5 ms·

This is an important issue. It's baffling to me how greenwashed everything electric is, despite almost universally having major problems in either manufacturing

by kiryin 5y ago

This is an important issue. It's baffling to me how greenwashed everything electric is, despite almost universally having major problems in either manufacturing materials or waste products. But environmentalism is just a business these days, I don't know why I ever expected anything different. The solution to the harm inflicted upon the environment by humanity isn't some new feat of technology or invention, it's downshifting. In every field, not just in individual's private lives.

Barrin92 5y ago
if you talk about preserving energy, reducing consumption and using social and cultural means to reduce the impact on the planet these days you're pretty much immediately labeled as some kind of anti-growth luddite, in particular by the 'green tech' crowd, looking at Ramez Naam among others. VC's, 'entrepreneurs' and green energy journalism seems to have a vested interest to in a sense consume 'green innovation' rather than just treating it as technology.
- kjksf 5y ago
  I don't have problems with people advocating reducing consumption to reduce the impact on the planet. Personally I think it's about as effective as telling people to not watch porn but you do you and advocate away. It's harmless. I do have problems with people who argue against transitioning to 100% renewable energy with this argument. That's actively harmful. You won't actually convince anyone but it plays into the hands of anti-EV, pro fossil fuel interests. The likes of BP that spill a fuck ton of oil into the ocean and we just shrug it off. And then they go "but mining lithium is harmful" (which it isn't, at least not more harmful than mining gigatons of coal or fracking gas). The problem with your position is a total lack of perspective of what's harmful to the planet and what can realistically be done about it.
  - afarrell 5y ago
    The problem is that many forum-commentators don't know how to craft policy that avoids figuratively trying to "boil the ocean".
  - Barrin92 5y ago
    >The problem with your position is a total lack of perspective of what's harmful to the planet and what can realistically be done about it. The heaviest polluters and carbon emitters on earth could very easily reduce their pollution and emissions by at least 50% say, if not way more by changing the way we consume, travel, what we eat and so on. We are talking low hanging fruits here. Do you now how many battery stations we need to plaster on earth, how many not yet invented technologies we need to get to significant renewable use which we could get for free if we could turn half of our coal plants off? Just for 'perspective', over the last 30 years we have gone from, 93-95% carbon based fuel sources to... 88% today. People want to go to Mars in 10 years but it's 'unrealistic' to advocate that people replace beef with chicken and air travel with a train? This is the actual most bizarre thing about this argument, the complete inversion of who has lost perspective and realism.
    - pixl97 5y ago
      >The heaviest polluters and carbon emitters on earth could very easily reduce their pollution and emissions by at least 50% say, if not way more by changing the way we consume, travel, what we eat and so on Then how are batteries going to screw that up? If and when we do that, using batteries would still make things more energy efficient and greener.
    - imtringued 5y ago
      >The heaviest polluters and carbon emitters on earth could very easily reduce their pollution and emissions by at least 50% say, if not way more by changing the way we consume, travel, what we eat and so on. We are talking low hanging fruits here. Very easily? People start protests over much less than 50%.
    - cogman10 5y ago
