Climate change and human responsibility

[Scroopy Noopers]

Originally Posted by zamler

Not a red herring there is no perfect location for a nuclear power plant. I am not against nuclear in fact all for it except the consequences of failure are too great IMO.

And the consequences of not going nuclear are much greater. In science’s opinion.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by zamler

Tell that to Japan they have changed their entire energy strategy due to Fukushima. 100,000 people were displaced the area is not inhabitable for 40 years or more. Over 500 people died.

And that should be compared to the direct and indirect deaths caused by air pollution due to coal.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents

In terms of deaths/PWh (PWh is 1,000,000 GWh) coal has 100,000/PWh whereas nuclear is 90. Roof top solar from mainly installer accidents is 440. That doesn’t include GHG affects just air quality affects.

We just are more shocked by capsthrophic events then Frog Boiling events.

[edslunch]

I was surprised to see Toyota promoting hydrogen fuel at the car show. Benefits: clean to use, can be produced from off peak electricity, fill the tank in <5 min, 500 km range for a hydrogen / battery hybrid.

[stone hands]

Originally Posted by zamler

Not a red herring there is no perfect location for a nuclear power plant. I am not against nuclear in fact all for it except the consequences of failure are too great IMO.

fukushima is like...hundreds of meters away from the ocean in a country that has a history of typhoons

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by edslunch

I was surprised to see Toyota promoting hydrogen fuel at the car show. Benefits: clean to use, can be produced from off peak electricity, fill the tank in <5 min, 500 km range for a hydrogen / battery hybrid.

Toyota has been working on hydrogen for probably 15 years.

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Toyota has been working on hydrogen for probably 15 years.

Yeah, and Japan in general is the torch-bearer for hydrogen. And while EVs have a major head start, they're still a niche, even in its largest market, China. And there are signs that China is planning to invest heavily into hydrogen as well after Premier Li Keqiang was impressed by the Toyota Mirai. They've already begun the process of severely reducing subsidies for EV.


https://www.theepochtimes.com/chinas...l_2865743.html

[SeeGeeWhy]

Nuclear is the way to go fo sho.

Even No Good David Staples recognizes the good work my company is doing to bring cheaper, safer, smaller, lower waste, higher utility nuclear to the table.

Fear not, new nuclear reactors can solve Canada's climate change crises

[Muta]

Originally Posted by SeeGeeWhy

Nuclear is the way to go fo sho.

Even No Good David Staples recognizes the good work my company is doing to bring cheaper, safer, smaller, lower waste, higher utility nuclear to the table.

Fear not, new nuclear reactors can solve Canada's climate change crises

Staples is just excited about getting a Fallout: Edmonton video game.

Although, Edmonton already looks like a wasteland without the nuclear backstory.

[Mathgod]

I don't see why we aren't much farther along with geothermal power than we currently are. Doing some rough calculations, there is enough thermal energy inside the Earth to power the world for billions of years, and that's not even taking into account chemical reactions in the Earth's core which generates even more energy. The thing is, we don't need billions of years of geothermal, we just need something like 50 years as a stop gap until we figure out hydrogen fusion.

[Muta]

I bet hydrogen fusion is already developed, but the oil, gas and non-renewable energy industries have been buying political favour for years to prevent its commercial release.

[zamler]

Japan's move to hydrogen is not so simple and probably not what you think.

https://www.greentechmedia.com/artic...s-the-next-lng

[Fuzz]

This was posted in the Tesla thread, but I thought it would be a good point of discussion here:


https://business.financialpost.com/t...ehicle-rebates


Are there any studies that show how beneficial these kind of rebates are to reducing CO2 emmisions? It kind of sounds like a lot of money given out, and private vehicles account for about 20% of our emmisions. I'm just wondering if this money would be better spent elsewhere.



The fact that all current electric vehicles are just replacing fairly fuel efficient cars at this point, is there a big gain to be made, or is this mostly marginal improvements for large amounts of money? At ~40 000 sales a year that's $200 million, not including provincial incentives. Now, I have to assume most of these 40 000 don't qualify, but when the prices do come down, is it a big benefit? What are the real CO2 reductions by this policy?


There was a CBC news story last night about Salt Spring Island and how it is a hotbed of electric cars, but you could probably get away with a golf cart there. Are we just going to be giving moeny away for these super short drives these people do that has a near zero effect on our emmisions?

[burn_this_city]

More people have died to Hydroelectric power than Nuclear.

[Fuzz]

Ah, ok here we go...this is a good news article on it:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/repo...ticle35418341/

And this looks to be a very good rundown of the numbers, definitely worth a read:
https://www.iedm.org/sites/default/f...ote0417_en.pdf

It is easy to calculate the cost of each tonne of GHGs not emitted thanks to these provincial programs by dividing the cost of the subsidy by the quantity of emissions avoided. We thus arrive at a total of $523 per tonne in Ontario and $288 per tonne in Quebec...probably well below the actual cost.
...

By subsidizing the purchase of electric cars, the Ontario government is paying 29 times more than the carbon market price per tonne of GHGs elimin-ated, and 52 times more than the future federal tax when it comes into effect next year. For Quebec, the corresponding figures are 16 and 29 times more. Even if we take the maximum amount of the carbon tax, namely $50 in 2022, electric vehicle subsidies remain the most expensive option by far.
...
CONCLUSION
Subsidies for the purchase of electric vehicles have little effect on GHG emissions and are much more expensive than other incentive measures that achievethe same results. Between different methods that produce the same results, the more expensive method should never be favoured. If the goal is to obtain the greatest emissions reductions for the amounts spent, then subsidies for the purchase of electric vehicles are actually the least efficient, most expensive way to get there. The Quebec and Ontario governments should abolish them.

