Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[GE Morton]

The issue is economics. Ideally they would clean up gunk they dump into the atmosphere, but that would make fuel even less financially competitive, requiring of even more subsidising by the taxpayer.

By "gunk," do you mean CO2? If not, then they do clean up the "gunk" THEY produce. But if the "gunk" to which you refer is CO2, then THEY don't dump it. YOU do. You stubbornly refuse to acknowledge that fact.

[Sy Borg]

The issue is economics. Ideally they would clean up gunk they dump into the atmosphere, but that would make fuel even less financially competitive, requiring of even more subsidising by the taxpayer.

By "gunk," do you mean CO2? If not, then they do clean up the "gunk" THEY produce. But if the "gunk" to which you refer is CO2, then THEY don't dump it. YOU do. You stubbornly refuse to acknowledge that fact.

It's easy to throw responsibility on to the poorest and let the powerful off scot-free. The wealth pyramid developed by Suisse makes clear how misleading your claims are:

https://cdnext.credit-suisse.com/about- ... lisher.JPG

Less that one percent of people held over 43% of all wealth. The top 11% held over 82% of all wealth. Presumably that top 11% have far more resources to spend in burning fossil fuels and bear more responsibility to change their behaviour.

[Steve3007]

In my part of the US (Pacific Northwest) 69% of electricity generation is from renewables, 22% from fossil fuels. 60% of the 69% is from hydro. There is no possibility of expanding the hydro; in fact, removing some of the dams, due their impacts on fish habitats, is getting serious attention. So the necessary doubling will have to come from wind, solar, and possibly geothermal.

Interesting. I guess the large proportion generated by hydro is because of things like the Grand Coulee Dam that I remember Woody Guthrie singing about! But I suppose the doubling of electricity generation that would be required in order for cars to run on "renewable" energy has to be a doubling across whole countries, or groups of countries, not just regions within countries. For example, electricity generation in the UK is shared with Ireland, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Norway. Or so I've read. One of the advantages of oil is that it can be shipped and stored around the world, so each region or country doesn't need its own supply. It's a global market. Electrical energy is harder to store in large quantities and harder to transmit over very long distances. Unless, of course, it's used to create hydrogen, and the hydrogen is then stored/shipped.

So lots of problems to solve!

[Steve3007]

Less that one percent of people held over 43% of all wealth. The top 11% held over 82% of all wealth. Presumably that top 11% have far more resources to spend in burning fossil fuels and bear more responsibility to change their behaviour.

It would be interesting to see a similar pyramid not for wealth but for CO2 emissions. Jeff Bezos, for example, is roughly a million times richer than me, but I'd be very surprised if he personally pumps a million times more CO2 into the atmosphere than me. If I had to guess I'd say it's 10 times, or maybe 100. But not a million. He probably has a bigger car and flies in planes more. And maybe he has a few houses in which he tends to leave the lights on when he goes out. Or maybe not.

If we think of this in terms of responsibility, then clearly we're all responsible. Oil companies pump oil to the extent that we burn it. If we didn't burn it they wouldn't pump it. Amazon delivery vans bring us our plastic gadgets to the extent that we order them. If we didn't order them, Jeff wouldn't deliver them.

Personally I'm in favour of governments taking action to encourage the development by companies of things like electric car infrastructure (although the potential of hydrogen means we shouldn't be entirely counting out the internal combustion engine just yet) because in a free market, with oil still plentiful, it wouldn't get a foothold yet. The oil is still too cheap and easy to extract. (The peak oil supply crunch that was fretted about a couple of decades ago has been postponed. Largely due to innovations in US shale). We consumers (or the vast majority of us) if given a choice between oil and electric driven cars will tend to make our decision based on price and convenience. The vast majority of us won't deliberately go for the expensive and inconvenient option for the sake of a global long term aim. We won't take responsibility unless it's in our short term personal interests to do so.

