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Goodbye climate deniers, hello climate bullshitters

theguardian.com

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Re: Goodbye climate deniers, hello climate bullshitters

#21

Post by bserge »

sleavey wrote: post #3

I enjoyed hearing electric cars called "external combustion engines" given that in most countries (at least mine) the electricity used to charge the car still mostly comes from fossil fuel. In such cases all we're doing is adding an extra lossy conversion between chemical and kinetic energy, potentially making it worse. Yet people buy such cars and feel great about themselves. I am reminded of the South Park episode…

Assuming plants are regulated on pollution, they're way better at reducing emissions than a petrol burner in everyone's garage.

But then there's the battery manufacturing, not sure how dirty it is compared to manufacturing the car parts they replace.

Re: Goodbye climate deniers, hello climate bullshitters

#23

Post by jnsaff2 »

sleavey wrote: post #3

I enjoyed hearing electric cars called "external combustion engines" given that in most countries (at least mine) the electricity used to charge the car still mostly comes from fossil fuel. In such cases all we're doing is adding an extra lossy conversion between chemical and kinetic energy, potentially making it worse. Yet people buy such cars and feel great about themselves. I am reminded of the South Park episode…

Both the cars and the grid need to be de-fossilised. You can't just do one or the other. ICE cars can never be clean, EVs have the potential and when grid catches up they will be cleaner and the benefits from cleaner grid will increase.

Good video to watch on topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzZ1_vH30ko

Re: Goodbye climate deniers, hello climate bullshitters

#24

Post by mepiethree »

sleavey wrote: post #10
bonzini wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't power plants have higher efficiency than ICEs anyway, even if combined with the efficiency of electric engines? Correct me if I am wrong.

That's a good question, I don't know the answer to that. One thing to include though is transmission loss to get the electricity to the place it's needed. And at the same time of course include the energy used to get petrol to a gas guzzling car. In other words, the comparison needs to be fair, and that doesn't sound like an easy analysis. I'd be interested to hear from anyone that knows more about this.

I like this (very pro-EV) video which gets into this exact question https://youtu.be/1oVrIHcdxjA

The most important point, IMO, is that localized emissions do the most harm. Even if the emissions were equal, keeping pollution out of the urban core will literally prevent (or defer) millions of cases of lung cancer etc. This paper quantifies the social cost of atmospheric release: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-015-1343-0

Re: Goodbye climate deniers, hello climate bullshitters

#25

Post by gspr »

sleavey wrote: post #3

I enjoyed hearing electric cars called "external combustion engines" given that in most countries (at least mine) the electricity used to charge the car still mostly comes from fossil fuel. In such cases all we're doing is adding an extra lossy conversion between chemical and kinetic energy, potentially making it worse. Yet people buy such cars and feel great about themselves. I am reminded of the South Park episode…

> given that in most countries (at least mine) the electricity used to charge the car still mostly comes from fossil fuel.

The green revolution in personal transportation has two components: emissions-free electrical energy generation and the cars that use that energy. The fact that the former is lagging in many countries cannot be blamed on the latter.

> Why are we incentivising electric cars at purchase rather than incentivising the use of green energy to charge them?

Both need to be incentivised. The energy production will be in the form of disincentives to fossils fuel generation in the form of taxes and cap-and-trade.

Re: Goodbye climate deniers, hello climate bullshitters

#26

Post by mepiethree »

sleavey wrote: post #19
mepiethree wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure what country you live in, so this may not apply to you, but most countries, including mine (USA) do heavily incentivize the use of green energy. Globally, renewable energy growth is accelerating, now that costs have come down so far. It’s both/and, not either/or. One other thing is that EVs have huge potential for energy storage. Smart energy policy will effectively use EVs as both a source and sink. In…

I actually published a paper on your last point many years ago. To me it's obvious that we need to use electric car batteries as storage for the grid. The infrastructure is already there. The software in the car should allow the user to specify their preference for how full to keep the battery at all times, and when they next plan to drive far, and the car can decide how it gets its battery charge to the required lev…

Nice! Would love to read your paper :) I worked on this project, which is why I am all over this comment section :)

https://its.berkeley.edu/news/new-tsrc-report-shows-benefits...

Re: Goodbye climate deniers, hello climate bullshitters

#27

Post by christkv »

I never understood why we don’t create hydrogen plants and dump spare electrical generation into splitting water. It might be less efficient than other storage technologies but burning it will produce only water again. Just keep it away from dense population so if it blows it does not take out to much.

Re: Goodbye climate deniers, hello climate bullshitters

#28

Post by lozenge »

sleavey wrote: post #10
bonzini wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't power plants have higher efficiency than ICEs anyway, even if combined with the efficiency of electric engines? Correct me if I am wrong.

That's a good question, I don't know the answer to that. One thing to include though is transmission loss to get the electricity to the place it's needed. And at the same time of course include the energy used to get petrol to a gas guzzling car. In other words, the comparison needs to be fair, and that doesn't sound like an easy analysis. I'd be interested to hear from anyone that knows more about this.

The car engine has to fit a weight and size limit that means most of the heat is wasted instead of harnessed.

Power plants can capture 60% of the heat energy. http://needtoknow.nas.edu/energy/energy-sources/fossil-fuels...

Conventional cars capture 12-30% of the energy in the fuel. https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/evtech.shtml#:~:text=Energy%....

The difference is big enough that the analysis is easy.

Re: Goodbye climate deniers, hello climate bullshitters

#29

Post by lozenge »

christkv wrote: post #27

I never understood why we don’t create hydrogen plants and dump spare electrical generation into splitting water. It might be less efficient than other storage technologies but burning it will produce only water again. Just keep it away from dense population so if it blows it does not take out to much.

I think we don't have enough excess electricity to do it on a big scale. It is happening on one island though. https://youtu.be/8UmsfXWzvEA

Re: Goodbye climate deniers, hello climate bullshitters

#30

Post by jsiepkes »

vanderZwan wrote: post #4

A guy from the village I grew up in became a millionaire with a business processing old EUR-pallets into wood chips. Now he's getting into "sustainable" energy based on burning those woodchips. Note that this isn't about electricity, it's about delivering heat or steam from a "sustainable" source. From what I gather (through village gossip, admittedly) is that the whole process is, and I know this will piss off some…

I never understood the woodchips thing. Even the political green parties bought in to it; Nuclear, hell no! Burning woodchips, great idea!

How on earth can you ever sell burning wood as a environmental sensible thing to do? It's even dirtier then burning brown coal. It seems there is no limit to what people can justify with "spreadsheet-logic".

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