Electric Vehicles a Flop?

[Son of A Tiger 561]

I don't have an EV and I'm not knocking them. But this is an interesting opinion piece. What do you think?

EV market could become the ‘next big flop’: Economist | Fox Business

[homersapien 11,373]

Myopic view.  But I do agree that more emphasis needs to be placed on hybrids as a transition technology.

Edited October 30, 2023 by homersapien

[AU9377 4,931]

1 hour ago, Son of A Tiger said:

I don't have an EV and I'm not knocking them. But this is an interesting opinion piece. What do you think?

EV market could become the ‘next big flop’: Economist | Fox Business

Advancement has to be made on battery technology and companies like Toyota are spending hundreds of millions on hydrogen fuel cell tech and other forms of tech as well.  Even so, I wouldn't call it a bust.  The price point is still prohibitive for most.

Their biggest selling point that doesn't get discussed much is the power they have and how fun they are to drive.   Ofcourse, that observation is made after driving a Tesla.  A Nissan Leaf may not be as fun on the road...

BP just ordered $100 million worth of superchargers from Tesla to expand their charging options.  I don't think they would be expanding in that direction if they didn't believe there would be a continued need.

https://www.carscoops.com/2023/10/bp-just-dropped-100-million-to-bring-tesla-superchargers-to-its-gas-stations/

Edited October 30, 2023 by AU9377

[Son of A Tiger 561]

1 minute ago, AU9377 said:

Advancement has to be made on battery technology and companies like Toyota are spending hundreds of millions on hydrogen fuel cell tech and other forms of tech as well.  Even so, I wouldn't call it a bust.  The price point is still prohibitive for most.

BP just ordered $100 million worth of superchargers from Tesla to expand their charging options.  I don't think they would be expanding in that direction if they didn't believe there would be a continued need.

https://www.carscoops.com/2023/10/bp-just-dropped-100-million-to-bring-tesla-superchargers-to-its-gas-stations/

FWIW, I have a grandson who works for General Motors in the battery area. He said some progress is being made on the life and cost of lithium batteries but there is a ways to go to make them economical. He said he wouldn't buy one now.  Then there is the disposal problem.

Hydrogen is a whole different ball game. I have my doubts it will ever be used in cars  for several reasons. Hydrogen fuel cells have a real safety problem and a hydrogen distribution system is not in the cards for a long time. Ford has admitted they are not likely to ever recover their investment in EVs so that may end up being the case for others.

[auburnatl1 4,914]

One other issue with EVs - big picture - what generates the electricity? It doesn’t come from magical pixies. Fossil fuels or nuclear with a very small portion from hydro and solar. I’m not picking on the tech and it’s part of the right strategic answer, but if we really want to solve carbon - power generation itself has to be addressed.

[homersapien 11,373]

Just now, auburnatl1 said:

One other issue with EVs - big picture - what generates the electricity? It doesn’t come from magical pixies. Fossil fuels or nuclear with a very small portion from hydro and solar. I’m not picking on the tech and it’s part of the right strategic answer, but if we really want to solve carbon - power generation itself has to be addressed.

For better or worse, nuclear.

[auburnatl1 4,914]

2 minutes ago, homersapien said:

For better or worse, nuclear.

The French would mostly agree.

[homersapien 11,373]

26 minutes ago, auburnatl1 said:

The French would mostly agree.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/10/30/climate-emergency-scientists-declaration/

Why many scientists are now saying climate change is an all-out ‘emergency’

Escalating rhetoric comes as new study shows there’s just six years left to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius at current CO2 emissions rate.

Bill Ripple had never been an activist.

The Oregon State University ecologist had spent his career wandering through the hills and canyons of Yellowstone National Park, tracking the health of wolves and other large carnivores. Nor was he particularly outspoken: As a college student, he was so concerned about taking a debate class that he considered dropping out and returning to his family farm.

But then, in 2018, Ripple saw pictures of a town called Paradise, Calif., completely destroyed by wildfire. Houses had disappeared in the blaze; all that remained were twisted hunks of metal and glass. Ripple started writing a new academic paper. He called it: “World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency.” He sent it to colleagues to see if anyone wanted to sign on. By the time the paper was published in the journal Bioscience in 2019, it had 11,000 signatures from scientists around the world — it now has more than 15,000.

“My life completely changed,” Ripple said. He is the subject of a 30-minute Oregon State University documentary; he gets constant media requests and calls to collaborate from scientists around the world. Last week, he published a new paper on the state of the climate system.