      > Do you now how many battery stations we need to plaster on earth? Global power consumption is at ~23TWh. To make it through the night on nothing but solar, you'd need about 1/3th of that dedicated to batteries (Likely a lot less though due to wind, hydro, and nuclear production) So ~8 TWh of storage on the extreme end. Roughly 8000x our current battery deployments. A lot, but not really crazy. > how many not yet invented technologies we need to get to significant renewable 0. There are no technologies needed for significant renewable deployment. About the only thing needed is manufacturing capacity. Solar efficiency is crazy high as is wind which has driven cost/watt way down. Battery prices have similarly fallen off a cliff (and are still falling), which makes that extremely feasible at this point. New tech will make the whole transition cheaper, but certainly isn't needed to get things switched over. > which we could get for free if we could turn half of our coal plants off? Ok.. but that solves only the power generation problem and runs smack dab into the politics problem. Wanting to turn off coal doesn't make it happen. > 'unrealistic' to advocate that people replace beef with chicken and air travel with a train? Yes, because you are talking about winning over a huge diverse group of people. Going to mars requires one rich asshole to invest in mars travel. He doesn't have to convince millions to change their habits or minds. Realism is realizing that you can't control others thoughts or behaviors. An excellent example of this is what's happening with COVID. You want to tell me it's realistic to convince people to give up their favorite foods when getting people to just wear masks is seen as a breach of liberty or whatever garbage? Come on. The amount of rational people is FAR too low to realistically expect that sort of pleading to work.
rightbyte 5y ago
It is a sort of Nimbyism. Tail pipe emmisions are low for EVs since they have no tail pipe. ICEs running on renewable fuel has localy observable emissions and are not sexy. The decommision of ICEs are way easier then EVs and the refeuling infrastructure simpler for liquids. It is a shame there is a look-in on EVs.
- simondotau 5y ago
  Even if the power source is pure coal, EVs are still significantly better than ICE cars when it comes to air pollution per distance travelled, as well as carbon footprint per distance travelled. Except most power grids are not pure coal, they include some mix of zero carbon energy already. And there are opportunities for EVs to contribute to a high-renewables grid with smarter charging. And separate to your concern (or lack thereof) about climate and renewables, moving emissions away from the tailpipe has significant advantages for local air quality where most people live.
  - rightbyte 5y ago
    > ... carbon footprint ... I was referring to renewable fuel, where the tailpipe carbon goes back into nature. > moving emissions away from the tailpipe has significant advantages for local air quality where most people live. Yes, but where most people don't live is also where ICEs are advantageous in that an BEV would need Tesla size batteries for range, which are oversized for normal city-ish driving.
- adrianN 5y ago
  ICEs running on renewables need a lot more renewables. An EV turns something like 80-90% of the power a wind turbine produces into movement. If you want to use synfuels in an ICE you lose >>50% just by turning the electricity into fuel and then the ICE only turns 30% of that into movement.
  - rightbyte 5y ago
    How much of the power of the wind does the turbine turn into electrical power? It is not really a fair comparison. I think BEVs are a better solution for most cases, but my feeling is that renewable ICEs and EVs with smaller batteries and "trolley bus" solutions just are way downplayed and underrated.
adrianN 5y ago
"Downshifting" would mean going back at least two hundred years in most technology if you want to avoid catastrophic climate change without "new" feats of technology like renewable electricity and batteries. Most likely that would ensue also going back about 200 years in the population Earth can sustain. Recall that we're now about 6 billion people more than in the early decades of the 19th century.

