The Equation (UCS)

My favorite is https://blog.ucsusa.org/david-wright/the-moon-and-nuclear-war-904/

What do you think of the argument that EVs actually do make this better, albeit not entirely, due to the efficiency difference between[0] (coal-fired) power plants and internal combustion engines in gasoline powered vehicles? [0] https://blog.ucsusa.org/jimmy-odea/electric-vs-diesel-vs-natural-gas-w…

Related data on CO2 intensity on grids, this shows a map based on EPA data. It shows what the equivalent CO2 emissions would be between an average EV compared to a gas car. The worst in the lower 48 is SERC Midwest (parts of IL and MO) at around 42mpg, the best is upstate NY at 255mpg. https://blog.ucsusa.org/dave-reichmuth/plug-in-or-gas-up-why-driving-o…

The UCS (Union of Concerned Scientists) has an article stating that, essentially, this development is not that special and is probably just defense hawks (paraphrased) wanting to go off and spend billions more all over the place. https://blog.ucsusa.org/elliott-negin/calling-out-the-hype-over-hypers… Also, an anecdote, there's been a lot of articles recommended to me over the past few days about both Russian and Chinese hypersonic missles, so I wouldn't doubt that this is literally a defense hawk doing some shady advertising, as others have mentioned.

> He tells me that in the corn belt many farmers are turning to PV because it pencils out much better than corn for ethanol, but neighbors sure as hell don't want to see solar panels when they drive by so there is a lot of effort into beauty strips. Some states have implemented laws that preempt local planning from blocking renewables development. In states that don't, I recommend to developers to offer to buy properties from people who say it's going to impact their property values at fair market value and then flip the house after the project is done (because there is always someone who will pay at least what it was acquired for). https://apnews.com/article/wind-solar-energy-projects-local-opposition… > Out west in CA it is a matter of time before people realize they want to build a solar field in some place that is habitat for an endangered species so I think sometimes the paperwork is going to approach AP1000 hassle as well. CA has plenty of room for solar remaining to develop that is unlikely to receive pushback, which will add to the 21.5GW of existing solar utility generation (does not include behind the meter distributed…

This article and blog series appears to primarily focus on fossil fuel plants failing in extreme weather events (which are growing more frequent). This is an important dimension to track, but isn't directly comparable to "normal" reliability - ie, how much storage do you need to keep your 100% wind+solar+hydro mix providing all your typical energy needs through a typical night (for example). Also, I don't particularly think these articles make great arguments. For example, "Similarly, 56% of the generating capacity knocked offline came from gas plants during Winter Storm Uri". Texas' overall energy capacity mix is ~40% gas. So while yes, it is disproportionate, I don't think it's hugely so, especially without taking into account other factors - for example, typical solar capacity in winter. The blog post that actually starts digging at some numbers (https://blog.ucsusa.org/mark-specht/how-reliable-are-gas-power-plants-… indicates that we might expect gas plants to have a reliability of ~70-80%. From another blogpost from them, we can find a very rough estimate of solar/onland wind reliability of ~30-40% (measured in ELCC, same as the 70-80% figure above) https://blog.ucsusa.org/mark-specht/elcc-explained-the-critical-renewa… So it's important to take into account the reliability derating of gas plants, but it doesn't really change the fact that solar/wind are in a significantly different class of…

The article focuses on wages outpacing inflation as solution. But why is no one focusing on why food prices are still increasing so much? We're long past shortages of COVID. It seems there has been an unchecked rise in food supplier oligopolies which allows a small number of companies to collude -Big potato: https://www.levernews.com/the-rise-of-big-potato/ -Big meat: https://blog.ucsusa.org/karen-perry-stillerman/will-the-biden-administ… -10 companies own most of the world's food brands: https://www.good.is/this-infographic-shows-how-only-10-companies-own-a…

People are missing the tree for the forest. If the “concerned” folks are to be believed, after more than a decade of corruption fighting Xi has missiles filled with water rather than rocket fuel. How do you think the Soviet hand-me-downs are going? The problem isn’t Putin or Xi committing global suicide, it’s they’re not paying attention to the details: Sgt. Boris or Liu driving off with thermonuclear warheads and selling them. https://blog.ucsusa.org/gregory-kulacki/xi-jinpings-thoughts-on-chinas…

Are you talking about this graph? https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-co2-emissions-region?sta… You might be talking about the graph on https://blog.ucsusa.org/peter-frumhoff/global-warming-fact-co2-emissio… , however that page has a missing image, so I cannot see that graph. Not sure which other graph you might be talking about?

