The problem here is that we all lose. They ignored the warnings about climate change but now we all suffer the effects of it.
Wait are you talking about Greta or about warnings in general?
The climate hasn’t changed, the humans have changed.
We had electric cars over 100 years ago, and surprise surprise, those things didn’t explode into hellfire.
I’m confused by this because the climate is indeed changing
The climate is only changing because the humans are rapidly changing.
Name me one other species that refines and burns gasoline, diesel, etc…
If humans had never interfered, the climate would be much more stable.
Good, my confusing comment got you to thinking about these sort of things…
Now reverse my comment to back before the industrial/oil age, if humans hadn’t mucked so much with nature, we wouldn’t be anywhere near this predicament we seem to be in today…
Your comments confuse me. What the hell are you trying to say?
nobody knows, but it’s provocative
My thoughts exactly. The first two comments directly contradict each other immediately. “The climate isn’t changing” … “the climate is only changing because of humans”
I think they think this is some deep and profound personal insight that the rest of us just can’t comprehend.
Feels like you are going to propose developing a time machine instead of just doing literally anything else about it.
Nobody has to develop a time machine to learn knowledge of the past, they’re called books.
Humans successfully lived over 100,000 years without massive industry or vehicles or anything like that.
Best invention I’ve seen in the past 200 years is the bicycle. Try riding one instead of driving a car once in a while, or God forbid, try walking every now and then.
Then maybe you’ll be making a difference.
Nobody has to develop a time machine to learn knowledge of the past, they’re called books.
Humans successfully lived over 100,000 years without massive industry or vehicles or anything like that.
Best invention I’ve seen in the past 200 years is the bicycle. Try riding one instead of driving a car once in a while, or God forbid, try walking every now and then.
Then maybe you’ll be making a difference.
Why are you deleting your comments? Cowardice getting the better of you?
I’d rather not argue with folks, plain and simple. I deleted my comments because I have nothing more to say.
You have a good day stranger.
If you’d like to have a civilized discussion, that’s cool.
I don’t think the climate would be changing all that much if humans had never interfered. We humans are our own problem. We created this energy consumption issue, no other creatures on the planet do that or even seem to need that.
So, if human revert to monke, maybe the world can heal itself…
Good, my confusing comment got you to thinking about these sort of things…
Now reverse my comment to back before the industrial/oil age, if humans hadn’t mucked so much with nature, we wouldn’t be anywhere near this predicament we seem to be in today…
You dropped this.
The climate hasn’t changed, the humans have changed.
We had electric cars over 100 years ago, and surprise surprise, those things didn’t explode into hellfire.
Congratulations, you express a deliberate point to resurrect an argument which I already dropped and deleted.
No joke though, lead acid batteries don’t explode like lithium ion batteries. Hell I’ve never seen one explode in my life.
How is this new tech safe in any way? They gotta clear out 50+ feet away from a burning lithium ion powered vehicle.
Even apartment complexes don’t allow electric bicycles inside, they don’t want their complex burning down ya know.
Back to my OG point, we humans created these dangerous chemicals. Maybe we should analyze ourselves and realize we are the problem.
I’d rather not argue with folks, plain and simple. I deleted my comments because I have nothing more to say.
I thought this was your point, now go delete these comments too since we already know you don’t actually value anything you say.
You troll much?
I don’t even have a car, done put over 50k miles on my bicycle, and worn through countless pairs of shoes in my day.
You can drop this ‘argument’ any time you want.
You stupid much? You’re still going. Why would I drop an argument you said you were leaving? Jog on sunshine, I’m happy to stick around and berate you for your wilful stupidity.
Will you just shut the F up? I still can’t figure out if I’m signed into Lemmy or not…
This is literally a Jerboa Lemmy test message.
Where should the energy for electric vehicles come from? of course, I understand that living somewhere in Europe, you can talk about wind turbines, solar panels and everything green. But if you live in a region where, if the heating is turned off, you can freeze to death in less than a day, you start looking at wind turbines and solar panels with irony.
And I don’t really understand, besides, how exactly replacing some energy emissions in random places with other emissions in random places will greatly help to cool the planet.
in norway all the power is hydroelectric, and it’s been that way for the past 100 years.
and i don’t understand how wind turbines, solar panels, or “everything green” is somehow exclusive to europe.
I really don’t understand the topic well, but I searched the Internet and indeed wind generation is possible. but there is still no solar generation due to too short daylight hours. as for hydroelectric power plants, they are already around. I did not think that they are considered green, given that they require flooding of huge territories.
