[HN Gopher] Why EVs Aren't a Climate Change Panacea
___________________________________________________________________
Why EVs Aren't a Climate Change Panacea
Author : mfiguiere
Score : 70 points
Date : 2023-01-28 17:04 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| Anytime I see the word "assume" in an article it feels like a
| mechanism for subtly turning journalism into an op-ed.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| This article is explicitly an op-ed. Not sure what you were
| expecting here.
| osigurdson wrote:
| I think any solution that involves things getting worse for
| people is a non-starter. EVs will soon reach the point where it
| makes no sense to purchase an ICE vehicle. That is the model to
| shoot for - make the bad stuff obsolete. When the bad stuff is
| obsolete already (WFO is a good example), lets do our best to
| take advantage of it.
| Zigurd wrote:
| The article headline sets up a straw man. EVs do two important
| things: take a diffuse source of CO2 and other pollutants, and
| confine the problem to large-scale power plants. They also cut
| smog in cities where people are most exposed to pollution.
|
| Other commenters here have noted that small EVs like scooters are
| an important part of electrifying transport. A lot of cities
| would smell a lot better with electric scooters replacing gas
| scooters.
| afrodon wrote:
| [dead]
| jeffrogers wrote:
| Even factoring in probable range increases and advances in
| charging tech, it will still be necessary to incrementally, if
| not fully, charge EVs in public. One thing that doesn't seem to
| occur to our elected officials... there is nowhere near enough
| real estate to charge that many vehicles around town.
| acdha wrote:
| How hard would it be to put plugs onto street lights? Most
| cities have wiring and the switch to LED bulbs means those
| circuits have a lot more spare capacity than they used to.
| longitudinal93 wrote:
| New Westminster ( part of metro Vancouver) has been doing
| exactly that:
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KaBLOGakGfg
| timbit42 wrote:
| Use existing parking spaces.
| sillywalk wrote:
| I feel like I'm missing something fundamental about the whole EV
| thing.
|
| 1. Produce/transport a bunch of electric vehicles, producing
| massive emissions 2. ??? 3. Somehow billions of tonnes of carbon
| get removed from the atmosphere
|
| I fail to see how EVs do anything to actually do something about
| the problem i.e. _REMOVE_ CO2 from the atmosphere.
| imtringued wrote:
| They are more energy efficient than ICE cars. An ICE car
| produces a lot of waste heat in the process of trying to move
| its wheels. That heat serves no purpose other than warming the
| cab. This reduces CO2 emissions. Removing CO2 from the
| atmosphere isn't cost effective without heavy government
| subsidies. You need somewhere between 300EUR to 600EUR per ton
| to capture CO2 with mature tech and 100EUR per ton assuming
| some sort of breakthrough. How are you going to pay for this?
| Are you going to introduce 300EUR CO2 taxes?
|
| That would kill many industries and they would move abroad so
| the first thing that needs to be done is to reduce emissions
| because that costs less than 300EUR per ton.
|
| A VW golf driven for 150k km produces 30 tons of CO2 which
| would cost 9000EUR to capture just to break even. If you want
| to get rid of 3 tons of CO2 for every car then let's round it
| up to 10kEUR.
|
| There are plenty of EVs in the 30kEUR price range that you can
| buy today and there are other benefits that make EVs appealing
| like lower energy costs, less maintenance and so on. So you
| have this product on the market that doesn't need much
| government support anymore and is well accepted in the market
| and then you got this mega project that can only be started by
| the government with massive taxation that makes everything more
| expensive.
| howtousethetime wrote:
| The idea, as I understand it, is that: A. Before the 2038 date
| the article suggests we must move to EV by, many/most cars will
| need to be replaced. So, the suggestion isn't necessarily to
| throw away good cars, as much as to replace them with an EV
| when they are replaced. B. Currently the electricity used to
| charge your EV may not be emission free, but someday it might
| be. Whereas gasoline will never be emission free. And if
| everyone has EV's already, then the benefit of cleaning the
| grid becomes greater and easier to justify to a decisionmaker.
| So while EVs wont solve the problem, it maybe could be said
| that the problem cannot be solved without first switching to
| EVs.
| kristopolous wrote:
| It's a giant decrease in aggregate emissions.
|
| Some people say we should go all in on mass transit. Alright
| cool. Suburbia doesn't work then. We're going to have to
| massively build our way out of this any way you slice it.
|
| EVs are an incremental improvement and that's how all goals are
| reached.
|
| Some people argue "What if you have a coal plant from the 1830s
| and that's powering the EV and we compare it with some sleek
| next gen hybrid" and we're all supposed to pretend that's not
| just some classic bullshit artist play. The stupidity gives me
| a headache. Why are we entertaining such transparent lies as if
| they're being given in good faith?
| sillywalk wrote:
| The point I'm trying to make (or get) is that EVs (or solar
| panels/wind turbines) don't actually do anything to actually
| fix the root problem - too much CO2 in the atmosphere. All of
| the emissions required to produce them in fact make the
| problem worse.
|
| Even if the world ICE vehicle fleet was magically converted
| to EVs powered by carbon-free fusion power tomorrow, I fail
| to see how this will actually lower the CO2 from 414ppm.
| kristopolous wrote:
| We are always limited to the best solutions we have on
| hand.
|
| Since there's more than one person in the world, we can
| work on even better solutions while transitioning to the
| best ones we have, simultaneously.
|
| What's presented by saying EVs aren't the final solution is
| the classic perfect being the enemy of the good dilemma
| weaponized to encourage waiting, stalling, and inaction.
| The actual material world impact of this type of policy is
| just delay delay delay as we sow in seeds of uncertainty to
| putz around without actually doing something.
|
| This has literally been the oil playbook for decades. It's
| the same thing.
|
| It manifests in many ways. For instance there is a leftist
| tech skeptic movement against electric vehicles that in
| practice is just reactionary conservatism. They use the
| classic Ralph Nader play to falsely claim that EVs catch
| fire more than ICE vehicles, focus on the egregious labor
| issues at EV plants and other classic tropes while
| simultaneously proffering some imaginary solution of
| getting rid of single family homes, suburbia and radically
| transform how people live overnight into a marvelous
| network of high speed rail by I assume, an actual magic
| wand.
