This page says the ocean is about 352,670,000,000,000,000,000 gallons, which is about 1.3 x 10^21 liters, and each liter is a kg of water (yeah, yeah, the dissolved salt adds some mass but I don’t think it adds sufficient thermal mass to make a difference). It takes 4.184 kilojoules to raise 1kg of liquid water 1°C, and 1 joule is 2.778 x 10^-4 wh.

So that’s 1.55 x 10^18 watt hours, or 1,550,000 TWh.

Global electricity consumption is about 30,000 TWh per year, so if you use the entire world’s electricity consumption for 51 years you’d raise the oceans’ temperature by 1°C.

Or if you take global data center power capacity of about 125 GW, and ran them at full power 24/7, you’d be producing about 10.8 TWh per day or 3944 TWh per year. It’d take about 393 years of the world’s data centers to raise the ocean by 1°C.

Just goes to show that much more of the energy heating up our world and our oceans is coming from the sun heating up the planet and the planet failing to radiate it out past our greenhouse blanket, not from the actual heating of our atmosphere from our own energy sources.

My phone has a system app known as a “dialer” despite not having a round dial.

From my point of view the steering wheel and brake pedal are accelerators as well.

GFCI doesn’t protect against arcs, so AFCI would be necessary to protect against arcing causing fires.

The danger with outdoor outlets is short circuiting (like when water drips onto a live wire), so GFCI is almost always required of outdoor outlets. Generally, outdoor outlets also require covers that keep the receptacle dry, at least when not in use (and more modern code generally requires it have an “in-use” cover that can stay on even when something is plugged in).

But having GFCI isn’t the same as AFCI, so arc fires can still theoretically happen.

I’m definitely in the camp where I want physical buttons and dials and stalks for controlling everything, both driving related (turn signals, windshield wipers) and not (audio controls, climate controls).

But that’s not really an electric vs gasoline thing, even if the leading electric brands (by sales volume) go too far in that direction and it causes a correlation where electric tends to have too much touchscreen/touchpad nonsense. I’m glad some of the car companies have returned to more physical no-look controls.

I’ve driven a few EVs (Tesla 3/Y/S/X, Polestar 2/3/4, Hyundai Ioniq 5, Kia EV6, Chevy Blazer EV, Cadillac Lyriq), and plenty of them basically have the same controls as a gasoline-powered vehicle of the same manufacturer. Tesla, especially the higher trim levels, go way too far, with even non-tactile touchpads for shit like turn signals.

But go take a few test drives of EVs from the traditional manufacturers. See which ones have good ergonomics for how you want to drive and change radio stations and stuff. And then remember which ones you liked for when it comes time to buy a used vehicle of current 2026 model years.

So what makes you think the people eating these things are only eating them for health reasons?

Taste: it’s actually really hard to taste just as good as normal meat, as meat is not only meat but also fat, tissue and blood.

One thing I’d push back on is the idea that meat has one single flavor. It’s entirely possible that we’ll be able to replicate many different types of sausages and meatballs and ground meats, things like imitation crab or meatloaf or chicken nuggets, while still struggling to mimic whole muscle cuts. Or it may be easy to mimic certain types of flavors like meat-based soups and sauces, or poached/braised meats, while not quite getting there on grilled or roasted meats.

Meanwhile, I can also see a world where lab-grown meat is cost competitive with more expensive meats, like beef or lamb or lobster, while not being able to compete with cheaper meats like chicken.

It doesn’t have to be all or nothing substitution. Sometimes imperfect substitutes can partially replace something and reduce overall demand while the original item still remains available in smaller volumes.

a weird path to take

Is the idea of eating food for enjoyment so foreign to you that you wouldn’t understand why we eat foods for reasons other than absolute minimum nutritional needs?

The lightest EVs are still kinda heavy. The Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Bolt are nearly 4000 lbs, significantly more than a Honda Civic (high 2000’s or low 3000’s) comparable to a BMW M3, a much larger vehicle.

Plus some of the faster tire wear comes from the fact that EVs have such high torque from a stop. It’s great for the driver experience, but tough on the tires.

If the funding comes from a federal fuel tax, then the higher per gallon tax on diesel (and the much higher fuel consumption that cargo trucks have) mean they actually do.

