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Author Topic: Free Lunches  (Read 16231 times)

Rob C

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Re: Free Lunches
« Reply #20 on: September 23, 2016, 05:57:32 pm »

I don't think it matters what we do in North America and Western Europe from a save-the-planet standpoint. China and India are in their ascension and are not going to be slowed down by such concerns. And there is nothing we westerners can do about it.

That's my big picture thought. Now my little picture thought:

Build more nukes. Make car batteries standard and interchangeable. Nukes make the electricity. Gas stations turn into battery stations. Pull in, remove old battery, insert new battery, off you go. No waiting around to charge up.


But those batteries still have to get juiced up somewhere, sometime. It would help the car's immediate problem but not solve the overall situation.

DeanChriss

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Re: Free Lunches
« Reply #21 on: September 23, 2016, 08:19:28 pm »

...
Overall, that seems likely to be a good thing, but how it can be achieved appears, to me, to be more and more difficult to understand as we humans grow in number.
...

In 1800 there were about 1 billion people on the earth. Now there are about 7.3 billion and it takes only about 12 years to add another billion. Within the last 50 years the ocean fish population has decreased by 50% and the middle of the Pacific Ocean has become a plastic soup. Polar ice is melting faster than anyone thought and warming oceans have already killed nearly a quarter of the Great Barrier Reef and many others. About 500 species became extinct in the last 100 years. With few exceptions the populations of remaining species from butterflies to polar bears have been in decline for decades. Ecosystems are changing and it's getting harder to raise crops in many areas.

Most of the 7.3 billion of us don't even know or care about this stuff. Heck, nearly half live on less than $2.50 per day and most of those don't even have access to adequate sanitation. They are worried about basic survival, not how their electricity is produced, assuming they even have electricity. Many in the "rich" half of the population aren't in much better shape. The global median income is only $1225 per year. If you make $32,400 or more you are among the richest 1% of the world's population. By some stretch of the imagination these are the people who may be able to affect the weighty problems we all face. Well, maybe when they are not working to pay for college and picking up kids from soccer practice. Unfortunately every problem we face is far more immediate than saving the ecosystems that support life on our planet. The bills have to be paid this month but the food wars won't happen until I'm long gone, hopefully. My point is that we will never act quickly enough or dramatically enough to reverse the biggest problems faced by humanity, or even dramatically change our course. To do that the whole world would need to work together and that IMO is a fantasy.
« Last Edit: September 23, 2016, 08:22:57 pm by DeanChriss »
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N80

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Re: Free Lunches
« Reply #22 on: September 23, 2016, 08:37:04 pm »


But those batteries still have to get juiced up somewhere, sometime. It would help the car's immediate problem but not solve the overall situation.

That's what the nukes are for. The main reason for the electric cars is to do away with fossil fuel dependency. And when oil is worth nothing, Saudi Arabia is worth nothing.
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BernardLanguillier

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Re: Free Lunches
« Reply #23 on: September 23, 2016, 08:45:22 pm »

Back the initial question, electric cars help reduce pollution everything else being equal because it is a lot easier to clean the exhaust generated by static power plants than it is to clean the exhaust of a car.

Now it is less obvious to figure out to what extend, if at all, electric car result in a more efficient usage of available energy. It is complex because it depends on the mix of energy sources that depends on the location.

I would be interested in any link pointing to a scientific comparison, but my guess is that overall electric cars may not be efficient today in terms of fossil energy usage compated to gasoline cars. I would love to be proven wrong.

Cheers,
Bernard

Rob C

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Re: Free Lunches
« Reply #24 on: September 24, 2016, 04:12:30 am »

That's what the nukes are for. 1.  The main reason for the electric cars is to do away with fossil fuel dependency. 2. And when oil is worth nothing, Saudi Arabia is worth nothing.


1.  That's kinda obvious, in theory. And taken in isolation without expanding the thinking about consequential changes so induced.

2.  Oil will never be worth nothing; for a start, we depend on plastics for an enormous volume of products and machinery still requires lubrication. As for Saudi, that's a political point and also flawed from the point of view of its influence: it's money will not simply evaporate, and money is influence even within a domestic family. And let's not even touch on the religious impact it has worldwide.