UPD: also, for any large wind generation, forests will most likely have to be cut down.
whaaat?! we have to flood areas for hydroelectric? and cut down forests for wind generation?! oh well, then that’s it, it’s settled.
guess we should just go back to burning coal then.
Why you? I was talking about my geographical area. And we don’t build any wind turbines, we just use nuclear and hydroelectric power plants. although, of course, we mainly use thermal power plants.
Climate is a planetary-scale problem, so it is impossible to build environmentally friendly energy production on one side of the earth in the hope of overcoming warming. Maybe my English is not good enough. This is my third language, so I’m really sorry.
replacing some energy emissions in random places with other emissions in random places will greatly help to cool the planet.
We’re not talking a 1:1 moving emissions around with electrifying everything. Even if the local grid is 100% fossil fuels a large stationary fossil fuel powered plant running 24/7 can be more efficient per unit of fuel than thousands of tiny little poorly maintained gasoline engines in vehicles, especially when the car’s engine spends so much of its time far outside of it’s most efficient ranges (idling, speeding, going up hills, etc.) Not to mention how capturing polutants at the plant is far more doable than capturing polutants from every single car.
And even if you don’t believe the green arguments, electric cars are just plain cool! They cost a few dollars per full recharge to charge compared to $30-50 per gas tank, they often regulate their internal temperature while charging so no waiting ages for the car to warm up first thing in the morning while you scrap ice off the windows, and who doesn’t love the instant insane torque that an electric motor provides? Lower maintenance costs, longer lifetimes of individual vehicles (especially as battery technologies continue to improve by leaps and bounds) plus idling is basically free so drive-thrus, listening to music while parked and stop go traffic wastes way less gas. Regenerative breaking not only provides some free charge to the motors but also spares your breaks so they last way longer. The list of benefits goes on and on
They cost a few dollars per full recharge to charge compared to $30-50 per gas tank
In my region full car fuel by gasoline cost 20$ and full electrocar recharge cost 14$. Not so much economy.
they often regulate their internal temperature while charging so no waiting ages for the car to warm up first thing in the morning while you scrap ice off the windows
If I drop electric car as my usual car on a field on nowhere I can’t go anywhere in the morning. If I drop my electric car on parking that costs recharge more than gasoline for usial car.
Warming up the cabin also exists in my anti-theft system, just press the button while drinking tea before leaving.
and who doesn’t love the instant insane torque that an electric motor provides?
The moment to achieve which you need to warm the battery in advance for as much as 2 minutes and return to recharge in half an hour? In normal mode, this is no different from the average gasoline car, like Honda for example. I have a motorcycle for speed.
Lower maintenance costs, longer lifetimes of individual vehicles
I have 15 years old Honda Accord, and I payed nearly 16 000 $ on maintenance for all 15 years. Tesla model S cost me 85 000 $ for new car if I want by it and nearly 70% of that every 5 years because battery capacity will degrade and need replace. This not look like an lower maintenance cost.
plus idling is basically free so drive-thrus, listening to music while parked and stop go traffic wastes way less gas. Regenerative breaking not only provides some free charge to the motors but also spares your breaks so they last way longer.
The average mileage for me is 200 kilometers. In one day. And if I want to visit my parents, then 800 kilometers in one direction along the highways without recharge stations. ,Saving on idling, but the need to buy a generator for $ 1,500 just to visit your parents? I’d rather overpay for not to stand in the middle of nothing at -35 degrees for a few hours without working conditioner just to be able to drive on.
All change by regions. I can buy 95 gasoline per 0.6$ for liter. Electric cars will extreme hard try for enter to market.
UPD:
Not to mention how capturing pollutants at the plant is far more doable than capturing pollutants from every single car.
The irony is that transport throws out more factories, only if you count cars, ships and all other transport. If we count only private cars, then factories still emit more, even despite all the tricks of filtration. This, of course, does not mean that you should not try to reduce emissions. The main thing is that such dirty gasoline cars should not be replaced by a new conglomerate of factories.
Nuclear energy is the solution, even though it’s the boogeyman thanks to smear campaigns. Coal plants release more radiation than nuclear plants.
And I don’t really understand, besides, how exactly replacing some energy emissions in random places with other emissions in random places will greatly help to cool the planet.
There’s some truth to this, but it’s hard to argue electric cars aren’t a marginal improvement (especially as “green” energy becomes more prevalent). The key is also using this time to improve public transportation, and making adjustments that eliminate unnecessary travel (e.g. work from home). If nothing else it’s a step in the right direction considering the massive cultural shift that’s already underway.
I wrote a little bit about something else.
The law of conservation of energy always applies. If the wind rotates the windmill, then the energy of the wind force is converted into the energy of rotation of the windmill, and the wind energy reserve decreases.
