Author Topic: heartbroken that John Clauser seems to have joined climate change denial.  (Read 31476 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Online Siwastaja

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 9337
  • Country: fi
Not burning fossil fuel is an effective measure against CO2 rise.  You on  board ?
How do you get a democratic society to voluntarily accept extra costs and hardship without explaining  ( fearmongering )  the risks.   We don't seem to mind a little fearmongering when war is afoot.

I might be a closet optimist, but by offering alternatives and showing how they are superior. This is already happening with electric vehicles. People only need to look at George Bush / Vladimir Putin and they understand fossil fuels come with other costs than this abstract concept of climate change. The ball is rolling very well without fearmongering. On the other hand, we are wasting mental resources in stuff like making a huge deal out of replacing plastic drinking straws, which could have been simply recycled into energy, offsetting other fossil fuel use directly, with paper based alternatives which end up in whatever waste.

Or we make a big deal out of replacing cow milk with plant based substitutes which have been independently shown to produce no less CO2 emissions than the dairy product when the cattle is fed with modern animal feed (Merja Saarinen, Natural Resources Institute Finland). Even if the feed is not optimized, in big picture this is totally insignificant.

Again, we must concentrate our efforts in HVAC of buildings and road transport of people and goods, and this is exactly what many of us are working on.

Quote
Lets review the issue with Mr Clauser.  He is cozying up to a petroleum industry supported group that spreads climate BS.

I would rather look at what he is saying than who you think he is friends with; identity politics is dangerous. The excerpts as quoted in this thread seemed completely reasonable to me. Maybe he is wrong on something; it's not the end of the world and he doesn't need to get cancelled for that. For that matter, remember that scaremongers get a lot of facts wrong all the time, too, yet you don't see anyone wanting to cancel them.

Quote
I haven't identified ANYONE on this board in any posting.  How are you imagining who I am targeting?

It doesn't matter - you name-called in plural so at least two people, and I did read every message on this thread and I don't think anyone deserved that name calling. Everyone else has been acting civil about this. This is why I wrote my comment. Had I seen truly hostile comments against you, I would have assumed you referred to them, and would have not commented.

I also commented about your behavior because your opening post itself was about your feelings against a certain person, not as much climate change itself.
« Last Edit: August 02, 2023, 05:06:02 pm by Siwastaja »
 
The following users thanked this post: RAPo

Online Siwastaja

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 9337
  • Country: fi
And BTW, fear, fear-induced adrenalin and cortisol are good drivers in acute crisis situations like being chased by a wild boar or something. They are completely counter-productive in long-term situations because cortisol slowly incapacitates, and that "long-term" means something that lasts longer than a few hours or days. Based on how human hormone system and basic psychology works, if we want to solve the "climate crisis" that must happen through positive engineering. Instead, we are incapacitating the whole next generation by telling them they have no hope, and that boycotting education somehow helps.

We need to wake up and understand that we are actually on the right track already, and keep focused on the right things. If you tell people that the hope is already basically lost, what motivation they have to fix things? I can see signs in our societies that we are in the "party until the end" mode. Normal people are now encouraged to take more and more debt, use drugs, sell your body (if you are a woman, instead of educating yourself) for some more partying money. But I admit there might be an observation bias here, maybe this is nothing new, so take this comment with a grain of salt as a discussion opener (i.e., I'm asking if others are seeing this pattern).
« Last Edit: August 02, 2023, 05:19:13 pm by Siwastaja »
 
The following users thanked this post: RAPo

Offline nctnico

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 28429
  • Country: nl
    • NCT Developments
The politics of "climate change" are going to far, just like woke did, and just like covid did. And it's going to end just as badly.
True. In the Netherlands there are no middle ground political parties left to vote for. Either you vote for capitalists, leftists /socialists, greenists or ban-islam-ists.
« Last Edit: August 02, 2023, 07:21:10 pm by nctnico »
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline nctnico

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 28429
  • Country: nl
    • NCT Developments
scientists as a group will have to come to some sort of consensus on what is the 'truth of the day'.

