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China's e-buses dent oil demand more than electric cars do

bloomberg.com

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Re: China's e-buses dent oil demand more than electric cars do

#51
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not true. They produce more sulphur dioxide, a pollutant that cars don’t emit much of in general, and which the heavy fuel used by ships generates in abundance. Somehow the story morphed from “a few ships emit more of this specific pollutant than all cars” to “more pollution” to “more CO2.” The entire worldwide shipping industry accounts for about 3% of humanity’s CO2 emissions.

> The entire worldwide shipping industry accounts for about 3% of humanity’s CO2 emissions. To my knowledge personally owned vehicles account for a similar percentage of total CO2 output, so that number while small is a red herring. People tend to generate more CO2 per capita as a result of air conditioning than from the vehicles they drive.

Do you have sources for all of these claims?

Re: China's e-buses dent oil demand more than electric cars do

#52
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not true. They produce more sulphur dioxide, a pollutant that cars don’t emit much of in general, and which the heavy fuel used by ships generates in abundance. Somehow the story morphed from “a few ships emit more of this specific pollutant than all cars” to “more pollution” to “more CO2.” The entire worldwide shipping industry accounts for about 3% of humanity’s CO2 emissions.

And how does that 3% compare to the total CO2 from personal vehicles?

"Road transport" was 16.5% of global emissions in 2008: https://www.who.int/sustainable-development/transport/health...

Re: China's e-buses dent oil demand more than electric cars do

#53

This is a very good way to think about the price of goods. When supply and demand are in relative equilibrium price remains stable and reflects the cost of production plus some margin for manufacturers. When you trim demand even slightly by a few percent - which EVs in their various forms will inevitably do - what happens to price? Where is the new demand for oil to compensate? Jet fuel? I believe price per unit oil…

As China uses less and there is softening price due to that, other consumers and industry will pick up the slack.

People will drive more, or buy bigger cars, or it fly more, etc. etc...

The price of Oil I think is going nowhere but up even as we deploy electric vehicles, because there are a lot of new people coming into the new economy and they want cars, they want to fly etc.

Re: China's e-buses dent oil demand more than electric cars do

#54

Excuse me for this tangent, but when it comes to environmental concerns, why do we still skirt around the largest elephant in the room? Curbing population growth. We have laws against almost every "natural human instinct/desire": X Murder X Rape X Theft, even if you're stealing food when you're starving X Taking shelter in property that you don't own, even if you were freezing to death X In some countries: Being with…

Because population growth is expected to decline over the next century already, and because population is not really the problem anyway. We have the ability to improve the carrying capacity of the earth and we have done so repeatedly over time. Dire predictions of the negative consequences of overpopulation, ever since Malthus, have turned out wrong. The population doomsayers didn't even anticipate the real problem w…

> population is not really the problem anyway.

> Dire predictions

Those are not only predictions, but existing examples. I invite you to visit the slums of developing/"third-world" countries, or even just see images/videos of them.

> regulating reproduction is a violating of the most basic human freedoms.

We regulate MANY things that are also basic human freedoms.

Re: China's e-buses dent oil demand more than electric cars do

#55
post #25

Now they need to get off coal as the source of much of that electricity. I’m not saying they won’t though... I’m pretty sure they are onboard with both cleaning up their environment, and limiting their CO2 emissions.

China is actually running nuclear AP1000 reactors: https://sg.news.yahoo.com/nuclear-shares-soar-china-plans-11.... It seems serious about nuclear power, unlike the U.S.

Re: China's e-buses dent oil demand more than electric cars do

#56

Excuse me for this tangent, but when it comes to environmental concerns, why do we still skirt around the largest elephant in the room? Curbing population growth. We have laws against almost every "natural human instinct/desire": X Murder X Rape X Theft, even if you're stealing food when you're starving X Taking shelter in property that you don't own, even if you were freezing to death X In some countries: Being with…

Because population growth is expected to decline over the next century already, and because population is not really the problem anyway. We have the ability to improve the carrying capacity of the earth and we have done so repeatedly over time. Dire predictions of the negative consequences of overpopulation, ever since Malthus, have turned out wrong. The population doomsayers didn't even anticipate the real problem w…

> We have the ability to improve the carrying capacity of the earth and we have done so repeatedly over time.

At the expense of causing massive climate change, it is worth noting. The era of our ability to "increase the world's carrying capacity" may be coming to an end.

I really, really hope I'm wrong and we're able to get Climate Change under control, but we are heading in the exact opposite direction right now.

Re: China's e-buses dent oil demand more than electric cars do

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because population growth is expected to decline over the next century already, and because population is not really the problem anyway. We have the ability to improve the carrying capacity of the earth and we have done so repeatedly over time. Dire predictions of the negative consequences of overpopulation, ever since Malthus, have turned out wrong. The population doomsayers didn't even anticipate the real problem w…

> population is not really the problem anyway. > Dire predictions Those are not only predictions, but existing examples. I invite you to visit the slums of developing/"third-world" countries, or even just see images/videos of them. > regulating reproduction is a violating of the most basic human freedoms. We regulate MANY things that are also basic human freedoms.

> They are not predictions. I invite you to visit the slums of developing/"third-world" countries, or even just see images/videos of them.

Slums are not caused by overpopulation. They are caused by poverty and lack of opportunity, often abetted by bad government policy. Tiny countries with small populations have slums.

Re: China's e-buses dent oil demand more than electric cars do

#58

Excuse me for this tangent, but when it comes to environmental concerns, why do we still skirt around the largest elephant in the room? Curbing population growth. We have laws against almost every "natural human instinct/desire": X Murder X Rape X Theft, even if you're stealing food when you're starving X Taking shelter in property that you don't own, even if you were freezing to death X In some countries: Being with…

It’s a pretty well documented observation that the birth rate in prosperous nations tends to level out without intervention. Additionally, prosperous nations are responsible for orders of magnitude more per capita carbon emissions than the “global south.”

Is your plan to depopulate the wealthy countries responsible for CO2 emissions who already have a replacement level birthrate?

Or is it to artificially prevent population growth and economic development in undeveloped countries? It would be morally unacceptable for the global north to extract wealth from the global south for 500 years, use the wealth to build highly industrialized economies, then prevent the rest of the world from catching up economically.

Re: China's e-buses dent oil demand more than electric cars do

#59

Excuse me for this tangent, but when it comes to environmental concerns, why do we still skirt around the largest elephant in the room? Curbing population growth. We have laws against almost every "natural human instinct/desire": X Murder X Rape X Theft, even if you're stealing food when you're starving X Taking shelter in property that you don't own, even if you were freezing to death X In some countries: Being with…

Because it goes very much against the constant growth required by the economy?

Growth of the economy to what end? What is the endgame?

What will conjure up the constant resources and space required for the constant growth required by the economy?

Re: China's e-buses dent oil demand more than electric cars do

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you say put solar panels on large tankers?

Not really. A TI-class supertanker has a length of 380m, breadth of 68m, for a surface area of less than 7 acres, and run on a 37,450 kW engine. (Wikipedia). Meanwhile, a 50 MW solar installation in Ohio takes 500 acres of space.( https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/anatomy-of-a-50... ). You would need to find a way to increase the surface area by a factor of 10 without ruining the aerodynamics, or use wind…

That is actually way closer to possible than I thought it would be.

Of course, that stil only lets you run under power during the day!

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