Rob C

Robert Roaldi

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Re: Free Lunches
« Reply #25 on: September 24, 2016, 06:51:29 am »

The question of whether battery systems will ever have the energy density of a tank of gasoline is interesting enough, but even if it never happens that doesn't mean electric cars won't be useful. Depending on how things turn out, we might lose the ability to drive from New York to Florida in a relatively inexpensive and convenient way, but there was never any guarantee that we could do that forever. When/if there comes a time when the price of a litre of gasoline is $10, say, lots of people will get rid of their cars, since there won't be much point owning something you can't afford to use. But we'll still need to buy groceries and go to the dentist and we've designed our cities (in North America anyway) so that those things are never within easy walking distance. At that point, a limited-range and limited-speed e-car will seem like a godsend and not an substandard substitute, even if you only charge it up once a month. In the long run, we will probably have to change the way we live, and no one ever likes that.
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GrahamBy

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Re: Free Lunches
« Reply #26 on: September 24, 2016, 07:22:29 am »

I would be interested in any link pointing to a scientific comparison, but my guess is that overall electric cars may not be efficient today in terms of fossil energy usage compated to gasoline cars. I would love to be proven wrong.

It obviously depends on where. France is 80+% nuclear, plus another ~8% hydro. very different from Australia which is 100% fossil.

There is also the polemic around the implications of the finite life of the battery packs and the mining of the niobium for the permanent magnets in the motors... I'm not sure anyone has reliable data because of the obvious market economic consequences of battery life estimates for selling the cars, getting government subsidies etc. There is very, very big money on the table.

Getting emissions out of the cities would be a huge deal though, French cities literally stink of diesel fumes now... they smell much worse than petrol vapours to me, and unlike petrol emissions, they have been declared carcinogenic (for what that's worth: I've sat on some of those committees and the decision making is... interesting).
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N80

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Re: Free Lunches
« Reply #27 on: September 24, 2016, 08:07:20 am »


1.  That's kinda obvious, in theory.

It seems this entire discussion is theoretical.

Quote
And taken in isolation without expanding the thinking about consequential changes so induced.

Not sure what you mean. But if you're suggesting that there are downsides to nuclear, well, that's kinda obvious too. As the title of the thread suggests, there is no free lunch.

Quote
2.  Oil will never be worth nothing; for a start, we depend on plastics for an enormous volume of products and machinery still requires lubrication. As for Saudi, that's a political point and also flawed from the point of view of its influence: it's money will not simply evaporate, and money is influence even within a domestic family. And let's not even touch on the religious impact it has worldwide.

Rob C

Of course it won't be worth nothing. Forgive the slight hyperbole. The point being that it will be unlikely that the western world would be dependent on imported oil for the uses you describe, particularly from the core of middle eastern nations that are all inherently unstable; those who enjoy stability receive it from without and not within, solely due to the value of their oil. Those who once enjoyed stability from within, Iraq, 'enjoyed' it at the cost of brutal suppression. Money does not evaporate. But it might as well. Witness the mark following WWI. Plenty of them; no value. Saudi Arabia produces nothing more than oil. The population, while educated, is virtually without a skilled labor force. They are almost entirely dependent on imports. Without oil they have nothing to export except terrorism. So yes, of course this is a political point but there can be no discussion of the future of energy production, global climate change and pollution without a geopolitical discussion. Simply fruitless. And I'm glad to refrain from discussing the impact of religion, but it is also tightly intertwined in the discussion of oil and politics. It cannot be separated. But it can be mitigated when the middle east is no longer the arbiter of western energy resources and economic considerations. Then the discussion can simply be political or religious.
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jfirneno

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Re: Free Lunches
« Reply #28 on: September 24, 2016, 09:36:44 am »

The question of whether battery systems will ever have the energy density of a tank of gasoline is interesting enough, but even if it never happens that doesn't mean electric cars won't be useful. Depending on how things turn out, we might lose the ability to drive from New York to Florida in a relatively inexpensive and convenient way, but there was never any guarantee that we could do that forever. When/if there comes a time when the price of a litre of gasoline is $10, say, lots of people will get rid of their cars, since there won't be much point owning something you can't afford to use. But we'll still need to buy groceries and go to the dentist and we've designed our cities (in North America anyway) so that those things are never within easy walking distance. At that point, a limited-range and limited-speed e-car will seem like a godsend and not an substandard substitute, even if you only charge it up once a month. In the long run, we will probably have to change the way we live, and no one ever likes that.

