Electric Vehicles Aren’t the Climate Change Solution we Were Promised

[rangerrebew]

Electric Vehicles Aren’t the Climate Change Solution we Were Promised
Story by Marc Wiley • 4h ago

As we push toward an electrified automotive future, the overarching message is one of sustainability and environmental responsibility. Unfortunately, though, a new study claims that private electric vehicles aren’t the single solution to climate change they were once thought to be. The question then becomes – how can we change course?
 
Are electric cars better for the environment?
The reason for the emphasis on electric vehicles has everything to do with pollution from tailpipe emissions. While that is certainly an admirable goal, it ignores the fact that private vehicular travel is about much more than what comes out the back of your car.

By switching to EVs, tailpipe emissions drop in urban areas, but that doesn’t mean they are carbon-neutral. According to a study published in Science Direct, the pollution simply shifts to rural areas. That means while electric cars are better for the environment in one area, they harm it in another.

In some cases, EVs place a higher demand on the power grid, which often burns coal or natural gas. In all cases, the Lithium mining required to produce EV batteries pollutes both soil and groundwater in the surrounding area. By making a mass switch to EVs, pollution isn’t solved – it’s simply outsourced to places we don’t see.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/electric-vehicles-aren-t-the-climate-change-solution-we-were-promised/ar-AA19E3Qb?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=ccf8e6a1435a4bf7b6615f8018ad9d83&ei=21

[Kamaji]

Electric vehicles are also heavier, and thus wear out tires faster and create more tire dust pollution, which is also a carbon contributor. 

[Smokin Joe]

That's okay.

Climate change isn't the Crisis we were promised, either.


Just another expensive nonsolution for a nonproblem.

[roamer_1]

That's okay.

Climate change isn't the Crisis we were promised, either.


Just another expensive nonsolution for a nonproblem.

Yes! but at a phenomenal expense... So there's that. 

[Free Vulcan]

If Musk can get his base car down to the 15K without the exotic materials like he wants, I could be interested for the simple reason of generating my own juice to run it, then use it for errands around the local towns.

That way have something to get around in if gas gets too expensive. That's the only thing I could see being a viable product.

[DB]

The net result is a lower standard of living for most people while those with the right connections to the new government required industries get wealthier.

[roamer_1]

If Musk can get his base car down to the 15K without the exotic materials like he wants, I could be interested for the simple reason of generating my own juice to run it, then use it for errands around the local towns.

That way have something to get around in if gas gets too expensive. That's the only thing I could see being a viable product.

Generating that juice would be stupid expensive... Solar or generator. Unless you have a serious turbine in a stream, I don't see that being real.

But I get you... I am messin with making an electric trike... They ARE rechargeable by solar or jenny as part of the inverted AC or DC norm... And even if it only does half as good as expected, It will get me all over town, with a pickup bed in the back (old lawn cart adapted), and would be able to haul a load of groceries or the like back...

But an EV, for the price, and for the crazy, crazy charging needed... way too crazy.

[Hoodat]

Electric Vehicles Aren’t the Climate Change Solution we Were Promised

They are exactly the climate change non-solution Conservatives predicted.

[Free Vulcan]

Generating that juice would be stupid expensive... Solar or generator. Unless you have a serious turbine in a stream, I don't see that being real.

But I get you... I am messin with making an electric trike... They ARE rechargeable by solar or jenny as part of the inverted AC or DC norm... And even if it only does half as good as expected, It will get me all over town, with a pickup bed in the back (old lawn cart adapted), and would be able to haul a load of groceries or the like back...

But an EV, for the price, and for the crazy, crazy charging needed... way too crazy.

That'd be the basic idea - a grocery getter and errand mule. Less than 50 miles round trip when the temps are warm enough. But, you've given me ideas. Utility vehicles are common now and usually have a small bed to haul, and can go off-road. I might look into an electric version of that. Wish I could find something to run on alcohol.

We're getting ready to go see a guy who has a mostly 'plug-in,' off the shelf woodgas sytem to run a generator. If you want feedback from the trip let me know.

[roamer_1]

That'd be the basic idea - a grocery getter and errand mule. Less than 50 miles round trip when the temps are warm enough. But, you've given me ideas. Utility vehicles are common now and usually have a small bed to haul, and can go off-road. I might look into an electric version of that. Wish I could find something to run on alcohol.

We're getting ready to go see a guy who has a mostly 'plug-in,' off the shelf woodgas sytem to run a generator. If you want feedback from the trip let me know.

