Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming • Hacker News Board

Re: Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming

#321

Post by russdill » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 9:27 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #295

irrational wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are pick-ups so popular? I can understand if you are a construction worker, farmer, etc. that actually needs a pickup truck; but why are they so popular for other people? The vast majority of pickup trucks I see have beds that are so clean that it is obvious that has never been used to haul even one bag of cement or load of dirt.

I expect part of the reason is utility vs cost of ownership. You can commute in a pickup but you can't move an apartment in a Prius (well not in one trip :-). If you look at the marginal cost of a second vehicle[1] it is quite high. Thus you may be limited to owning exactly one vehicle, and that vehicle is going to consume a chunk of your income (insurance/gas/maintenance). In that scenario the most financially prude…

I mean sure, if you are in a small apartment or a dorm, but you aren't moving your home/family in a pickup truck. Most adults have far too much stuff. Even then, moving is a very rare event.

Re: Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming

#322

Post by Ancalagon » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 9:28 PM UTC

robocat wrote: post #293

aaronblohowiak wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source for tesla being a net producer of CO2? Your assertion goes against my understanding that even when powered by coal plants, it is less CO2 per mile and over lifetime of vehicle as well.

Sorry, I probably shouldn't have mentioned Tesla since it tends to provoke needless reaction. However: 1. A geeky acquantance bought a Tesla X in New Zealand. I think it cost $200000. To me, that price implies a large amount of embedded energy. He felt he was helping the world, but by my calculations it wasn't. 2. In New Zealand a large amount of our power comes from hydroelectricity, so electric car owners are often…

I also want to point out a lot of CO2 comes from the manufacturing process as well, and buying a lightly used vehicle that is a hybrid or runs on gas might actually be better than buying a new car.

Re: Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming

#323

Post by PeterisP » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 9:32 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #295

irrational wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are pick-ups so popular? I can understand if you are a construction worker, farmer, etc. that actually needs a pickup truck; but why are they so popular for other people? The vast majority of pickup trucks I see have beds that are so clean that it is obvious that has never been used to haul even one bag of cement or load of dirt.

I expect part of the reason is utility vs cost of ownership. You can commute in a pickup but you can't move an apartment in a Prius (well not in one trip :-). If you look at the marginal cost of a second vehicle[1] it is quite high. Thus you may be limited to owning exactly one vehicle, and that vehicle is going to consume a chunk of your income (insurance/gas/maintenance). In that scenario the most financially prude…

I've heard this argument before but can't really make sense of it.

Moving apartments and similar activities are (a) rare; (b) can't be done in a pickup anyway - I'd need to rent a much larger truck; and (c) renting a proper truck every time I moved and will move apartments/houses in my whole life is cheaper than the cost difference between a pickup and a smaller car, especially as fuel is a huge part of total cost of ownership.

Re: Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming

#324

Post by appleiigs » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 9:32 PM UTC

appleiigs wrote: post #305

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually incorrect. Bitumen from Alberta shipped through Line 9 is now refined in Ontario and Quebec and is now the majority of oil consumption in central Canada. The poster above posted an out of date article and then drew incorrect conclusions from obsolete information.

No, it's not out-dated dude. In a different post from you, you're quoting the National Observer which I've never heard of. In Wikipedia's entry it says this: "According to an article by Vivian Krause in the Financial Post, the National Observer has received funding from The Tides Foundation of San Francisco, and Linda Solomon Wood is the sister of a former chairman of the Tides Foundation. Terence Corcoran in the Nat…

I can't reply under your reply.

>imported means only 25% of _all of Canadian_ oil is imported

Yes! 25% of Canadian oil is imported! Don't know why wrote "only". An oil rich country gets 1/4 of it's oil from elsewhere, including Saudi and apparently Azerbaijan.

Anyway, HN reply mechanism is nudging me to move on from this discussion, so I will.

Re: Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming

#325

Post by irrational » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 9:33 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #295

irrational wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are pick-ups so popular? I can understand if you are a construction worker, farmer, etc. that actually needs a pickup truck; but why are they so popular for other people? The vast majority of pickup trucks I see have beds that are so clean that it is obvious that has never been used to haul even one bag of cement or load of dirt.

I expect part of the reason is utility vs cost of ownership. You can commute in a pickup but you can't move an apartment in a Prius (well not in one trip :-). If you look at the marginal cost of a second vehicle[1] it is quite high. Thus you may be limited to owning exactly one vehicle, and that vehicle is going to consume a chunk of your income (insurance/gas/maintenance). In that scenario the most financially prude…

But, it's like $50 or less a day to rent a huge uhaul truck. And an SUV can easily haul a boat or other toys, plus keep gear covered and provide seating for more people. If you really need to haul something that wont fit in the back of the suv, you can always rent a uhaul trailer for about $20/day. Heck, you can rent a large flat bed truck from home depot for about $20 for a few hours that can probably haul more than an F-150.

Re: Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming

#326

Post by robocat » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 9:34 PM UTC

McWobbleston wrote: post #314

robocat wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I did some napkin math based on a claim that a 75kWh battery takes 13kg C02 to produce That just sounds completely unbelievable to me. "That same battery if Elon is the believed will cost Tesla $100 per kWh by the end of 2018" so let's underestimate that it costs $7500 to the consumer. And let's say a barrel of crude costs $60, 13kg of CO2 is $2.50. I think that is 0.0325% embedded energy - I can't see how that cou…

You're right, I meant to say 13,000kg.

Even that is only the battery, and it works out to be very roughly 1 litre of crude per dollar. 2.5 kg CO2 per litre of crude, USD60 for a barrel, 160 litres per barrel. So 40% of $7500 cost is embedded energy by my calculations.

