be-used-as-a-clean-alternative/71449.article

Are there any other manufactured fuels which are carbon neutral. Lots of hype around hydrogen but its difficult to store and refuelling would dangerous.

1 hour ago, turboplanner said:

My intention isn't to provide design data for building an EV Service station, just pointing out that a lot more real estate will be needed. 

I get that more real estate is needed if everyone charges at a power station. My point was that significantly less space is needed because 95% of people will charge at home.

The exceptions are going to be around period of peak demand, ie public holidays, rental changeover etc. Interestingly these aren't going to be in cities. They'll be in regional areas.

1 hour ago, turboplanner said:

Tesla S: 21 hours on a 7.5 kW/Hr outlet.

The 7.2 kWh is generally considered a home charger not what you'd see in a commercial charging site. You might find this at a hotel where you leave the vehicle overnight but not at site offering vehicle "refueling" services. It's a bit like saying that your refuelling time in a car is the time taken to pump fuel from multiple jerry cans with a hand pump. Yes I've done it but its not a likely scenario.

From the graphic the cost is 1.2M over 3 years in fuel, are you saying that batteries are less cost effective for metro? Simply because fuel is a smaller part of overall costs in metro. Couldn't you simply rightsize for metro by having smaller battery packs?

With the removable batter packs, what ratio is required between the truck and batteries to maintain capacity or is this a piece of string question. A couple of large solar farms in the right spot along highways could cater to the demand? 

The difficult thing for government is going to be the loss in fuel taxes. At some point they're going to have to charge by the km or similar.

As burning dino fuel in our planes becomes less viable, what are the alternatives?

There's an old article on certifying ethanol by Waco University where power increased significantly over AVGAS. They are using an engine with 9.7:1 compression which appeared to be available at the time from Lycoming.

If there's a ban on "Jets" does that mean that private Turboprops or Propfans are OK. We might see a new class of private transport. The fastest twin turboprop is Piaggio P.180 Avanti Evo according to https://aerocorner.com/blog/fastest-twin-turboprop-planes/#1-piaggio-p180-avanti-evo-462-mph

The issues with swappable batteries is that you need to standardise on a battery unit, or subunit which is common across manufacturers. Swapable batteries work for fleets where there is standardisation and commonality, not with the current market. If Tesla had pulled it off a decade ago, given their first mover advantage they might have pulled it off however they gave up.

Given the current state/rate of development of batteries it would probably slow innovation in the area rather than enhance it.

What most people appear to be missing is that if we get to 80% EV the power demands on our grid are going to be about double what they were a decade ago, how's that going to work. Australia hasn't grown it's grid for a long time. The market models which optimise static capacity such as energy spot markets generally don't work to stimulate long term investments so you end up with suboptimal outcomes. Based upon the experience in other countries intermittent renewable power sources require equivalent gas peaking power generation to cover shortfalls, so essentially you're paying for 2 different types of generation and still burning fossil fuels. 

3 hours ago, turboplanner said:

Land: Service stations for petrol/diesel have a land size and layout for perhaps a 5 minute refuel cycle. A 15 minute to 20 hour cycle requires a lot a lot longer recharge cycle, so a lot more recharge points and a much more expensive land area, and access from surrounding roads.

However the point that you're missing is that most people will refuel at home, the number of people travelling who require charging will only be a fraction of those who currently use service stations. Only on longer trips will peak demand occur, think queuing on long weekends at locations 4-6 hours out of Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne during holidays. Holiday rentals will also change, with those within range of the single charge commanding a premium.  Most consumer vehicles recharge in 20m not 20 hours from a fast charge point. If there's a car that requires 20hours I don't think many will sell.

5 minutes ago, onetrack said:

There's only one thing that will make EV's viable, and it is swappable EV batteries. No need to queue up for chargers or spend precious time looking for a charger - just drive into a swap station, swap the battery out in 2 mins, and head out again. The batteries can be charged overnight utilising off-peak power, instead of requiring huge recharge demand in the middle of the day.

I'll bet you a beer that this doesn't happen. Tesla tried this a number of years ago and couldn't make it work well, and different cars have different battery sizes. Happy to be wrong as I'll buy myself one at the same time.