No, I strongly disagree. This is not the job of scientists as a group to do. To decide what to do is politics, and politics can be based on science, but it's still not science.

For science, it's completely OK to say "we don't have truth of the day about this". This is also the job of science. Coming up with some kind of compromise middle ground or consensus is pseudo science.
It is not pseudo science, it is a snapshot. A long time ago people thought the earth was flat (snapshot 1), then they realised that based on scientific evidence the earth is a sphere (snapshot 2). After another while due to improvement measurement techniques it turns out the earth is not a perfect sphere, but sphere shaped (snapshot 3). How close to a perfect sphere? Last time I checked nobody seems to know.

It always works like this: scientists do research and publish results. Then commities like IPCC, WHO, national health institutes, SI organisation, etc, etc sift through it to figure out which results have merit or not. From this sifting process, you get reports which are used by governments to base their policies on (which are based on reports from a wide variety of research fields).

You can probably find scientific proof that de best thing to do for the planet is kill 95% of the human population. A less extreme example is from today's paper: a German scientists claims that increasing the fuel price to 100 euro per liter would stop people from using a car. It doesn't take a genious to figure out that doing that would bring the economy to a grinding halt because people need cars to get to their work.

In the end the choice is up to the politicians but they will need decent input to base their decission on.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 
The following users thanked this post: tom66

Offline PlainName

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 7509
  • Country: va
The ball is rolling very well without fearmongering. On the other hand, we are wasting mental resources in stuff like making a huge deal out of replacing plastic drinking straws, which could have been simply recycled into energy, offsetting other fossil fuel use directly, with paper based alternatives which end up in whatever waste.

Plastic is generally made from a finite resource, isn't it? So 'recycling into energy' would be a net loss and we'd have to make more of it. In contrast, paper is pretty much zero sum in that the waste can be used to grow more (or we can 'recycle into energy'). Whatever, the massive garbage patch in the middle of the Pacific doesn't seem to have much paper since it's biodegradable, but there is lots of plastic.

If the root problem is that we're not turning plastic into energy then we surely need to start doing that. Or reusing it instead of creating more.

Elsewhere in the thread someone says:

Quote from: Someone else
My bank sent me a new card, from recycled plastic. Great, all that 10g plastic saved.

That seems to be a common mindset, but what's missed is that there are over twenty-two billion cards in circulation, so at 10g apiece that's potentially 2,000,000,000Kg of plastic reused instead of floating around the oceans, and a consequent reduction in raw materials. Halve it because of the chip (though many cards are plain plastic) and it's still 'quite a lot'.

This is how we got into this mess in the first place - some person or family or even town polluting the place has little effect, but industrialise that process and replicate it by a huge amount and it starts to affect even the biggest unmovable things. To counter it, doesn't that suggest a similar effort in the other direction is required?

On the one hand, none of us is going to have any detectable effect on anything, but all of us could make the difference. And this seems to be where we will end up because there cannot be consensus so 'all' will only ever be a tiny subset. Unless something really dramatic turns up, and I think it will be too late then.
 
The following users thanked this post: NiHaoMike, thm_w

Offline Zero999

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 20363
  • Country: gb
  • 0999
Ok,  I get it.

Most here believe that CO2 is causing problems by disturbing our climate but it just isn't worth doing much about since the end outcome of burning all the fossil fuel in the ground will just be some "weather".

I hope your right,  cause that is exactly what we are going to do.
Burning fossil fuels have been responsible for the greatest rise in living standards ever. There is no way to stop using them, given today's technology, without a huge reduction in living standards, which would disproportionately affect the poor and minorities. An authoritarian government would be required to achieve such a goal and I'm far more fearful of that, than I am higher temperatures and precipitation, which will save more lives, than it would take.

