The electric car as a talisman of false hope • Hacker News Board

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#131

Post by theworld572 » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 1:39 PM UTC

Electric vehicles are ranking number 26 in terms of total cost and total atmospheric reduction of CO2:

https://www.drawdown.org/solutions-summary-by-rank

So its not a talisman, but it is certainly a real step in the right direction. I don't hear anybody saying that electric cars means we can just forget about the other causes of climate change?

A very contrarian article that just argues against a straw man. I suspect people who write articles like this are usually the ones who revel in being smarter than everybody else.

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#132

Post by Barrin92 » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 1:41 PM UTC

theworld572 wrote: post #124

Barrin92 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't make a real difference, and the author is correct about it. If you drive towards a wall and you're accelerating and all you're doing is slowing the rate of acceleration you're still going to run into the wall at terminal velocity. The author correctly points out that the total increase in car usage, mostly conventional engines is going to offset the small dent that electric cars make, and that cars themsel…

So whats the alternative? Do nothing at all? If you have $100k left to pay on your mortgage, and somebody offers you $5k towards the mortgage are you going to tell them they're offering you a "false hope because you'd still have $95k left to pay"? EDIT: This is also known as the "nirvana fallacy": because the solution is not perfect - that means it is worthless. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy

No, the alternative is to figure out how to change the very fundamental levers of the system in a way that enables change on a scale that matters. The individual consumption lens is going to accomplish nothing.

If you could move an entire country from being car dependent to being largely car free, by pushing rapid urbanisation and transit and you put 20 car drivers onto a train or a bus, then we're starting to talk about measures that actually have some effect.

Or if we eliminate meat consumption altogether rather than promising people magic lab meat every five years, that would have an effect. Or if we put some significant money into a manhattan project for carbon capture, that at least gives us a statistical shot.

But buying a tesla or a linen bag at the supermarket or paying 50 cents for a biodegradable cup at starbucks isn't saving the planet, it's the modern version of paying the catholic church for absolution.

And in the long and infamous history of bad references to fallacies, this isn't one either. If you need to go from 100 to 10 and you're spending billions on something that gets you from 100 to 99.9 you're wasting time and energy that you don't have.

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#133

Post by whenchamenia » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 1:42 PM UTC

srfilipek wrote: post #115

growlist wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though the extra weight of the regenerative system has to be taken into account.

Tesla's brake pads for the Model 3 are scheduled for replacement after 250,000 miles of use (according to tesla rep. I spoke to). No, I did not mistype that.

Just checked mine on my honda with 200,000 miles. Fronts were a bit low, so I replaced them, rears were still about at half wear. Tesla is no magic beast in this reguard. The secret is a manual transmission.

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#134

Post by whenanother » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 1:42 PM UTC

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #79

Seems to me a lot of people are so attached to carculture that they can't even read the article properly. The author sees all sorts of good things about electric cars. I drive them myself. I love cars. But... The points the article makes about cars being part of a larger flawed system of urban and rural development are spot on. 'Self-driving' cars will only make this worse. Even just the excessive prevalence of hard-…

urban mass transit is never used by the wealthy. the last thing people with ill gotten gains want to do is to be around others who can identify them and see with their own eyes how much they’ve stolen. and they don’t want to be around their own kind as there’s no honor amongst thieves.

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#135

Post by amluto » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 1:44 PM UTC

eptcyka wrote: post #21

Denzel wrote: post #13

His argument distills to: solve it all-at-once, or don’t solve it at all. This is an uninteresting and uninspiring line of thinking that ignores the nature of socially dynamic systems which don’t exist in a world of instantaneous cause-and-effect. His conclusion states that electric cars make a difference, but they don’t make a real difference: “I do think they can slightly reduce unsustainability” but “by switching…

The argument isn't that doing _something_ is bad, it's that the amount of effort people put into obtaining their shiny non-paleolithic-compost-fueled-but-rather-battery-powered 2 tonne sledgehammers would be better spent changing policies that operate on organizational rather than individual units. How about we just stop buying as much shit from halfway across the world? Global trade requires us to spend stupid amoun…

> Global trade requires us to spend stupid amounts of fuel in engines that have never been optimized for emissions.

Whoa there! These engines are indeed not optimized for emissions like NOx and particulates, but they are impressively efficient. I believe that a good deal less CO2 is emitted shipping a container across the ocean than would be spent driving it across the country.

Anyhow, the economic solution here is clear: a carbon tax that applies to imports. The serious proposals do this.

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#136

Post by SECProto » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 1:48 PM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #88

Denzel wrote: post #13

His argument distills to: solve it all-at-once, or don’t solve it at all. This is an uninteresting and uninspiring line of thinking that ignores the nature of socially dynamic systems which don’t exist in a world of instantaneous cause-and-effect. His conclusion states that electric cars make a difference, but they don’t make a real difference: “I do think they can slightly reduce unsustainability” but “by switching…

They don't make a real difference, and the author is correct about it. If you drive towards a wall and you're accelerating and all you're doing is slowing the rate of acceleration you're still going to run into the wall at terminal velocity. The author correctly points out that the total increase in car usage, mostly conventional engines is going to offset the small dent that electric cars make, and that cars themsel…

> If you drive towards a wall and you're accelerating and all you're doing is slowing the rate of acceleration you're still going to run into the wall at terminal velocity.