The differing battery size thing might just be a marketing gimmick to artificially make you pay significantly more though.

However we're a long way from the topic of flying things. I'm actually more interested in how restrictions on fossil fuels will impact aviation. During the oil shocks in the 70s and 80s propfans were on the radar of most jet engine manufacturers as no other technology comes close to providing the efficiency gains. NASA pushed the initial prototypes through against an aviation industry which was upfront in their desire not to use propellers which were seen as both old fashioned and noisy. But they did achieve about a 30% lower fuel burn. They kept the industry interested until the fuel price dropped.

It would be interesting to see how hard qantas is pushing their turboprops at the moment with high fuel prices, as they're more fuel efficient to run, but I think that their maintenance costs are higher. I suspect that they're wring the necks of the Q400s

37 minutes ago, BrendAn said:

Yes but I was talking about range. Even if you had an electric SUV. How could you go anywhere off the main highways. Ok if you go camping for a week. You might be able to put enough charge in from solar to get home. It's just not practical in the country. 

The longest range Tesla has a range of 663km which is good for most regional areas (but not all). For instance I drive about 800km to visit family on a regular basis.

Charging from solar isn't going to get you home unless you stay out for a long time. For example with a Tesla Cybertruck going offroad with a 200kWh battery, 16 panels (a lot to carry) gives about 20kW/h per day so that's a 10 day charge with 16 panels that you can carry to deploy. A 100kW/h battery of a normal long range Tesla would give you 5 days between charges.  A portable grunty generator might make more sense to leave running overnight. https://www.carshtuff.com/post/can-you-charge-a-tesla-with-a-generator

It's kind of a DIY hybrid and probably a lot cheaper in the long term than an integrated one.

12 minutes ago, turboplanner said:

The Utes that BrendAn referred to towing a caravan, boat or trailer are only achieving about 100 km to full discharge, so a long time even on the high speed chargers. Trucks take that a further step. I was present at the drive-by certifcation of one 23 tonne new truck model, so know it worked but the programme was cancelled.

There's an article here https://www.carsguide.com.au/adventure/tesla-model-x-74243 where towing a caravan basically cuts the range of the vehicle in half. Maybe one day there'll be an option to put a battery pack in the caravan.

29 minutes ago, turboplanner said:

This introduces a new problem because if by some chance it became feasible to build a BEV B Double, the ICE base collatoral would be lost, and without that road train prime movers could not be built and without that Australia's beef industry would be crippled because today the market is geared to turnoffs hudreds of cattle at a time, so when they are ready for sale on a property the owner just books enough road trains to take the lot.

Maybe we'll see the return of drovers and the TSR opening up again.

But you're right in terms of segments of industry being disrupted as the scale of product lines are wound back, unfortunately there will be significant dislocation of some industries and with change comes winners and losers. The whole phasing out of this industry is going to be difficult and painful. However the alternatives will be much worse, so completely ignoring the issue, melting the antarctic icecap completely gives about 60m sea level rise, massive humanitarian causalities, dislocation and war on an unimaginable scale. An acidic ocean with no calcium carbonate based lifeforms would be very different, iron, currently largely insoluble in oceans becomes soluble and no longer limits growth leading to large hypoxic areas.

But is remains hard to predict winners and losers, for example coal's medium and long term future is pretty grim but the combination of the conflict in Ukraine have led to some spectacular prices in the near term.

4 minutes ago, BrendAn said:

i will believe it when i see it. i have been watching the u tube videos of electric utes towing trailers in the usa . not very impressive range at all.

But the costs are way way less. For instance I drove my admittedly gas guzzling beast about 800km the other day and put about $200 of fuel into the atmosphere. My wife has an electric vehicle on order which would have cost about $50 in electricity or much less if charged from solar.

The maintenance costs are significantly less as well so overall I'm pretty happy with the tradeoff.

For person transport batteries just work. Electric cars are faster and require less maintenance than their petrol and diesel brethren, they also cost significantly less to run. As battery costs decline, electric vehicles will get cheaper. 