|
| This is the same tactic tobacco companies used: "4 out of 5
| doctors (who smoke) prefer brand X". Just like this
| statement ignores that most doctors don't smoke, the
| sensationalization of Tesla ignores all of the problems of
| the rest of the industry or that there's many fine
| offerings of electric vehicles from other vendors. It's a
| wildly misinformed caricature.
|
| In practice it produces the same stalling outcome -
| delaying the transition even more.
|
| On the WSJ conservative end there's articles where someone
| rents say a $180,000 Lucid Air, drives like a maniac, goes
| to the most expensive charging options and then compares
| the vehicle with a used Toyota Prius to demonstrate how
| much more expensive electric vehicles supposedly are.
|
| Learn to recognize the bullshit. It's important and the
| consequences are big this time.
| sokoloff wrote:
| That's a technically correct but IMO too narrow view of the
| problem.
|
| Reframe the problem as "how much atmospheric CO2 will be
| present in 2050?" and 2023 EVs do have promise to reduce
| that.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| Limiting ever more CO2 from going into the atmosphere is an
| important related thing to do alongside of the other (much
| much harder!) problem of removing CO2 from the atmosphere.
| gulikoza wrote:
| They don't.
|
| What they do is centralize CO2 production which can be then
| mitigated on a larger scale (switching power production to
| nuclear/solar/wind, CO2 capture from industrial processes...).
|
| They also clean-up living spaces and allow pollution (that
| which is necessary) to be outside of the cities. This alone
| would probably save millions of lives...
| SECProto wrote:
| > 1. Produce/transport a bunch of electric vehicles, producing
| massive emissions 2. ??? 3. Somehow billions of tonnes of
| carbon get removed from the atmosphere
|
| I'll revise that to be more accurate:
|
| 1. Produce/transport a bunch of electric vehicles, producing
| _moderately more emissions than the production of equivalent
| gasoline vehicles would have_
|
| 2. _These electric vehicles release dramatically less carbon
| emissions per kilometer, even if the power source is itself
| fossil fueled_
|
| 3. Billions of tonnes of carbon _that would have been emitted
| with the status quo are not._
|
| > I fail to see how EVs do anything to actually do something
| about the problem i.e. REMOVE CO2 from the atmosphere.
|
| EVs aren't going to remove carbon from the atmosphere (and I've
| never heard anyone say that they will?). They simply reduce the
| ongoing _increase_ of emissions from the transportation sector.
| They are one small piece of the climate change puzzle.
|
| The carbon in the atmosphere can't even _begin_ to decrease if
| we are continually increasing the amount we add to it.
| college_physics wrote:
| People are hoping for a quick sustainability fix but that is not
| on offer. Our current footprint on the global environment took at
| least a century of population growth and technological expansion
| to manifest. Car based cities are just one of the designs we are
| stuck with.
|
| EV's will play some role to keep that pattern workable, but it
| may well be that other ways of organising life and the economy
| will prove better adapted and more efficient in the midterm (~20
| yrs)
|
| Keep in mind that co2 is just one of the many constraints we are
| increasingly bumping against. The age of innocence is gone. On
| the other hand there is nothing sacred about how we organized
| things since 1900 or so...
| jakewins wrote:
| The head of IEA they are referring to, Birol, wrote an op-ed on
| why the explosion of EVs is fundamental for the climate
| transition just a few months ago:
| https://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/23/perspectives/iea-electric...
|
| Why would IEEE use a quote from 2017 from some Norwegian blog to
| make it seem IEAs position is the opposite of what it actually
| is?
| stevespang wrote:
| [dead]
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| > International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) argues
| that EVs are the quickest means to decarbonize motorized
| transport. However, EVs are not by themselves in any way going to
| achieve the goal of net zero by 2050.
|
| Yep. Technically correct, but an example of shooting for the
| wrong goal, and failing entirely.
|
| The goal is not making our motorized transport system low carbon.
| The goal is limiting the damage of climate change and keeping a
| lid on temperature rises. If we constrain our solution set to
| maintaining the same sort of motorized transport system we will
| fail.
|
| I would like to hope that software engineers on this site reading
| this would recognize such a problem.
|
| It is like when, fundamentally, the design of a program from the
| get go was wrong from the first foot forward and as a result it's
| simply too slow. No amount of fiddling around the edges, hacks
| and minor fixes will result in an adequate improvement. Only a
| new design is a real fix.
|
| Thankfully in many ways it's actually easier to fix cities than
| to fix a major software project. For one thing we at least know
| the solutions, and they're easily achievable given political will
| and with not a great deal of money. (not easily around on a
| software project!)
|
| Most of the issues come more from political restriction than
| anything else, and so much can be done by simply letting people
| do things that they're currently banned from doing (ie. let
| people build more housing). Couple that with some relatively
| affordable bike lanes and rapid bus lanes, and one can achieve
| remarkable improvements with relatively little capital
| expenditure and effort.
|
| > Even a few US cities it might be livable without a car.
|
| Musing that better things are maybe possible in "a few" US cities
| is dramatically low ambition and out of touch.
|
| Consider that 45% of Vancouver's West End commutes to work _by
| walking_. That 's a neighbourhood of 45,000 in a major NA city.
| There's absolutely nothing going on remarkably here that accounts
| for this excepting the simple fact that it's a bunch of 1960s era
| residential apartments in a pleasant tree lined area within a 20
| minute walking distance of Vancouver's Downtown. That's it. I'm
| pretty sure this concept is quite replicable in cities across
| America.
| longitudinal93 wrote:
| They've also made it very unpleasant to own a car in the West
| End - parking is extremely limited or requires a special pass.
| There are very few thru- streets so all car journeys are
| convoluted, etc.
|
| And support for alternatives is plentiful - bus service is
| excellent, bike lanes and routes are abundant, there are
| numerous and frequent bike share stations, etc.
|
| It's definitely a great place to live.
| cat_plus_plus wrote:
| We are talking 2050 right? Why would most people keep a separate
| self-driving EV in the garage? Just hail one through an app and
| it will drive you on your trip, 1 mile or 500 miles. Some people
| just enjoy shaming others for living pleasant lives when
| technology is already available to preserve each activity while
| keeping carbon emissions down and is not standing still - in fact
| the rate of technological advancement of humanity is accelerating
| over time. Lab grown meat can be cheaper, tastier and healthier
| than one from a whole animal. See your less important travel
| destinations in high quality VR. Or if you still want organic
| meat or a non-VRable beach vacation, enjoy, we have carbon
| capture and biofuel tech to get you covered. Progress is about
| giving choices, not taking away choices.
