Quote:
Originally Posted by #-3
I spent far to much time thinking about this, because I was think I answered a little harshly yesterday, but I was a little annoyed that you expressed confidence that my numbers were not only wrong but cut directly against common wisdom, and demanded that I source my information following common wisdom, which I admit was my appealing to expertise and reciting numbers for environmental scientists on podcasts. So I did a simple google search "EV vs ICEV life time emissions", and the first 4 hits were literally articles focused on debunking the myth you were demanding I provide sourcing to disprove, which means you are not holding yourself to the standard that you are holding me to, and sourcing the information that you confidently espouse. Further your claim is the one that cuts against common wisdom and should carry a higher burden of proof, and in the future if you think it is a fun and interesting fact that common society is wrong about one of the innovations it is excited about, you should check that you are right before publicly pushing the claim.
But I did consider the alternative claim that not emissions, but land use would be worse for an EV, and it seemed slightly more credible to me, so this morning I took the time to look and found relatively little directly addressing the lift time land use question. I will caveat the fact that because I cannot find good articles directly comparing the two, I asked ChatGPT to search the web and come up with an estimate. It warned me that these estimate could vary in extreme ways depending on the source of resource extraction, but came up with this;
So I had very strong priors in favor of EVs in terms of GHGs, and I was agnostic about EVs vs ICEVs in terms of land uses. This answer from ChatGPT and the fact that ICEVs require recurring life time land use, slightly tip the scales in favor of EVs for land use as well, in terms of my estimation for land use. So in the future when someone is making claims of about the open pit lithium mines, I am probably going to hold them to the standard of proving that those add up to more land use than fuel extraction. I really appreciate the concern for the environmental impacts of EVs, but I get really annoyed when the concern is solely and firmly routed in a desire to ignore the environmental impacts of traditional fuels, I don't know if it is motivation be a subconscious concern for the industry one is supported by, fear of changing technology and a desire to be contrarian and privy to special knowledge that others around you are not. But I am sure that most of the people who smugly say EVs are just as bad are engaged in some form of motivated reasoning, and are at the very least cherry picking their sourcing, if not spreading anecdotes without bothering to source them.
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Thanks for the thoughtful post and reply again. I was pretty drunk when I wrote my original reply lol. Sorry about the aggressiveness.
However to extend this discussion, and to your point expecting you to do all the work is unfair, I went and reviewed a recent report sent my way for work. It is an annual energy research paper written and researched by Michael Cembalest of JP Morgan. He interviewed and consulted with Vaclav Smil amongst other researchers and drawn from actual empirical data.
In the report he writes about CO2 emissions in comparison between ICE and PHEV cars. I’ll leave the quote here below and would post the chart but not too sure how… (sorry I am not good at that type of thing / don’t care enough).
“
CO2 emissions reductions from PHEVs appear to be overstated. As shown in the first chart, empirically measured
PHEV emissions per km in Europe are not that different than internal combustion engine cars and well above initial
EU estimates. The second chart uses real-world data from commercial settings and highlights the issue of driver
behavior: the average PHEV is used more like an ICE car most of the time, rather than being battery-powered.”
The chart then depicts that original EU estimates for PHEV’s had about ~40 grams CO2 per km, when in actuality based on what happened in Europe the data shows about 180 for ICE and 145 for PHEV’s real world.
That’s real data so your point stands in that EVs are superior however the emissions benefits likely vastly overstated. Perhaps Tesler in particular has a way of getting the emissions down or improving on whatever happened in Europe but considering Musk is a Nazi grifting piece of #### I have my doubts he actually gives a rats ass about the planet and making sure Tesler emissions substantially shrink beyond what European EVs are capable of.