Well, I think I would bank on diesel for a UTV - Diesel likely being the last to go, due to trucks and tractors, and is somewhat capable of being manufactured, if you can get at the raw chemicals necessary to convert biomass.

Electric UTV... The cheap idea there would be to rebuild an electric golf cart I guess, but unless you have serious solar, diesel is likely to be around longer than the grid.

I dunno. Ultimately, a guy has to be ready to do without, and that has always been my focus, with interim conveniences being useful, but treated as expendable. You can rely on solar, I suppose, but if there really is a crash, and the grid goes away, and shipping and industry grinds to a halt, What do you do if your solar controller sh*ts the bed? Or capacity begins to lag, as batts go bad?

So BEST to me, is to understand how to live without it... All of it. Because in the end, that's the only sustainable way.

So UTV is alright and all, but I would admire to find a reason to have a horse or two laying around.

YMMV. 

ETA and PS:

Yeah, keep me in the loop on the gasifier stuff! 

[Kamaji]

They are exactly the climate change non-solution Conservatives predicted.

[Kamaji]

Someone should start designing/building small alcohol-based engines, and then scale up, first to motorcycles, then to cars.

[Smokin Joe]

Someone should start designing/building small alcohol-based engines, and then scale up, first to motorcycles, then to cars.

Small steam engines which could be multifuel...

[roamer_1]

Small steam engines which could be multifuel...

I have almost started messing with steam a few times. Reliable, predictable, and powerful... And anything that will burn will do. 

[Kamaji]

Small steam engines which could be multifuel...

Only if one doesn’t have to wait 20 minutes for the boiler to heat before one can begin driving.

[Smokin Joe]

Only if one doesn’t have to wait 20 minutes for the boiler to heat before one can begin driving.

No matter what bullshit the government imposes in the name of "climate change: and "Saving the Earth", it WILL be less than the convenience and reliability to we have become accustomed.
It takes nearly that long to get the ice off the windows and warm the cabin on an ICE vehicle during winter here, now. Perhaps if the waste heat was used to cook breakfast of a burger while waiting...

[Kamaji]

It takes nearly that long to get the ice off the windows and warm the cabin on an ICE vehicle during winter here, now. Perhaps if the waste heat was used to cook breakfast while waiting...

Thus illustrating the dangers of anecdote and assuming that everyone is just like one's self.

It might take that long to get a car ready to drive where you are, but that would be an intolerably long wait in most other places in the country at almost any time during the year.  Even in sub-zero temperatures, with the defroster blowing hi and the electric defroster in the back, it takes my car about 5 minutes to get ready to go.

I certainly am not going to sit and wait 20 minutes in the month of October for the boiler on a steam car to heat up to the point where I can drive it, and I suspect that most other people won't, either.

Alcohol-based ICE engines are a much better alternative.

[The_Reader_David]

Electric vehicles are also heavier, and thus wear out tires faster and create more tire dust pollution, which is also a carbon contributor.

I personally suspect that a lot of the recent warming is anthropogenic, but that the models blaming greenhouse gasses are still largely wrong:  black carbon (mostly soot, but also tire dust) and other light absorbing particulates changing the albedo of ice packs and the aggregate urban heat island effect world wide (which isn't actually confined to cities -- laying more highway produces similar but smaller effects) are ignored in the alarmist models (which are built on the assumption that it's greenhouse gasses.  We don't really have a good measure of the first and the alarmists have cynically harnessed the latter to "prove" their immanent catastrophe by making time series using largely urban and suburban weather stations, rather than rural stations where the temperatures have been more stable.

[Smokin Joe]

I personally suspect that a lot of the recent warming is anthropogenic, but that the models blaming greenhouse gasses are still largely wrong:  black carbon (mostly soot, but also tire dust) and other light absorbing particulates changing the albedo of ice packs and the aggregate urban heat island effect world wide (which isn't actually confined to cities -- laying more highway produces similar but smaller effects) are ignored in the alarmist models (which are built on the assumption that it's greenhouse gasses.  We don't really have a good measure of the first and the alarmists have cynically harnessed the latter to "prove" their immanent catastrophe by making time series using largely urban and suburban weather stations, rather than rural stations where the temperatures have been more stable.

Jeeeez.

And here I thought all that hot air was coming from politicians and the harbingers of doom screeching for half a century 24/7 about how the world is going to end in just another 10 years...