To complete your metaphor and make it more accurate: we don't know exactly how far away the wall is. Reducing acceleration (emissions) is good unambiguously. If we reduce them fast enough, maybe our seatbelt and airbags will make the crash survivable.

> Our ecosystem doesn't care whether we tried really hard and if we were really good citizens or whether we did nothing

Yes, it absolutely does "care". It's not a black and white issue. Each fractional degree more of temperature increase causes dramatically more serious change to the environment. Every possible reduction is valuable.

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#137

Post by theworld572 » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 1:48 PM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #132

theworld572 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So whats the alternative? Do nothing at all? If you have $100k left to pay on your mortgage, and somebody offers you $5k towards the mortgage are you going to tell them they're offering you a "false hope because you'd still have $95k left to pay"? EDIT: This is also known as the "nirvana fallacy": because the solution is not perfect - that means it is worthless. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy

No, the alternative is to figure out how to change the very fundamental levers of the system in a way that enables change on a scale that matters. The individual consumption lens is going to accomplish nothing. If you could move an entire country from being car dependent to being largely car free, by pushing rapid urbanisation and transit and you put 20 car drivers onto a train or a bus, then we're starting to talk a…

So, while you sit there waiting for the perfect solution (which is completely unrealistic) people actively working on real solutions.

> spending billions on something that gets you from 100 to 99.9 you're wasting time and energy that you don't have.

Of course those numbers are just made up but they are also very far from reality. Solutions to climate change have actually been ranked in terms of total cost and total amount of CO2 reductions and electric cars come in at the 26th most cost-effective solution to climate change:

https://www.drawdown.org/solutions/transport/electric-vehicl...

I really don't know why climate change seems to inspire so many people's inner contrarian where they just want to deride any attempt at preventing it because they haven't solved the whole thing in one go. There is no perfect solution, we are not going to fundamentally transform the world to a car-less society, or eliminate meat consumption.

Its like if you buy an electric car, somebody tells you "BUT you still fly!".

If you stop flying, somebody tells you "BUT you still eat meat!".

If you stop eating meat somebody tells you "BUT you still heat your home with gas!"

If you switch to electric heating based of clean energy sources somebody tells you "BUT you still buy avacados imported from across the world!"

It never ends.

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#138

Post by pas » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 1:51 PM UTC

navigatesol wrote: post #95

pas wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people already don't buy shit. At all. I mean after about a decade I finally gave in and bought a used TV (instead of using a PC monitor). I already don't fly to useless tech conferences, and work remotely (so no mindless daily commute). And eventually when the e-charger network will become widespread enough around here, I guess, I'll buy a used EV instead of the current car, because cities can't ban these s…

> And the way to make the GHG-friendly stuff cheap is to tax the shit out of the GHG-positive things. Making everything more expensive is a political dead-end, and would exacerbate income inequality.

Who said everything?

Taxing stuff that comes from large scale industrial destruction of the environment is completely different than everything.

Plus all the carbon tax schemes start with direct rebates to the tax payers in equal parts, so those who consume more get less back than those who don't.

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#139

Post by panzagl » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 1:52 PM UTC

navigatesol wrote: post #99

adamlett wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I read TFA, the argument is this: If you think electric cars is the solution or a meaningful part of the solution, you're wrong. It does not say electric cars are bad, and it certainly does not argue that we should not solve [the climate crisis] if we can't solve it all-at-once. There are unfortunately still many, many people, who—even if they accept that human caused climate change is real—do not appreciate…

> There are unfortunately still many, many people, who—even if they accept that human caused climate change is real—do not appreciate how urgent the crisis is. I am one of these people. How urgent is it? Between the denials and exaggerations, I really can't tell.

I'm also one of those people. I mean, the only meaningful change we could make in a couple years would involve mass depopulation of the planet- anything else is on the order of decades.

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#140

Post by acidburnNSA » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 1:53 PM UTC

kaibee wrote: post #127

acidburnNSA wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Consider using the term "low-carbon energy" in place of "renewable energy". We want to promote the right stuff. Biofuel is considered renewable but is high carbon. Nuclear fusion would be low carbon but not considered renewable. The difference matters hugely for future energy policy.

While I agree that technically, fusion is not renewable, I feel like it might as well be? Working fusion reactors make it economical to siphon hydrogen fuel from Jupiter and such. Did you mean fission?

Well, technically, nothing's really renewable. Limited but massive nuclear fusion in the sun is indirectly powering solar PV and wind and hydro for 4-10 billion more years. Limited nuclear alpha decay of Uranium inside Earth powers geothermal. The limited Earth-Moon gravitational system powers tidal.

So I think it's fair to actually consider nuclear fusion and nuclear fission in breeder reactors both to be renewable. B. Cohen said the same about breeder fission reactors in the 1980s [1].

Uranium in seawater can be extracted at 10x world energy scale for billions of years. It replenishes continuously through crustal erosion and plate tectonics. Sounds pretty renewable.

But according to policies we're writing today, the term renewable does not include fusion or fission in breeders. I consider this problematic. Thus I think we all should prefer either "sustainable energy" or "low-carbon energy".

[1] http://large.stanford.edu/publications/coal/references/docs/...