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"For a snapshot of what all this points to regarding the total materials footprint of the green energy path, consider the supply chain for an electric car battery. A single battery providing a useful driving range weighs about 1,000 pounds.[15] Providing the refined minerals needed to fabricate a single EV battery requires the mining, moving, and processing of more than 500,000 pounds of materials somewhere on the planet (see sidebar below).[16] That's 20 times more than the 25,000 pounds of petroleum that an internal combustion engine uses over the life of a car."

Splashy headlines have long overshadowed inconvenient truths about biology and economics. Now, extensive new research suggests the industry may be on a billion-dollar crash course with reality.

Just as there is talk of automated self driving cars, the same is for cargo ships. Only the reality is that autonomy will start with smaller ships, whith shorter hauls.

Treasury's just-released Climate Action Plan establishes five priority actions to strengthen and build upon Treasury's climate resilience and adaptive capabilities: (1) rebuilding programs and capabilities that may have atrophied or stagnated in recent years; (2) addressing climate change impacts and vulnerabilities across the range of Departmental operations, including administrative, manufacturing, and law enforcement activities; (3) ensuring a climate-focused approach to managing Treasury's real property portfolio footprint; (4) enabling procurement management to fully consider climate change realities; and (5) providing, measuring, and accounting for a financial investment approach appropriate to the Department's climate objectives.

Technologists in the U.S. and China, experts in Japan and researchers within the European Space Agency and the United Kingdom Space Agency are all working to make space-based solar power a reality. Over the past decade, researchers have made impressive advances that increase the likelihood that space solar power (SSP) will be realized during the next decade. "Two of the biggest hurdles to the realization of SSP have always been the cost of launch and the cost of hardware. Add flight rate, and all of a sudden you're looking at numbers always talked about for solar power satellites." The experts believe that solar power satellites at scale could be available within a decade, and envision "a world in the year 2100 where about 20% of electrical power comes from terrestrial nuclear and renewables, with 80% supplied by astroelectricity."

"What sounds like sci-fi is now becoming a reality, and as these minute cameras pass through your body, they take two pictures per second checking for signs of cancer and other conditions like Crohn's disease." This new technology is a less invasive and more convenient alternative to current practices. The ease of this care provides a more comfortable experience for those who would have needed a traditional endoscopy.

I've swallowed the pill camera before to check an issue in my gut. It was 14 hours of video!!!

"While we don't expect to be delivering a full Star Trek holodeck experience in the near future, we're already boldly going in new directions to add additional functions to the system. Soon, we expect to be able to modify the temperature of the airflow to allow users to feel hot or cold surfaces. We're also exploring the possibility of adding scents to the airflow, deepening the illusion of virtual objects by allowing users to smell as well as touch them."

With the trucking industry continuing to move forward, the main thing on truck drivers' minds is the security of their jobs. Let's take a closer look at self-driving trucks quickly becoming a reality.

We all have a futuristic vision of lonely robot trucks running alone through a dark desert night in our heads. But, in reality, the first automated commercial vehicle you see "in the wild," will most likely be a truck or van running in a controlled area - possibly under some sort of remote human control or monitoring. For most of us, this probably will be some sort of airport or hotel shuttle bus, running a dedicated route on a dedicated timetable, performing a monotonous, but demanding, task over and over again.