EV batteries are not being disposed in a landfill. The relatively few that have failed are mostly stored right now as the processes to recycle their materials are brought into production. The volumes are too low right now for a full industrial build out but pilot plants exist and can be built into full industrial recycling facilities as the need grows. https://electrek.co/2022/10/14/us-increases-ev-battery-recycling-capac… https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35513612 https://blog.ucsusa.org/jessica-dunn/are-ev-batteries-recyclable/

I agree with the "class warfare" quote. But aren't "the rich" pretty much the ones pushing these anti-regulatory sentiments? I agree, these regulations you're pointing out aren't sufficient. But I maintain, I think the finger-pointing crap is a distraction. Nobody's going to do anything when they can point their finger at the bigger-offender, and feel vindicated in their own inaction. And since numbers are so easily fudgable, everyone feels this way (see: leading U.S. politicians blaming Africa for climate change [1], about as ridiculous a claim as is imaginable) [1] https://blog.ucsusa.org/derrick-jackson/house-speaker-mike-johnsons-cl…

Starlink has a little over 5,000 satellites in orbit currently, with expansion planned up to 42,000 in the future. At the end of 2022, there was only 6,718 active satellites[1] in space - total. The amount of government objects (from any country, of any kind, station, spy satellite, probe, rover, etc) is dwarfed by commercial interests. This just illustrates the sheer volume of commercial objects in space... In fact, here's a list of all publicly acknowledged satellites launched by the USAF since 1984[2]. It shows 331 in total, counting inactive satellites. [1] https://blog.ucsusa.org/syoung/how-many-satellites-are-in-space-the-sp… [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_USA_satellites

The Union of Concerned Scientists claimed recently that this push for lighter regulations was the root cause if the flurry of stories about how hard legacy auto was finding it to sell EVs. Of course all the stories framed it just as people not wanting EVs in general. "Electric Vehicle Sales Continue to Grow, Despite What Some Automakers Are Saying" https://blog.ucsusa.org/dave-reichmuth/electric-vehicle-sales-continue… > the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is in the process of setting regulations for future passenger vehicles—and casting doubt on EV sales is a tactic to push for weaker regulations.

Exactly. WarGames is very similar to a true incident that occurred in 1979, four years before the release of the film. https://blog.ucsusa.org/david-wright/nuclear-false-alarm-950/ In this case, it turns out that a technician mistakenly inserted into a NORAD computer a training tape that simulated a large Soviet attack on the United States. Because of the design of the warning system, that information was sent out widely through the U.S. nuclear command network.

https://blog.ucsusa.org/chanese-forte/cold-war-nuclear-weapons-put-st-… The government dumped radioactive material in Cold Water Creek. https://coldwatercreekfacts.com/

https://blog.ucsusa.org/james-gignac/wind-turbine-blades-recycling/ "But the blades are different as they are made up of fiberglass (a composite material) to be lightweight for efficiency yet still durable enough to withstand storms. The mixed nature of the blade material makes separating the plastics from the glass fibers to recycle into a workable fiberglass material difficult—and the strength needed for the blades means they are also physically challenging to break apart."

Even more recently, Texas, Oklahoma, Indiana, West Virginia all passed laws within the last year or two that deny state contracts to any company who divests from oil/gas. Just insanely unconstitutional and vague, and a good reminder of why there's so much astroturfing around ESG, but those laws were adopted largely verbatim from "sample" text written by oil & gas lobbyists and energy companies; https://blog.ucsusa.org/elliott-negin/how-the-american-legislative-exc… Center for Public Integrity did a whole series on the phenomenon they called "Copy, Paste, Legislate": https://publicintegrity.org/topics/federal-politics/state-politics/cop…

> Glyphosate has seen billions of USD in settlements In my country some scientists have been found guilty of "not predicting an earthquake"[1], so I would be careful to believe to what a court can prove or disprove and the scientific value of their decisions... [1] https://blog.ucsusa.org/michael-halpern/italian-scientists-jailed-for-…

> batteries need rare earth metals "Rare earths" are a column (edit: ha ha see below) in the periodic table, and are not used in batteries. Some types of electric motors use rare earths, others do not. Here's a primer: https://blog.ucsusa.org/josh-goldman/electric-vehicles-batteries-cobal…

Maybe, but if it does, it's only because of corruption. Coal is really economically uncompetitive nearly everywhere. The only reason that it's still on the grid at all is usually some really bad long-term deals made in the past, or corrupt utility execs. Utilities continue to use coal even when it loses them money: https://blog.ucsusa.org/joseph-daniel/new-ucs-research-utilities-uneco… Utilities also tend to use long out-of-date costs when doing they planning, and the planning modes are often not available for inspection to regulators or the rate payers.