| mrshadowgoose wrote:
| > Some people just enjoy shaming others for living pleasant
| lives
|
| I've observed that most people have some instinctual need to
| hate on some other sub-group of society, and blame them for the
| world's problems. For a lot of people that subgroup seems to be
| "car users".
|
| We could collectively be focusing on decarbonizing all energy
| production, and building excess energy production capacity to
| offset any remaining carbon production, and even start winding
| back the damage we've done so far. And then it wouldn't matter
| one bit what mode of transportation you used, or what you used
| energy towards.
|
| But it's easier to divide ourselves and hate on each other.
| MaysonL wrote:
| Micromobility EVs may make a much bigger contribution to climate
| change amelioration.
| zip1234 wrote:
| Truly, micromobility like E-bikes are cheap, require much less
| space, healthier and are more social. Governments do not know
| how to build for micromobility yet it seems.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| all it would require is building some protected bike lanes
| (which are very cheap to build), but that would _gasp_ be
| taking space _away_ from exclusive car use, and so is
| political anathema to many. This needs to change.
| andrepd wrote:
| Exactly. A 3.5-ton electric SUV is marginally better than a
| petrol SUV. You what's better than both? An e-bike.
| mulcahey wrote:
| > Perfect is the enemy of good! More at 11
| varelse wrote:
| [dead]
| nkingsy wrote:
| Don't know where to put this, but utility rates in northern
| California have gotten to the point where it's cheaper to drive
| my prius than my EV from a fuel standpoint, and that's using the
| special off peak EV rate.
|
| If you have net metering and solar, great, but at this point if
| you're not a homeowner with grandfathered nem 2.0, Evs make no
| sense in northern ca.
| agilob wrote:
| Pretty much the same in most of Europe. Electric trams are
| stopped where I lived, council resigned from buying electric
| buses, some nearby cities even turn on only one side of street
| lights, charging EV is more expensive than diesel for the same
| range.
| [deleted]
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| EVs absolutely help, but they don't address any of the myriad of
| problems inherent in low occupancy vehicle transportation. One
| person in a car requires more resources (energy, parking space,
| space on the road while in use, the cost of the vehicle and its
| maintenance, damage to roads, injuries/deaths from crashes, etc)
|
| If we spent even some money spent on self-driving vehicles on
| public transit infrastructure, we'd get immediate gains and it
| would in particular help those who are on the bottom rungs of the
| ladder economically - making it easier for them to contribute
| toward society, and causing fewer problems to boot (such as the
| enormous costs of trying to maintain a cheaper/older car, causing
| a crash because their vehicle is poorly maintained, or they fell
| asleep while driving from working 2-3 jobs, etc.)
| imtringued wrote:
| Governments don't tax land so they have no incentive to invest
| in good public transport. Most transportation projects
| massively increase property values which is then captured by
| landlords instead of governments and then everyone complains
| that public transport doesn't work and can't fund itself and
| people wonder why politicians invest in boondoggles to
| immortalise themselves instead of acting more like a business
| that prioritizes useful investments because it increases future
| tax revenue.
|
| Land value taxes make way more sense than income taxes because
| they are location based. If a politician makes a mistake and
| you move away they will get your income tax regardless. So they
| have no reason to invest in any given location.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Governments don't tax land
|
| They...actually do.
| andrepd wrote:
| Absolutely nailed. EVs solve one problem about ICE cars. Not
| the other 99.
| pyrrhotech wrote:
| EVs seem to not be a very well thought-out long term solution in
| general, unless radically different batteries with very high
| energy density can soon be developed. Earth has 88 million tons
| of lithium, of which only 1/4 is economically feasible to mine.
| Each Tesla battery uses about 50 kg of Li, which means only about
| 18 Tesla batteries can be produced per ton, or about 396 million
| total Tesla batteries. Current global automobile production is
| about 80 million per year. If society were to totally switch to
| EVs, we would run out within a decade or so even assuming most of
| these cars used far less lithium (and thus had much shorter
| range, limiting practicality). This back of the napkin analysis
| also ignores all the other competing uses of Li...
| triyambakam wrote:
| And the mining itself is very polluting
| jakewins wrote:
| Your number is off by eight orders of magnitude.
|
| Lithium is one of the most common elements on the planet.
| Earths crust contains ~0.002-0.006% Li by weight, or
| 1,220,000,000 million tonnes if you use the low estimate.
|
| You seem to have confused the concept of "known reserves" - the
| 88M number is deposits that we've paid to map out and know
| _exactly_ where they are.
|
| As current deposits empty out, companies will invest in mapping
| out others.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| > Each Tesla battery uses about 50 kg of Li
|
| Do you have a source for this figure?
| ravenstine wrote:
| Maybe governments are helping to prop up EVs as a means of
| covertly hoarding lithium. Even if EVs don't work out, having
| an abundance of lithium could be of tremendous value.
| /conspiracy
| zopa wrote:
| This is in a timeline where governments _are_ capable of
| long-term secret plans that move markets, but _haven't_
| thought of strategic reserves?
| jhp123 wrote:
| Earth has many trillions of tons of lithium.
| mjrpes wrote:
| Musk in 2022 said lithium makes up 5kg in a car battery:
| https://seekingalpha.com/article/4502519-tesla-inc-tsla-ceo-...
| ajross wrote:
| > Earth has 88 million tons of lithium, of which only 1/4 is
| economically feasible to mine.
|
| This is outrageously spun. That number is (I assume, you don't
| cite a source) a count of total known reserves. That's not the
| way research extraction works; as industries develop (and this
| one is in its infancy) they discover new sources. This is the
| logic that led people to warn about "peak oil" in the 90's.
| They were hilariously wrong (because guess what? we
| "discovered" fracking as prices rose!).
|
| The "1/4 economically feasible" bit likewise assumes, again,
| current prices and production method. You don't think it's
| possible to reach a price equilibrium and technology balance
| that makes that worthwhile to extract? Why? It's happened for
| every other resource we use.
|
| And the big mistake here is that you're assuming that we throw
| the batteries in the trash when a vehicle reaches end of life.
| In point of fact battery elements are among the _most
| effectively recycled materials in the modern economy_. A junk
| NMC battery is, in essence, a very highly concentrated cobalt
| /lithium ore just waiting for smelting. We don't "run out" like
| you posit. At steady state, we need enough to cover growth and
| loss only.
