this post was submitted on 28 May 2024
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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world.  About 1C of total warming.  Second chart:  about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability.  Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases.  About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

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While a Trump presidency couldn’t slam the brakes on the E.V. transition, it could throw enough sand in the gears to slow it down. And that might have significant consequences for the fight to stop global warming.

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 5 months ago (1 children)

How much greenhouses gasses could be reduced if we just glued Trump's mouth shut?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago

Honestly, his mouth is his biggest asset. If he didn’t have that mouth, more conservatives and independents would vote for him.

[–] tsonfeir 33 points 5 months ago

If you slam the brakes on an EV, it’s just going to generate more electricity. Good luuuck

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago (1 children)

"Slam" and "shred" in the same headline FFS

[–] General_Shenanigans 4 points 5 months ago

“Slam” was used too acceptably, so they had to come up with another.

[–] LifeLikeLady 14 points 5 months ago (5 children)

I own a Volt. But let's stop saying that EVs are going to stop global warming. Do they help after years of being on the road? Sure a little. But until China stops burning coal, Saudi Arabia quits drilling for oil, factory dairy farms shut down.

People over paying for a car isn't doing a damn thing.

Are they fun to drive? Yes. Can you save a few bucks on gas? Yep sort of. (Thanks new registration taxes) But other than that EVs are not saving the world. That's not even thinking about the mining required to make batteries, or the copper needed for the motors.

We need to hold these super polluters accountable, and stop expecting the little guy to bail us out of the problems they created.

[–] br3d 24 points 5 months ago (1 children)

And you don't see any link between ditching your ICE car and "Saudi Arabia quits drilling for oil"? Better to ditch your ICE car for no car, of course, but if you HAVE to have one, the smallest EV you can get away with is a step towards stopping that oil drilling. If everyone did it, that drilling would change dramatically

[–] [email protected] -2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Do you think it will work that way?

The more people switch to EVs the cheaper fuel will be, which incentivised people to drive ICE vehicles.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Fossil fuel extraction is an extreme economy of scale. This is only true to a point.

[–] br3d 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

More people driving EVs won't make (oil-based) fuel cheaper. Every person getting off oil makes producing oil-based fuels more expensive, as the economies of scale are reduced.

Go to extremes if that helps picture it: imagine you're suddenly the only person on Earth driving an ICE car. How much would you be paying for a fill-up, which now involves finding, extracting, shipping and refining fuel just for you: more than today or less than today?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Fuel prices halved during covid when everyone stayed home.

All the infrastructure is in place, the fuel needs to be sold.

Reduced demand will only reduce production of fuel from more expensive wells, like where the oil is more difficult to reach.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yeah but nobody retired a marginally profitable fuel refinery that became unprofitable during covid because they knew demand would return soon. The effect isn't instantaneous, but all the infrastructure has operation and maintenance costs. With fewer overall consumers all the overhead has to go somewhere eventually.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago

eventually

Yeah, but I think you might be waiting longer than you imagine.

There might be a long tail of barely profitable wells with low output, but I suspect the vast majority of current production can sustain a significant reduction in retail price and still be more profitable than simply capping the well.

Every person that switches to an EV increases the demand for electricity and reduces the demand for fuel.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (1 children)

That’s not even thinking about the mining required to make batteries, or the copper needed for the motors.

Yeah, but... that stuff isn't going away. In a couple decades when an EV's worn out, all the materials will still be there ready for recycling. It's not like coal and oil where we dig them up and then set them on fire and they're gone.

[–] Frozengyro 9 points 5 months ago

Don't worry, that coal and oil is still there too. Just hanging around in the air.

[–] SacralPlexus 12 points 5 months ago

You’re totally right I just want to mention one of their benefit which is the markedly decreased emissions from a smog standpoint! Some cities really struggle with this problem.

But from a climate change perspective you’re right.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

Can EVs reduce local emissions, and lead to improved air quality? Is air quality something we should be concerned about?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

EV's are also just as devastating to collective infrastructure as CE cars. They also won't change the fact that most packaging and plastic is still made from oil. They are a temporary patch, not a solution.

[–] Hildegarde 10 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Does he mean he's going to shred the 100% tariff? That seems to be core of biden's ev policy.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

The core policies are:

  • A subsidy which targets cheaper EVs to not-super-rich and limits it to cars with key components made in the US
  • An emissions rule which will effectively force a significant fraction of cars sold to be EVs in a few years
  • subsidies for new factories

Trump will surely get rid of those.

The tariff he hasn't really weighed in on; he seems to think of himself as a mercantilist, so he might keep it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Until bird flu somehow gets called Chyna virus.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

To be fair maybe he will also reverse the part where Biden removed eligibility from EV’s for the Tax credit that aren’t sourced from America.

Only bad thing he could do is remove the emissions regulations which weren’t even harsh.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

Great, let Trump and musk blow each other

's ambitions to hell.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Even if you don't care about electric cars this is still bullshit. Let them innovate, maybe they'll make them better and cheaper, then more people will start caring about electric cars.