I will object to it: https://blog.ucsusa.org/dave-reichmuth/are-electric-vehicles-really-be…

> Companies aren't starting to install storage, as renewable evangelists promised. Yes, they are, at least in California which has an aggressive storage policy: https://blog.ucsusa.org/guest-commentary/five-facts-about-energy-stora…

There may be structural problems, but the current administration contributed significantly the poor response to this epidemic. Had they kept existing infrastructure and people in place, things could have gone significantly better. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-cdc-exclus… https://blog.ucsusa.org/anita-desikan/trump-administration-has-hindere…

> 1: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-blog/20... That article compares the footprint of building a new car vs keeping and existing already built car, not ICE vs EV lifetime carbon footprint. The actual reduction in lifetime carbon footprint for an EV is around 50% vs and ICE, as described here: https://blog.ucsusa.org/rachael-nealer/gasoline-vs-electric-global-war… Not sure if you'd call that night and day, but it's pretty huge. > . But there's no doubt that the EV is a huge improvement in use, and switching a large portion of the trucks in our cities to EV would be giant win for air quality. Indeed, and by consequence, it should reduce the rate of respiratory illnesses in cities caused by particular air pollution today.

Tesla Model 3 is roughly 15kwh per 100km. See this [1] for discussion of gasoline production - even more unexpected and complicated to tally. We are already getting EV emitting less CO2 each year, see here [2]. With wind/solar (+batteries) getting even more wins over coal due to price drops, this process will only accelerate — no need to wait for fusion. [1] https://greentransportation.info/energy-transportation/gasoline-costs-… [2] https://blog.ucsusa.org/dave-reichmuth/new-data-show-electric-vehicles…

> But I wouldn't say it is a good thing we reject more than half the energy we create. The meaning of "Rejected Energy" in that graphic is obscure but it certainly doesn't relate to energy which has been created and rejected. It may relate to excess capacity of fossil fuel plants (how much more they could produce if ordered to burn more fuel). The US is thankfully not "rejecting" twice as much energy as it is producing as those figures of 68.5 vs 32.7 lead you to believe. Curtailment of wind and solar generation in the US is recently around 2-4% [1] https://blog.ucsusa.org/mark-specht/renewable-energy-curtailment-101

>There aren't any rare earths in batteries btw. they're common in motor design, especially motor-in-hub designs. To play devils' advocate : batteries are filled with so-called 'conflict materials', and the places that export things like lithium and cobalt have famously bad worker conditions.[0] The popularity of such materials is only going to make their conditions worse unless they're accommodated somehow. [0]: https://blog.ucsusa.org/josh-goldman/electric-vehicles-batteries-cobal…

I’m skeptical about the conspiracy claims about how livestock were THE leading cause of GHG and looked up my own sources. The EPA doesn’t place livestock as the leading cause of GHG. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions Livestock are an important source (just not the most important). Documentaries with an obvious angle also purposely edit their footage to cast their villains in an unflattering light. There’s also a good blog post by the Union of Concerned Scientists about this very claim. https://blog.ucsusa.org/doug-boucher/cowspiracy-movie-review

This covers that and much more: https://blog.ucsusa.org/rachael-nealer/gasoline-vs-electric-global-war…

This is really interesting, and it should also be noted that NOAA's mission and ability to provide weather data directly to US citizens is in jeopardy. Rather than paying for it just once through their taxes, there is an effort to charge fees for public access so that companies which repackage weather data can serve forecasts with ads and gather users' data. https://blog.ucsusa.org/andrew-rosenberg/conflicts-of-interest-noaas-n… edit: If the Union of Concerned Scientists is too ideological (?): https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-06-14/trump-s-pick-to-lea…