|
| Basically: you're wrong. There's lots and lots of Li out there
| long term. In the nearer term, though, yeah: we can't mine
| remotely enough of the stuff and batteries will remain
| expensive as the industry grows.
| yawaramin wrote:
| > as industries develop (and this one is in its infancy) they
| discover new sources.
|
| And what do you imagine they will do with those new sources?
| Leave them pristine while they elegantly and cleanly suck out
| only the required lithium? No, they will destroy those
| ecologies with massive mining operations which will generate
| tons of waste, toxic chemicals, and CO2.
|
| In our quest to reduce carbon emissions it seems we are
| willing to do everything we can to destroy our habitable
| environment.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| How are you quantifying those mining externalities compared
| to other mining activity or compared to the reduced
| externalities from ICE vehicles?
| giardia wrote:
| The Economist wrote a few months back that an EV in Japan
| actually produces more carbon per mile than an ICE because almost
| all of their energy comes from coal plants. I'm not sure if
| America has a radically different coal plant design which
| produces less carbon somehow, but ~60% of electricity in America
| comes from coal. [edit: 60% is fossil fuel generated, ~20% is
| coal]
|
| Additionally, it's going to be a massive effort to upgrade our
| grid (not just generation) to handle all these EVs, and America
| is not well situated for public transport since we built out
| instead of up.
|
| I don't want anyone to get the impression that EVs are bad, but
| people act like they're saving the world by buying a Tesla. It's
| not that simple. This is a very, very difficult problem and every
| solution has trade-offs.
| kiba wrote:
| _Also, America is not well situated for public transport since
| we built out instead of up. That 's a very difficult issue._
|
| It's currently economically unsustainable. We will need to
| densify and abandon non-viable area, get rid of minimum
| parking, and reduce lanes of roads.
| zip1234 wrote:
| Every state/local already continually asks for federal
| handouts to maintain their overbuilt 8 lane roads. The fact
| that people still want to add lanes to roads is mind
| boggling.
| philipkglass wrote:
| Coal provided 23% of US electricity generation in 2021, 20% in
| 2022, and is forecast to fall to 19% in 2023. The US now burns
| less than half of the coal it did in 2007.
|
| https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/report/coal.php
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/184333/coal-energy-consu...
| giardia wrote:
| Oops, mixed up coal and total fossil fuel for energy
| generation which is a big difference.
| SigmundA wrote:
| Coal is under 20% now in the US and dropping:
| https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=48896
|
| Even if you still run off coal you are decoupling energy source
| from the vehicle allowing the vehicle to run off any source
| that currently makes the most sense. You can't run a gas car
| off coal but you can run an electric.
|
| Power plants are more efficient than small combustion engines
| as well as having more sophisticated emission controls with no
| concerns for weight or size with a full time staff to maintain
| them.
|
| The grid needs to increase 30% to support all cars, it only
| took 40 years for it to increase 5X from 1960 to 2000, about 4%
| per year, so less than 10 years to support all cars, easily
| doable.
| ezfe wrote:
| I don't believe that it's true a fully coal powered EV produces
| more carbon per mile due to how inefficient combustion engines
| are
| giardia wrote:
| I'll be honest, I haven't bothered to double check it, but it
| may be that coal is just that dirty.
| com2kid wrote:
| > The Economist wrote a few months back that an EV in Japan
| actually produces more carbon per mile than an ICE because
| almost all of their energy comes from coal plants. I'm not sure
| if America has a radically different coal plant design which
| produces less carbon somehow, but ~60% of electricity in
| America comes from coal.
|
| It is easier to upgrade a (comparative) small number of power
| plants than it is to make everyone's ICE engine more efficient.
|
| > Additionally, it's going to be a massive effort to upgrade
| our grid (not just generation) to handle all these EVs.
|
| The amount of work needed to upgrade our grid to handle the
| increased usage of air conditioning due to global warming is
| greater than the work needed to support EVs.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| On US average grid EVs get 93mpg equivalent. On the dirtiest
| (most carbon intense) grid in the US that figure is 42, the
| cleanest 256. Of course for EVs those numbers will get better
| each year.
|
| https://blog.ucsusa.org/dave-reichmuth/plug-in-or-gas-up-why...
| lnsru wrote:
| I see on some days, that electricity generation in Germany is 45%
| coal and 20% gas. With all transmission and storage losses the
| EVs are almost coal powered then. I know, it's very rough
| estimation. But with coal powered cars not much positive can be
| done against climate change.
| timbit42 wrote:
| An EV running on coal-generated electricity is still cleaner
| than an ICEV.
| fwungy wrote:
| 1) Climate modeling is hard. There have been substantial shifts
| in the climate over time, including five ice ages.
|
| 2) Climate change predictions have been repeatedly wrong. In the
| 80's they said the Maldives would be submerged by 2000, for
| example. Maldives are still there.
|
| 3) if the models are good then things like the costs of coastal
| real estate should show it. Coastal real estate is still premium
| so either the models are wrong or the banks are ignoring the
| models and lend huge amounts on property thar will soon be
| reclaimed by the sea.
|
| 4) There are people and countries with trillions on pil reserve
| wealth who will be reduced to poverty in a fossil free world. Are
| they going to cooperate with their own impoverishment based on
| weak, poorly performing climate models produced by antagonistic
| western states?
|
| 5) There is a huge installed base of fossil fuels in the
| developing world. The energy density and portability of fossils
| is great for places with limited infrastructure. How do you
| convert them?
|
| 6) Nuclear is the only realistic approach to mass scale
| decarbonization. Why is this ignored. If you believe the climate
| models then we should accept the stochastic risks of nuclear over
| the absolute risk of climate in the near future. Is not the risk
| of an occasional Chernobyl better than planet wide destruction
| and degradation.
|
| 7) The past few years have demonstrated the danger of alarmists
| reacting to scary looking model data that they don't fully
| understand.
|
| 8) Addressing climate change directly at the source is
| intractable for the reasons I've listed. Mitigation approaches
| are going to pay much better dividends than multi moon shot green
| technology agendas.
| CJefferson wrote:
| 2) By "they said the Maldives would be submerged by 2000", this
| seems to be one report which was the basis for for a full study
| of the problem by the UN. Do you agree there have been notable,
| significant, temperature rises over the last 100 years, which
| appear to be a significantly faster change than in previous ice
| ages?