[Steve3007]

I think there's very little point in fretting and fuming about how bad those rich people are because they don't use their billions to personally bring about a reduction in CO2 emissions. I think there's very little point in telling the big oil companies how bad they are, and punishing them. I think it's as pointless as saying that wherever the industrial revolution happened to start, that's who is to blame. It's a cliché to say it, but blame cultures are counterproductive. If there is an urgent need to reduce the amount of CO2 going into the atmosphere, and we want to try to do it without having to go back to pre industrial revolution standards of living, then I think part of that solution has to be the companies that currently bring us our cheap and convenient energy sources. Such things as big oil companies, with their track record of success at solving problems, should be encouraged to be part of the solution, not demonized as the source of the problem.

Now that the push to end the age of oil seems to be genuinely gathering steam (to use a coal powered analogy) it seems that oil companies really are starting to scale back oil exploration activity. Since most of the world still currently runs on oil, that pushes up the price of the stuff. (Look at it.). That increases the profits of oil companies. That gives them the opportunity to invest in "renewables" in order to protect their own long term futures and keep their long term shareholders (largely pension funds) happy. The role of government is just to encourage this process.

I've never been a big fan of automatically attacking people who are part of the problem, because they often turn out to be well placed to also be part of the solution, with a bit of coaxing.

[Pattern-chaser]

In the US the fossil fuel industry receives about $3 billion annually in direct benefits, nearly all of which are tax deductions, most of which are similar or comparable to those available to all other businesses. They receive virtually no grants, per the definition above.

Consider a black-and-white example involving the current universal bogeymen: paedophiles.

Consider a product that is only of use to, and only used by, paedophiles. Because Americans clearly understand that people shoot people, not guns, the company manufacturing this product would be allowed to continue. That much is "available to all other businesses", in America.

But what if the company making the paedophile accessories is subsidised by the taxpayer? Even though other companies are permitted to receive subsidies, they generally don't. Would it not be appropriate to remove the subsidy from these paedophile suppliers? All we would be doing is placing them at the same level that most companies experience, so that's OK, right? We would not be commercially disadvantaging anyone if we removed the subsidy from the bogeymen.

Why can't we do the same for these CC bogeymen?

[GE Morton]

Interesting. I guess the large proportion generated by hydro is because of things like the Grand Coulee Dam that I remember Woody Guthrie singing about!

Yes. Blue circles are hydro projects, orange natural gas generators, green wind. There are over a dozen dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers which generate 1GW or more. Grand Coulee is the largest, > 6GW. That map is from 2017, and the number of wind generators has probably doubled since then.

nwpowersources.jpg (37.52 KiB) Viewed 857 times

But I suppose the doubling of electricity generation that would be required in order for cars to run on "renewable" energy has to be a doubling across whole countries, or groups of countries, not just regions within countries. For example, electricity generation in the UK is shared with Ireland, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Norway.

N. America is divided into several grids, within which power can be interchanged. Most of the US West is one grid. But the further the current has to travel, the greater the line loss.

electricalgrid.jpg (155.01 KiB) Viewed 857 times

[GE Morton]

Yes. Blue circles are hydro projects, orange natural gas generators, green wind. There are over a dozen dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers which generate 1GW or more. Grand Coulee is the largest, > 6GW. That map is from 2017, and the number of wind generators has probably doubled since then.

It is worth noting that none of those "green" methods are cost-free, environmentally speaking. Wind turbines are estimated to kill > 1 million birds year; hydro projects kill fish trying to navigate fish ladders and block their spawning grounds, which has become a big issue in the Pacific Northwest.

https://abcbirds.org/blog21/wind-turbine-mortality/

[Steve3007]

N. America is divided into several grids, within which power can be interchanged. Most of the US West is one grid.

That's interesting. The UK being small we have a single National Grid.
https://grid.iamkate.com/

But the further the current has to travel, the greater the line loss.

Yes, that's P = I²R for you.

[Steve3007]

It is worth noting that none of those "green" methods are cost-free, environmentally speaking. Wind turbines are estimated to kill > 1 million birds year; hydro projects kill fish trying to navigate fish ladders and block their spawning grounds, which has become a big issue in the Pacific Northwest.