Oh let's not constrain ourselves to a bleak future.  Let's have faith in the ability of man to overcome technological hurdles.  After the governments get tired of subsidizing electric car usage we'll go on using more efficient gasoline engine based designs (such as the hybrid concept with it's small battery regenerative model) for as long as fossil fuels are relatively plentiful.  What happens after that depends on what we use for the large scale production of power.  If nuclear power becomes the model then it would seem that a hydrogen based combustion engine would be preferable both because of the highly exothermic nature of that combustion process and the clean emissions (water).  The engineering challenges involve making hydrogen fuel safe.  But I have faith in the wonders of modern engineering.  After all if we can have self driving cars then low risk hydrogen engines should be easy.
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Rob C

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Re: Free Lunches
« Reply #29 on: September 24, 2016, 10:53:04 am »

It seems this entire discussion is theoretical.

Not sure what you mean. But if you're suggesting that there are downsides to nuclear, well, that's kinda obvious too. As the title of the thread suggests, there is no free lunch.

Of course it won't be worth nothing. Forgive the slight hyperbole. The point being that it will be unlikely that the western world would be dependent on imported oil for the uses you describe, particularly from the core of middle eastern nations that are all inherently unstable; those who enjoy stability receive it from without and not within, solely due to the value of their oil. Those who once enjoyed stability from within, Iraq, 'enjoyed' it at the cost of brutal suppression. Money does not evaporate. But it might as well. 1  Witness the mark following WWI. Plenty of them; no value. Saudi Arabia produces nothing more than oil. The population, while educated, is virtually without a skilled labor force. They are almost entirely dependent on imports. Without oil they have nothing to export except terrorism. So yes, of course this is a political point but there can be no discussion of the future of energy production, global climate change and pollution without a geopolitical discussion. Simply fruitless. And I'm glad to refrain from discussing the impact of religion, but it is also tightly intertwined in the discussion of oil and politics. It cannot be separated. 2  But it can be mitigated when the middle east is no longer the arbiter of western energy resources and economic considerations. Then the discussion can simply be political or religious.


1.  That was the German experience. Not gonna happen with Saudi: they have huge investments abroad; I guess they know their own internal score and have hedged their bets accordingly. Of course, that all depends on whom we includes in the word Saudi: do we speak only sheiks or include everybody else too? In some fantasies I could see a flotilla of superyachts rounding the Cape of Agulhas, Suez and most of the Red Sea being, I'd bet, far too dangerous by then.

2.  Seems the greatest reserves (oil) of all sit beneath the safe bottoms of the Brazilians. Their women may be cute in that area, but their politics?

Rob

FabienP

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Re: Free Lunches
« Reply #30 on: September 24, 2016, 01:18:23 pm »

Energy production should be handled by engineers, not by politicians.

The faith in renewables as the sole and only solution shows how little politicians understand the issues at stake. Without the ability to store energy produced by renewables and use it at will, we will still need to have electricity power plants to supply energy when there is no wind and sun. Power plants cannot be started and stopped at short notice, so they have to run constantly. Thus I am not sure that renewables in their current incarnation have lowered the need to have that dirty old coal power plant running in the background. Politicians never mention that fact. Actually, I am not sure they are even conscious of the problem.

This is why nuclear power plants remain useful as base load electricity plants. The problem is that most of the currently deployed units are based on a technology (PWR, pressurised water reactors) that was chosen in the 1950s to get military grade plutonium and be able to use as a smaller version in submarines. These rely on uranium as combustible and are largely responsible for the bad reputation of nuclear power plants.

Other designs such as molten salt reactors, which did not get as much funding at the time, would be better suited for energy production. As an added bonus, most of the problems associated with nuclear energy are greatly reduced in those designs. For instance, they can be designed so that a loss of cooling capacity still results in a safe shutdown. A leak in containment would be much less problematic given the low pressure in the reactor. Nuclear waste is also reduced compared to conventional designs.

So yes, give us more nukes, but make sure to address the issues with the currently used designs.

Cheers,

Fabien

(speaking as someone who lives 20 km away from a nuclear plant of the same type as Fukushima Daiichi, but unlike Unit 3 there, not using MOX as fuel)
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Telecaster

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Re: Free Lunches
« Reply #31 on: September 24, 2016, 05:12:45 pm »

I don't think it matters what we do in North America and Western Europe from a save-the-planet standpoint.

I don't even think in terms of "saving" the planet. We humans have been and are remaking the planet. The amount of forethought and long-term planning we devote to this is what I'm interested in. We could have some degree or other of control over the process, or we could fail to think & plan and let it get away from us. As a human who innately cares about the future of our species, even though I'll leave no descendents of my own, I'd rather we opt for the former.