I'm not saying we should emit greenhouses willy nilly. If it's easy to find an alternative, then it makes sense, but the damaging net zero targets should end. Invest in nuclear energy would be a start. Solar doesn't make any sense for much of the northern hemisphere, as it doesn't work in winter, when it's most needed. Wind is good, but improvements need to be made on turbine recycling.
 
The following users thanked this post: .RC.

Online SiliconWizard

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 15802
  • Country: fr
Ok,  I get it.

Most here believe that CO2 is causing problems by disturbing our climate but it just isn't worth doing much about since the end outcome of burning all the fossil fuel in the ground will just be some "weather".

I hope your right,  cause that is exactly what we are going to do.
Burning fossil fuels have been responsible for the greatest rise in living standards ever. There is no way to stop using them, given today's technology, without a huge reduction in living standards, which would disproportionately affect the poor and minorities. An authoritarian government would be required to achieve such a goal and I'm far more fearful of that, than I am higher temperatures and precipitation, which will save more lives, than it would take.

Yes. Absolutely. The times when we were "carbon neutral" and only using renewables was most of humanity before discovering fossil fuels.
Fossil fuels have allowed us to get where we are now. Including obviously the growth of the world's population.

I'm not saying we should emit greenhouses willy nilly. If it's easy to find an alternative, then it makes sense, but the damaging net zero targets should end. Invest in nuclear energy would be a start. Solar doesn't make any sense for much of the northern hemisphere, as it doesn't work in winter, when it's most needed. Wind is good, but improvements need to be made on turbine recycling.

Yes, and I'm pretty sure we can do much better over time as long as we invest (wisely) in that. Absolutely no doubt about it.

Disclaimer: the following is 100% only opinion.
My opinion on this is that the most pressing goal of many of the leaders of this "climate change movement" is not to lower our emissions or become carbon-neutral, but it is to drastically reduce the human population, and that's consistent with what you mentioned above: the first, immediate effect of drastically reducing our use of fossil fuels is not going to be less CO2 in the atmosphere (which has big inertia), but a drastic reduction of standards of living and relatively rapidly, of the overall population.

« Last Edit: August 02, 2023, 09:30:16 pm by SiliconWizard »
 

Online tautech

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 29813
  • Country: nz
  • Taupaki Technologies Ltd. Siglent Distributor NZ.
    • Taupaki Technologies Ltd.
Wind is good, but improvements need to be made on turbine recycling.
Yep, another inconvenient truth.

Avid Rabid Hobbyist.
Some stuff seen @ Siglent HQ cannot be shared.
 

Offline thm_w

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 7527
  • Country: ca
  • Non-expert
Disclaimer: the following is 100% only opinion.
My opinion on this is that the most pressing goal of many of the leaders of this "climate change movement" is not to lower our emissions or become carbon-neutral, but it is to drastically reduce the human population, and that's consistent with what you mentioned above.

Makes no sense, you are entering conspiracy territory. Many countries try to encourage higher birth rates and straight up give you money for having a child.

Wind is good, but improvements need to be made on turbine recycling.
Yep, another inconvenient truth.

Wind turbines can pay back in terms of co2 in less than a year.
Saying improvements *need* to be made an odd statement. Should recycling be improved? Yes. Should we stop deploying wind turbines in their current form due to existing recycling methods being difficult? no, not at all.

https://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/2021/10/13/wind-turbine-never-generate-much-energy-cost-build/8423146002/
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frsus.2022.1060130/full
"The results demonstrate that the payback periods are much lower than the lifetime of the wind turbine, the important role of EPBT and GPBT in addressing climate change and energy savings."
Profile -> Modify profile -> Look and Layout ->  Don't show users' signatures
 

Offline coppice

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 10035
  • Country: gb
Ok,  I get it.

Most here believe that CO2 is causing problems by disturbing our climate but it just isn't worth doing much about since the end outcome of burning all the fossil fuel in the ground will just be some "weather".

