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

bloomberg.com

61–70 of 270 posts

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

#61
This points out a new opportunity. Why stop at China for electric busses (yes they are probably manufacturing them locally)?

Cities are seeming increasingly more able to be proactive than countries.

Encourage local cities to one by one electrify the bus network and this effect goes global. It’s obvious tangible action that citizens can demand and mayors can visibly deliver.

Game for those playing at home, do a search on what make of buses are used in your home city. Search for if that manufacturer is trialing electric buses. Interested to see what you find.

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

#62
post #29

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’s a delicate subject. Giving someone the power to decide who is and is not allowed/able/encouraged to have babies is scary stuff for many people.

We already have a LOT of laws decide who is and is not allowed/able/encouraged to have a LOT of other very basic rights:

Food, shelter, healthcare, education, sex.

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

#63
post #33
post #6

"Forget Tesla" is the wrong attitude. We should applaud every win we can get, big or small.

It’s a clickbait title. More appropriate clickbait would be “the United States becomes the #1 producer of oil while China rushes to electric vehicles”, busses and cars: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-autos-electric/chin...

That revision is still clickbait. The US being the #1 producer of oil doesn’t say anything about usage. Example: a country could simultaneously be a low user while being a huge producer - Norway.

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

#64

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…

Any attempt to discuss population control will be met with accusations of eugenics and genocide. So what you do instead is promote women’s rights, education about contraception and birth control, health care for children, immunisations, etc. It turn out that education and empowerment of this kind (especially where you can show women that their children will survive and that everyone can get an education and a job) wi…

Our unchecked population growth has already caused/contributed to the genocide of many species in the last 50 years alone – in just one person's lifetime!

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

#66
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.

You are very incorrect on most of what you've posted here, but this is embarrassing since you could verify this with basic math.

An air conditioner typically consumes in the neighborhood of 4kW, less than half the day, less than half the year.

So, being generous, 6000kWh annually for air conditioning.

Gasoline has the equivalent of 34kWh/gallon, which implies air conditioning uses the equivalent of 176 gallons of gas per year.

The average person in the US drives over 13,000 miles per year. The average car gets 25 mpg. That is 520 gallons.

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

#67
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it’s a delicate subject. Giving someone the power to decide who is and is not allowed/able/encouraged to have babies is scary stuff for many people.

We already have a LOT of laws decide who is and is not allowed/able/encouraged to have a LOT of other very basic rights: Food, shelter, healthcare, education, sex.

Yes... that’s right. Good luck doing that with procreation in anything but a dictatorship type government.

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

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's because they use cheap oil that tends to be really, really dirty when burned.

I don't think that could be a full explanation. Perfectly clean burning turns all of the carbon atoms in the fuel into carbon dioxide. [hydrocarbons] + O2 -> CO2 + H2O "Dirtier" burning would result in less CO2 emission.

The problem is that you are assuming that what these ships are burning is [hydrocarbons] when it’s much more than just that. There are various impurities including sulphur, which lead to extremely dirty emissions such as SO2.

The OP is misinformed with regards to the “6 largest ships” claim and the “CO2” claim — as covered elsewhere in comments on this article.

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

#69
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.

What makes you confident they are onboard with limiting CO2 emissions when they are currently looking the other way at rising CFC emissions which are far more harmful.

It looks like it's just 18 companies, and the profit is not big enough for China to protect them instead of playing by the rules.

CO2 is a much harder case because of the pervasive oil lobby.

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

#70

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…

Limiting who is allowed to reproduce? I mean what could possibly go wrong!

We already limit many things that people are allowed to do.
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