-Dave-
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Rob C

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Re: Free Lunches
« Reply #32 on: September 24, 2016, 05:45:18 pm »

I don't even think in terms of "saving" the planet. We humans have been and are remaking the planet. The amount of forethought and long-term planning we devote to this is what I'm interested in. We could have some degree or other of control over the process, or we could fail to think & plan and let it get away from us. As a human who innately cares about the future of our species, even though I'll leave no descendents of my own, I'd rather we opt for the former.

-Dave-

Dave,

Remaking is a bit kind! I think we are destroying it, our own future and that of any projected genes at an alarming rate.

It's as if we have this gigantic, collective blind spot, that it'll all be all right in the end just as long as we don't think about it too much. and actually change anything in our own lives by way of contribution.

Trouble is, this attitude is made easy to accept because we think that nobody else is going to bother to be careful, so why should we? Our little contribution won't make any difference; yet, add them all up...

All in all, I'm glad I lived when I did. Looking forward doesn't make me think I'm going to miss very much. And looking back makes me think it peaked late 50s, plateaued until about the mid 80s and then went into an accelerating decline because of greed, excessive consumerism and a total loss of moral compasses.

In the UK, I think it began with the dumbing down of schools, the political confusing of the practice of sending more capable kids to better schools with elitism which, I think I have seen, has led not to any raising of collective standards, but to a whole swathe of kids whose lack of knowledge about anything beyond teenage interests is truly shocking. But they are not totally to blame: they seem to be children of parents themselves in school during the 60s when the rot set in. In life, I believe that one will never be able to turn sows' ears into silken purses, however politically delightful one might think that fantasy to be.

Rob

N80

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Re: Free Lunches
« Reply #33 on: September 24, 2016, 06:09:26 pm »

I often feel the same way about the future but probably for vastly different reasons from you, Rob. But I often realize that I'm not the first middle-aged/ older man to feel this way. There have been much darker times even in the lives of our parents and their parents. I think that especially for us baby-boomers (I'm 53, why I'm a baby-boomer I can't explain) we've simply been spoiled rotten, at least here in the US. And I think a lot of our current negative expectations of the future are couched in two things. The first is that we see the future not being as comfortable and relatively care-free as the past and present we have lived in. And that is sort of pathetic because, in my opinion, comfort and security are benefits of a good life but are not the required ingredients for one. The second thing is an ironic hubris coupled with an equally ironic pessimism. We think we have ruined (or are ruining) the global habitat and at the same time reckon that we can fix it, while at the very same time doubting that we can survive and thrive in what we consider one that we fail to fix.

Audubon felt like we had ruined it in 1820.
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DeanChriss

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Re: Free Lunches
« Reply #34 on: September 24, 2016, 09:17:32 pm »

I do think we are ruining the global habitat but I don't think we have a prayer of fixing it. I'd think people will almost certainly survive but most other species will not. I'm not sure I'd say people would thrive in such an empoverished world, but then people have a way of adapting to new normals and in a generation no one will miss what they never knew, so perhaps they will indeed thrive and think their world is as complete as they need it to be. From e-books, videos and photos they'll know things like tigers, elephants, and monarch butterflies existed a few generations ago just like we know mastadons existed 13000 years ago, but they won't miss them. In all of human history I don't think the global environment ever improved in any significant way and I'd expect that to remain the case. The global environment has not been as good as Audubon had it in 1820 since 1820, and I'm sure that in many ways it was better in terms of biodiversity and other factors in 1720.

I think the best case scenario is a continued decline with its speed depending on how problems are handled until some minimal level is reached. But I doubt it'd turn out so well. It's quite likely that the changing environment would trip several natural phenomena that would take the planet's climate on a runaway course. Those include the oceans warming until the enormous methane clathrate deposits on the ocean floors are released. That phenomena is already being observed. A similar mechanism occurs when greenhouse gasses trapped in frozen tundra are released as ice within the tundra melts. Warm oceans mean storms of unprecedented magnitude on a regular basis and very limited regions suitable for food crops. It doesn't sound like much fun to me.

While I know this is sounds very pessimistic I think it's just logical based on what's known at the moment and our history of fixing the environment.
« Last Edit: September 24, 2016, 09:22:11 pm by DeanChriss »
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Rob C

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Re: Free Lunches
« Reply #35 on: September 25, 2016, 04:42:20 am »

As a passing thought, which I'd better unload quickly before it gets lonely: is there a chance that the increasing rainfall will regenerate the deserts?

