>Oh no, am i bad at making jokes?, Or is your argument a joke?
No my argument was serious. You've sliced your data gratuitously. You're also making rude jokes, and I think there are HN rules about that somewhere. But, I'll forgive you.
You looked up the share of energy for the US as if every vehicle owner spends equal time driving in every city. That's dishonest. A vehicle owner typically drives in one city nearly all the time. If that city is coal powered as we can see, many are, that owner should not operate an EV. But policy relying on blanket data like yours would incentivize their doing so. That's bad for everyone, except the policymaker and his buddies selling EV related products.
The primary point, however, is that EVs move the pollutants up the supply chain. The car itself is non-emission, but the power plant and battery cycle are not! And the alternative power sources aren't really clean either. Nuclear, for example, requires mining, enrichment, etc. (all carbon heavy) and then we still need to deal with disposal which doesn't even exist! We're sweeping that under the rug when we call that clean energy. We don't have a solution for waste so we just exclude it from our impact calculations? Ridiculous.
Now add a toxic battery on top of all of that, and all of the mining and waste disposal associated with it. You've moved your pollutants to China, added shipping lanes, and dumped more oil and now lithium into the ocean. This may be worse overall and it's for sure worse for owners of cars in coal powered locations.
But you do get to say that the EV in a vacuum is zero emissions (at the location of inertial output only). Nice work!
Your argument zoomed out to blanket statement the US where it suits you, and then zoomed in to the car itself to exclude where your pollutants are. It's truly very dishonest. That argument is damaging to the public interest and to the environment, and insults the sciences.
Did you really not understand? I suspect you did, and in the context of your previous jokes, I think you're trying to annoy me. It'd be nice if that's not true.
Is it?
I suppose if we want to look at the US as a country (pretending it's all one city with one grid), then we will continue to encourage the 20% (roughly by your numbers) that drive gasoline in the coal power areas to downgrade to coal powered EVs.
I don't think that's good. I think you're careless and destructive for supporting that.
Anyway, you're not really acknowledging very real problems with your assertions and that's not going to make for coherent discussion. There's nothing scientific about that, so I suspect you might not be interested in science.
Lost my interest. Cheers.
For others reading, I'm happy to continue scientific discussion on this topic, especially if you disagree.
No my argument was serious. You've sliced your data gratuitously. You're also making rude jokes, and I think there are HN rules about that somewhere. But, I'll forgive you.
Right where you found your data (you shouldn't use Wikipedia for science), is a map of coal plants in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coal-fired_power_stati...
You looked up the share of energy for the US as if every vehicle owner spends equal time driving in every city. That's dishonest. A vehicle owner typically drives in one city nearly all the time. If that city is coal powered as we can see, many are, that owner should not operate an EV. But policy relying on blanket data like yours would incentivize their doing so. That's bad for everyone, except the policymaker and his buddies selling EV related products.
The primary point, however, is that EVs move the pollutants up the supply chain. The car itself is non-emission, but the power plant and battery cycle are not! And the alternative power sources aren't really clean either. Nuclear, for example, requires mining, enrichment, etc. (all carbon heavy) and then we still need to deal with disposal which doesn't even exist! We're sweeping that under the rug when we call that clean energy. We don't have a solution for waste so we just exclude it from our impact calculations? Ridiculous.
Now add a toxic battery on top of all of that, and all of the mining and waste disposal associated with it. You've moved your pollutants to China, added shipping lanes, and dumped more oil and now lithium into the ocean. This may be worse overall and it's for sure worse for owners of cars in coal powered locations.
But you do get to say that the EV in a vacuum is zero emissions (at the location of inertial output only). Nice work!
Your argument zoomed out to blanket statement the US where it suits you, and then zoomed in to the car itself to exclude where your pollutants are. It's truly very dishonest. That argument is damaging to the public interest and to the environment, and insults the sciences.