The horror of clicking through and reading is nigh...

> Well, disagree.

Laws of physics don't care about you agreeing or not.

> Every good idea starts somewhere,

Agreed. This one is not a good idea.

> and I’d love to see this one go somewhere.

So you want to harm our planet even more? Well that's... not wise.

> Out of curiosity, are you an engineer or a manager or both?

Engineer. Out of curiosity, what does it matter?

I'm not saying either of these things.

I'm saying, compared to actually building a car, it's way easier to do the math about the maximum possible benefit and realize it's so tiny that building that car is guaranteed to be at best pointless and at worst a net negative for the environment - which it turned out to be and, worse, it will probably motivate others to waste their time and resources as well, which in turn will cause further unnecessary damage to our planet, contrary to what they set out to do, which is ironic.

With that realization you can conclude that some of the following happened:

- They did not do the math and built a car. Not a wise sequence of steps, especially for someone who is smart and determined enough to be capable of building a car

- They did the math and decided to build the car anyway. Even less wise

In any case, calling this "innovation" is... similarly not wise.

It's a fun exercise and building a car is obviously a really good achievement on its own, but as far as being touted as a solution to our CO2 problem, this is bonkers. Hypocrisy is a good thing to avoid.

None of that matters if the initial conditions are provably unfavorable. It's like trying to innovate on perpetuum mobile when we know it is impossible, by the laws of physics, for it to work. Your examples are all in a distinct category because we had no reason to believe they were impossible.

So e.g. when people started innovating regarding the Apollo spacecraft, they said "let's try this idea that surely, by the laws of physics, cannot get us to the Moon"? That... doesn't make sense.

> Just a reminder to the downers in here: advancement starts with the least effective, worst version of a thing.

That's like saying "let's support faster-than-light travel innovations". The problem here is not that this is inefficient - the problem is it cannot be efficient enough to even remotely make sense. You cannot go against physics and claim that's "innovation".

> This whole thread is ridiculously anti-innovation.

Innovations are only good if they make sense. This is so ridiculously inefficient that it's absolutely an abhorrent attempt at a solution just so they can get more money or whatever they are after. You cannot go against the laws of physics by "innovating".

> Public transport is cool folks,

Convincing others of that is unfortunately a lost cause...

> by spending some money you get to feel good, like you're contributing.

Similarly how I feel when I eat three times as much as I need to...

But birds don't exist...

Do you think wild vultures would be so unafraid to allow to be petted though?

Wonderful work and just what I needed today!

> The signs are apparently intended to catch the eye because they're out of the ordinary.

Well, then they should have put 21.73 km/h.

That's interesting! Do you have some sauce handy?

> A Missouri school board decided Tuesday to shut down a grade school that sits near a contaminated creek after a study funded by law firms involved in a class-action lawsuit found high levels of radioactive material inside the school.

I feel like these days everything is trying to get someone inside schools hurt, even unintentionally. Damn...