I have not found a single study on the impact of the global installation of wind turbines on wind roses around the world. Accordingly, I just can’t understand why this energy is considered “green”. Then the gasoline generator is quite environmentally friendly until the number of generators reaches a critical level.
Moreover, the consequences of even a slight change in the wind rose are much more catastrophic than the pollution of the planet with carbon dioxide. For example, such as you see in the picture in the post.
Nuclear, but the climate people are too big of pussies to push for it. Can’t have the peasents enjoying cheap energy!
Nuclear has always been expensive af. It’s just “cheap” because all the real costs are not carried by the providers, but the states. Try getting an insurance for a nuclear power plant, have to find a solution for the waste. Besides that just take a look at the French: having to shut down mamy of their nuclear power plants, because the rivers don’t have enough water to cool them down these days. On the other hand renewables, that are much faster build and way cheaper, are amortized after a few years.
Honestly, I’m at the point now that I believe that if you follow the money and memes, you’ll find the oil industry pushing the anti nuclear ideas. The anti nuclear environmentalists being useful idiots to them.
That being said, even if you can’t use green energy everywhere isn’t an excuse to use it everywhere it could be used. At the very least, it would buy use more time to figure out more solutions. The people who are saying that EVs don’t help because our electricity is primarily from gas and coal are deliberately leaving out the fact that the demand and infrastructure of solar and wind are also rising. Not having EVs would only lessen the demand and makes me suspicious about the origin of that meme as well.
Imagine hating a child for “shuffles deck” caring about the planet she lives on.
No-no-no-no-no Dont you understand?? She’s one of those extreme esss-jay-double-uuu libearls!!
She’s living in their heads rent free
How to tell the world your testosterone levels have peaked and the decline is making you a bit cranky.
Peaked? I haven’t even begun to peak. And when I do peak, you’ll know. Because I’m gonna peak so hard that everybody in Lemmy’s gonna feel it. I shall unleash my fury upon you like the crashing of a thousand waves! Begone, vile little girl! Begone from me! This car is a finisher car! A transporter of gods! The golden god! I am untethered, and my rage knows no bounds!
— That guy probably
Humans will come and go. The earth will continue doing it’s thing. I’m more concerned with the crazies throwing trash out of their cars or not bringing their shopping cart to the shopping cart areas.
In the words of late great George Carlin, “The planet is not going anywhere. We are. We’re going away.”
That’s not the same car.
But thats how to get attention.
It’s a big problem that even if the situation describes itself people make collages of pictures that have no direct relation just to make a point.
Ironically this behavior undermines the actual goal because it shifts the debatte to “this is fake” not to “Housten, we have a problem.”.
And most ironically: My comment underlines the debatte shift even more.
Hoomans are fucked.
The text on the left is not even on the car, so could be. Anyways, fake AF
That’s not human but corporation with inability to fix products, shrinkflation, shortening life cycle of product with software update.
We are paying higher price but corporations are using raw metrials and power inefficient
I don’t know if electric vehicles are better for the planet, Lithium Ion batteries cost/pollute a lot to produce and as far as I know, cannot be recycled or cost/pollute a lot to recycle
People love this “gotcha”, but really it just shows how terrible cars are on a fundamental level.
The solution isn’t electric cars, it’s electric micromobility and public transport.
It’s always “ah ha but did you know it’s only 80% better for the planet? Gotcha, idiot!” Like yeah, we know.
The best solution is not to drive at all, but if we’re forced to in this backwards country that has been mislead to believe public transport is a bad thing then we might as well take the option that’s 80% better rather than 0% better
You don’t know. You said it.
Gasoline cars produce, on average, about ten times more lifetime pollution compared to manufacturing pollution. So even if electric car manufacturing pollutes a bit more, it more than makes up for it over its lifetime of driving.
Your other claim that batteries can’t be recycled is false. And that recycling pollutes more. More than 90% of battery materials by mass can and do get recycled - and the expectation is to reach 98+%. Recycling process is expected to produce less pollution and be cheaper than mining the equivalent amounts of material.
I don’t get how the “lithium batteries can’t be recycled” idea passes the sniff test.
Lithium mining requires moving insane amounts of earth to reach the ore: often a pit mine. Said ore contains around 1-2% Lithium Oxide by weight – which still needs to be refined and processed into Lithium metal.
A battery is around 11% Lithium by weight.
There’s money to be made, and people are already on it.
While most EV components are much the same as those of conventional cars, the big difference is the battery. While traditional lead-acid batteries are widely recycled, the same can’t be said for the lithium-ion versions used in electric cars.