| fwungy wrote:
| Show me the detailed climate data for the past 20 million
| years.
|
| Oh, you can't. Why? Because there is no data. It's all
| modeled.
|
| To be clear I'm not denying anthropogenic climate change, I'm
| questioning the strategies employed .
|
| A hundred years of data amongst millions is insignificant. We
| don't know what proportion is anthropogenic and which is the
| larger climate trend that is beyond our control. Regardless,
| the logical optimization is nuclear and mitigation, not a
| suicidal unilateral rush into zero GHG. Under that approach
| if the multiple technogical breakthroughs never come we are
| in worse shape than if we had not done anything.
| acdha wrote:
| > Climate change predictions have been repeatedly wrong
|
| This is fossil fuel industry propaganda - whoever told you this
| is untrustworthy and literally banking on you not fact-checking
| their claims. The consensus predictions since the late 1970s
| have been increasingly accurate, especially since the 1980s.
|
| For example, the first IPCC report from 1990 had estimates
| which we now have data to judge them against:
|
| https://arstechnica.com/science/2012/12/ipccs-climate-projec...
|
| Similarly, Dr. James Hansen (director of NASA's Goddard
| Institute) testified before Congress based on his 1988 study
| predicting global warming and his numbers were very close to
| what we saw over the subsequent 3 decades:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97...
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97...
| If you believe that "ice age" talk was real, remember that the
| source of that was a couple of speculative papers which were
| never widely accepted and were refuted by the late 1970s.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/that-70s-myth-did-cl...
| AstixAndBelix wrote:
| Decrease need for private transportation.
|
| Heavily push for EVs.
|
| Allow combustion engines when actually necessary instead of
| banning everything like a bunch of blind ideologues.
|
| Clean up the air from carbon to compensate.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Better headline: "EVs are decarbonizing transport, but we have
| more work to do. Here's what we should do next."
|
| From the article:
|
| > This is not to imply in any way that electric vehicles are
| worthless. Analysis by the International Council on Clean
| Transportation (ICCT) argues that EVs are the quickest means to
| decarbonize motorized transport.
|
| The headline feels like someone crafted it for maximum clickbait.
| The perpetual doomsday framing of everything, _including the
| climate wins_ , only makes people tune out of the conversation.
| acdha wrote:
| I think this concern has to be balanced against the billions of
| dollars promoting the status quo. A lot of people want to
| believe that all we need to do is buy electric cars, and there
| are multiple industries pushing that since it's good for
| business while politicians like not having to tell people that
| lifestyle changes are necessary.
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| >> A lot of people want to believe that all we need to do is
| buy electric cars
|
| The people i hear most vehemently arguing for ev adoption are
| quick to share a laundry list of all the other things we
| should be doing.
|
| I haven't run across the EV-and-we're-done brigade. I'm not
| dismissing that they exist but I haven't met them.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Literally every time I see anything about "green
| transportation" from federal, state, or local government
| and non-profits the talk starts with and ends with electric
| vehicles.
|
| The feds talk some talk about alternative transit, and some
| cities are leaning heavily into alternate transit...but at
| my county and local level there's basically zero interest
| in public transit, walking, or biking infrastructure.
| BuyMyBitcoins wrote:
| Advocating for walkable cities and being anti-automobile
| is all the rage nowadays, but that doesn't translate well
| to real world action. As much as we want to, and should,
| redesign cities, that is a monumental undertaking that
| will necessarily require several decades worth of effort
| and billions of dollars.
|
| Switching to electric vehicles, meanwhile, does not
| require eminent domain and does not ask citizens to
| change their mobility standards. It is also something
| local governments don't have to pay for.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| > ...does not ask citizens to change their mobility
| standards.
|
| My how far we have come from "Ask not what your country
| can do for you, but what you can do for your country."
| sokoloff wrote:
| That challenge was to find ways to contribute in your own
| sphere.
|
| Converting one car to an EV (and accepting the resulting
| compromises) is more realistically in that spirit than
| something like "knock down your house and build a mid-
| rise on your lot" would be.
| ajross wrote:
| > A lot of people want to believe that all we need to do is
| buy electric cars, and there are multiple industries pushing
| that
|
| Um... who? I think it's rather the opposite: I see a "lot of
| people" in "multiple industries" making strawman arguments
| like this. Essentially, it's a deflection from "EVs are
| better than cars" (a clear truth that can't reasonably be
| argued with) to "EV proponents don't have all the answers
| either" (a winnable argument that feels like it's related
| even though it isn't).
|
| Buy the EV. Also move closer to the urban core, WFH, and
| otherwise reduce your dependence on the suburban road
| networks. But buy the EV if you need a car.
| mellosouls wrote:
| Even leaving aside your dubious claim about what can and
| cannot be argued with, your conclusion about what choices
| people should make is pie in the sky for a significant part
| of even the developed world.
|
| Economic and logistic reasons mean that carbon fuel cars
| are still the best transport option for most (?) people
| outside of urban centres and well-paid jobs.
| ajross wrote:
| This seems like a dodge? You said lots of people were
| saying something, I asked for a cite.
| mellosouls wrote:
| I'm not the poster you are referring to.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Upvoted, as I see you were downsmashed because you spoke
| of realities, not "where we want to be".
|
| What you say is true. I find "everyone EV now!"
| proponents, often just use handwavy platitudes when given
| "I can't" info. For example, for many, many people ...
| range is a vital, and sadly an electric EV preventive
| thing.
|
| When told this, EV absolutists often blather on about why
| a person is wrong, and do so while ignoring that person's
| reality.
|
| The same is valid for cost. If you are poor, and can
| barely afford a truck for work, telling someone to spend
| 2x or 3x for a EV variant is exceptionally unfeeling,
| unrealistic, and elitist.
|
| What we need to do, is be open to solutions to help
| people switch. One is H2, which has multiple cars with
| extensive range on the road, yet EV absolutists will
| start going on about green or not h2.
|
| While at the same time ignoring that all excess power in
| the US, currently comes from fossil fuel!
|
| Until the last fossil fuel shuts down, that is excess
| kept running by EV needs.
|
| But you see, the goal is not where the battery charge, or
| h2 comes from, it is where it _can_ come from!
|
| We can 100% make green h2, just as we can eventually
| fully purge fossil fuels from our electric grid.