It was called “Entering Uncharted Territory.”

“Scientists are more willing to speak out,” Ripple said. “As a group, we’ve been pretty hesitant, historically.” But, he added, “I feel like scientists have a moral obligation to warn humanity.”

After a few years of record-breaking temperatures and extreme weather events, Ripple’s experience is a sign of how climate scientists — who once refrained from entering the public fray — are now using strident language to describe the warming planet. References to “climate emergency” and “climate crisis,” once used primarily by activist groups like the U.K.-based Extinction Rebellion or the U.S.-based Sunrise Movement, are spiking in the academic literature. Meanwhile, scientists’ communication to the media and the public has gotten more exasperated — and more desperate.

On Monday, scientists released a paper showing that the world’s “carbon budget” — the amount of greenhouse gas emissions the world can still emit without boosting global temperatures more than 1.5 degrees Celsius — has shrunk by a third. The world only has 6 years left at current emissions levels before racing past that temperature limit.

“There are no technical scenarios globally available in the scientific literature that would support that that is actually possible, or can even describe how that would be possible,” Joeri Rogelj, a climate scientist at Imperial College London, told reporters in a call.

Tim Lenton, one of the co-authors on Ripple’s most recent paper and a professor of earth system science at the University of Exeter, said that 2023 has been filled with temperatures so far beyond the norm that “they’re very hard to rationalize.” “This isn’t fitting a simple statistical model,” he said.

Lenton said he isn’t afraid to use terms like “emergency” or “climate and ecological crisis.” “If you say ‘urgent’ to a politician … that isn’t really enough,” he said.

The language has spilled into academic publications as well. As recently as 2015, only 32 papers in the Web of Science research database included the term “climate emergency.” In 2022, 862 papers contained the phrase.

After a few years of record-breaking temperatures and extreme weather events, Ripple’s experience is a sign of how climate scientists — who once refrained from entering the public fray — are now using strident language to describe the warming planet. References to “climate emergency” and “climate crisis,” once used primarily by activist groups like the U.K.-based Extinction Rebellion or the U.S.-based Sunrise Movement, are spiking in the academic literature. Meanwhile, scientists’ communication to the media and the public has gotten more exasperated — and more desperate.

On Monday, scientists released a paper showing that the world’s “carbon budget” — the amount of greenhouse gas emissions the world can still emit without boosting global temperatures more than 1.5 degrees Celsius — has shrunk by a third. The world only has 6 years left at current emissions levels before racing past that temperature limit.

“There are no technical scenarios globally available in the scientific literature that would support that that is actually possible, or can even describe how that would be possible,” Joeri Rogelj, a climate scientist at Imperial College London, told reporters in a call.

Tim Lenton, one of the co-authors on Ripple’s most recent paper and a professor of earth system science at the University of Exeter, said that 2023 has been filled with temperatures so far beyond the norm that “they’re very hard to rationalize.” “This isn’t fitting a simple statistical model,” he said.

Lenton said he isn’t afraid to use terms like “emergency” or “climate and ecological crisis.” “If you say ‘urgent’ to a politician … that isn’t really enough,” he said.

The language has spilled into academic publications as well. As recently as 2015, only 32 papers in the Web of Science research database included the term “climate emergency.” In 2022, 862 papers contained the phrase.

It wasn’t always this way. In the 2000s and even early 2010s, most scientists shied away making any statements that could be seen as “political” in nature. Jacquelyn Gill, a professor of climate science and paleoecology at the University of Maine, said that when she was doing her PhD in the late 2000s, senior academics warned her against deviating at all from the science when interacting with the media or the public.

“We were actively told if we start to talk about solutions, if we start to talk about the policy implications of our work, we will have abandoned our supposed ‘scientific neutrality,’” Gill said. “And then people will not trust us anymore on the science.”

Susan Joy Hassol, a science communication expert who has worked with climate researchers for years, says that even a decade ago, climate scientists were uncertain what their role was in communicating the dangers of rising temperatures. “I think at least some of them felt that scientists communicate through IPCC reports,” Hassol said, referring to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “‘We do our science, we publish, we put together these reports, and it’s kind of up to other people to listen.’”

Now, she said that has changed. “We have reached this stage of crisis,” she said.