I hope your right,  cause that is exactly what we are going to do.
Burning fossil fuels have been responsible for the greatest rise in living standards ever. There is no way to stop using them, given today's technology, without a huge reduction in living standards, which would disproportionately affect the poor and minorities. An authoritarian government would be required to achieve such a goal and I'm far more fearful of that, than I am higher temperatures and precipitation, which will save more lives, than it would take.

I'm not saying we should emit greenhouses willy nilly. If it's easy to find an alternative, then it makes sense, but the damaging net zero targets should end. Invest in nuclear energy would be a start. Solar doesn't make any sense for much of the northern hemisphere, as it doesn't work in winter, when it's most needed. Wind is good, but improvements need to be made on turbine recycling.
Its not just living standards. Its population. 1/2 the nitrogen in your body is said to have been through the Haber process. Before that was developed limited high fertility resources, like guano, were being depleted rapidly, as technology allowed the population to grow rapidly after 1769 (i.e. James Watt's key patent). If you want to run down fossil fuel consumption faster than alternatives can be developed and deployed you are calling for mass murder. The world's population is going to decline massively over the next century. Some countries are likely to have less than 10% of their current population, unless their is a massive reversal in current trends. I don't want to see a population reduction by mass starvation.

 

Online tautech

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 29813
  • Country: nz
  • Taupaki Technologies Ltd. Siglent Distributor NZ.
    • Taupaki Technologies Ltd.
Q's to all
1. Can the lunar orbit affect our weather ?
2. What rare lunar event occured in 2023 ?

The effects of this event took some years to peak and will take some years to wane.
Are scientists factoring these uncontrollable factors into any climate calculations ?

Avid Rabid Hobbyist.
Some stuff seen @ Siglent HQ cannot be shared.
 

Offline thm_w

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 7527
  • Country: ca
  • Non-expert
Q's to all
1. Can the lunar orbit affect our weather ?
2. What rare lunar event occured in 2023 ?

The effects of this event took some years to peak and will take some years to wane.
Are scientists factoring these uncontrollable factors into any climate calculations ?

A few seconds of google would answer your question: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/may/12/how-the-moon-influences-temperatures-on-earth

Quote
According to Hawkins’ paper, these lunar cycles can heat or cool the globe by about 0.04C at their extremes. That’s imperceptibly small to humans, but enough to influence climate change modelling. In particular, the effect may help explain an apparent slowdown in warming in the 2000s, and could fractionally increase warming in the 2030s.
Profile -> Modify profile -> Look and Layout ->  Don't show users' signatures
 

Online tautech

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 29813
  • Country: nz
  • Taupaki Technologies Ltd. Siglent Distributor NZ.
    • Taupaki Technologies Ltd.
Q's to all
1. Can the lunar orbit affect our weather ?
2. What rare lunar event occured in 2023 ?

The effects of this event took some years to peak and will take some years to wane.
Are scientists factoring these uncontrollable factors into any climate calculations ?

A few seconds of google would answer your question: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/may/12/how-the-moon-influences-temperatures-on-earth

Quote
According to Hawkins’ paper, these lunar cycles can heat or cool the globe by about 0.04C at their extremes. That’s imperceptibly small to humans, but enough to influence climate change modelling. In particular, the effect may help explain an apparent slowdown in warming in the 2000s, and could fractionally increase warming in the 2030s.
Did I mention heating/cooling effects, no and for good reason.

Instead the lunar effect on weather that is now falsely linked to Gobull warming is where you need focus your studies along with the 2023 major lunar event.
Avid Rabid Hobbyist.
Some stuff seen @ Siglent HQ cannot be shared.
 

Online tom66

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 7336
  • Country: gb
  • Electronics Hobbyist & FPGA/Embedded Systems EE
Q's to all
1. Can the lunar orbit affect our weather ?
2. What rare lunar event occured in 2023 ?

The effects of this event took some years to peak and will take some years to wane.
Are scientists factoring these uncontrollable factors into any climate calculations ?

