My advice is to start writing. Write small stories first, and learn how to put together a cohesive story. To have a good story, one needs to decide on how the story is to be structured... is it just a series of random events? Does the protagonist have an arc, where he or she begins with a flaw and learns how to overcome it? Does he or she grow in some way? become a better person?

Have a solid ending in mind when you start. Then, built towards that ending as you go. Try to avoid using "clever side stories" along the way that don't progress the story towards the ending.

Me, I like building an outline, as you would when writing a term paper or something. One of my favorite authors describes taking writing classes where he thought the professor was an idiot and the advice was not good advice. He wrote several things and submitted them to publishers, only to get shot down each time. To prove the professor wrong, he followed the advice exactly, and when that was submitted, it became his first published work.

He said that he uses a sentence that is essentially ,"the hero's goal is X, but cannot fulfill that goal because Y is standing in his way. He must do Z to defeat Y so that he can achieve X." Fill in the X Y and Z and you have your story.

When I write anything, I have the basic term paper format of Introduction, 3 sections of Main Body and Conclusion. That's five basic blocks of writing. In the 3 sections of Main Body, I break down each section the same way, with an introduction to the section, 3 areas of investigation or challenge, where questions or challenges are posed all relating to the same theme, and a conclusion to the section. Within each area of investigation, I have the challenge and research or data (or in fiction, actions taken) to resolve, refute or support the question or challenge.

This gives me a main story arc, with 3 main phases, and nine supporting challenges to overcome, with an introduction and conclusion at either end. Flesh out the first part with a good justification of why the hero needs to go on the story arc, with some character introduction and world building, and the last section is the "prep and execution of the resolution of the book." If you add in the idea of a Hero's Journey story arc and build around it, you can fill in the details as you go, and the story kind of writes itself.

Mine is already over 10 years old. Will be used tomorrow to carry my son to work.

My car battery is still good after 10 years of use. I will like get at least another five out of it.

Oh, I'm not poor. I escaped the poverty of my father's family, by ignoring his wishes and joining the military, then using the GI bill to help me get a college degree. I've worked in a decently paying job for the last 40 years, while he could not keep a job due to alcoholism, prison, being a felon, and being a delusional asshole.

But, we weren't talking about me, per se. We were talking about the idea that a Caucasian isn't allowed to gain any sympathy for being a "Descendent of Slavery" even if we were. It's a system of double standards that spans more than just the USC - it's become pervasive across the US, Canada, Europe, etc. Because "white people" have not been universally poor for the last 500 years, we're the evil ones and must therefore now be punished.

Would that be "huge tracks of land?"

I am a "descendent of slavery," although I'd be ridiculed if I tried to describe myself as one. Also, every person in my father's family history, at least as far as I've been able to trace, has been impoverished. I have an uncle who's done okay, and my mother's side of the family was middle class (certainly not wealthy).

But, I am Caucasian, so all I get is blame for things I had nothing to do with. Our society needs to figure out how to move past things that people who have been dead for hundreds of years did to each other.

I’ve never seen a change to a story that inserts modern politics that I have ever liked.

Solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, etc.

It’s a step forward, and that’s progress

Or, and here me out, not breaking the methane back into hydrogen gas at the other end. Methane can be freely burned for heat and/or power, because it wasn’t sourced from fossil fuels.

Turning the gas from hydrogen (H2) into methane (CH4) means you don’t need to change the lines to carry the gas.

Hydrogen is a decent carrier of energy. It can be used when combined/separated from other elements, like carbon and oxygen. In fact, hydrogen, when combined/separated from carbon and oxygen, is how we power the world today. The energy was captured thousands/millions of years ago, stored as hydrocarbons, and is released when the carbons are stripped from the hydrogen by oxidation.

We can do the same thing today, add energy to hydrogen and carbon, stripping away the oxygen from water and CO2, then using the combined hydrocarbon as a carrier for the energy we added in. This isn't a new science - it is well known how to do it. It may not be the most energy efficient way, but it doesn't rely on new, untested and/or expensive technology to make it work.

The oceans are warming half as fast as land masses. So, all land masses are warming twice as fast as the global average. Doesn't mean anything.

The person you replied to didn’t say sea ice melt. Land ice melting and then flowing into the sea is likely what was meant.

I want to be the person who doesn't sit around doing nothing all the time. That having been said, I live my life in those brief moments of "doing something" that exist between working, sleeping and waiting for a chance to go out and do something. I end up "preparing" to do something a few hours a week, "putting things away" a couple of hours a week, and traveling to the place (and coming home from) where I'm going to be able to "do something" several hours a week.

The actual "doing something" might be a couple of hours, might be as much as a couple of days." I figure, on average, two real events a month, of a handful of hours, each. Out of over 700 hours in a month, I'm not "doing something" a large percentage of the time.

But, those are really the only hours I remember.

What I see is people discovering this wonderful book and wanting to talk about it. I've seen similar frequent posts about other books, but I've never thought that such an outpouring of praise is "astroturfing."

By the way, I loved the book, too.

Sorry I wasn't more clear. It is the "fan" part of turbofan that makes it efficient, not the "turbo" part. The turbine can and does create thrust, but it's relatively inefficient. So they add a "shrouded fan" to the output shaft of the turbine to increase the efficiency of the turbine.

We can add a "shrouded fan" to the output shaft of an electric motor to make the most efficient thrust from the output of the electric motor.

More passenger trains would be excellent. We really need rail lines that we don't have to share with freight, and freight having the priority... Nearly all of the problems with Amtrak are due to freight companies controlling the tracks.

There will always be prop noise. We can also power shrouded fans by electric motor, and those are more efficient than open props. A "turbofan" is a shrouded fan driven by a turbine, and it's currently the most efficient way to propel an airplane.

Yet another new battery that won't make it out of a lab?

I love the fact that they have come up with a way to make the battery more energy dense. It shows the ignorance of the author, however, to write that it will allow an EV to travel any certain distance on a single charge. I can build a car right now that can travel twice that on a single charge, without any new technology. Just use a bigger battery. The Aptera EV, using existing battery tech and a 40 kWh pack can travel 390 miles on a single charge. If it uses a 60 kWh battery, it can travel 600 miles on a single charge.

I wish EV reporting was better.