It isn’t just the fact that emissions still aren’t going down — or that policy hasn’t responded quickly enough to the challenge. (Carbon dioxide emissions related to energy use have continued to climb, even following the brief downturn of the covid-19 pandemic.) As the impacts of climate change escalate, scientists say that their language has changed to meet the moment.

When it comes to terms like “climate emergency,” Gill says, “it’s a little bit of strategy and a lot of honesty.” While climate scientists are still discussing whether warming is accelerating, she added, “it’s clear the impacts are becoming more noticeable and in-your-face.”

Hassol said that the shift is simple. In the 2000s, she said, climate change wasn’t yet at the level of an emergency. She recalls a 2009 report called the Copenhagen Diagnosis, which analyzed climate science to date and made suggestions for how to reach net-zero carbon emissions. If world governments had acted swiftly, the world would have only had to cut emissions by a bit over 3 percent per year. “We called that the bunny slope,” Hassol recalled.

If, on the other hand, governments didn’t start the transition until 2020, cuts would have to be much steeper — up to 9 percent per year. “We called that the double-black diamond,” she said. Despite the brief respite in CO2 emissions during the pandemic, humanity’s trajectory has veered closer to the double-black diamond path.

At the same time, many scientists realize that even the best communication in the world isn’t enough to overcome the inertia of a fossil-fuel based system — and the resistance of various oil and gas companies.

“The problem is not that scientists haven’t been communicating clearly enough,” Hassol said. “We communicated pretty darn clearly. Anyone who wanted to hear the message — it was there.”

 

Edited October 30, 2023 by homersapien

[johnnyAU 3,630]

We aren't in a climate emergency or crisis. That is patently ridiculous.

However, the best answer for energy production in the future is nuclear with a blend of hydro, geothermal, solar, wind and yes, fossil fuels.  Trying to replace fossil fuels with predominantly wind and solar has always been a fool's errand.

[auburnatl1 4,914]

2 minutes ago, johnnyAU said:

We aren't in a climate emergency or crisis. That is patently ridiculous.

However, the best answer for energy production in the future is nuclear with a blend of hydro, geothermal, solar, wind and yes, fossil fuels.  Trying to replace fossil fuels with predominantly wind and solar has always been a fool's errand.

Do you believe it’s not a crisis because it’s not imminent, the whole thing is made up by liberals/ scientists, or that the earth is naturally going through climate change regardless of people? Just curious and not being argumentative. There is pretty rock solid science that co2 levels have increased steadily since the Industrial Revolution but I understand  many people don’t believe it’s a problem.

[johnnyAU 3,630]

CO2 levels have increased, but there's no proof that CO2 is the driver of climatic changes. We aren't in a "climate catastrophe", "climate crisis", "climate apocalypse", etc...Those hyperbolic terms are word salads for fear porn articles. 

A warmer climate is actually more beneficial than a colder one. Extreme cold kills many more people than extreme heat. The Earth naturally goes through warmer and colder cycles. We have adapted well over the last few hundred years, mostly through the use of technology driven by the use of affordable, reliable and available energy like coal, oil and natural gas. Trying to replace these with intermittent, unreliable sources like wind and solar is absolutely atrocious. Look at what's happened to places like Germany and Australia with skyrocketing energy prices.  

[Gowebb11 9,321]

2 hours ago, johnnyAU said:

CO2 levels have increased, but there's no proof that CO2 is the driver of climatic changes. We aren't in a "climate catastrophe", "climate crisis", "climate apocalypse", etc...Those hyperbolic terms are word salads for fear porn articles. 

A warmer climate is actually more beneficial than a colder one. Extreme cold kills many more people than extreme heat. The Earth naturally goes through warmer and colder cycles. We have adapted well over the last few hundred years, mostly through the use of technology driven by the use of affordable, reliable and available energy like coal, oil and natural gas. Trying to replace these with intermittent, unreliable sources like wind and solar is absolutely atrocious. Look at what's happened to places like Germany and Australia with skyrocketing energy prices.  

Yeah, but what would these folks know?

https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/17/do-scientists-agree-on-climate-change/ 

Edited October 31, 2023 by Gowebb11

[TexasTiger 12,866]

6 hours ago, Son of A Tiger said:

I don't have an EV and I'm not knocking them. But this is an interesting opinion piece. What do you think?

EV market could become the ‘next big flop’: Economist | Fox Business

It’s a question of pace and schedule, partly. Right now, unless you’re just driving around town or have the wealth to have different cars for different purposes, the nationwide infrastructure isn’t close to where it needs to be for EVs to be primary. I think hybrids deserve more focus in the immediate term.