A few seconds of google would answer your question: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/may/12/how-the-moon-influences-temperatures-on-earth

Quote
According to Hawkins’ paper, these lunar cycles can heat or cool the globe by about 0.04C at their extremes. That’s imperceptibly small to humans, but enough to influence climate change modelling. In particular, the effect may help explain an apparent slowdown in warming in the 2000s, and could fractionally increase warming in the 2030s.

It's almost as if climate scientists know what they're talking about, being that they study the climate for their whole professional lives.  Crazy, right?

Another factor:  human emissions of aerosols are accounted for.  These slightly cool the climate, by around 0.1-0.2C.  It buys us about 5 extra years of inaction.  And yes, there have been studies on whether releasing aerosols to fix the climate is an option.  It's a pretty desperate one, and does nothing for ocean acidification, but if carbon emissions don't slow down it may be our only option.
 
The following users thanked this post: thm_w

Offline thm_w

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 7527
  • Country: ca
  • Non-expert
Did I mention heating/cooling effects, no and for good reason.

Instead the lunar effect on weather that is now falsely linked to Gobull warming is where you need focus your studies along with the 2023 major lunar event.

People who are actually interested in discussion don't disguise their point. If you want to make a claim, do it directly, and provide some recognized form of evidence.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210820-the-subtle-influence-of-the-moon-on-earths-weather
https://www.washington.edu/news/2016/01/29/phases-of-the-moon-affect-amount-of-rainfall/

There is no real useful discussion happening in this thread.
Profile -> Modify profile -> Look and Layout ->  Don't show users' signatures
 

Offline snarkysparkyTopic starter

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 419
  • Country: us
I REallllly didn't want to discuss the varied theories of global warming.

The psychological aspect is infinitely more interesting.  Why people take the positions they do, and how inflexible they become.

What are their motivations?

Reminder of my original point.  A giant of early quantum mechanics theory has gone to align himself with a political propaganda organization.

Does Clauser really believe the outcome of unregulated burning of fossil fuels will only be a small matter and that the main goal should be the concern for all those who are suffering from want of food and warmth.  I get that there is massive suffering in the world. Seems easy to fix if we wanted to without burning massive amounts of CO2.


 

Offline EEVblog

  • Administrator
  • *****
  • Posts: 39026
  • Country: au
    • EEVblog
Does Clauser really believe the outcome of unregulated burning of fossil fuels will only be a small matter and that the main goal should be the concern for all those who are suffering from want of food and warmth.  I get that there is massive suffering in the world. Seems easy to fix if we wanted to without burning massive amounts of CO2.

There is a good chance that there isn't. There are many countries with massive populations that are poor. Coal and gas are cheap.
Even "rich" countries like China are sticking with coal. Two new plants per week it seems:
https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/china-permits-two-new-coal-power-plants-per-week-in-2022/
 

Offline EEVblog

  • Administrator
  • *****
  • Posts: 39026
  • Country: au
    • EEVblog
Also, when it comes to "global warming", has anyone stopped to consider the ultimate technical question, can we actually measure and track the temperature of the the globe accurately?
How do we know we are doing it accurately? How accurately exactly?

NOTE: I am NOT syaing that the globe is not warming, I'm just asking the technical question, how do we measure this, and with what degree of precision and reliability. Because, AFAIK, everything hinges on that.
And maybe, is it excessive technical hubris to think we can even do that at all?
« Last Edit: August 03, 2023, 04:50:32 am by EEVblog »
 
The following users thanked this post: RAPo

Online tautech

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 29813
  • Country: nz
  • Taupaki Technologies Ltd. Siglent Distributor NZ.
    • Taupaki Technologies Ltd.
Also, when it comes to "global warming", has anyone stopped to consider the ultimate technical question, can we actually measure and track the temperature of the the globe accurately?
How do we know we are doing it accurately? How accurately exactly?
Yep, this is the crux of this matter especially when historical climate data has been cleansed to properly fit climate models and agendas.
Avid Rabid Hobbyist.
Some stuff seen @ Siglent HQ cannot be shared.
 