For freight it's not so black and white, batteries wear out quickly and they eat into the carrying capacity of the vehicle. However for metro use they're probably still a good fit. Long haul will be using liquid fuels for some time. As costs of carbon capture are costed in some routes will be cheaper via electric rail.

For air transport batteries don't make any sense at all. The only options that I can see are liquid at room temperature fuels and nuclear. Nuclear not because it's a good thing to put in a plane but it does have zero emissions and provides effectively unlimited range. And planes have flown with reactors aboard.

2 hours ago, turboplanner said:

It's a free world and anyone is free to do that, however for the rest of the world what she had to say at that presentation probably gives enough detail to do the other 30 or so hours reading to grasp the sequence and get the references.

It is a free world and you can believe whatever you want, however I believe in occam's razor as a problem solving tool. Look I'm not a big believer in theories where organisations like the UN and agenda 41 and special agencies have significant hidden agendas and move mysteriously behind the scenes. Burning fossil fuels and polluting the atmosphere was a problem waiting to happen. You can't put gigatons of stuff into the atmosphere and expect nothing to happen. Similarly dumping CFC's into the atmosphere disrupted the ozone layer. In the past dumping pollution into streams and rivers created problems which are still with us today. Ask the Japanese about mercury.

I believe things like politicians and people in position's of power taking bribes for personal advantage and vested parties corrupting processes for advantage. They happen and they're documented. Loonies tend to get together and try to influence things and when that fails they blow shit up and kill people. Just look at the current processes happening in Australia where christian groups are trying to use branch stacking to take over an established political party, but in essence they've making the party unelectable as moderates distance themselves from the fundis, demoncracy in action. Gambling related organisations lobby Governments to continue to allow problem gamblers to be their prey despite the obvious harm. The simple fact is that problem gamblers contribute the most, they give all their income and more. 

Essentially there are extremely powerful and well heeled groups in plain sight who will be significantly disadvantaged by the curtailment of fossil fuels. I'd be expecting them to be spending enormous sums to try to maintain the status quo and confuse simple souls for as long as possible. It worked for the tobacco industry so why not fossil fuels. 😉 Take a look at the Panama papers to see dishonest wealthy lying and engaging in fraud and cheating to keep their lucure.

Show me any peer reviewed or even a paper endorsed by a number of academics or news organisations which shows that this spectre is haunting our society and handing power to faceless men?

My world is pretty simple it's made up of money, power, issue motivated groups and individuals who like to create and do things and of course the mob who can be flushed in most directions. For my compass I use science and technology, other people use the vibe, whispers and happy thoughts.

1 hour ago, facthunter said:

It's possible that the small jet concept may involve some rather poor fuel used/pax/Km. Anyone got some figures on this? Generally if you can fill a plane  like the Airbus A 380 it seat Km costs are low. Nev

In terms of efficiency the old piston airliners were pretty good in their fuel consumption per passenger mile.

https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/09/piston-powered-aircraft-as-fuel-efficient-as-current-average-jet.html

3 hours ago, onetrack said:

I have this constant niggling thought, that a lot of scientific people fail to understand the difference between "Climate Change" and "Climate Cycles".

Yes they do. If you actually read the publications from climate scientists you'd find that this has been done to death. Cycles are well understood, there are many sources of data relating to this.

What is poorly understood is by many people is the rate of change caused by greenhouse gases.

Anyway I think banning private jets is dumb, making them carbon neutral is a much better concept.

What wrong with making private jets carbon neutral? Bill Gates does it with his?

Just buy a starship and it's not a private jet and more efficient to boot. 😉

1 hour ago, turboplanner said:

I'm not interested in conspiracy theories.

My takes on it is that Ann Bressington is a bit a looney, and taking in her theories as gospel is really drinking the cool aid.

You have groups like this https://likethedaysofnoah.wordpress.com/agenda-21-by-anne-bressington/ who think its a good idea. I'd just call them the religious fringe. ie the world is 7000 years old and homos should be cured types. If man was meant to fly God would have given him wings etc.

