Poll of the Day > Americans sure are stinky... :b

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/29/carbon-emissions-americans-social-cost

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Whenever I see someone supporting Tesla, or the GND in general online, I always make sure to ask them how many kids they have. Very few say zero.

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I support Tesla.

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Weird zebatov ignored me I don't think we've ever had a conversation

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Sarcasthma posted...

I support Tesla.

As someone who lives five minutes from their factory, fuck you very much

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Tell me how you really feel, buddy.

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We can be stinkier.

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Sarcasthma posted...

Tell me how you really feel, buddy.

fire elon into the sun

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wydrah posted...

fire elon into the sun

But its too far away.

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Sarcasthma posted...

But its too far away.

i mean, the sun is preferred, but we can point him in any direction away from earth for all i care

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Oil best resource in all Canada, bro. No child slave-labour involved like mining lithium and cobalt in Africa. I choose to support the children. Each to their own.

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zebatov posted...

Whenever I see someone supporting Tesla, or the GND in general online, I always make sure to ask them how many kids they have. Very few say zero.

0 kids checking in

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zebatov posted...

Whenever I see someone supporting Tesla, or the GND in general online, I always make sure to ask them how many kids they have. Very few say zero.

The other thing a lot of people forget is the sheer size of the US, and how absolutely shit mass transit is in most places. Cars are pretty much a necessity here in ways that they aren't in other countries. So we're pretty much going to generate far more waste in that respect than most other places, regardless of whether we're using combustion engines or electric.

It's also worth remembering that electric cars aren't necessarily carbon-neutral or "green", either, because that electricity still needs to come from somewhere, and unless you're getting it from fully hydroelectric/geothermal/wind-powered/solar-powered sources, there's still a carbon cost. Along with the environmental impact of batteries, plastics, and other manufacturing elements.

And most of this ultimately doesn't matter if you focus most of your attention on the individual level rather than the corporate level. Outlawing plastic bags at supermarkets or pushing people to buy electric cars doesn't really help if companies are still dumping tons of waste into the environment and there's tons of fuel being used on airplanes and trucks for cargo transport. It's a scenario where we need to change from the top down more than from the ground up.

(And THAT'S not even getting into the impact of raising animals and farming crops with modern fertilizing methods, which in many places can be hard to roll back without outright culling the population - humans have grown far beyond the planet's ability to sustain us at the most basic "natural" level.)

Things are far more complex than the "Why don't we just do X?" solutions the average person comes up with.


...which is not to say that we should just shrug and give up, either, because we're pretty much fucked as a species in the next century or so.
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Wildfire smoke is probably worse than car exhaust.

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ParanoidObsessive posted...

It's also worth remembering that electric cars aren't necessarily carbon-neutral or "green", either, because that electricity still needs to come from somewhere, and unless you're getting it from fully hydroelectric/geothermal/wind-powered/solar-powered sources, there's still a carbon cost. Along with the environmental impact of batteries, plastics, and other manufacturing elements.

You're not really wrong, but I don't like this argument. We know gas and diesel engines are NEVER going to be clean, but at least there is potential with electric. But I also don't like people being delusional about how green it is, or that it seems to be the de facto future solution now. Maybe there could've been potential in fuels that burn clean and are relatively clean to produce.

Edit: To be fair you were reasonable about what you said here. I know a lot of people who work in the fossil fuel industry and they like to post this take all the time in a smug manner, so I kinda get immediately triggered when I see it

CinderLock posted...

Weird zebatov ignored me

same lol

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ParanoidObsessive posted...

It's also worth remembering that electric cars aren't necessarily carbon-neutral or "green", either, because that electricity still needs to come from somewhere, and unless you're getting it from fully hydroelectric/geothermal/wind-powered/solar-powered sources, there's still a carbon cost. Along with the environmental impact of batteries, plastics, and other manufacturing elements.

EV's are the ideal moving forward because of the possibility that the electricity fuelling them will eventually be clean. By contrast, you can never run a gas-powered car without burning gas (outside of weird fringe cases where people have re-engineered their cars to run on fried eggplants or whatever). The costs that go into manufacturing EV's do also offset some of the potential savings even with clean energy (to say nothing of the non-zero environmental cost of that "clean" energy in the first place), but that's also something that has room for improvement.

Also, as much as you're still ultimately burning gas or whatever to produce the electricity for those cars, burning gas for electricity production is much more efficient than burning it to move a car. The fact that cars have radiators at all (which ultimately amount to "get rid of all the energy we can't capture from that gas") is a testament to that. Power plants, on the other hand, capture every joule they possibly can from the fuel they burn. Also, because of the limitations in what batteries can actually hold (hydrocarbons are much, much more efficient as energy storage per unit of volume/weight than even the best batteries will ever be), making EV's viable has entailed making a lot of modifications that improve their energy efficiency, most notably regenerative braking (which just blows my mind at how elegant a solution it is), allowing them to get significantly more mileage out of the energy that's put into them.