Online tautech

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 29813
  • Country: nz
  • Taupaki Technologies Ltd. Siglent Distributor NZ.
    • Taupaki Technologies Ltd.
Did I mention heating/cooling effects, no and for good reason.

Instead the lunar effect on weather that is now falsely linked to Gobull warming is where you need focus your studies along with the 2023 major lunar event.

People who are actually interested in discussion don't disguise their point. If you want to make a claim, do it directly, and provide some recognized form of evidence.
the-subtle-influence-of-the-moon-on-earths-weather[/b]]https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210820-the-subtle-influence-of-the-moon-on-earths-weather
https://www.washington.edu/news/2016/01/29/phases-of-the-moon-affect-amount-of-rainfall/

There is no real useful discussion happening in this thread.
Yeah well neither of those www links are any revelation to those that spent a lifetime on the land.

Again I ask have the lunar effects on the earth been factored into climatic models and if not why not ?
Might they blow off the Gobull warming agenda if they did ?

Knowing the moon impacts on worldwide weather and the major 2023 lunar event which took decades to build and will take decades to wane has impacted NZ with climate extremes in 2023 seems a little too coincidental IMO however the next few years as weather patterns settle again will demonstrate the inaccuracies of climate modelling.
« Last Edit: August 03, 2023, 07:38:34 am by tautech »
Avid Rabid Hobbyist.
Some stuff seen @ Siglent HQ cannot be shared.
 

Offline vad

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 518
  • Country: us
The climate has always been changing. That is a well-known fact.

Nobody is arguing otherwise, but climate skeptics love their strawmen with this statement.  The question is not whether the climate is warming or cooling, but whether it is warming or cooling too much, and it appears that it is, and that humans are the direct cause of the vast majority of that warming.
Claiming that there is 'too much' warming is an unscientific statement. Climate alarmists usually support such statements by comparing the current temperatures to cherry-picked points in time when the annual average atmospheric temperature was at its minimum in the history of observations or by referencing cherry-picked minimum estimates of historical temperatures before systematic instrumental readings began. Additionally, when presenting estimated historical data, the alarmists conveniently omit showing error ranges on hockey stick charts, which can impact the overall perspective of the data.

As a physicist by education, I find it concerning when someone who claims to be a scientist presents their measurements or model predictions without including error bars on their charts.

I do not see how burning hydrocarbons to mine, refine and transport elements for EV battery production helps in reducing CO2 emissions.

Surely you can see the simple relation of fixed cost + ongoing cost,  it is not just a fixed cost.  Call it K1+nK2,  and K3+nK4 is cost of fossil car, both sum of manufacturing and running emissions over 'n' years,  if K1+nK2 is less than K3+nK4 then extra CO2 emissions to produce EV batteries can  be a net winner.

In Europe the figure 'n' is about 2-3 years for EV batteries.  In China it is closer to 3-4 years due to higher levels of coal on Chinese powergrid.  Still, a car lasts ~15 years, so generally a winner.

Indeed, the question of the million (or billion) tons of CO2 is closely tied to the K1...K4 factors. However, we must approach the estimates provided by BEV manufacturers' lobby with caution as they may not be entirely reliable. Independent sources suggest that accurate estimations are challenging, often leading to wide ranges for the carbon footprint of BEV batteries. Some estimates place the carbon footprint at around 100-200 kg of CO2 per kWh of battery.

Taking the average value of 150 kg/kWh, we can calculate that a typical small sedan BEV, like the Tesla Model 3 with an 82 kWh battery, emits approximately 12 metric tons of CO2 during the production of its battery.

To put this in perspective, burning one gallon of petrol produces about 9 kg of CO2. Thus, the production of the Model 3's battery is equivalent to burning about 1,300 gallons of petrol.