Agenda 21 is a non-binding resolution which simply says try not to shit in the nest. Build sustainably.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_21

Conspiracy theories associated with Agenda 21 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_21#Conspiracy_theories

Quote

Conspiracy theories

The right-wing John Birch Society described Agenda 21 as a plot, disguised as an environmental movement, to end individual freedom and establish a one-world government.^[28][29] Activists believed that the non-binding UN resolution was "the linchpin in a plot to subjugate humanity under an eco-totalitarian regime."^[27] The conspiracy had its roots in anti-environmentalist ideology and opposition to land-use regulation.^[29]

Anti-Agenda 21 theories have circulated in the U.S. Some Tea Party movement activists and others promoted the notion that Agenda 21 was part of a UN plot to deny property rights, undermine U.S. sovereignty, or force citizens to move to cities.^{[25][27][8][16]}

Conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck warned that Agenda 21 was a "seditious" conspiracy to cut the world population by 85%.^[28] He claimed it represents a move towards "government control on a global level" and the creation of a "police state" that would lead to "totalitarianism."^[28] Beck described the dystopia it would cause if the world followed the UN plan in a 2012 novel he co-authored called Agenda 21.^[30][31][32]

Articles on the conspiracy theories

Conspiracy theory associated with Agenda 21 https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/jun/24/agenda-21-conspiracy-theory-sustainability

This is pure nonsense and drivel.

2 hours ago, turboplanner said:

I recommended people did their own research into the lot. Certainly some will not get the link between ocean rise and global temperature and othe complicated links.

I really don't understand what is so complicated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise

1. Greenhouse gasses make things warmer.
2. Ice melts when it get hot.
3. Water runs down hill and eventually gets to oceans.
4. When you add water to a container the level in the container gets higher. Water also expands as it gets warmer.

You can check this by visiting pretty much any glacier that you want to, they've receded or disappeared.

The whole social media meme of Sydney harbour shows no sea level rise is simply bogus.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/10/26/fact-check-sea-levels-sydney-harbor-rising-data-shows/10555953002/

Geologic processes make individual points rise and subside. So it is possible and even likely that some area will show sea level rising or subsiding, however by comparing lots of these areas you can average them together and figure out what is going on.

Grabbing a single data point and spouting about it is called "cherry picking" for good reason. Just because a plane momentarily pitches down doesn't imply a mechanical problem when it flies well for the rest of the time, it could simply mean that you entered an area of descending air. On average the air is static however there are areas where it's moving up and others where its moving down.

The atmosphere isn't a conspiracy.

54 minutes ago, turboplanner said:

If you, like me start to get curious, you can google Ann Bressington, a Member of the Legislative Council of South Australia who, in 2013 felt something was wrong and tracked down the Club of Rome and an outrageously corrupt United Nations official who decided they could make money using the power of the United Nations. The Club still exists today, hiding in plain sight. More and more UN people joined the network. At one point a committee is appointed to look at ways of making big money; the committee reports back that they have chosen about ten things, and one of them happens to be Climate change. The UN/COR group form the  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), The IPCC is not a scientific body, it's the body set up to drive the "Climate Change Agenda" and new world order which was to  make the billions of dollars. The Intergovernmental Panel as its name suggests has the job of coaching the world leaders, and you can google IPCC and see the regular bulletins they send to countries including Australia, including the one which reset the start date back 245 years for the 1.5 degree  Armageddon/Doomsday. 1.5 degrees is about the average difference between Sydney and Melbourne. They flattened the line gradient from an embarrassing arrival about now to an almost flat line allowing it to be used as a stick for most of this century.

Ann Brassington was treated horribly, but she had brought the evidence to the surface. 

This sound a bit conspiracy theoryish to me. I'd suggest that you read up on what the IPCC is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergovernmental_Panel_on_Climate_Change and understand it's funding model. It paid for by Governments and the payments are voluntary. It's reports are based upon good science, not conspiracies or some special club's agenda.