EV's certainly aren't as perfect a solution to the climate crisis as people would like to think they are, but they are a major step in the right direction, and will only get better.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

The other thing a lot of people forget is the sheer size of the US, and how absolutely s*** mass transit is in most places. Cars are pretty much a necessity here in ways that they aren't in other countries. So we're pretty much going to generate far more waste in that respect than most other places, regardless of whether we're using combustion engines or electric.

Really, the size of the US should be incentivizing mass transit, not discouraging it. Using a personal vehicle for long-distance travel is hideously inefficient, and the fact that the country's been deliberately designed around doing so is stupid.

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Lokarin posted...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/29/carbon-emissions-americans-social-cost

....carbon dioxide doesn't have a smell.

You're getting pretty close to my ignore list these days.

zebatov posted...

Whenever I see someone supporting Tesla, or the GND in general online, I always make sure to ask them how many kids they have. Very few say zero.

If the GND refers to AOC's trash propaganda, I think most supporters I know don't have kids, although a few have had kids lately and, honestly, they have more problems being the kids of those parents than anything else.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

The other thing a lot of people forget is the sheer size of the US, and how absolutely shit mass transit is in most places. Cars are pretty much a necessity here in ways that they aren't in other countries. So we're pretty much going to generate far more waste in that respect than most other places, regardless of whether we're using combustion engines or electric.

This.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

And most of this ultimately doesn't matter if you focus most of your attention on the individual level rather than the corporate level. Outlawing plastic bags at supermarkets or pushing people to buy electric cars doesn't really help if companies are still dumping tons of waste into the environment and there's tons of fuel being used on airplanes and trucks for cargo transport. It's a scenario where we need to change from the top down more than from the ground up.

Also this. It also turns people off from environmental shit, and is part of what got me out of it (as well as learning that so many of the claims were flat-out false)


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Zeus posted...

....carbon dioxide doesn't have a smell.

You're getting pretty close to my ignore list these days.

bruh, I was making a fart joke... cuz emissions

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Zeus posted...

carbon dioxide doesn't have a smell.

Incorrect.
Odor of carbon dioxide:

• Low concentrations: none
• High concentrations: sharp; acidic

I work with it often and can confirm the nose notices it.

Carbon monoxide on the other hand is odorless.


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Clench281 posted...

0 kids checking in

Thank fuck. Youre clear for landing on the Whatever-you-want-to-talk-about Way.

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ParanoidObsessive posted...

The other thing a lot of people forget is the sheer size of the US, and how absolutely shit mass transit is in most places. Cars are pretty much a necessity here in ways that they aren't in other countries. So we're pretty much going to generate far more waste in that respect than most other places, regardless of whether we're using combustion engines or electric.

It's also worth remembering that electric cars aren't necessarily carbon-neutral or "green", either, because that electricity still needs to come from somewhere, and unless you're getting it from fully hydroelectric/geothermal/wind-powered/solar-powered sources, there's still a carbon cost. Along with the environmental impact of batteries, plastics, and other manufacturing elements.

And most of this ultimately doesn't matter if you focus most of your attention on the individual level rather than the corporate level. Outlawing plastic bags at supermarkets or pushing people to buy electric cars doesn't really help if companies are still dumping tons of waste into the environment and there's tons of fuel being used on airplanes and trucks for cargo transport. It's a scenario where we need to change from the top down more than from the ground up.

(And THAT'S not even getting into the impact of raising animals and farming crops with modern fertilizing methods, which in many places can be hard to roll back without outright culling the population - humans have grown far beyond the planet's ability to sustain us at the most basic "natural" level.)

Things are far more complex than the "Why don't we just do X?" solutions the average person comes up with.

...which is not to say that we should just shrug and give up, either, because we're pretty much fucked as a species in the next century or so.

All I have to say is Cali is begging people to not charge their cars while still charging what most people would consider an astronomical rate for fuel.

Zeus posted...

If the GND refers to AOC's trash propaganda, I think most supporters I know don't have kids, although a few have had kids lately and, honestly, they have more problems being the kids of those parents than anything else.

GND = Green New Deal. I have zero kids. I plan to be non-hypocritical in that department.

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Heck, you don't even really need to work with CO2 often to know that it has a smell. Just sniff a glass of tonic water. It's not a strong smell (because that's not exactly high concentrations), but there's clearly something there beyond the normal water smell.

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