|
| And it takes decades to move cars and transport from
| fossil to alternative options. We are doing it in
| parallel. So that one day, when we are free of fossil
| use, all our cars will already be fossil free! Including
| poor people driving 20 year old cars!
| acdha wrote:
| It's not 2-3 times more for an EV: the average American
| truck buyer dropped $46k last year. You can buy a Leaf or
| Bolt for half that much and you'll save many thousands of
| dollars in maintenance and fuel over the life of the
| vehicle. Yeah, perhaps 10-20% of truck buyers do
| something those vehicles can't but most of the sales are
| fashion accessories for men who like to cosplay as
| ranchers. Given how much of the population lives in non-
| rural areas and doesn't haul cattle for a living,
| switching to EVs buys a lot of time to find solutions for
| the hardest use cases.
|
| Similarly, the reason hydrogen isn't talked about more
| comes down to two reasons: it's not competitive and it
| costs a lot more. Right now a huge number of people can
| buy an EV and charge it at home - if your commute is the
| American average or less, you don't even need a 240V plug
| for that. If you want to buy a hydrogen powered car,
| you're paying twice as much just to get started and you
| can refuel at a total of 60 places in the entire U.S. and
| Canada, most of them in California.
|
| That might be worth thinking about but for the other
| problem: most hydrogen is made from fossil fuels. This is
| why there's so much astroturf presenting it as a good
| future choice: the hydrocarbon industry can profit now
| while claiming that green sources will happen real soon
| now.
|
| Yes, you can envision that we'd have solar powered H2
| plants or something but that still hits a lot of
| incompletely solved logistical problems--it's hard to
| contain and ship--and immediately runs into the question
| of why you wouldn't instead have that solar power
| charging the much greater number of EVs which are much
| easier to support.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Here we are again. People "don't need" that truck, so buy
| a small ev, it is cheaper!
|
| Meanwhile, I specifically referenced prople buying trucks
| for _work_.
|
| And if they do not, a small gas powered is far cheaper
| that a small ev. Remember, I referenced _poor_ , which
| means save NOW!, or where do you think all that well
| known credit card debt comes from.
|
| Planning for future maintenance costs takes a back seat,
| when poor.
|
| And so here we show an elitist, hand wavy response.
| Telling the person referenced as "need a truck for work",
| no, you don't!
|
| Not helpful, but elitist, exclusionist.
| acdha wrote:
| Yes, I'm aware. It's still true that most people do not
| need a truck for work, even if you look exclusively at
| the subset of people who buy a truck for work. One of the
| interesting things about getting out of affluent areas is
| that you see far fewer trucks - go somewhere poor and
| it's a lot more small cars because they cost less to buy,
| maintain, and use half as much fuel.
|
| Again, it's not that _nobody_ uses one but that it's a
| much smaller fraction of the total market. We can reduce
| emissions considerably without inconveniencing anyone and
| over time all of the used EVs on the market will improve
| the low-cost options.
| acdha wrote:
| The automobile industry is huge. They desperately want the
| way we deal with climate change to be buying EVs at the
| same price as ICEs rather than investing in transit,
| density, biking, or electric low-speed vehicles (one
| electric SUV needs a battery large enough to power tens of
| those or hundreds of e-bikes).
|
| Agriculture uses a ton of fossil fuels, and they have the
| same interest: electric trucks aren't a threat the way
| eating less beef or not shipping food halfway around the
| planet is.
|
| Repeat for hospitality & travel, etc.
|
| My point isn't that EVs are terrible or that we shouldn't
| buy them but that we have to guard against complacency.
| Remember how city governments jumped at Uber & Tesla's
| marketing because it gave them the chance to say self-
| driving cars would solve travel & therefore they didn't
| need to invest in transit or bike infrastructure, wasting a
| decade? The same dynamic will unfold here if we treat EVs
| as the primary thing we need to change rather than a
| necessary but far from sufficient step.
| dheera wrote:
| What I _really_ don 't understand is why don't Shell, Exxon,
| Chevron and their ilk get into the EV game and start setting
| up DC fast chargers at all of their gas stations? They
| profit, and EV range anxiety becomes a thing of the past by
| having chargers literally everywhere.
| pharmakom wrote:
| Low profit. Accelerates decline of the cash cow.
| imtringued wrote:
| But the gas station cash cow is often the overpriced
| kiosk and not the gasoline.
| acdha wrote:
| It'll happen but it requires reversing half a century spent
| pouring money into marketing the idea that climate change
| isn't real, won't be much, etc. They'll need to reconsider
| the space usage but one nice thing about EVs is that non-
| toxic fuel means you can safely spread out through the
| entire parking lot.
| CharlesW wrote:
| I'm guessing for the same reason innovation rarely happens
| within companies that are printing money by maintaining the
| status quo. _The Innovator 's Dilemma_ by Clayton
| Christensen is a good book on this, and the iPhone is
| another good example that _had_ to come from outside the
| telecom industry.
|
| Plus, there's an impedance mismatch between EV charging
| times and the retail store model, in that retail stores
| want customers in and out ASAP.
| SECProto wrote:
| > What I really don't understand is why don't Shell, Exxon,
| Chevron and their ilk get into the EV game and start
| setting up DC fast chargers at all of their gas stations?
|
| At least in Canada, there has definitely been a push in
| this direction. Both Petro-Can[1] and Irving[2] have set up
| fast charging networks at their stations. Many of the Tesla
| Superchargers in Canada[3] are also located at various gas
| stations and truck stops (that specifically benefit from
| more restaurant customers when they use the charger).
|
| [1] https://www.petro-canada.ca/en/personal/fuel/canadas-
| electri...
|
| [2] https://www.irvingoil.com/en-US/on-the-road/electric-
| vehicle...
|
| [3] https://www.tesla.com/findus
| kristopolous wrote:
| They're in it and have been for years
|
| Example: https://shellrecharge.com/en-us/solutions
| aqme28 wrote:
| I don't fully agree. It argues that beyond the EV conversion,
| we also have to switch to cycling and public transit for
| transport.
| PheonixPharts wrote:
| > including the climate wins
|
| EVs aren't a climate win. It's just more consumption which
| ultimately means more energy which means more oil.
|
| Aside from that the issue has nothing to do with _where_ the
| oil is consumed, but how much. The only way to stop climate
| change is to _prevent_ oil from being extracted. We 're
| currently in the process of escalating a war to extract more so
| I'm not optimistic about this.
|
| If EVs had an impact on US oil consumption you would expect
| that consumption to _drop_ right?
|
| But 2022 was nearly a record year for US oil consumption [0]:
|
| > 20.40 million bpd in 2022 and 20.75 million bpd in 2023. That
| compares with a record 20.80 million bpd in 2005
|
| EVs are just a way to keep you consuming while feeling okay
| about. It's not a climate win in the slightest.
|
| 0. https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-crude-output-
| petroleum...