So let's say a USD35000 car is 35000 embedded litres of crude, which is 500 tanks full. Of course you need to compare against embedded energy in whatever other car you might choose to use.

All the above doesn't matter too much to me, since I simply believe that cost is the most honest estimate for CO2 production I can use. Which doesn't mean I don't want a high salary, but it does mean I don't have kids!

Re: Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming

#327

Post by WorldMaker » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 9:37 PM UTC

ryanmercer wrote: post #244

thorwasdfasdf wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of your reasoning hinges on spread of electric cars and electric planes. If that doesn't come to pass, oil will still be in huge demand. EVs have been in existance for almost a decade and now and they're still only 1% of US car sales: https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/us-electric-veh... If you extrapolate their upward line forward, it'll take an extremely long time before % of EVs becomes greater than…

>EVs have been in existance for almost a decade and now EVs have been in existence for nearly as long as ICE vehicles have. The 1867 World Exposition had an electric cycle and you had electric taxis in London in 1897 [1] and by 1912 there were 33,842 electric cars registered in the United States [2]. In the 50's you had Deutsche Post of the GDR using electric delivery vans (I believe an electric vehicle was being use…

> - They're far more expensive than ICE vehicles as there aren't a whole lot of used EVs but there are tons of used ICE vehicles at vary price levels.

For now. That's a combination of efficiencies of scale problems. VW Group says that they'll hit the efficiency of scale where EVs are cheaper across the board for every make and model to produce than ICE vehicles sometime between now and 2023 (that's less than four years).

Similarly there seem to be fewer used EV cars on the market than expected at this point, and they are retaining their market value better than comparable ICE models for interesting reasons: the average replacement rate is way down compared to the ICE average (where the average owner keeps a vehicle 3-5 years, the EV average is currently closer to 7-10 years), and the replacement rate seems to reflect overall reliability (Nissan Leafs have the highest replacement rate, and arguably the lowest battery reliability).

> John Q Public can't do much to repair an EV and has to take it to a mechanic, yet even something like an engine rebuild can be done in someone's garage if they are so motivated.

It's so very apples-to-oranges though. Most EV motors are essentially permanent magnet drivers with essentially no moving parts that will outlast the plastics and the frame of the car the motor is built for. There's no gas tank, fewer to no ball joints/pitmans/idle arms/timing belts/so forth and so on. Plenty of electrical work if you still want it, though most of it is now High Voltage and will take a bit more of an electrician background, some EVs still have a 12 volt system for bootstrapping the cabin systems.

> I can go to the gas station and fill a nearly empty tank in 2~ minutes which will last me 2 weeks of commuting and then some, for the same range in an EV I'm going to have to park somewhere and sit for 30+ minutes.

You think it would be hard to schedule a 30-45 minute meal somewhere once every two weeks? The car has to sit while it charges, but you don't and can schedule it as your grocery trip or your lunch break.

Re: Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming

#328

Post by WorldMaker » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 9:40 PM UTC

hanniabu wrote: post #271

nickserv wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's cheaper when you don't need to follow labor and environmental regulations.

Bingo, and when it becomes too expensive there, you just do your typical political corruption/bribery dance and get the rules to change here so you can continue to profit from environmental destruction.

Besides, warlords often want lots of Nickel and other metals for projects. The Cobalt is "waste product" from what they were going to be mining for in the first place.

Re: Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming

#329

Post by noobiemcfoob » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 9:42 PM UTC

irrational wrote: post #325

ChuckMcM wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect part of the reason is utility vs cost of ownership. You can commute in a pickup but you can't move an apartment in a Prius (well not in one trip :-). If you look at the marginal cost of a second vehicle[1] it is quite high. Thus you may be limited to owning exactly one vehicle, and that vehicle is going to consume a chunk of your income (insurance/gas/maintenance). In that scenario the most financially prude…

But, it's like $50 or less a day to rent a huge uhaul truck. And an SUV can easily haul a boat or other toys, plus keep gear covered and provide seating for more people. If you really need to haul something that wont fit in the back of the suv, you can always rent a uhaul trailer for about $20/day. Heck, you can rent a large flat bed truck from home depot for about $20 for a few hours that can probably haul more than…

Perception is important. A lot of these decisions aren't made by people who sat down and wrote down the numbers to arrive at the rational choice. But if I think I have utility for a pick up often because I like to think I'm that rugged, diy type of person, I'll think it's rational to own a pickup and assume the relative prices get massaged away.

/I drove a pick-up for a number of years for this reason until hybrid crossovers became viable.

Re: Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming

#330

Post by justinlink » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 9:53 PM UTC

irrational wrote: post #273

mxschumacher wrote: post #100

Demand for oil&gas will continue to grow for a long time due to: - SUV/pick-up boom (America's best-selling car in 2018 is the F150 series!) and more cars + trucks in countries like Brazil, India, China, Indonesia - crazy growth in air travel (look at order numbers of Airbus, see how many airports are under construction, see miles traveled via plane) - simultaneous shift away from coal+ nuclear, giving a huge boost t…

Why are pick-ups so popular? I can understand if you are a construction worker, farmer, etc. that actually needs a pickup truck; but why are they so popular for other people? The vast majority of pickup trucks I see have beds that are so clean that it is obvious that has never been used to haul even one bag of cement or load of dirt.

While I agree on the utility that other posts have mentioned, I also must say it also has room for kids in a smaller form factor.

With three kids in car seats, I found the F-150 4-door cab to be a great option. They are designed with enough room for 3 large adults to ride in the back so fitting the car seats is no problem. It's really tough to fit three proper car seats in the back seat of a sedan.

While I could get a large SUV, I don't want to banish one of the kids to two rows deep in the back of a large SUV. We are all together in the cab. Comfortable.