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Goodbye climate deniers, hello climate bullshitters

theguardian.com

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Re: Goodbye climate deniers, hello climate bullshitters

#31

Post by xbmcuser »

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…

Green energy has already been incentivized over the last 25-30 years that has resulted in solar and wind already being cheaper than most other forms of electricity production. Now the problem is electricity storage and fossil fuel use incentivizing electric transport is the correct move as it will result in less fossil fuel use as well decrease the price for electricity storage as more investments are made in battery tech. Btw 13000 miles is all it takes to make an electric car cleaner than a fossil fuel car when it come to carbon use https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/when-d...

Re: Goodbye climate deniers, hello climate bullshitters

#32

Post by sleavey »

mepiethree wrote: post #26
sleavey wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6609120

We were a bunch of physicists having fun. The impact of using just laptops for demand side response will be negligible but the idea is that all battery equipped, mains connected devices are capable of responding to grid supply/demand changes by adding or removing load only needing simple electronics (we used an Arduino Uno).

Re: Goodbye climate deniers, hello climate bullshitters

#33

Post by _rpd »

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.

If you have enough electricity to do that, you can just put into EV batteries directly and skip the hydrogen middle man.

Re: Goodbye climate deniers, hello climate bullshitters

#34

Post by vanderZwan »

js8 wrote: post #11
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…

The truth is, when it comes to negative externalities (like CO2, for instance), government just loves to give out subsidies rather than to create taxes. In economic theory, taxes (which can be then refunded to citizens as dividends), not subsidies (which require to leave the decision on the government instead of free market), are the correct solution to the externality problem. But in practice, regulatory capture and…

> government just loves to give out subsidies rather than to create taxes.

Doesn't take a expert to see why "we give you freebies if you do this" is an easier political sell than "we punish you if you keep doing that". So much of modern politics is based on risk management to the point of cowardice, including upsetting potential voters.

Re: Goodbye climate deniers, hello climate bullshitters

#35

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

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…

> 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.

I will point out, as I usually do when this is trotted out, that this line of thinking is formally called the "long tailpipe" fallacy.

You can find more with that search term.

Yes, it is a fallacy.

Re: Goodbye climate deniers, hello climate bullshitters

#36

Post by cblconfederate »

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…

Remote work tech will do more for car CO2 emissions than what electric cars will ever do. My theory is that EVs won't succeed at all as cars, BUT they will be great as backup batteries with wheels for home-solar installations.

Re: Goodbye climate deniers, hello climate bullshitters

#37

Post by em500 »

jsonne wrote: post #17
Angostura wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They just don’t live in the US

There is plenty of anti science attitudes all over Europe. It simply doesn't manifest in the same way as it does in the US.

There is not much controversy about the seriousness of climate change in Europe, see [1] (poll from March/April 2021, before the bad summer), apart from maybe a few % of Lizardman Constant [2].

[1] https://ec.europa.eu/clima/citizens/support_en

[2] https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and...

Re: Goodbye climate deniers, hello climate bullshitters

#38

Post by bronzeage »

The biggest climate bullshit is the narrative that climate change is the fault of small people. As if you should just recycle and stop eating meat and that's enough.

Climate change is out of the hands of common people and in the hands of CEOs and politicians, and people need to realize the only real difference they can make isn't their personal carbon footprint but pushing for political change.

Re: Goodbye climate deniers, hello climate bullshitters

#39

Post by zimpenfish »

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…

> To me it's obvious that we need to use electric car batteries as storage for the grid.

Like a Powerwall for your solar panels but using the car instead of the battery? That'd make good sense for places like the UK where there's currently no Powerwall equivalent (that I know of.)

Re: Goodbye climate deniers, hello climate bullshitters

#40

Post by jibbit »

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…

Many residential areas of the uk have illegal levels of NO2. Lethal levels. "adding an extra lossy conversion between chemical and kinetic energy" is not 'all' electric cars do.
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