Ohio is still part of the United States, so they’ll still pay the state tax and then would add this new federal tax on top of that, too.

Every vehicle I have ever own has been used and under $20k. I don’t trust a used EV because batteries.

We’re at the point where we have long term data on lots of battery models, and failure rates (and performance degradation) have shown a surprisingly high longevity:

https://www.npr.org/2026/03/02/nx-s1-5706658/electric-vehicle-battery-lifespan

LA Metro grounded their newest BYD K9Ms (used on their J line) from January 2026 to March 2026, to investigate an electric motor issue. Note that Toronto’s bus system retired their K9Ms as well, in 2025, after reliability issues.

I’m not just making this stuff up. It’s an area of active debate and of active concern. LA Metro has an open solicitation for 240 electric buses (one contract for 220 buses and one for 20). We’ll see if they go with BYD or New Flyer or someone else when those contracts get awarded this summer.

To the original comment’s point, though, I’m pretty sure the US surpassed 500 BYD buses before Japan did (I found a press release from 2019 announcing the 460th ordered), and it’s obviously been almost 7 years since then. I’m just not sure that they’re all still in service, given the struggles some of these transit agencies have had with incorporating them into their operations.

a perfect travel pace IMO

You’re obviously free to do road trips the way you want to do them, and 20 minutes every 3 hours is the kind of thing I can do with my kids, but on trips I’m doing without the kids I’d prefer the option of stopping for less than 10 minutes every 3 hours. I have a 500 mile trip planned this summer and I’m basically gonna throw in an overnight hotel stay in part to make it easier to top off at a charger while we sleep, but if I still had a gasoline vehicle I probably would just be driving straight through by leaving early in the morning, rather than doing an evening drive starting the night before.

And I’m with you on the charger locations being a bigger inconvenience. It takes a lot more planning/flexibility (ABRP and a few backup plans in case certain chargers are occupied or out of service or slower than advertised when I get there). But still, I’d like to see improvement in the driver experience for all of it.

Yes. The 2018 report was a significant setback for the company, because the effects are still being felt today. That’s my point.

BYD buses have been operational in the US for almost 2 decades now. But most of the early models suffered from reliability issues, and the LA Metro ended up spending a lot more money than expected while getting less useful life out of the BYD buses.

I don’t know if they’ve fixed the issues, but they have a bad reputation in the mass transit procurement world. It’s also not clear the extent to which the problem is in the design versus the actual operations out of its California factory.

How the fuck is that the best option right now? Why can’t my provider make use of economies of scale and buy a container ship full of solar panels.

Same reason why the cheapest option for a household that already owns a gasoline powered vehicle is to keep using the vehicle they already own.

If it were starting from scratch, solar+battery would be cheaper than new gas. But as it stands now, the gas plant is already built and operational, so a new solar plant would have to compete with “already built, no additional funds necessary for construction.”

Semis are responsible for most of the road repair budget in the US

No, I think you’re jumping to an invalid conclusion here.

Yes, heavy vehicles cause much more wear and tear on roads than light vehicles do. But a lot of road damage is caused by stuff other than vehicles driving normally on top.

Most road surface repair is necessitated by weather: freezing and thawing creating cracks, physical scraping from snow plows. Plus there are issues caused by soil erosion, tree roots pushing on stuff, other wear and tear caused by stuff falling or blowing on the road.

You can see it in places that have dedicated bike lanes, narrow residential streets where heavy vehicles simply can’t drive, etc. When the pavement gets old, potholes and other cracks still form, even with no heavy vehicle ever driving over it.

We need both.

In ideal conditions, a 300 kW charger can deliver 50 kWh in 10 minutes. That’s mostly fine, but on a road trip still involves 10 minutes of charging every 2 hours, much more frequently than the typical restroom break or snack break.

And if people are going to be leaving their cars to do other stuff while charging, there need to be a lot of stalls so that there are open spots at popular rest stops. Delivering high power to each stall is helpful to speed them to idle/trickle, so that the overall circuit for the whole set of multiple chargers can efficiently direct the power to where it’s needed most.

they host a whole lot of people too.

If a country that has 17% of the world’s people produces more than 50% of the world’s coal, the population size isn’t a defense.