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This is a big red flag: > "The GreenerCars report analyzes 1,200 cars available in 2024, assessing both the carbon dioxide emissions of the vehicle while it’s
by photochemsyn 3y ago
This is a big red flag:
> "The GreenerCars report analyzes 1,200 cars available in 2024, assessing both the carbon dioxide emissions of the vehicle while it’s on the road and the emissions of manufacturing the car and battery."
First, fossil fuel consumption, not carbon dioxide emissions, is the important metric if you're concerned about climate. Humans eat food and breath out carbon dioxide; it's not going to change atmospheric CO2 because photosynthesis. EVs do not consume fossil fuels; hybrids do.
Second, fossil fuel use during manufacturing depends entirely on the power sources used to run the whole manufacturing chain and in the real world may be all over the map, depending on whether coal, gas, nuclear, or solar/wind are the primary energy inputs to the process.
This is the kind of low-quality inaccurate and slanted reporting that I've come to expect from the big three US papers - NYT, WaPo, WSJ.
- Tagbert 3y agoThe “consumption” of fossil fuels is not the important metric from a climate change perspective. It is the CO2 emissions that result from that consumption. There is a direct relationship between the amount of consumption of fossil fuels and the amount of emission of CO2. The article is entirely correct in using CO2 as the measure. Yes, CO2 is emitted by multiple processes and there are some counter processes that return that CO2 back into carbon and oxygen. The problem is that the rate of production has exceeded the rate of CO2 return resulting in increased concentrations in the atmosphere. It takes very little CO2 to capture more heat in the system.
- photochemsyn 3y agoTracking fossil fuel production is more sensible as the ultimate goal is to keep all fossil fuel in the ground. Under a rational system, this would mean starting off with eliminating the global trade in fossil fuels as soon as possible, and the way to do that is to ensure all fossil fuel importers switch to renewable energy imports, which is cheaper in the long run for the importers.
- spaceisballer 3y agoI think the real oversight is not mentioning that the whole supply chain to provide the fossil fuel used to power the ICE or Hubrid. Its petroleum and fossil fuels all the way down. Even if those BEVs use fossil fuels to charge, there is no way that impact is as large as all the fossil fuels used in the delivering of fossil fuels to fill up your car with a gas tank (or the oil you regularly change).
- darkteflon 3y agoYeah - also: tailpipe emissions are a thing. Not emitting byproducts of hydrocarbon combustion around humans seems like it might be a good idea. Strong smell of Toyota’s famously outsized lobbying dollars on this article.