Rob

DeanChriss

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Re: Free Lunches
« Reply #36 on: September 25, 2016, 06:13:51 am »

As a passing thought, which I'd better unload quickly before it gets lonely: is there a chance that the increasing rainfall will regenerate the deserts?

Rob

From the U.N.E.P. Global Deserts Outlook:
Global climate change, the directional change induced by anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases (to be distinguished from longterm or short-term climate variations not caused by global-scale human impact on the climate system) also affects deserts. Deserts warmed-up between 1976 to 2000 at an average rate of 0.2-0.8ºC/ decade - an overall increase of 0.5-2ºC (Table 3.1), much higher than the average global temperature increase of 0.45ºC, which has been attributed to the increase in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases (IPCC 2001). Global warming is expected to induce an overall increase in rainfall; but high latitudes are projected to warm more than the mid- and low-latitudes, resulting in more rainfall in higher latitudes linked to reduced rainfall in subtropical ones. Indeed, in most deserts within the subtropical belt, rainfall has already been decreasing in the last two decades.
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DeanChriss

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Re: Free Lunches
« Reply #37 on: September 25, 2016, 06:34:54 am »

An interesting (not sure that's the right word) consequence of the global changes taking place is the rise of "Last Chance Tourism". I'm guessing that many are also involved in what might be called "last chance photography".
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Rob C

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Re: Free Lunches
« Reply #38 on: September 25, 2016, 06:48:13 am »

Polar bears will never replace the elephant in this room!

;-)

Rob

N80

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Re: Free Lunches
« Reply #39 on: September 25, 2016, 08:49:48 am »

One of the problems with the whole global warming discussion is the synthetic pessimism that has been injected into by those who would use the science as an ideological weapon. Taken as a whole, the science behind anthropogenic global warming has its flaws, most of which are paved over by consensus (which is the weakest kind of science). And too many ideologues have taken up its cause because it supports their socio/political views. This has lead to two problems: 1) They have sullied what good science there is behind the study of climate change by attaching extra and scientifically unsupportable baggage to it which gives skeptics much fuel from branding the entire endeavor as socio/political maneuvering. 2) Because it fits their various causes, they have created an atmosphere in which the science cannot be questioned. They have elevated it to the status of religion or cult. It is to be taken, with all the ideological and non-scientific baggage, as gospel and without question. To do so invites ridicule and accusation. It has lead to many, though far from a majority according to the polls, to accept the science faithfully, while having little or no understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of it. And this is a problem for the real science because there is no science that is above question. That is the nature of science, it is ALWAYS open to re-evaluation.

The evidence of this is everywhere and has been magnified by the popular media who understand none of the science and less of the geopolitics that they are so willing to endorse.

That evidence is the pessimism itself, reflected perfectly by DeanChriss's post above. In a real and statistical sense the probability that all consequences of global warming, regardless of the cause, are going to cause bad things for all of even most species is astronomically low. In a real and statistical sense the probability that the consequences of global warming in the balance are going to cause more bad things than good is also highly if not astronomically improbable. We are talking about a planet and its myriad species and daily we hear prognostications that all is lost due to several degrees of global temperature change. This is possibly the greatest nonsense that has ever been foisted on a presumably educated public.

It simply is not possible to introduce a few variables, of even a lot of variable into a global system and have all or even most outcomes be what we would call undesirable.

And yet, I defy anyone to find any substantial article that discusses the good things that will come from global warming and this is an indictment of the media. Likewise, find studies that show how global warming will result in benefits to society and culture...this is an indictment of the ideologues. The worse part is that the scientific community has not adequately examined the potential of good things to come from it. This oversight is bad science and tarnishes the good.

I have read, seriously, that global warming will be beneficial to some species. So far those species are mosquitos, sharks, spiders and poison oak. Compare this with the species that will be harmed. Here's a hint: They are all fury and have large limpid eyes.

A lot of people disbelieve the idea of man-made climate change because it does not fit their political beliefs and because they don't understand the science. They are, in general, referred to as idiots. There are a lot of people who likewise don't understand the science, who believe in it because it fits their agenda, they are typically thought of as progressive, caring and thoughtful. There isn't much anyone can do about either of these groups.

But for populations and governments to respond to global warming appropriately it is going to require dropping the baggage of unfounded ideological pessimism which is being used as means to socio/political ends and a media willing to report on climate change in a rational and unbiased way. As it stands now, this ideological baggage is far more damaging to the cause of a responsible reaction to climate change than any of the scientific weaknesses inherent in its propositions.
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