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The electric car as a talisman of false hope

jussipasanen.com

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Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#161

Post by benj111 »

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…

Surely we need all of the above, we need to encourage public transport and EVs. Vegetarianism and lab meat. Carbon capture and carbon reduction.

People are different, your idea of the best tradeoff and how to spend your carbon budget is likely to be different to mine, neither budget is more right or wrong so why not allow both.

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#162

Post by JeffL »

agumonkey wrote: post #148
srfilipek wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> high accelerations Acceleration does not waste energy (other than speed related things like wind resistance). This is a myth that is perpetuated without merit, but probably because it's typically associated with overall aggressive driving, which implies bad braking habits. Max efficiency is typically near peak torque for internal combustion engines [0]. For EV's, electric motors are actually most efficient at highe…

true, but I'd bet a 100$ that people accelerating too fast do speed too long and brake too much..

I gun the shit out of my Tesla at a green light, but look far ahead and slowly ease to a stop using regen braking only. Regen braking and one pedal driving is a nice incentive to not waste energy with brakes, and as EV's become more popular, I bet driving habits will become more efficient generally across the board.

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#163

Post by karthikb »

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…

>If you could move an entire country from being car dependent to being largely car free, by pushing rapid urbanisation and transit

While these are the “right” solutions, they occur over decades. Planning for any rail line, then constructing, takes over a decade. Even in the environmentalist San Francisco Bay Area. Even bus lines. Try a google of “Van Ness BRT” to get a sense for how slow infrastructure projects work.

You can buy a Tesla or a Leaf or an e-Golf and have significant personal emission reductions today.

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#164

Post by zip1234 »

michaelt wrote: post #110
Denzel wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn’t rebut any of my points. First, can you not buy an electric car and advocate and enact organizational or systematic change? They’re not mutually exclusive. Second, how do dynamic systems composed of many independent, self-directed agents change? Instantaneously or over some period of time? How long is that period of time? Probably much longer a period of time than it takes to purchase an electric vehicle (…

They’re not mutually exclusive. Well, you can only spend a given dollar once. So if for example the government spends $$$$ to put an EV charging point in every street light, that's $$$$ they didn't spend making busses more appealing.

Except the government does even need to do that. The government could actually make money by leasing spaces/taking a cut of revenue to put chargers and letting private industry install them and manage them.

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#165

Post by irq11 »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #160
irq11 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know what the #1, most significant thing any of us can do to reduce climate change? Have one fewer child. Nothing else even comes close. It’s a simple fact. It’s easy to do. But nobody wants to do that. It’s far less painful to pretend that we can keep the Titanic from sinking by making sure we sip our boat drinks from metal straws. The point of the post is that we’re trying to consume our way out of a consump…

Someone should go through the comments and collect together all the "perfect" solutions. If we let the "ban cars" and the "ban children" folk fight it out then that frees up time for the "pragmatically improve things along many different dimensions, many of which would be beneficial even if we totally ignored climate change" folk to get on with things.

You can deny it all you like, but it’s true [1] and you’re just illustrating the point: nobody wants to do the things that actually matter, because those things are painful (not incidentally, #2 is “sell your car”).

It’s far easier to mock the people who tell you the truth than it is to make substantial changes.

[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/environment...

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#166

Post by Lendal »

benj111 wrote: post #159
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…

"If you drive towards a wall and you're accelerating and all you're doing is slowing the rate of acceleration" I don't like your metaphor. Individually this may be enough to slow down for that tight hair pin. As a society each additional electric car is someone putting the brakes on some massive train, others may still be mashing the accelerator, but eventually the balance will tip.

Yes. Plus we're talking an entire society all changing everything they do all at once. Think about how that's going to be achieved when even a single individual can't change their life all at once.

Think about how long has it taken to get people to stop smoking. True, even now new young people continue to start up smoking. But overall, it is a massive improvement over the situation as it was 50 years ago. One person at a time, but coordinated from the top. This I think is how climate change will be solved. Very slowly, and it will never be completely eradicated.

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#167

Post by NullPrefix »

srfilipek wrote: post #144
whenchamenia wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If I drove my manual better, I could probably achieve that, but spirited driving made me replace everything twice over in 100k miles, with a third needed soon. :(

You pay twice everytime you brake. Once for the gas and then for the brakes too.

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#168

Post by theworld572 »

irq11 wrote: post #152
theworld572 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

Do you know what the #1, most significant thing any of us can do to reduce climate change? Have one fewer child. Nothing else even comes close. It’s a simple fact. It’s easy to do. But nobody wants to do that. It’s far less painful to pretend that we can keep the Titanic from sinking by making sure we sip our boat drinks from metal straws. The point of the post is that we’re trying to consume our way out of a consump…

> To this end, it’s worth pointing out that the only item on that list that relates to family size is midway down, where it talks about family planning for the third world

"Educating Girls" and "Family Planning" are ranked 6th and 7th on the list (out of 80). So I don't know why you are saying that its midway down the list?

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#169

Post by magduf »

irq11 wrote: post #152
theworld572 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

Do you know what the #1, most significant thing any of us can do to reduce climate change? Have one fewer child. Nothing else even comes close. It’s a simple fact. It’s easy to do. But nobody wants to do that. It’s far less painful to pretend that we can keep the Titanic from sinking by making sure we sip our boat drinks from metal straws. The point of the post is that we’re trying to consume our way out of a consump…

>Do you know what the #1, most significant thing any of us can do to reduce climate change? Have one fewer child. Nothing else even comes close. But nobody wants to do that.

What the heck are you talking about? Every industrialized nation now has negative population growth if you ignore immigration. People are having fewer children, and frequently, none.

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#170

Post by magduf »

karthikb wrote: post #163
Barrin92 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>If you could move an entire country from being car dependent to being largely car free, by pushing rapid urbanisation and transit While these are the “right” solutions, they occur over decades. Planning for any rail line, then constructing, takes over a decade. Even in the environmentalist San Francisco Bay Area. Even bus lines. Try a google of “Van Ness BRT” to get a sense for how slow infrastructure projects work.…

>Planning for any rail line, then constructing, takes over a decade. Even in the environmentalist San Francisco Bay Area. Try a google of “Van Ness BRT” to get a sense for how slow infrastructure projects work.

That's a uniquely American problem. Maybe America should fix itself so it doesn't take so long to build infrastructure.

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