Comparing this to a modern ICE vehicle, like the VW Jetta with a mileage of 35 mpg, it would drive about 45,000 miles (approximately 75,000 km) on 1,300 gallons of petrol.

Considering that the average annual mileage driven in the EU is 11,300 km, a brand new Tesla Model 3 causes as much CO2 pollution as the average similar-sized car in the EU over a span of 6.5 years. In China, the time frame is also 6.5 years, while in the US, it's 3.5 years.

However, it's important to remember that we have only addressed the impact of K1 and K3 variances here. K2 and K4 remain unexplored factors. In countries like China, Russia, and India, where fossil fuels dominate electric generation, Tesla is unlikely to catch up with comparable ICE vehicles before the battery needs replacement or the vehicle is scrapped.

Furthermore, we must not ignore the additional resources required for BEV infrastructure, such as new generation plants, charging stations, grid enhancements, transformer upgrades, etc. This leads to doubts about whether the BEV revolution will significantly reduce the carbon footprint of car transportation at all.

If you, unlike me, are concerned about CO2 emissions and believe that moderate climate warming is harmful to the planet, it's worth considering the implications before investing in a BEV. Choosing to keep your current ICE vehicle may at least spread the release of CO2 over many years.
« Last Edit: August 03, 2023, 04:44:53 am by vad »
 
The following users thanked this post: Dr. Frank

Online Siwastaja

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 9337
  • Country: fi
It is not pseudo science, it is a snapshot. A long time ago people thought the earth was flat (snapshot 1), then they realised that based on scientific evidence the earth is a sphere (snapshot 2). After another while due to improvement measurement techniques it turns out the earth is not a perfect sphere, but sphere shaped (snapshot 3). How close to a perfect sphere? Last time I checked nobody seems to know.

Now here's the thing: during snapshot 1, if you wrote a paper which disagreed with "scientific consensus" of earth being flat, you were "cancelled". During snapshots 2 and 3, this was not the case anymore; the driving reason why we were able to create a better model and understand the Earth was a sphere was the change in attitudes, allowing differing viewpoints no matter how ridiculous and against the consensus they could have been.

Now during our current snapshot, we are getting back in the middle ages. That's my point, this "strong consensus" through political / social means is both old and new thing, but IMHO doesn't belong to science, and actually hinders the process of creating a better model of the truth.

Yes! Ignoring what I personally think is the truth and just looking at the discussion dynamics and scientific process, I'm really saying sphere-earthists of the middle ages were the climate change denials of today: both were/are being silenced because the "scientific community" is so damn sure about their own right-being, because otherwise is a disgrace.

But we can choose to disagree.
« Last Edit: August 03, 2023, 05:06:28 am by Siwastaja »
 

Online Siwastaja

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 9337
  • Country: fi
Plastic is generally made from a finite resource, isn't it? So 'recycling into energy' would be a net loss and we'd have to make more of it.

The point is: we are burning massive amounts of fossil fuels anyway. Any even remotely realistic model is only about reducing this amount, maybe even significantly, maybe even by 90%. And you don't have to go to zero fossil fuels to solve the CO2 issue, that's just ridiculous. When we accept this premise, then recycling plastic as energy directly offsets the need of burning similar amount of raw fossil fuel, bringing net loss of the material itself to zero. What remains is the environmental cost (mostly energy) of turning oil into a finished plastic product, but I think it's probably even less than turning wood into a paper straw (I think the chemical process of making plastics is not that energy intensive; it's only the material itself which contains a lot of energy; I could be wrong).

Quote
In contrast, paper is pretty much zero sum in that the waste can be used to grow more

This paper waste recycles poorly in practice. It ends up mixed with biowaste, plastic, metal and whatever, gets wet and smushy, and just decays somewhere, releasing the CO2 into the atmosphere (this is even the advertised point, biodegradability). Which then surely can be used to grow more trees, but then again the same people who call for paper straws also call stopping using the forests for paper production, because, and I can very well understand their point, it is easy to just cut more forest than you plant.