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| EVs don't use as much oil in their lifetime (including
| production) as a combustion engine would in theirs (those
| have to be produced also, right?)
| codeulike wrote:
| _If EVs had an impact on US oil consumption you would expect
| that consumption to drop right?_
|
| Not yet, no. Barely expect it to make a dent yet.
|
| Straw man.
|
| _It 's not a climate win in the slightest._
|
| Why not? Why not _in the slightest_?
|
| You're saying its not even a teeny weeny little sliver of a
| climate win?
|
| We have to get away from fossil fueled transportation. Having
| transportation that can/can potentially be renewably powered
| has to be a step forward. What you're saying just seems like
| 'let the perfect be the enemy of the good'
|
| Please explain.
| PheonixPharts wrote:
| > Straw man.
|
| Sorry but anything other than reduction in global fossil
| fuel consumption is that strawman. That is the only thing
| that matters. If everything we do is "green" and we still
| burn more oil than the year before that's all that matters.
| codeulike wrote:
| But its like we're trying to cross a river and you're
| standing on the bank saying "we've got to cross that
| river, thats the only thing that matters" and the guy
| next to you goes and gets some wood and starts making a
| boat and you're looking at him saying "making that boat
| makes no difference, we're still no further across that
| river. Getting across the river is the only thing that
| matters"
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| In absolute terms more oil may be consumed, yet the cause
| could be growth elsewhere. Said another way EVs may have
| made that same growth less oil intense than the
| alternative.
| Spivak wrote:
| Yeah, but there's pretty much no way to measure that with
| massive interconnected global supply chains.
|
| You can say less oil is being used in this specific fixed
| depth trace of an EV production line but at the end of
| the day it doesn't mean anything if the net effect is
| billions of cars worth of ICE scrap and new-car
| consumption along with the impact of retrofitting every
| gas station, parking lot, and garage with chargers just
| for an unrelated industry (like freight shipping) to see
| dollar signs and take advantage of the inevitable price
| drop and burn all the oil anyway.
|
| The only measure that can means anything is worldwide
| consumption. This is not an argument for or against EVs
| but I think the parent is right at where the goal posts
| need to be set. Around 45% of US oil consumption is
| gasoline for vehicles so I do believe that it could make
| a real dent but I won't be popping any champagne until
| the numbers go down and stay down.
| sokoloff wrote:
| EVs could have reduced global oil consumption by 2 units
| while other factors, perhaps entirely unrelated to
| transportation, increased global oil consumption by 7
| units for a net of +5.
|
| EVs still did something beneficial in that story.
| sfpotter wrote:
| Maybe instead of criticizing the way in which the article was
| written you could comment on some if its actual contents. I
| feel like people on HN get incredibly hung up on minor things
| like the title of an article and can't move past that. Climate
| change is a big deal and HN is full of smart people. It would
| be nice if we could use it as a venue for discussion about
| interesting topics instead of whinging about things that annoy
| us.
| wffurr wrote:
| The presentation of the topic is as relevant as the facts at
| hand.
| belval wrote:
| I guess you haven't been here long. It's a staple of HN to be
| pedantic and obsess on details, that being said it's also how
| sometimes you end up with very interesting threads on
| tangential topics.
| andrepd wrote:
| Individual automobiles have 100 problems. EVs solve 1 of them
| (tailpipe emissions), leaving the other 99. Yes, I guess it's
| better than nothing, but...
|
| Meanwhile old boring things like trains, trams (frequent,
| comfortable, extensive), proper bike lanes, do more for climate
| change and general quality of life than replacing a petrol SUV
| with an electric SUV.
| labrador wrote:
| > The headline feels like someone crafted it for maximum
| clickbait
|
| It's written as a bait to people who have bought into the oil
| industry propaganda that EV's aren't a solution. "Where do you
| think the electricity comes from? Coal, gas and oil fueled
| power plants, that's where." If I had a dollar for every time
| I've heard this I could afford a Tesla.
| mshake2 wrote:
| Massively increased WFH (triggered by the pandemic) has done
| more to improve carbon emissions from transportation than any
| electric vehicle movement will ever do. yet you don't see a
| hard line top-down push for more WFH, only resistance, why?
| melling wrote:
| Shouldn't WFH be reflected in US oil consumption?
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/282716/oil-
| consumption-i...
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| Most jobs are on-site.
|
| The software industry, and things similar to it, like
| finance, certainly are suitable to work-from-home answers.
|
| But construction, service trades (plumbing, electrical,
| roofing...), transportation, factory work, retail,
| restaurant work, farming, janitorial, and more, require
| people to show up for work at specific places.
|
| How do you mandate that the work most people do, that can't
| be done from home, should be done from home. Yes the lock-
| down reduced carbon emissions. But those bounced right
| back, except for those few "tech" jobs that stayed remote.
|
| Maybe require tech workers to stay home? Maybe the tech-
| worker shuttles could be electric? I don't think government
| is particularly good at nuanced rule-making. Let's solve
| the problem some other way.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Any office job is suitable to work from home.
| mshake2 wrote:
| The point is that people are saying loudly that this is
| literally a matter of life and death, but we're not being
| told to continue stay home if our job can be done from
| home, we're being told to go back to the office (in a
| EV!). It's doublethink.
| epgui wrote:
| > It's doublethink.
|
| Yes. If humans were any good at thinking, we'd be trying
| a little harder to stop pooping where we eat. We'd have
| been decarbonizing everything a whole lot sooner.
|
| But we're not all that good at thinking, so here we are
| and this is how it's going.
| credit_guy wrote:
| > people are saying loudly that this is literally a
| matter of life and death
|
| Some people are saying that, but if you rationally think
| about the actual claims, it's clearly not like that.
|
| The goal of net zero by 2050 was clearly set by some
| rounding. If we achieve net zero by 2060, it does not
| mean that in 2050 we are at 100% and boom, in 2060 we are
| at 0%. It means we are somewhere at 10-15% in 2050. It
| won't change that much the trajectory of the climate
| change.