[johnnyAU 3,630]

7 minutes ago, TexasTiger said:

the nationwide infrastructure isn’t close to where it needs to be for EVs to be primary

And it never will be using primarily wind and solar. 

[TexasTiger 12,866]

14 minutes ago, johnnyAU said:

And it never will be using primarily wind and solar. 

It will require significant advances.

[auburnatl1 4,914]

2 hours ago, johnnyAU said:

CO2 levels have increased, but there's no proof that CO2 is the driver of climatic changes. We aren't in a "climate catastrophe", "climate crisis", "climate apocalypse", etc...Those hyperbolic terms are word salads for fear porn articles. 

A warmer climate is actually more beneficial than a colder one. Extreme cold kills many more people than extreme heat. The Earth naturally goes through warmer and colder cycles. We have adapted well over the last few hundred years, mostly through the use of technology driven by the use of affordable, reliable and available energy like coal, oil and natural gas. Trying to replace these with intermittent, unreliable sources like wind and solar is absolutely atrocious. Look at what's happened to places like Germany and Australia with skyrocketing energy prices.  

Thanks. I I think if you look at Venus and the impact of co2 on its temperature  - it’s a monster greenhouse gas. I won’t argue if you think hotter is a good thing. We’ll find out.

Personally I think the unfortunate dynamic today is that it’s become political - one party goes passionate on a subject (any subject), the other instantly denies. Muscle memory.

[johnnyAU 3,630]

23 minutes ago, auburnatl1 said:

I I think if you look at Venus and the impact of co2 on its temperature

Venus has not only 96+% concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere as Earth, it's atmospheric pressure is over 90X that of the Earth, it's atmosphere is 100X thicker than the Earth's, and it has no ocean. Here, at .004%, CO2 isn't the issue, and it won't be at .005, .006 etc...

Edited October 31, 2023 by johnnyAU
Correction in data point

[johnnyAU 3,630]

32 minutes ago, TexasTiger said:

It will require significant advances.

It will require nuclear to be the primary source

[auburnatl1 4,914]

1 minute ago, johnnyAU said:

Venus has not only 90+X the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere as Earth, it's atmospheric pressure is over 90X that of the Earth, it's atmosphere is 100X thicker than the Earth's, and it has no ocean. Here, at .004%, CO2 isn't the issue, and it won't be at .005, .006 etc...

Fair. I wasnt directly comparing ours to a melting lead atmosphere. Just that less co2 generally is… better. 

 

[johnnyAU 3,630]

I do agree with regarding the political spectrum however. It does not appear our 2 parties will ever agree on anything again. 

[auburnatl1 4,914]

There’s hope. Clear both party’s extremes off the table (who have screwed up just about everything ) - lower the insults - the 2 parties aren’t as far apart as they think.

[TexasTiger 12,866]

30 minutes ago, johnnyAU said:

It will require nuclear to be the primary source

Perhaps. Again, technology advances. We have a lot of sunshine. Conversion & storage needs to advance considerably. Advances happen. I’m not anti-nuclear.

[auburnatl1 4,914]

1 minute ago, TexasTiger said:

Perhaps. Again, technology advances. We have a lot of sunshine. Conversion & storage needs to advance considerably. Advances happen. I’m not anti-nuclear.

The problem with fission is the whole damn process is dicey, including the waste. Which is a 10000 year storage hazard. Fusion will hopefully happen in the next 25 years.  Extreme science that would literally change everything. 

[jj3jordan 2,053]

10 hours ago, auburnatl1 said:

Fair. I wasnt directly comparing ours to a melting lead atmosphere. Just that less co2 generally is… better. 

 

Don’t forget co2 is the life giving gas for plants to grow. How much less? You have to be careful messing with nature. Kill off plants=less oxygen for animals. Vicious cycle caused by us could be our ultimate demise.

[auburnatl1 4,914]

2 hours ago, jj3jordan said:

Don’t forget co2 is the life giving gas for plants to grow. How much less? You have to be careful messing with nature. Kill off plants=less oxygen for animals. Vicious cycle caused by us could be our ultimate demise.

Animals have done the requisite trace co2 for a billion years. It’s the +500million cars and industry that’s kinda new to the planet. I’m not sure you’ll find many more co2 is our friend scientists.