Yes, indeed. Nothing is cost-free. Everything involves a cost/benefit assessment.

[GE Morton]

We consumers (or the vast majority of us) if given a choice between oil and electric driven cars will tend to make our decision based on price and convenience. The vast majority of us won't deliberately go for the expensive and inconvenient option for the sake of a global long term aim. We won't take responsibility unless it's in our short term personal interests to do so.

One sometimes overlooked advantage of electric cars is their far greater thermal efficiency. With internal combustion engines only about 25-35% of the BTUs in the fuel are converted to motive power; the rest is dissipated as waste heat. Electric motors are > 90% efficient. A friend of mine, who is a civil engineer and just bought an electric car, calculated the equivalent miles per gallon he gets on that car, for a quantity of of electricity equal to the price of a gallon of gasoline: 120 MPG (but keep in mind that the price of electricity in this part of the country is very low, compared to world averages).

That waste heat from millions of cars also contributes to warming, especially in urban areas.

[Steve3007]

One sometimes overlooked advantage of electric cars is their far greater thermal efficiency. With internal combustion engines only about 25-35% of the BTUs in the fuel are converted to motive power; the rest is dissipated as waste heat. Electric motors are > 90% efficient.

Yes, we were having a discussion about this at work just the other day and wondering if this means that in cold weather there's not enough waste heat from the engine to heat the inside of the car. Obviously with an internal combustion enginer there's more than enough. But apparently the battery generates a fair bit of heat. There's a guy at work who drives a Tesla. I'll have to ask him about it.

A friend of mine, who is a civil engineer and just bought an electric car, calculated the equivalent miles per gallon he gets on that car, for a quantity of of electricity equal to the price of a gallon of gasoline: 120 MPG (but keep in mind that the price of electricity in this part of the country is very low, compared to world averages).

Yes, and also keep in mind that a gallon in the US generally is much cheaper than it is in most of Europe. The current price here in England is something like £1.40 (about $1.80) per litre. One of the discussions we have here is about what the government will do to recoup the tax income lost on gasoline/petrol/diesel taxes when most cars are electric. We suspect they'll tax the electricity instead. Currently, since the tax on electricity is way less than it is on gasoline/petrol/diesel, (as well as the efficiency you've mentoned), electric cars are virtually free to run by comparison

That waste heat from millions of cars also contributes to warming, especially in urban areas.[/quote]

Local warming, yes. But that's different from the warming (from the sun) caused by greenhouse gasses. I'd be surprised if it's a significant contribution globally.

[Steve3007]

(I messed up the quote tag on that last quote, but hopefully it's clear that it was a quote.)

[GE Morton]

But what if the company making the paedophile accessories is subsidised by the taxpayer? Even though other companies are permitted to receive subsidies, they generally don't. Would it not be appropriate to remove the subsidy from these paedophile suppliers? All we would be doing is placing them at the same level that most companies experience, so that's OK, right? We would not be commercially disadvantaging anyone if we removed the subsidy from the bogeymen.

Are you using "subsidy" with the dictionary meaning, or with Sy's Newspeak meaning? The various tax deductions incorrectly called "subsidies" are taken by virtually all businesses eligible for them; they would be fiscally irresponsible did they not.

But to answer your question substantively, if the pedophile tool you postulate has no uses other than for doing evil, then it should be banned. That is obviously not the case with fossil fuels (or guns).

[Pattern-chaser]

One sometimes overlooked advantage of electric cars is their far greater thermal efficiency. With internal combustion engines only about 25-35% of the BTUs in the fuel are converted to motive power; the rest is dissipated as waste heat. Electric motors are > 90% efficient.

Yes, we were having a discussion about this at work just the other day and wondering if this means that in cold weather there's not enough waste heat from the engine to heat the inside of the car. Obviously with an internal combustion enginer there's more than enough. But apparently the battery generates a fair bit of heat. There's a guy at work who drives a Tesla. I'll have to ask him about it.

In addition, electric cars feature regenerative braking; petrol-engined cars waste all the power used to reach current speed when slowing, and burn up brake pads too.