by kiryin 5y ago

Barrin92 5y ago

if you talk about preserving energy, reducing consumption and using social and cultural means to reduce the impact on the planet these days you're pretty much immediately labeled as some kind of anti-growth luddite, in particular by the 'green tech' crowd, looking at Ramez Naam among others. VC's, 'entrepreneurs' and green energy journalism seems to have a vested interest to in a sense consume 'green innovation' rather than just treating it as technology.

kjksf 5y ago
I don't have problems with people advocating reducing consumption to reduce the impact on the planet. Personally I think it's about as effective as telling people to not watch porn but you do you and advocate away. It's harmless. I do have problems with people who argue against transitioning to 100% renewable energy with this argument. That's actively harmful. You won't actually convince anyone but it plays into the hands of anti-EV, pro fossil fuel interests. The likes of BP that spill a fuck ton of oil into the ocean and we just shrug it off. And then they go "but mining lithium is harmful" (which it isn't, at least not more harmful than mining gigatons of coal or fracking gas). The problem with your position is a total lack of perspective of what's harmful to the planet and what can realistically be done about it.
- afarrell 5y ago
  The problem is that many forum-commentators don't know how to craft policy that avoids figuratively trying to "boil the ocean".
- Barrin92 5y ago
  >The problem with your position is a total lack of perspective of what's harmful to the planet and what can realistically be done about it. The heaviest polluters and carbon emitters on earth could very easily reduce their pollution and emissions by at least 50% say, if not way more by changing the way we consume, travel, what we eat and so on. We are talking low hanging fruits here. Do you now how many battery stations we need to plaster on earth, how many not yet invented technologies we need to get to significant renewable use which we could get for free if we could turn half of our coal plants off? Just for 'perspective', over the last 30 years we have gone from, 93-95% carbon based fuel sources to... 88% today. People want to go to Mars in 10 years but it's 'unrealistic' to advocate that people replace beef with chicken and air travel with a train? This is the actual most bizarre thing about this argument, the complete inversion of who has lost perspective and realism.
  - pixl97 5y ago
    >The heaviest polluters and carbon emitters on earth could very easily reduce their pollution and emissions by at least 50% say, if not way more by changing the way we consume, travel, what we eat and so on Then how are batteries going to screw that up? If and when we do that, using batteries would still make things more energy efficient and greener.
  - imtringued 5y ago
    >The heaviest polluters and carbon emitters on earth could very easily reduce their pollution and emissions by at least 50% say, if not way more by changing the way we consume, travel, what we eat and so on. We are talking low hanging fruits here. Very easily? People start protests over much less than 50%.
  - cogman10 5y ago
    > Do you now how many battery stations we need to plaster on earth? Global power consumption is at ~23TWh. To make it through the night on nothing but solar, you'd need about 1/3th of that dedicated to batteries (Likely a lot less though due to wind, hydro, and nuclear production) So ~8 TWh of storage on the extreme end. Roughly 8000x our current battery deployments. A lot, but not really crazy. > how many not yet invented technologies we need to get to significant renewable 0. There are no technologies needed for significant renewable deployment. About the only thing needed is manufacturing capacity. Solar efficiency is crazy high as is wind which has driven cost/watt way down. Battery prices have similarly fallen off a cliff (and are still falling), which makes that extremely feasible at this point. New tech will make the whole transition cheaper, but certainly isn't needed to get things switched over. > which we could get for free if we could turn half of our coal plants off? Ok.. but that solves only the power generation problem and runs smack dab into the politics problem. Wanting to turn off coal doesn't make it happen. > 'unrealistic' to advocate that people replace beef with chicken and air travel with a train? Yes, because you are talking about winning over a huge diverse group of people. Going to mars requires one rich asshole to invest in mars travel. He doesn't have to convince millions to change their habits or minds. Realism is realizing that you can't control others thoughts or behaviors. An excellent example of this is what's happening with COVID. You want to tell me it's realistic to convince people to give up their favorite foods when getting people to just wear masks is seen as a breach of liberty or whatever garbage? Come on. The amount of rational people is FAR too low to realistically expect that sort of pleading to work.

rightbyte 5y ago

It is a sort of Nimbyism. Tail pipe emmisions are low for EVs since they have no tail pipe. ICEs running on renewable fuel has localy observable emissions and are not sexy. The decommision of ICEs are way easier then EVs and the refeuling infrastructure simpler for liquids. It is a shame there is a look-in on EVs.

simondotau 5y ago
Even if the power source is pure coal, EVs are still significantly better than ICE cars when it comes to air pollution per distance travelled, as well as carbon footprint per distance travelled. Except most power grids are not pure coal, they include some mix of zero carbon energy already. And there are opportunities for EVs to contribute to a high-renewables grid with smarter charging. And separate to your concern (or lack thereof) about climate and renewables, moving emissions away from the tailpipe has significant advantages for local air quality where most people live.
- rightbyte 5y ago
  > ... carbon footprint ... I was referring to renewable fuel, where the tailpipe carbon goes back into nature. > moving emissions away from the tailpipe has significant advantages for local air quality where most people live. Yes, but where most people don't live is also where ICEs are advantageous in that an BEV would need Tesla size batteries for range, which are oversized for normal city-ish driving.
adrianN 5y ago
ICEs running on renewables need a lot more renewables. An EV turns something like 80-90% of the power a wind turbine produces into movement. If you want to use synfuels in an ICE you lose >>50% just by turning the electricity into fuel and then the ICE only turns 30% of that into movement.
- rightbyte 5y ago
  How much of the power of the wind does the turbine turn into electrical power? It is not really a fair comparison. I think BEVs are a better solution for most cases, but my feeling is that renewable ICEs and EVs with smaller batteries and "trolley bus" solutions just are way downplayed and underrated.

adrianN 5y ago

"Downshifting" would mean going back at least two hundred years in most technology if you want to avoid catastrophic climate change without "new" feats of technology like renewable electricity and batteries. Most likely that would ensue also going back about 200 years in the population Earth can sustain. Recall that we're now about 6 billion people more than in the early decades of the 19th century.