EV batteries are larger and heavier than those in regular cars and are made up of several hundred individual lithium-ion cells, all of which need dismantling. They contain hazardous materials, and have an inconvenient tendency to explode if disassembled incorrectly.
“Currently, globally, it’s very hard to get detailed figures for what percentage of lithium-ion batteries are recycled, but the value everyone quotes is about 5%,” says Dr Anderson. “In some parts of the world it’s considerably less.”
Yes, we know all of that. It’s still better than driving fossil fuels. Something that is only partially better is still better. It doesn’t mean we just keep doing what we have been because “oh but it’s only partially better”.
There is no silver bullet solution right now. Batteries get better and easier every year. Alternatives will crop up. You’re not proving your point, you just come off as unwilling to change but hiding behind thin “eco” reasoning.
Again, to really drive it home. We know they’re not perfect. They’re just better than the alternative. Better does not mean perfect.
Hate to be that guy, but it takes 20 tons of carbon to make a sedan and 5 tons to make the ev battery to run it (8 if you use the cheap kind). So even before the difference in emissions between gas and electricity come into play the ev is five or six years of driving behind the gas car it’s supposed to replace.
For a huge number of people the greenest car they can own is the one they already have.
That was literally, like, my exact point. Yes we know all of that, how many times do I have to say that? We literally know what you’re talking about.
It’s still better, over the life of the car you will come out better than a fossil fuel car. Consumption of anything anywhere pollutes, and the best option is to not buy a car at all (hello public transit funding, we need you). However, over the entire life of the car you will come out ahead, and the more EVs that are sold the easier it will be to produce. This month alone there are two firms who are claiming they have alternatives to lithium for the battery base. One claims they can use salt. We will continue to see improvements with battery production as it scales.
Please stop with the “gotcha” style and try to instead try to see other people’s sides. Yes, I take public transit and walk whenever I can, but in my city I still need a car for a few things, and my old car is dying. So, faced with buying a new car, I would rather have one that doesn’t pollute while I’m sitting in traffic that encourages auto makers to not just give in but to push green initiatives. Will it work? I don’t know, but it’s better than just giving up and saying “well acksually it’s still ruining our planet just slower”
Oh and by the way, your numbers are wrong.
Despite the environmental footprint of manufacturing lithium-ion batteries, this technology is much more climate-friendly than the alternatives, Shao-Horn says.
That link says that the battery alone takes 4-16 tons of carbon to produce. It doesn’t say anything about the actual chassis and other stuff in the car. So somewhere between 24 and 36 tons of carbon for a new ev to start rolling down the street versus the yearly emissions of the gas car it’s supposed to replace. based on the link you posted that’s six to nine years of emissions before you can even start comparing them mile for mile.
I’m not saying this to suggest that there’s no point in trying or that somehow evs aren’t greener than comparable gas cars but to state that if the goal is to make tremendous reductions in carbon output then a gigantic bubble of carbon rich consumption isn’t the way to go.
We can’t reduce carbon output in the short to medium term by replacing a bunch of cars. We can reduce it by not driving as much.
None of this is a gotcha or an attack on you personally. It’s just stating the fact that keeping existing cars on the road and reducing the amount they’re driven is a really viable path that doesn’t require the insanity of lithium batteries or for some new technology to replace them.
I tried to make that point in a way that put production up front as the best place to turn the carbon spigot off, but in case that’s not clear: consumers can’t change what gets produced and by extension how it is produced.
Yes, we know, but the alternative isn’t “just don’t buy one because it doesn’t matter anyway”, it’s “Do the best we can as consumers to make smart, green choices”. Vote with our wallets that we do want greener alternatives rather than giving up. If a battery comes along that is more eco friendly than lithium I’ll probably buy that one.
A better way to phrase what you said to encourage people to go green is to say “Absolutely going electric is a smart choice, it’ll reduce your personal emissions by a substantial amount, but remember that to public transit/walking are still the greenest options. We can also always demand from the companies we buy from that they should use greener manufacturing as well.”
Don’t just point out the flaws in a way that comes off as “We shouldn’t even try because what’s the point”. We can both be better ourselves and demand companies hold themselves to even higher standards, it’s not one or the other.
That 5% number seems extremely low to me. Is that maybe for all lithium batteries, like in phones and laptops? Or is that just car batteries?
The thing is, the vast majority of cars end up being stripped and recycled at the end of their life. Plenty of sources quote an 80+% recycling rate by weight. EV car batteries aren’t going to just be thrown in the landfill, the materials are just too valuable. If they aren’t being recycled now, I would expect they’re being resold or stored until recycling capacity gets better.