|
| We will clearly get to net zero. My bet is that in the US
| we will get there by 2040. It's going to take longer in
| China and India. But working from home will not make the
| difference between apocalypse and paradise.
| mshake2 wrote:
| >But working from home will not make the difference
| between apocalypse and paradise.
|
| Ah, the old "it doesn't matter if we do X, so long as we
| do Y" where "X" keeps shifting to whatever the arguer
| wants it to be in that moment. In this case "X" is the
| 860,000 US office workers driving fossil fuel cars back
| and forth to work every day, which I was told was a bad
| thing, but now it actually doesn't really matter.
| guelo wrote:
| > we're being told to go back to the office (in a EV!)
|
| Who is saying this? There are some businesses types
| saying to go back to the office. There are some
| environmentalists saying drive an EV. They are different
| people. There are hundreds of different view points from
| people with an opinon of what you should do.
|
| The generic "they" that are supposedly controlling your
| life is just lazy victim thinking
| mshake2 wrote:
| Yeah ok. Find a CEO who publicly says "return to the
| office in a gas-guzzling SUV" and I'll buy you an ice
| cream.
| BHSPitMonkey wrote:
| If we could wave a magic wand and suddenly make it so
| that the currently-externalized costs to _everything_
| that we do (e.g. the costs of correcting all the
| downstream impacts of things like driving a mile down the
| road, manufacturing a plastic bottle, ordering meat,
| disposing of waste items, etc.) became rolled into the
| up-front costs of these activities paid by companies and
| consumers, we 'd have correct incentives informing every
| aspect of society and cities/commutes would look much
| different (out of necessity).
| mshake2 wrote:
| That's like saying making drugs illegal produces the
| correct incentives to stop the drug trade. Companies and
| consumers will break the law to bypass any artificial
| market inefficiency, and it will produce a thriving black
| market. Why would I pay $50 for a pack of hamburgers when
| I can get it for $10 from a black market butcher?
| hnhg wrote:
| Another one is the fashion industry[1], amongst others. But
| that would be inconvenient for a lot of folks and so
| everyone forgets about it.
|
| [1] https://carbonliteracy.com/fast-fashions-carbon-
| footprint/
| [deleted]
| gedy wrote:
| Because many people don't really care about carbon,
| climate, and just latch on to that for their biases and
| agendas
| Schiendelman wrote:
| There's a real reason for this. Notice that traffic is back
| to normal? The demand for space on the road was WAY higher
| than the people actually using it - pre-pandemic far more
| people were using public transport.
|
| Even with a sizable increase in WFH, the people who were
| previously dissuaded from driving alone by traffic have
| filled much of that road space with cars (in the case of
| Seattle, nearly all of it).
| bnlxbnlx wrote:
| thx for pointing this out. i wasn't aware of this before,
| but it be totally makes sense. so we need also need to
| keep reducing (rather than increase) road space in
| combination with reducing reason to travel/commute at
| all.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I think traffic in Boston/Cambridge is way better than I
| recall it being pre-pandemic. There's still some at rush
| hours, but it feels like a lot less to me.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| Indeed. I get the feeling it's due to a combination of sunk
| cost fallacy (we've spent a lot of money on a fancy central
| London office space god damn it) and upper management
| wanting to maintain control over their little kingdom.
| hackerlight wrote:
| EVs are a significantly worse solution than mass transport.
| Not because the electricity comes from the grid but because
| of the wastefulness involved in the construction, from the
| cars themselves and roads, also the additional electricity
| that's required per capita from cars than from mass transit.
| That said, they're better than ICE cars.
| dheera wrote:
| Yeah I've heard this way too much too. Why are humans so bad
| at second-order thinking and understanding that it's possible
| and, barring politics, straightforward to change where
| electricity comes from but it's not really possible to change
| where gasoline comes from?
| sokoloff wrote:
| Was there any significant evolutionary pressure to reward
| better second-order thinking? Better thinking? Yes. Better
| long-term, second-order, or very nuanced thinking? Probably
| not.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| 130 million adults in the US have low literacy skills,
| meaning that more than half (54%) of Americans between the
| ages of 16 and 74 read below the equivalent of a sixth-
| grade level, according to a piece published in 2022 by APM
| Research Lab.
|
| https://www.apmresearchlab.org/10x-adult-literacy
|
| My note: critical thinking is not as prevalent as one might
| think, and there are also folks at various levels of gov
| and corp acting maliciously about the topic (fossil fuel
| consumption, climate change) due to entrenched interests.
| "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when
| his salary depends on his not understanding it."
| rayiner wrote:
| The map in your link suggests that low literacy rates are
| the result of states with large minority populations and
| immigrants. For example Iowa and Idaho have much higher
| literacy rates than say New York or California.
| Mississippi and Alabama have comparably low literacy
| rates to New York and California, but I'd hazard a guess
| that this is a product of their Democrat-voting minority
| population. Because it's not like education funding or
| anything like that otherwise distinguishes North Dakota
| from Alabama. So I'm not sure what point you're trying to
| get across here.
| osigurdson wrote:
| I don't like "most people are dumb" arguments. Most
| people have average intelligence (i.e. a normal
| distribution). It is generally most accurate to assume
| that "the masses" are just as smart as us - even if it
| hurts.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I don't like "most people are dumb" arguments. Most
| people have average intelligence
|
| "low literacy skills" or lacking "critical thinking" is a
| description of learning/education, not intelligence.
|
| > It is generally most accurate to assume that "the
| masses" are just as smart as us
|
| IF "us" refers to people of average intelligence only,
| this is accurate, though irrelevant here for the same
| reason as the preceding.
| [deleted]
| fbdab103 wrote:
| That the article did not make a bigger reference to
| immigrants makes me suspect. What are the percentages for
| native English speakers vs ESL? The states with the
| largest rates of Level 1 are all in the southwest where I
| expect there to be larger numbers of native-Spanish
| speakers.
| imtringued wrote:
| The politicians in Germany somehow believe in synthetic
| fuel...
|
| Hydrogen is difficult enough, adding carbon makes it
| absurd.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Yeah, it's a weird argument to make in public. It's an
| admission that you don't understand the difference between a
| binary/dichotomy and degrees.
| api wrote:
| Nothing is a "panacea."
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