Recycling newspapers etc. seems to work quite well at least here, but paper straws are not even allowed in the same process and even if they were no one would collect them separately, they go in mixed waste.

Quote
Whatever, the massive garbage patch in the middle of the Pacific doesn't seem to have much paper since it's biodegradable, but there is lots of plastic.

Yet, plastic as used by me never ever goes there. This is exactly like saying knives must be banned because some people commit crimes with them. The problem is, even if we reduce plastic use, those who put their plastic into the Pacific won't do that.

Quote
If the root problem is that we're not turning plastic into energy then we surely need to start doing that.

It's not the root problem; this is a tiny distraction, it's a tertiary thing to optimize; yet I again made the mistake of going on with this discussion. In reality we should really concentrate on HVAC and transport primarily, and industrial and agricultural processes secondarily. Everything else is too small to matter.

Amdahl's law applies here, too! People think that combining many small action makes a total large impact, but this depends on how small those actions are and how many of them. These tertiary-class actions of "plastic straw replacement" size are simply too small, even if they were as effective as imagined.

Quote
2,000,000,000Kg

You have one zero too much. Still a lot of course, just a nitpick.
« Last Edit: August 03, 2023, 05:33:50 am by Siwastaja »
 

Online Siwastaja

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 9337
  • Country: fi
Comparing this to a modern ICE vehicle, like the VW Jetta with a mileage of 35 mpg, it would drive about 45,000 miles (approximately 75,000 km) on 1,300 gallons of petrol.

Considering that the average annual mileage driven in the EU is 11,300 km, a brand new Tesla Model 3 causes as much CO2 pollution as the average similar-sized car in the EU over a span of 6.5 years. In China, the time frame is also 6.5 years, while in the US, it's 3.5 years.

This calculation seems roughly correct, there seems to be some sort of scientific consensus ( ;D ) of replacing ICE cars with equivalent EVs offers some 30-50% reduction in total lifecycle CO2, depending on source (ignoring biased sourced like oil or EV industry, which of course give numbers outside of this range). It's something, but it's not that much. It's especially problematic if and when small ICE cars are replaced with larger luxury EVs, as the difference goes to basically zero.

Personally, I'm driving a 1996 state of art in low fuel consumption vehicle which in my use gets 5.5l/100km = 43mpg, and all EVs I have been looking at have significantly more weight and frontal area so keeping the old one alive by welding rusty spots to pass inspections every year while waiting for EVs to get even better than they already are seems environmentally a sane choice.
 

Offline tszaboo

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 8218
  • Country: nl
  • Current job: ATEX product design
Also, when it comes to "global warming", has anyone stopped to consider the ultimate technical question, can we actually measure and track the temperature of the the globe accurately?
How do we know we are doing it accurately? How accurately exactly?

NOTE: I am NOT syaing that the globe is not warming, I'm just asking the technical question, how do we measure this, and with what degree of precision and reliability. Because, AFAIK, everything hinges on that.
And maybe, is it excessive technical hubris to think we can even do that at all?
We have, that's the big satellite debacle. The temperature measurement satellites had a slight upward temperature drift in their measurement of temperature. The engineers calibrated the new sat correctly, sent it up, and there was a downward jump in temperature. So the climate scientists said, we cannot have that, corrected it so the data is continuous. And then the new sat started drifting. We are not talking about large drifts here, its in the order of 0.05K/decade, but it's enough to completely mess up any climate model. It's likely in the local two point calibration system, but they actually don't know what's causing it.
You are engineers, so here is a challenge: Show me a circuit that would be able to do local measurements with 0.05K/decade noncertainty. Measure a PT1000 and guarantee that drift for 10 years.
 


Share me

Digg  Facebook  SlashDot  Delicious  Technorati  Twitter  Google  Yahoo
Smf