Electric cars are certainly better. The climate crisis is extremely bad. A significant percentage of the Earth will no longer be livable without AC within decades. Much of our ecosystems depended on a temperature range we won’t see again within our lifetimes. It’s much more likely to be our great filter than batteries are.
Someday we’ll envy how popular the Baby Boomers were in their old age. They didn’t understand, we do. We should be rioting, everywhere.
(I understand busses and trains are better still, I’m just addressing their not knowing which is worse)
The ~90,000 shipping freighters that operate daily use twice the amount of fuel than all ~2.5 billion personal vehicles that are on the roads globally. We’re electrifying the wrong shit.
And how do you plan on electrifying such massive ships?
Electrifying cars is easy and electrified railways have existed for more than a century now, but good luck electrifying airplanes or cargo ships, they’re just too big and don’t run on tracks
Start with banning nonessentials such as cruise ships and get rid of private jets while we’re at it, to start at least.
Gotta try first, got a whole world filled with specialists in various areas of expertise that could if they actually had the backing and funding of their governments and their voters to make a concerted effort in developing a solution. But that’s not profitable, ergo under capitalism, not financially viable.
I think with ships a good starting point would be making them burn cleaner fuel. The heavy oil they’re currently burning on ocean trips isn’t exactly the cleanest fuel around, having ships burn the gasoline we save from electric cars would already do a lot.
Now this is a more reasonable take, first try finding a more sustainable fuel to use then think of a way to electrify it (if at all possible)
An electric car is easy, 2.5 billion electric cars not so much. One electric ocean faring vessel is difficult, but once you can 90,000 is easy. And like I said, 90,000 cargo vessel are using twice the fuel resources of those 2.5 billion cars. That’s approx ~56,000 electric cars vs one electric cargo vessal
Just thinking out loud here, but if the main problem with building 2.5 billion EVs is making the batteries, why would that change anything if those 90,000 cargo ships each need 56,000 EV’s worth of batteries? I’m sure there’s some efficiency to be gained by making larger batteries, but it still doesn’t quite add up.
Of course this also assuming a cargo ship is as efficient as a car in terms of replacing the ICE with an electric motor. I’ve heard the fuel these cargo ships use is some of the worst quality fuel that we have and it doesn’t burn well, but it’s very cheap in the insane quantities they need.
why would that change anything if those 90,000 cargo ships each need 56,000 EV’s worth of batteries?
That’s not how scaling works, big is easier, small is harder. Also we’d be replacing 56,000 cars worth of fuel storage on that cargo ship too. We can make non lithium batteries for mass storage, but they’re the size of a house, couldn’t get one in my car, but something tells me a cargo ship could carry it.
It’s way easier to electrify cars than cargo ships, because you can refuel/recharge cars every few kilometres. This is simply not possible with ships, other more expensive technologies like hydrogen or artificial fuels are needed. Electrifying cars also helps to reduce other emissions like nitrogen oxides and particulate matter, which is good for your health.
That’s actually not true, right? https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/global-co2-emissions-from-transport-by-sub-sector-in-the-net-zero-scenario-2000-2030
In 2019 there are 6.08 Gt from road vehicles compared to the 0.87 Gt from shipping. That’s just overwhelming.
I’m speaking on base resource consumption, not emissions. And the main factor for shipping having less emissions is due to mass transit, this is why they say promoting mass transit is better than improving fuel efficiency or emissions in personal vehicles.
But I thought climate change was all my fault, and that if I just use less water in my garden everything will be fixed.
Are you saying that the news lied to me?!?
/s
It is all our fault, just not for the reasons you mentioned. It’s our fault for allowing it to happen, it’s out fault for voting for capitalism, it’s our fault for being undereducated, it’s our fault for not stopping it. The problem isn’t that it’s our fault, the problem is that we haven’t killed anyone over their exploitation of us and our planet yet, except ourselves.
Society breeds civility through cowardice, we know this because it’s immortal to attack a bad actor.
Giant flexible solar sails on shipping freighters powering the engines and catching wind could be an interesting and old school way of moving products. I think possibly direct airship shipping would be more interesting. Tens of thousands of slow moving solar powered airships moving freight without having to deal with multiple transportation solutions.
Pickup at factory, move across ocean on airship, deliver to customer. Much better than pickup at warehouse deliver to terminal, move to carrier, carrier moves it to terminal, load on ship, cross world, unload off ship, loads container onto train, train take container to yard, stores at yard, loaded onto truck, deliver to terminal.
I don’t know either, but thinking about all the pollution it takes to refine and transport the fuel, I still think electric cars pollute much less.
Removed by mod