Look I've worked in an around Government agencies for decades and they struggle to tie their shoe laces, even given an instruction book. Yes the "Club of Rome" is an organisation however it's not a particularly potent lobby organisation. It reflects a point of view but not a particularly great one or one backed by rigourous modelling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_of_Rome they aren't particularly influential

There is no "Climate change agenda", there is a climate change problem. Climate change is a real problem and it is based upon very simple science with some appalling outcomes, in many way the analogy to the recent Chinese booster launch stage coming back down recently is a good one. Just because we can't predict where it will land doesn't mean it won't be coming down. That sucker is coming down and it's based upon very simple maths which a high school student can do, similarly climate change is based upon very simple maths, however predicting the exact outcomes is very difficult. The key thing is that this lack of certainty is actually worse

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-28/chinese-long-march-booster-rocket-fall-earth-china-doesnt-know/101276380

1 hour ago, turboplanner said:

Shorthaul Jet travel has changed our lives and economy in Australia.

Shorthaul jet travel may have had a significant impact on the operation of some mines however that doesn't mean that it is a sustainable business model if you factor in the cost of emissions. Once you do other options might present themselves as more attractive. Even minor efficiency gains like turboprops start to add up so if you want to invest in transport they'd be the way to go.

Look I want to do things which have an extravagant energy budget however I'm smart enough to know that fossil fuels are bad. They're extremely handy and we've 120 years of optimising processes to make stuff from them. If you look at the four pillars of modern society as "cement, steel, plastic and ammonia" we currently make them all from very old sunlight in the form of fossil fuel, getting away from that will be incredibly hard and expensive.

Look while I think that wind and solar have a place in the overall energy solution personally I don't think that it is a viable solution for more than about 15% of our electricity grid needs. We need clever people making good decisions on what technologies to base our economy on which don't emit greenhouse gases. We don't need lazy thinking blaming it on a "conspiracy theory".

I read up on the costs associated with ammonia production via solar and wind and it's pretty ludicrous. For example a best case scenario gives you about a 20% efficiency ignoring the fact that you might need to transport it, and the fact that nobody yet has a power generation turbine which can run on ammonia so you'd need to split it back into Hydrogen making it even less efficient, ignoring the fact that burning ammonia makes 100x the NOx emissions of natural gas.  Also ignoring the fact that you'd want to be running the electrolysis unit as 100% rather than intermittently and the fact that you need to run the Haber-Bosch process continuously or otherwise it damages the catalysts. 

On 07/09/2022 at 6:34 PM, Flying Binghi said:

Ian, can I recommend you actually study the subject…🙂 

I have a pretty good understanding of what science actually says in this area. While there is a lot of the non-science chatter in the popularist mediums (this one included), proper journals actually publish good material and I suggest you acquaint yourself with these sources of information.

Wikipedia too is a good source of information. Contentious issues tend to be moderated by people who understand and attempt to provide a viewpoint which reflects consensus.

On 07/09/2022 at 6:34 PM, Flying Binghi said:

Physicist Steve Koonin, former U.S. under secretary for science, and the director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University

Rather than argue I'll simply point to the following. Firstly read the wikipedia article on the guy. While he worked for a Government department he wasn't the go-to guy, he was an under-secretary. This is a member of the management team but not a head-honcho. The secretary is the go-to person.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_E._Koonin

Secondly read a couple of rebuttals in either a respected popular science rag such as Scientific American which has had articles written by luminaries such as Einstein https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-new-book-manages-to-get-climate-science-badly-wrong/

Another nice rebuttal is provided by one of his previous PhD students, who actually liked the guy https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/05/a-critical-review-of-steven-koonins-unsettled/

The statistics that we're presented with often don't tell the real story of actual risks. For example young people are over-represented in the driving statistics fatality rate. However when you base your statistics on actual risk per unit of exposure ie the amount of travel that people actually do, the high risk drivers are the elderly. 

Essentially young people drive a lot and they tend to drive with full cars. People older than 70 don't drive near as much however they're over-represented in the accident statistics per unit of travel.

And yet in Victoria you now require something like 200 hours or 5 weeks of 9-5 driving to get your provisional license. And yet there are no controls of the actual higher risk group. 

Another ignored risk is that young drivers generally get better over time and older drivers get worse.

1 hour ago, red750 said:

Vic drivers don't need a medical. Up to you to decide if you are unfit to drive. Renewed my licence for 3 years a couple of months ago, turned 78 last Saturday. Renewed online by Bpay.

This might explain why our neighbour had to intervene and get their fathers license removed in Victoria. Can't say that I think that its a great policy from a safety point of view.