Wow, I suspected it was a pretty inefficient method of reducing emmisions, I just didn't realize it was that bad. Maybe someone in government should look at the numbers before making feel good programs.

The interesting part is this acts as a pretty big subsidy for a company like Tesla, and Tesla also gets subsidized by selling emmisions credits to companies like FCA.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/8/18...missions-fines

Tesla is also bleeding cash. I'm dubious about how much benefit these electric vehicles actually have, and if there is an economic case for them at all, given the costs.

[Lanny_McDonald]

That's actually a pretty terrible article on the issue. It parrots the findings of the think tank article and does nothing to actually fully explore the claims. It is also tying two very separate issues together, which are unrelated.

Subsidies for buying electric vehicles is not related to the amount of GHG they reduce. Those subsidies are there to force adoption of a new technology in an attempt to gain public acceptance and establish critical mass where the product is purchased without said subsidy. Even the article states we have achieved that goal.

If the article was fair, they would look at actual subsidies paid to the various industries associated with the cost of building vehicles, building the infrastructure for them, and then the fuel for each of them. If they went down that rabbit hole I'm sure they would find a very different outcome than the one this "think tank" paper has to share, and would correct many of the inaccuracies (check the citations and references). I can't speak to the Canadian government and what they pay out in subsidies so I'll have to look at the US, where the numbers are little easier to come by. For example, three companies of interest to this issue, General Motors has received $3.5B in subsidies from the US government (that is 250,000 $14,000 EV subsidies), Royal Dutch Shell received 2.04B in subsidies (147,417 EVs), Dow Chemical received 1.4B in subsidies (100,000 EVs). Consider the top subsidy in the US is $7,500, and you can see an even larger scale of magnitude shift in those numbers.

Like the climate change issue, there is a cottage industry whose job it is to make sure that you keep buying the same products from the same companies you have been for decades. They have all the money and the power to pay for these think tanks to create information that muddies the facts. Its been going on for decades and with different industries. Cigarettes don't cause cancer and kill you! Doctors are just trying to deprive you of your lifestyle! There is no link between cigarettes and anything but good clean fun. Now light up that Marlboro and show what a man you are! Same game plan, just different causes now.

[Fuzz]

You missed the point of the article, that governments paying rebates for electric vehicles is a pretty inefficient way of reducing emmisions, which you can find in the conclusion. The point is that governments have limited moeny to spend on emmisions reductions, and paying rebates like this is fairly ineffective. Put it towards converting coal plants, building nuclear, building solar farms, whatever...but these rebates are not a good way to spend limited money.


The other underlying issues is that electric vehicles aren't affordable to be a sustainable industry without subsidies, which should be concerning becuase the current model isn't sustainable, and isn't attainable for the vast majority of consumers. There is no such thing as an a economy electric car. They are just to expensive to build.

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

You missed the point of the article, that governments paying rebates for electric vehicles is a pretty inefficient way of reducing emmisions, which you can find in the conclusion. The point is that governments have limited moeny to spend on emmisions reductions, and paying rebates like this is fairly ineffective. Put it towards converting coal plants, building nuclear, building solar farms, whatever...but these rebates are not a good way to spend limited money.


The other underlying issues is that electric vehicles aren't affordable to be a sustainable industry without subsidies, which should be concerning becuase the current model isn't sustainable, and isn't attainable for the vast majority of consumers. There is no such thing as an a economy electric car. They are just to expensive to build.

I think you missed the point. The subsidy is encourage adoption, not to act as an efficient drag on emissions. The efficient drag on emissions will come with broad adoption of the cleaner technology.

Electric vehicles are not affordable yet because there is not widespread adoption. Wide spread adoption will not happen until there is infrastructure. There will be no infrastructure investment until there is widespread adoption. That is where subsidies come into play. Encourage adoption to then encourage investment.

The only reason electric cars are expensive to build is the lack of supply channels for parts. Once demand for those parts increases more and more companies will start supplying parts, increasing competition and dropping the cost of parts. All of this is basic economics is it not?

[Fuzz]

You have been misled then. Electric cars aren't expensive for any of the reasons you mention. They are expensive because of the batteries. Adding more demand for expensive batteries won't reduce the cost, it could increase it as the materials to make them become more rare. The rest of the car, other than the motor, is just a car. Nothing complicated. Even the motor shouldn't be all that expensive. Yes, there are efficiencies to be found in battery manufacturing, but it's a fundamental limit that is going to prevent economy electric cars from existing until they find a cheaper battery. And very smart people have been worknig on it for decades, and this is the best we have, which just won't make the cut for mass adoption. 99% of people don't care what powers their car. They don't need to be incentivized becuase it is scary or new or whatever. They just need it affordable.

An electric car is virtually a cluster of battery packs on wheels. The Model S, the flagship of Tesla, has an electrical capacity of almost 60 kilowatt-hours, which means that nearly 42.25% of the car’s advertised retail price is attributed directly to its batteries. But all we can do is guess and do some crude calculations on the actual cost of a Tesla battery.

https://speakerspeakermusic.com/how-...-battery-cost/

[Leeman4Gilmour]

https://www.engineering.com/Electron...-Wreck-It.aspx

https://www.euronews.com/2019/03/21/...-international

Electric cars are not an environmental magic pill. At least in their current form. There's a net benefit by most accounts, from a ghg perspective, but I'm not convinced there's a net benefit from an overall environmental perspective.

[PaperBagger'14]

Originally Posted by Muta

Staples is just excited about getting a Fallout: Edmonton video game.

Although, Edmonton already looks like a wasteland without the nuclear backstory.

I'll now replay fallout 4 and if I see any deathclaws in sweatpants I'll post a screenshot